"Walsh." Flat. Down to business before the line had even settled.
"Jess. It's twenty past eight."
"I know what time it is. The post is up, I take it. Two million by now."
"Two million."
"Good. That's the version of you they keep." Not a flicker of warmth you could point to and yet the whole sentence was warm, which is Jessica, the warmth always buried under the work. "It's a good photograph. She did right doing the hand and not the faces. Now get your head off your own ring for ninety seconds, because I have got something and you are not going to like the size of it."
I knew that voice. That was not the voice of a woman ringing about a wedding.
"Go on."
She does not breathe in before she talks. She just talks.
