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‘Happy birthday?’ she asked.

‘How do you know it’s my birthday?’ Bond just managed to keep the surprise from his voice, he thought.

‘Just a good guess,’ she said. ‘I could tell you were celebrating something last night. So was I – you sense these things. We celebrants, celebrating.’

Bond touched the knot of his tie and cleared his throat, recalling. The woman had been sitting in the dining room last night, a few tables away from him.

‘Yes,’ Bond said, somewhat ruefully. ‘It is indeed my birthday . . .’ He was buying a few seconds’ time, his mind beginning to work. He was definitely off colour this morning. The lift hummed down to the lobby.

‘So – what were
you
celebrating?’ he asked. He remembered now – they had both been drinking champagne and had simultaneously raised their glasses across the room to each other.

‘The fourth anniversary of my divorce,’ she said, drily. ‘It’s a tradition I keep. I treat myself to cocktails, dinner, vintage champagne and a night in a suite in the Dorchester – and then I send him the bill.’

She was a tall rangy woman in her mid-thirties, Bond estimated, with a strong handsome face and thick honey-blonde hair brushed back from her forehead and falling in an outward curve to her shoulders. Blue eyes. Scandinavian? She was wearing a jersey all-in-one navy catsuit with an ostentatious gold zip that ran from just above her groin to her neck. The tightness of the close-fitting material revealed the full swell of her breasts. Bond allowed the nature of his carnal appraisal to register in his eyes for a split second and saw her own eyes flash back: message received.

The lift doors slid open with a muffled ‘ping’ at the ground floor.

‘Enjoy the rest of your day,’ she said with a quick smile and strode out into the wide lobby.

In the dining room, Bond ordered four eggs, scrambled, and half a dozen rashers of unsmoked back bacon, well done, on the side. He drank a long draught of strong black coffee and lit his first cigarette of the day as he waited for his breakfast to arrive.

He had been given the same table that he’d occupied at dinner the night before. The woman had been sitting to his left, three tables away, and at an angle of the room so that if Bond turned his head slightly they had a good view of each other. Earlier in the evening, Bond had drunk two dry martinis in Fielding’s, the private casino where he’d managed to lose almost £100 at chemin de fer in about twenty minutes, but he wasn’t going to let that spoil his night. He had ordered a bottle of Taittinger Rosé 1960 to go with his first course of pan-fried Scottish scallops with a beurre blanc sauce and, as he had raised the glass to himself – silently wishing himself a happy forty-fifth birthday – he had spotted the woman lifting her glass of champagne in an identical self-reflecting gestural toast. Their eyes had met – Bond had shrugged, smiled and toasted her, amused. She toasted him back and he had not thought about it further. She had left as he was preoccupied with assessing the bottle of Chateau Batailley 1959 that he had ordered for his main course – fillet of beef, rare, with pommes dauphinoises – and consequently hadn’t really taken her in as she swept briskly past his table, registering only that she was tall, blonde, wearing a cream dress and that her shoes had small chunky gold heels that flashed in the glow of the table lights as she walked out of the dining room.

He sprinkled some pepper on his scrambled eggs. A good breakfast was the first essential component to set any day off to a proper start. He had told his secretary he wouldn’t be coming in – part of his present to himself. It would be as impossible to face his forty-fifth birthday with the routine prospect of work as it would without a decent breakfast. He ordered another pot of coffee – the hot liquid was easing his throat. Strange that the woman should be in the lift like that, he thought, and stranger still for her to guess it had been his birthday . . . Funny coincidence. He recalled one of the first rules of his profession: if it looks like a coincidence then it probably isn’t. Still – life
was
full of genuine coincidences, he reasoned, you couldn’t deny that. Very attractive woman, also. He liked the way she wore her hair. Groomed yet natural-looking—

The maître d’ offered Bond a copy of
The Times
to read. Bond glanced at the headline – ‘Viet Cong Offensive Checked With Many Casualties’ – and waved it away. Not today, thank you. That zip on the front of her outfit – her catsuit – was like a provocation, a challenge, crying out to be pulled down. Bond smiled to himself as he imagined doing precisely that and drank more coffee – there was life in the old dog yet.

