'No, but Lizetta often says that companies are usually quite happy to adopt equal opportunities policies, but whether their doing so has any real effect is difficult to determine....'
'Don't give up on account of this. That bigot will have won if you do. Give it another month or so. Look, for god's sake don't say a word about this to anyone here - my wife meets me at the office sometimes - but Lizetta and I are hiring a cottage up in Scotland in February. Why don't you come and stay with us for the weekend?'
Vincent's support did make me feel better. Nothing might come of his hoped-for weekend away with Lizetta, but the invitation to join them was kind. 'A break would be nice, but wouldn't I be rather in the way?'
'Nonsense. You've played host to us at the hotel, if you spend a weekend with us we'll be taking our turn, that's all. My main problem is coming up with a good excuse for the wife.'
On the occasions when he and Lizetta had come to the hotel for Sunday dinner he told her that he was meeting a business associate at the airport, but a convincing excuse for a whole weekend away would be far more difficult. The affair sometimes seemed terribly precarious. At the hotel they ate Sunday dinner with Darren and me, and then spent a few hours together between hotel sheets, twice in one of the guest rooms and once, when all the rooms were taken, on the futon in my flat downstairs, like a couple of teenagers with strict parents making love at a friend's house.