Page 20 of The Last Kiss Goodbye

‘You could well be right, Brian,’ she said as evenly as she could. ‘We all know how much prejudice is bred into people like this, but if we don’t challenge them, how can we ever hope to change their minds about anything?’

Brian didn’t look convinced.

‘All right,’ he sighed, looking up at the clock above the office door. ‘But who are you going to get to come on a protest at lunchtime on a Friday?’

Rosamund thought about it for a moment. He was irritating, but he had a point.

‘We’ll find someone,’ she muttered as she headed down to the street to think.

They gathered in a loose knot at the revolving front door of the building. Rosamund could see herself reflected in the polished brass plaque reading ‘Brook Publishing: London, New York’ and tried to ignore the fact that there were only five of them.

‘At least we have placards,’ said Sam, seeming to read her thoughts.

Ros nodded. With just a couple of hours’ notice, finding people to lend weight to the protest had not been easy. On the way to the Capital office she had managed to convince two friends, Alex and George, to come along on the proviso that she meet George for a drink after work at some unspecified point. They were both tall and imposing, especially George, who had the build of a wrestler, but more importantly, they both worked at Jenning’s, the printers hidden on a back street behind Piccadilly, and consequently had easy access to both stiff card and paints. The placards reading ‘Down with Capital’ and ‘Listen to the People’ weren’t particularly inspired, but Brian had come up with ‘Blacks In’, generously daubed in red, and the possibly offensive ‘Go Back to Eton’.

They had also managed to mimeograph a one-sheet polemic Ros had dashed off on the office typewriter entitled ‘Capital: Bold-Faced Lies’, which, along with a DAG information leaflet, they were forcing into the unwilling hands of passers-by.

The choice of a lunchtime protest had been unexpectedly fortuitous, as it meant the entire Capital building had to run the gauntlet of their slogans as they headed out for sandwiches.

‘Withdraw the article!’ shouted Alex.

‘Fire Dominic Blake!’ yelled Ros to bemused glances from the secretaries and post boys hurrying in and out of the polished brass and glass front doors.

‘I’m not sure the message is getting through,’ said Sam from the side of her mouth.

‘That’s not the point,’ said Rosamund. ‘The point is we air our views, exercise our democratic right to protest. Whether it changes anything is neither here nor there; the fact that we’re doing it is all that matters.’

She caught Sam’s raised eyebrows. She wasn’t at all sure she was convinced by her own argument either. The Direct Action Group was coming up to its two-year anniversary, and in her darker moments Ros wondered what her beloved pressure group had actually achieved, beyond a police caution six months ago when she had chained herself to the railings outside the Houses of Parliament.

‘Miss?’

She jumped as someone tapped her on the shoulder. A young man, no more than sixteen, was standing there wearing an ill-fitting suit – probably a hand-me-down from his father, she thought, immediately regretting being so glib. Either way, he looked terrified.

‘Yes?’ she said as gently as she could.

‘Would – would you mind coming this way?’ stuttered the boy.

‘What? Where?’

?

?Upstairs,’ he said, motioning into the building. ‘My boss wants a word with you.’

She felt a little jolt of alarm, but Brian and Sam nodded in encouragement.

Handing her placard to Sam, she walked into the building, glancing at herself in the mirrored wall of the reception. She looked pale from the cold and wished she had some colour to her face to balance the darkness of her hair. Ros had a difficult relationship with make-up. She disliked the tyranny that a ‘full face’ suggested, but secretly admitted that a slash of red lipstick could give a girl an instant lift of confidence.

Reminding herself that she had a masters degree from the LSE, she followed the boy up a flight of stairs, into a smoky open-plan office full of desks and typewriters. There was a room at one end with large glass windows. She could see inside and noticed a man standing up behind his desk on the phone.

The boy knocked on the door and the man put down the phone and gestured for Rosamund to come inside.

Now his suit certainly fits, thought Ros, taking a minute to observe him. In fact you could tell at a glance that the man in question had spent a lot of time at the tailor’s. His jacket was quite short, the lapels narrow, and the colour, dove grey, matched his eyes. He held up the mimeographed sheet and raised his eyebrows as if to say ‘Well?’ Rosamund felt her heart jump; if there was an enemy, he was putting himself in her sights.

‘You’ve read our views?’ she said as calmly as she could.

‘I’m Dominic. Dominic Blake, editor of Capital,’ he said by way of brusque introduction. ‘And yes, I have read your . . . piece, Miss . . .’

‘Bailey. Rosamund Bailey. Chairwoman of the Direct Action Group.’