Read The Night Book for Free Online

necklace, andcast her eyes around distractedly.
    ‘Who’s who?’ Trish peered.
    ‘There, in the grey.’
    ‘With the necklace? That’s Roza Hallwright. David’s wife.’
    ‘I’ve never heard anything about his wife,’ Simon said.
    ‘She’s very private. They say she doesn’t like politics. She’ll have to front up when David wins the election.’
    ‘She doesn’t like politics,’ Simon repeated.
    ‘David’s very protective of her, of her right to not like politics. He’s probably quite happy if she stays in Auckland. In her own little world.’ Trish sniffed.
    He registered her sharp tone. ‘It sounds as though you don’t approve.’
    ‘Well. Put it this way, she doesn’t exactly leap in to help anyone who has a good idea. She could do a lot in her position, but she doesn’t lift a finger.’
    ‘Does she have a job?’
    ‘She works for a publisher. She’s David’s second wife. I assume you know his first wife died. Cancer. Terrible.’
    Simon said, ‘Could I have met her? Has she been to one of your parties?’
    Trish dabbed her lips. ‘Never,’ she said coolly.
    Simon stared. There was something about the woman that absorbed his attention. He not only felt that he’d seen her before,but that she was strangely, intensely out of the ordinary. She could have been a patient — that was probably it — but he had no memory of having treated her. Surely he would remember such a striking person.
    He said, ‘Maybe I’ve seen her picture somewhere.’
    ‘They did a magazine interview this year. But she was only in one picture. David did all the talking. She’s the most undercover wife in the world.’
    The woman looked up and smiled. There was a very slight gap between her two front teeth. She looked directly at Simon; her eyes rested on him for a second and then flicked away.
    Trish said, ‘His first wife was gorgeous. Vivacious. A real organiser. Not wishy-washy like that one.’
    ‘I think she’s …’ He stopped himself, and picked up his glass. He spent his life distancing himself from strong feeling; he needed to be detached, to work. But looking around the table now, at the ruddy, bedizened, cackling lot of them, he felt a flaring of his nerves — exhilaration, anger, energy — like the stirring of a much younger self.
    He kept his thoughts to himself, also his feeling that Roza Hallwright was beautiful.
    The spotlights went on at the front of the room and a man stepped up to the podium, and introduced David Hallwright as ‘our next prime minister’.
    Hallwright listened to the applause, then raised his hand for silence. There were cameras set up below the stage and the light shone at an angle on his face, making his cheeks look hollow. He leaned forward and began to speak. His diction wasn’t clear and he mangled some words, but he made up for it by staring fiercely around the room, projecting energy and vigour, and by outlining, with dogged simplicity, the points the audience wanted to hear. Atfirst, applause burst out at ragged moments, but the audience began to learn the pattern Hallwright had set, and to respond when he signalled.
    It was an exercise in affirmation, more communion than speech, and Hallwright controlled the crowd better as he went on, getting up a rhythm between his punchy signals and the eager response. Simon didn’t listen to the words, but felt, in his tipsy, heightened state, that he was watching a dance between two natural forces; that Hallwright, having whistled the crowd up into fixed, reptilian attention, had only to move to make it bend and sway in reply.
    The speech finished and there was a standing ovation. Simon stood and caught Roza Hallwright’s eye. She looked away.
    The lights were dimmed, the mood relaxed. Simon got trapped in a conversation with the elderly woman next to him, and tried not to stare at the next table. His mind wandered. Roza Hallwright. He was the last person who could ask a woman whether he’d met her before. Once at a party