31
Vanessa looked at her watch. The Butler saw this as a gesture for more mint juleps; the sun was approaching the yard arm, not that conventions such as this bothered Vanessa Thyme.
Vanessa put a cursory hand over her glass, ‘No more, Hermione, thankyou. You may leave us.’ All the staff were female, as were the private consultants, and all of them disaffected women who held a grudge against a male-dominated world; things were getting better, but they had no time to wait and were not inclined to do so.
‘We should have heard something by now,’ Van Esther said, totally relaxed in a wicker armchair, shoes off and legs resting on a pouf (an article of furniture); she wiggled her painted toes.
Vanessa thought for a moment, lifted her feet from the ornamental pond where the fish had been ni