Bond returned to his room and packed up his dinner suit, shirt and underwear from the night before. He threw his toilet bag into his grip and checked that he’d left nothing behind. He needed a couple of aspirin for his throat, he thought: the coffee had soothed it momentarily but now it was feeling thick and lumpy, swallowing was uncomfortable. Flu? A cold, probably – he had no temperature, thank God. However, the day was his to do with as he pleased – he had a few necessary chores, but there were plenty of birthday treats that he had promised himself along the way.

At the checkout desk it seemed that a group of a dozen Japanese tourists were collectively querying their bill. Bond took out his cigarette case and, as he selected a cigarette and put it in his mouth, noted with mild concern that he must have smoked over thirty cigarettes the previous night. He’d filled the case before he’d gone to the casino. But this was not the day to entertain thoughts of discipline and cutting down, he told himself, no, no – today was a day for judicious self-indulgence – then, as he fished in his pocket for his lighter, he smelled Guerlain’s ‘Shalimar’ once more and heard the woman’s voice again.

‘May I trouble you for a light?’

As Bond lit her cigarette she steadied his hand with two fingers on his knuckles. She had a small cream-leather travelling bag at her feet. She was checking out also – coincidence . . . ? Bond lit his cigarette and looked squarely at her. She plumed smoke sideways and returned his gaze, unperturbed.

‘Are you following me, or am I following you?’ she said.

‘We are seeing rather a lot of each other, you’re right,’ Bond said. He offered his hand. ‘My name’s Bond, James Bond.’

‘Bryce Fitzjohn,’ she said. They shook hands. Bond noticed her fingernails were cut short, unvarnished – he liked that – and her grip was firm. ‘Do you always celebrate your birthday alone?’ she asked.

‘Not always,’ Bond said. ‘I just didn’t feel like company this year.’

She glanced up as the phalanx of tourists began to move away.

‘At bloody last,’ she said. There was the hint of an accent, Bond thought. Bryce Fitzjohn – Irish?

‘After you,’ Bond said.

She opened her handbag and took out a card, offering it to him.

‘I end my divorce celebrations with a cocktail party. It’s at my house, this evening. A few amusing and interesting people. You’re most welcome to come. We start at six o’clock and see how it rolls along from there.’

Bond took the card – a small alarm bell ringing in his head, now. The invitation was overt; the blue eyes were candid. I’d like to see you again, was the message – and there might be some sexual fun to be had, was the subtext.

Bond smiled, apologetically, pocketing the card anyway. ‘I’m afraid my day is spoken for,’ he said. ‘Alas.’

‘Never mind,’ she said, breezily. ‘Maybe I’ll see you here next year. Goodbye, Mr Bond.’

She sauntered to the checkout desk, Bond noting the lean perfection of her figure, rear view. It had been the correct thing to do, in terms of proper procedure, but all the same he wondered if perhaps he’d been a bit hasty saying no quite so unequivocally . . .

Bond took a taxi back to his flat in Chelsea. As it swung into Sloane Square he felt his spirits lift. Sloane Square and Albert Bridge were the two London landmarks that gladdened his heart whenever he saw them, day or night, all seasons – signals that he was coming home. He liked living in Chelsea – ‘that leafy tranquil cultivated
spielraum
 . . . where I worked and wandered’. Who had said that . . . ? Anyway, he thought, telling the taxi to stop just before tree-filled Wellington Square, whoever it was, he agreed with the sentiment. He strolled into the square and made for his front door. He was searching his pockets for his keys when the door opened and his housekeeper, Donalda, stood there.

‘Ah, glad you’re back, sir,’ she said. ‘There’s a wee bit of a crisis – the painters have found some damp in the drawing room.’

Bond followed Donalda into his flat, dropping his grip in the hall. She had been with him for six months now – she was the niece of May, his trusted housekeeper of many years, who had finally, reluctantly, retired, creeping arthritis encouraging the decision. It had been May who suggested Donalda. ‘Best to keep it in the family, Mr James,’ she’d said. ‘We’re very close.’ Donalda was a slim, severe-looking young woman in her late twenties with a rare and diffident smile. She never wore make-up and her hair was cut in a short bob with a fringe – a nun’s hairstyle, Bond thought. He supposed with a little effort she might have made herself less plain and more attractive but the handover of May’s housekeeping responsibilities had been achieved so seamlessly that he had no desire to see that quiet efficiency alter in any way. One morning it had been May, as ever, then the next day Donalda had been introduced. There was an apprentice period of two weeks when both May and Donalda had run his household life, then May had gone and Donalda took over. Absolutely nothing in his domestic routine had been altered: his coffee was brewed to the same strength, his scrambled eggs had the same consistency, his shirts were ironed identically, the shopping was done, the place kept unimprovably clean. Donalda slipped into his life as if she’d been in training for the job since childhood.

