Free Playing Grace by Hazel Osmond Page A

simple option and, with a sharp jabbing motion, suggest a theoretical route straight through the office wall.
    She had gone for the jabbing, which seemed to rouse Alistair. He picked up his briefcase, but before detaching himself completely from the others announced, ‘I used to smoke quite a lot.’ A schoolboy snigger. ‘Not tobacco.’
    Gilbert winced and as Alistair did that weird baseball action again, made even clumsier by the presence of his briefcase, Tate caught Grace’s eye just at the moment she was remembering Mr Baldridge’s comment about ‘a bunch of pot-smoking Democrats.’
    She looked away. He could forget about building little connections between the two of them based on in-jokes. She was busy building a high wall to keep him out, with possibly a moat beyond.
    In his office, Grace saw Alistair glance at the notes she had left him about Gilbert’s payment and the phone messages, and push them to one side.
    ‘Seems … interesting, Tate,’ she said, knowing an oblique approach to any issue was always best with Alistair.
    ‘Mmm. Challenging, bit brash maybe, but I can see his potential.’ Alistair did that face Grace suspected he had read about in management technique books – the one heimagined made him appear inscrutable. In reality, it made it look as if he had a piece of food stuck between his molars and was trying to extract it surreptitiously. ‘I can see him really connecting with the funky young clients,’ he went on. ‘Making us the go-to company for hip tours.’
    Grace studied Alistair’s V-neck sweater and the striped shirt under it, one side of his collar buttoned down and the other breaking free, and gave thanks he had not used the terms ‘wack’ or ‘well baaad’.
    ‘Have you been thinking of getting someone like this in for a while?’
    ‘Oh, yes. I mean, I know people think I sit in here just faffing around, but I’ve been thinking strategically. Our competitors aren’t standing still, Grace; they’re all offering a wider range of tours than us. And no offence, but neither you nor Gilbert is able to fill this gap in our services: Gilbert’s at home in the sixteenth century, the seventeenth at a pinch, and you’re far too busy keeping me in line.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘Don’t think I don’t appreciate it.’
    When he was like this, she could understand what Emma saw in him. He dressed far older than his years and he could do with shifting a bit of weight, but he wasn’t bad looking in a scrubbed, pens-in-his-top-pocket way. And he was decent. Not a flake. Not like Tate Jefferson.
    ‘So, he’s employed on a freelance basis? Same terms as Gilbert?’
    She saw the beginnings of a look that suggested it was none of her business. ‘Uh-huh,’ Alistair replied with a mistimed wave of his hand, which Grace guessed was meant to suggest nonchalance. ‘Kind of a no-risk approach on my part.’
    Grace very much doubted that.
    ‘And he has a Blue Badge?’
    ‘No. But what he does have is lots of contacts – artists, gallery owners, curators.’
    She would not show how irritated she was that Alistair had put Tate’s extensive address book on a par with the tourist qualifications Gilbert and she had sweated and studied for.
    ‘And he has all the right paperwork, you know, for being employed in the UK? I expect you’ve seen his qualifications? You interviewed him formally somewhere?’
    She could tell from Alistair’s face that the answer to those questions was ‘don’t know’, ‘no’ and ‘yes, in the pub’.
    ‘Grace, Grace.’ He folded his hands in his lap. ‘Sometimes you have to take a leap. Push back the boundaries. We all get so bogged down in making sure every “t” is crossed and every “i” dotted. Don’t you sometimes feel that you have to shake off the shackles of how things have beenand move on to how things will be? A life lived with regret is a life not lived at all.’
    She wasn’t really sure where Alistair was going with