A Place of Secrets

Chapter 1

JUNE 2008

How tiny and random are the events that shape our destiny.
By the time she left for the office the next morning, Jude had almost forgotten her dream. Waiting for the train at Greenwich station, the sudden wail of a toddler brought back fragments of her distress, but by the time she reached Bond Street these too were displaced by other, more mundane worries. She had no sense that something important was about to happen, something that on the face of it was quite insignificant.
It was Friday lunchtime in the Books and Manuscripts department of Beecham's Auctioneers in Mayfair. She'd been sitting at her computer screen all morning, cataloging rare first editions of eighteenth-century poets for a forthcoming sale. A painstaking job, it meant describing the contents of each slim volume, noting its condition and recording any quirks or flourishes--a handwritten dedication, say, or scribbled annotations--that might tickle the interest of potential buyers. Annoying then, when anyone broke her concentration.
"Jude." Inigo, who inhabited the next desk in their open-plan office, came over, clasping a mess of paper festooned with multicolored sticky-backed notes. "Proofs of the September catalog. Where do you want them?"
"Oh, thanks," she murmured. "Give 'em here." She dumped the pile on the already overflowing tray beside her computer, then started to type another sentence. Inigo didn't take the hint.
"I really do think you should look at the Bloomsbury pages again," he said in his most pompous tone. "I jotted down a couple of points, if you'd like to...?"
"Inigo--" she said, trying and failing to frame a polite way of saying "mind your own business." The Bloomsbury Group first editions were her responsibility and she didn't report to him in any way on them or on anything else. "Can we talk this afternoon? I must finish this."
Inigo nodded and glided back to his desk where he started to get ready to go out. He slid his tweed jacket on over the matching waistcoat, tucked his fountain pen into the breast pocket, straightened his silk cravat and ran smoothing fingers across his schoolboy fair hair, his dapper figure as fussy as a dog with a flea.
"Going somewhere important, Inigo?" she remarked.
Looking pleased that she'd asked, he whispered, "I'm meeting Lord Madingsfield at Chez Gerard," and tapped the side of his nose to indicate confidential business.
"Lord Madingsfield again?" she said, surprised. "Well, have fun." She turned back to her keyboard. Inigo had been toadying up to this wealthy collector for months now. In her private opinion the wily old aristocrat was stringing him along.
"We're in quite a delicate stage of negotiation, actually," Inigo said.
Jude and Suri, the trainee cataloger who sat at the desk opposite, exchanged mock-impressed glances. Suri looked back quickly at her work, but Jude could see her shoulders quivering with suppressed mirth. Inigo took everything in life too seriously, but most of all, his place in it. Only when the lift arrived and swallowed him up did they give way to their laughter.
"I wonder what he'd say if he saw a video of himself," Suri managed to say between giggles. She stood up to go out herself, adjusting the clasp in her glossy black hair and swinging her handbag onto her shoulder.
"He'd probably fall in love, poor boy," Jude said as she typed. "Enjoy your lunch."
"Can I get you anything?" Suri said. "I'm going past Clooney's if you want a sandwich."
"Thanks, but I'll be OK,"...