'Peter... but he gave up a job in the US before joining the firm.'
'Exactly. He is now desperately trying to find a way out. Maybe he's accepted that the three senior partners will not give up the Committee, and is hoping he can persuade them to put him forward to the Institute in some sort of computer supremo role.'
'What will happen to Caroline if they send him to the States?'
'She will probably go with him. There are plenty of multi-national firms based in New York that would be glad to take on someone with her personnel experience in the UK and Europe. She's fine, by the way. She asks after you, you know. We'll have to fix up to have a meal together. You'll find her good company now.'
No matter how good the paper that Peter intended to present that afternoon, it was unlikely to be well received. In the partners' eyes the Institute was sacred. To convince them to put such a novel proposal forward would require months of persuasion. To try to push the idea at the quarterly meeting without doing the preparatory work was hopeless.
I had a dozen routine tasks to get through that afternoon, but dread of the summons to the meeting made it difficult to focus my mind on any of them. After half a dozen attempts I gave up trying to contact Tom. Increasing hunger was making me irritable. Why had I not had something more substantial at lunch with Lizetta? I dared not go out again in case Peter sent for me; one or two people who might have been asked to go out to the sandwich bar for me as a favour were engaged on tasks that could not easily be set aside. I would have to starve.
Suddenly I remembered the car. It had been in the side street for hours and might easily have been stolen or vandalised. The breakdown service was engaged twice when I tried to ring, but I got through the third time and hurriedly explained the problem, no doubt sounding like a complete buffoon. They repeated back the details of where to find it and, with understandable annoyance, promised to make collecting it a priority, 'since all your appointments have prevented you from letting us know about the accident before now, sir.' Reporting the crash to the office manager would have to wait until Monday; by then her disapproval might be easier to bear.
The call to the quarterly meeting did not come until four o'clock. I was as nervous as I had been at my first ever job interview. In the board room there was one free chair, more or less opposite Peter. The chairman waved me towards it, thanked me for coming to help with what he called Peter's 'submission', and asked him to begin.