Sunrise by Rosie Thomas

Author:Rosie Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007560615
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-02-11T16:00:00+00:00

Eight

‘Why do we have to come all this way?’ one of the girls complained in the taxi. ‘Aren’t there enough places to eat in Soho? I’m completely ravenous.’

‘Harry’s idea,’ someone answered, as if that was sufficient explanation.

Harry was wedged into his corner, silently watching the London streets slide past the cab window. He might have been miles away from the noisy group of people with whom he had been watching the rough cut of a new film at a Wardour Street preview theatre.

‘You a Londoner, Hal?’ asked the man from the Coast who had money to invest in a new project.

Harry shook himself out of his reverie. Seeing the tangled ribbons of London streets like this reminded him of the weeks he had spent endlessly looking for Angharad. Millions of faces, jostling and crowding, and never a hope of finding her.

‘Me? No, Morty, I’m a Welshman.’

Le Gallois. The Welshman. The name of the new restaurant had sprung out at him from a flyer, and he had decided at once to visit it. It took him back to the days of searching when he had followed up the slenderest connecting threads, like this one, in case they led back to her. How long? Five, six years ago. So much had happened since then, but in another sense nothing had happened at all.

‘We’re going to Le Gallois,’ he had said to the party outside the preview theatre, not caring whether they came or not. They had come, of course, all of them, and now Harry found himself wishing as he did too often nowadays that he was alone.

The taxi pulled up abruptly and the girls fell forward, laughing and exclaiming. Harry put out a steadying hand to one of them and felt the pressure of it returned, too eagerly. He was frowning as he paid the driver and shepherded the little group into the restaurant.

The foyer was cool and wide, and a greeter came hurrying forward, American-style. Morty began to look more cheerful.

‘Harry Cotton,’ Harry said briefly. ‘A table for seven. My office booked it.’

The girl ran her finger down the list in her book, shaking her head. ‘I hope there hasn’t been a mistake, Mr Cotton. We’ve been very full since we opened, and this last week …’

Harry leaned over her and pointed. ‘That’s it. Parallax Productions. I’m sorry, I didn’t know my secretary had given the company name.’

Angharad had taken the call, and had written the film company’s name in the book herself.

The greeter was smiling, relieved. ‘Not at all. This way, sir.’

There was a round table laid for seven in the middle of the room. Harry saw that his guests were seated before looking around him. Cream tablecloths, neutral walls and carpets, a comfortable room full of fashionably dressed people who could equally well have been in New York, or Rome, or Los Angeles. Le Gallois, Harry thought wearily. There was nothing Welsh here at all. It was exactly like a hundred other good restaurants he knew across the world.

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