They hardly spoke. Jay was going through his notes one last time. When he did speak he was conscientiously pleasant. But it was clearly an effort.
He can’t wait to get rid of me, thought Zoe. She felt as if he had struck her to the heart.
And then he gave her a gentle smile that did not seem as if it was an effort at all. For a moment her heart rose.
‘I thought you’d like your last ride in a gondola. I’ve ordered one to take us to the conference hotel. Shame about the weather, though.’
But he did not touch her. Her heart sank back to the bottom of the ocean again.
Jay dealt with the practicalities swiftly. He paid the bill.
‘We’ll take our bags with us to the conference. That way we can circulate as long as possible before making a bolt for the airport.’
‘Good thinking,’ said Zoe, working hard to play bright and interested.
His smile was twisted. ‘Just another thing I’ve done before.’
The mist had the odd effect of concentrating sound. In the gondola, Zoe could hear the plop and swish of the gondolier’s pole, the lapping of water against the low sides of the boat. Her breathing. Jay’s. But of the other gondolas, which loomed out of the mist and then were swallowed up again, she heard almost nothing. As they moved towards the Grand Canal, though, she heard the machine gun fire of the Vaporetti motors. And the mist swirled and pulled apart, getting thinner and thinner.
She thought, This is the last time we’ll ever be alone.
She took Jay’s hand quickly, before she lost her nerve.
She said in fierce, rapid under-voice, ‘I want to say—I’m really glad it was you. I won’t ever regret it.’
And then the gondolier poled them out between two tall palaces. And the mist dissolved into little puffballs of bite- sized cloud and they were into thin sunshine.
‘Zoe—’ Jay sounded strangled.
But the gondolier demanded clarification of their destination— and then the laptop overbalanced—and then another boat came dangerously close and a ferocious argument broke out. And then they were there.
He helped her up the steps. And held onto her hand when they were ashore, ‘Zoe, we have to— I should have— Oh, hell, this is terrible timing.’
Zoe looked up and saw a man coming towards them along the canalside, hands held out in welcome.
‘Jay. So good to have you. Come inside and meet everyone.’
Inevitably she slid into the background. Oh, everyone was kind—and Jay was meticulous in introducing her—but she had no role here. She could see it in everyone’s eyes. They were tolerant, even intrigued. But the message was clear: she’s just along for the ride.
Jay had her seated in the front row, though. He was doing his best to pretend that she was a fellow professional, thought Zoe, touched. The last thing he said to her before he disappeared onto the podium was, ‘Now, don’t forget to take notes. I want a proper post mortem on this speech.’
And her neighbour’s smile said, as loudly as words, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Zoe set her teeth and applied herself to the foolscap note pad.
Jay talked well. Not a surprise, of course. He was always fluent But this was different. He talked with knowledge and wit and ease. But also with a seriousness that was almost like passion.
He told the crowded room, ‘Recently a friend reminded me that what we call public relations a lot of our critics call putting a spin on things.’
Zoe sat bolt upright. Jay smiled, straight at her.
‘Not a high calling, you may think,’ he went on. ‘Not a very laudable role. Let me tell you what I think we do. And why it’s important.’
There followed the stuff that she had researched. The statistics. The international examples. The anecdotes.
And then he said, ‘When I first came into this business I was defensive. The press had stitched me up. I thought that what I was doing was giving people the tools to defend themselves against shallow and malignant journalism. But I have come to see that what we do is more than that. In our campaigns we are telling stories. We are reflecting the age back to itself. And in doing that—if we want to—we can reflect the best. Kindness instead of self-interest. Common humanity instead of hate. We are not just about selling things, ladies and gentlemen. We are about confirming values. In these dark days, that is important.’