‘Who are your clients?’
A good question, she has to give him that. If this were an interview she would have made a little squiggle in the margin of her assessment form to indicate that he was brighter than he looked.
‘Usually recruitment firms, but also companies, agencies or government bodies that are considering internal promotion to the leadership team or other key posts. Sometimes it’s investors who want to know who they’re dealing with.’
‘Like Stephanie?’
‘Exactly.’
Just as Laura is about to return the favour and ask Niklas about his job, the alpha male opposite breaks into their conversation. He must be fifty, and she doesn’t need to look at his place card to know his name.
‘Did you say you worked as a headhunter?’
He already has the attention of everyone around the table, which means they are now focused on her.
‘No,’ Laura says curtly, because she already knows where he’s going with this.
However, he’s not so easily dismissed.
‘I’m actually looking for a new challenge.’
Laura shakes her head. ‘As I said, that’s not what I do.’
He’s not listening. ‘I usually increase turnover by at least ten per cent in the first twelve months,’ he informs her. ‘There was an article about me in Industry Today the other week – did you see it?’
Laura demonstratively turns to Niklas, but the alpha male still doesn’t get it.
‘The headhunters call me once a week, if not more often,’ he boasts. ‘You wouldn’t believe the salary they offer – but I need the right kind of challenge. What company did you say you worked for, Lena?’
Steph intervenes before Laura bites his head off.
‘Laura runs her own business, Tobias. She assesses people like you, searches out their weaknesses. The skeletons in your closet. You need to watch yourself.’
There are odd bursts of laughter, and if Tobias had any sense he would drop the whole thing. Instead, he leans across the table.
‘Do I, indeed? So how would you assess me, Laura? What are my weaknesses?’
He beams at her, showing his recently whitened teeth, and she can see that a number of the guests are on his side. Steph is giving her a look, and Laura knows she ought to keep her mouth shut, but alpha-Tobias is wearing the smug expression favoured by only a certain kind of man. He really is asking for this.
Steph shakes her head almost imperceptibly, but to no effect.
‘I’ve met so many people like you,’ Tobias goes on. ‘Cod psychologists who think they can judge someone by getting them to fill in a fucking form. Can you list your three greatest weaknesses? What colour do you associate with your personality? If you were a car, what make would you be? Bullshit, pure and simple.’
He laughs loudly, and once again several of the other guests – mainly male – join in. Buoyed up by their support, he leans even further forward and extends an index finger with a faint sticky film covering the nail.
‘Go on, Laura – give me your best shot!’
‘OK, but remember this was your idea.’
She takes a sip of her wine, puts down the glass while observing Tobias closely. Follows the tell-tale redness at his hairline, down over his upper body, his hands. You could hear a pin drop around the table.
‘You’re married,’ she begins. ‘But that’s not your wife.’
She nods in the direction of his companion, who is at least twenty years his junior.
‘You drove here because you wanted to show her your expensive car. It could be an Italian make, but it takes time to learn to drive them properly, and you don’t have the patience, so I’ll go for a slightly more easy-to-handle Porsche.’
Tobias’s eyes are darting from side to side.
‘You’ve already drunk too much, but you’re still intending to drive home, because you don’t want to leave your precious toy parked on the street. Which means you don’t really care about risks or consequences for yourself or others. Since you came by car, you don’t live in town, but in Lidingö or Djursholm. Judging by the exaggerated way you pronounce the letter i, I’d go for the former, but the cadence of your sentences suggests that you were born and grew up somewhere on the west coast.’
She pauses, leaving him to squirm for a few seconds. She avoids catching Steph’s eye. This is too easy. And so much fun.
‘Your suit is Brioni, your watch Rolex, your tie Fendi. Red, of course, because you read in someone’s autobiography that it’s a power colour. Autobiographies are all you read, by the way. And you recently had a hair transplant.’
She leans back, trying not to look smug.
‘To summarise, Tobias: you’re a walking, talking, risk-taking, middle-age crisis. What do you think of my assessment?’
No one speaks. Tobias is gasping for air, as if he’s about to explode.
Suddenly Steph begins to laugh, a loud, infectious belly laugh that draws everyone in, and the atmosphere lightens.
‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ she says as the laughter gives way to an amused hum of conversation. ‘Laura’s fucking lethal.’
Tobias knocks back the contents of his wine glass.
‘How the fuck did you know all that?’ He sounds annoyed, but reluctantly impressed.
‘Do you really want to know?’ Laura says.
The conversation dies away. She gazes steadily at him.
‘I read the article about you in Industry Today. It told me where you come from, where you live, and that you’ve been married for many years. But your companion this evening isn’t wearing a wedding ring.’ Once again she nods in the direction of the young woman, whose hands are clearly visible. ‘Plus, you had a much higher forehead in the photograph in the magazine.’
And there’s something sticky on your fingers which I’m guessing is Regaine, just in case the transplant doesn’t succeed, because you can’t think of anything worse than going bald. She decides to keep that little snippet to herself. There are limits, after all.
Tobias’s face is bright red. He has got over the shock and surprise, and now he’s furious, humiliated. He’s probably wondering whether to call her a bitch and storm out, or pretend to turn the other cheek and be a good loser. She thinks he’ll go for the latter option; anything else would be stupid.
‘And the car?’ the man next to her asks. ‘How did you know he drives a Porsche?’
Laura shrugs.
‘He arrived just after me and parked by the door. I saw them getting out of the car as I was walking in.’
Another burst of laughter. Tobias grins, looking embarrassed but doing his best to join in the merriment. A wise decision.
One of the women is laughing so much she can hardly breathe. She reaches for her glass of water and knocks it over. When she leans forward to retrieve it, one of her curls gets too close to a candle.
Laura can see what is about to happen and opens her mouth to warn the woman, but it’s too late. A flash of fire, then a scream.
It’s over in a second. The hiss of burning, the flame is extinguished. All that remains are agitated voices and the acrid smell of burned hair.
Everyone’s attention is on the woman, so no one notices when Laura gets up and hurries out of the room. Her stomach contracts, she can feel the sweat on the back of her neck.
She just manages to lock the toilet cubicle door, turn on the cold tap and sweep her hair out of the way before she throws up in the hand basin. She swills out her mouth, blows her nose several times to try to get the smell of burned hair out of her nose, but somehow it is still there.