Bond stepped into his drawing room. The rugs were rolled up, the tall bookshelves empty of his books – all boxed and in store – the floorboards were bare and the furniture was grouped in the centre of the room under dust sheets. His nose tingled with the astringent smell of fresh paint. Tom Doig, the decorator, pointed out the patch of damp in the room’s western corner, revealed when a bureau had been moved. Bond reluctantly authorised him to investigate further and wrote a cheque for £125 to cover the next period of work. He had been promising himself for years to redecorate his flat. He liked his home – its scale and situation – and had no intention of moving. Besides, his lease still had forty-four years left to run. Bond calculated – I’ll be eighty-nine if I last that long, he thought. Which would be extremely unlikely, he reasoned, given his line of work – then he grew angry with himself. What was he doing thinking about the future? It was the here and now that intrigued and fulfilled him and, as if to prove the truth of this adage to himself, he spent an hour going over all the work in the flat that Doig had completed, deliberately finding fault everywhere.

When he’d thoroughly irritated and discomfited Doig and his team he told Donalda not to bother preparing a cold supper for him (she went home at six) and he left the decorators to swear and curse at him behind his back.

There was a hazy afternoon sun and the day was agreeably mild and balmy. He wandered pleasurably west along the King’s Road towards the Café Picasso pondering a late lunch of some kind. The King’s Road was busy but Bond found his mind wasn’t concentrating on the passing parade – the throng of shoppers, the poseurs, the curious, the gilded, carefree young, dressed as if for a fabulous harlequinade somewhere; a noise, a random image, had triggered memories of his dream that morning and he was back in northern France in 1944 walking through an ancient oak wood towards an isolated chateau . . .

To Bond’s eyes, it looked as if the Chateau Malflacon had been the victim of a rocket attack by a Hawker Typhoon on D-Day. The classic stone facade was cratered with the shallow impact-bursts of the Typhoon’s RP-3 rockets and the left-hand wing of the building had been burnt out, the exposed, charred roof timbers still smouldering in the weak sunshine. Bizarrely, there was a dead Shetland pony lying on the oval patch of lawn surrounded by the gravelled sweep of the driveway. There were no vehicles in sight and everything seemed quiet and deserted. The men of BRODFORCE crouched down amongst the trees of the wooded parkland around the chateau waiting while Major Brodie scanned the building with his binoculars. Birds were singing loudly, Bond remembered. The faint breeze blowing was cool and fresh.

Then Major Brodie suggested that Corporal Dave Tozer and Mr Bond might circle round the back of the chateau and see if there was any sign of activity there. He would give them ten minutes before the rest of the men stormed through the front door, took occupancy and began their search.

It was the same kind of hazy, weak sunshine, Bond recalled, as he neared the Café Picasso – that was what had started him thinking, again – the same sort of day as that 7 June – soft, lemony, peaceful. He and Dave Tozer had cut through the woodland and darted past an empty stable block before finding themselves in a sizeable orchard, unkempt and brambly, with some sixty or seventy trees – apple, quince and pear in the main but with some cherries here and there, already showing clumps of heavy maroon fruit. ‘Look at this, Mr Bond,’ Tozer had said with a grin. ‘Let’s snaffle this lot before the others come.’ Bond had raised his hand in caution – he had caught a scent of woodsmoke and thought he heard voices coming from the other side of the orchard. But Tozer had already stepped forward to seize the glossy cherries. His left foot sank into a rabbit hole and his ankle snapped with a crisp, distinctly audible sound, like dry kindling caught by a flame.

Tozer grunted with pain but managed not to cry out. He also heard the voices now. He waved Bond to him and whispered, ‘Take my Sten.’ Bond was armed: he had a Webley .38 revolver in a holster at his waist and he handed it to Tozer, with some reluctance, picking up Tozer’s Sten gun and creeping cautiously forward through the orchard towards the sound of men’s voices . . .