Zero History

getting him wherever he’s now gotten.”
“On his way to Iceland, that would be.”
“Let him go. How are you at kitchens?”
“Cooking? Minimal skills.”
“Designing them. I have a flat in Berlin. East side, new building, old was entirely
asbestos so they knocked it down. One very big room and a bathroom. No kitchen, just
the stumps of pipes and ganglia sticking up from the floor, more or less in the middle.
We’d need to fill that in, if we were going to live there.”
“You want to live in Berlin?”
“Provisionally, yes. But only if you do.”
She looked at him. “When I was leaving Cabinet,” she said, “following you out to the
Slow Foods van, Robert congratulated me. I didn’t ask him what for, just said thanks.
He’d been odd since you turned up. Do you know what that was about?”
“Ah. Yes. When I first struck up a conversation with him, when I was waiting for you,
I told him that I was there to ask you to marry me.”
She stared at him. “And you were lying.”
“Not at all. Moment never presented itself. I assume he thinks we’re engaged.”
“Do you?”
“Your call, traditionally,” he said, putting down the bungee.