Chapter 174: David’s Notebook

The box had been in the archive room since the reclaiming.

Not overlooked… filed. Harrow had catalogued everything in the building when the administrator handed it over, and the box had been logged as personal effects, non-corporate, non-evidential, requiring Seraphine Callum’s personal review when ready. It had sat on shelf four in the archive room with that label for two years and I had known it was there and had not been ready and had not forced the readiness.

Tuesday morning I was ready.

No particular reason. The way you just get ready sometimes, not announced, just present when you reached for it.

Priya was in the outer office when I came through.

“The archive room,” I said. “Shelf four. There’s a box labelled personal effects. Can you bring it to my office?”

She looked at me for a moment… reading something in the request that went beyond the practical. Then she nodded and went without commentary, which was one of the many reasons Priya was exactly right for the job.

The box was smaller than I expected.

Cardboard. Sealed with tape that had gone brittle from two years in a climate-controlled room. My father’s name on a sticker on the side in Harrow’s handwriting… the careful lettering of someone who understood what the box contained and had wanted the label to reflect that.

I opened it at my desk.

Inside: a watch that had stopped. Three photographs I had seen before… me, Margaux, the company’s early staff in a group shot that predated Gerald’s involvement. A small carved wooden object that I didn’t recognize and couldn’t identify but which had clearly been kept deliberately. Two letters in envelopes I would open another day.

And at the bottom.

A notebook.

Dark blue cover. Spiral bound. The kind sold in every newsagent, nothing special about it except that my father had written in it and it had been in this box for however many years before Gerald’s people packed it away and before Harrow retrieved it.

I opened it.

His handwriting.

Familiar now from the evidence documents and the founding charter and the letter he left with the solicitor. But different here… looser. Like that of someone who wasn’t preparing a document. Just thinking on paper.

The early pages were work notes. Company decisions in their formative stage. Questions he was working through about direction, partnership and what kind of company he wanted to build.

I read slowly.

Not searching. Just reading. The way you read something when the point was the reading rather than any particular finding.

He wrote about David Callum the businessman, the decisions, the calculations, the problems he was solving. And sometimes, in the margins, he wrote about David Callum the person.

A note beside a budget projection: This number worries me less than whether the culture will hold as we grow. Culture is harder to rebuild than capital.

A note beneath a staff meeting summary: Priya… remember to ask about her mother. She mentioned it in passing and I didn’t respond properly.

Twenty years later Priya was still here.

Still doing the job.

Still being asked about with genuine interest.

I turned pages.

The notebook covered roughly eighteen months of his thinking… the period two years before he died, which meant the period when Gerald’s behaviour had begun to concern him enough to document but before he had understood the full scope of what he was dealing with.

He hadn’t started documenting Gerald yet. That was a different notebook, a different period. This one was earlier.

This one was just him.

I turned to the final pages.

The writing changed in the last twenty or so pages, slightly different quality of attention, the pen moving differently. The period when something had started costing him more than usual.

I read carefully.

Observations about the company. Questions about a partnership that was making him uncomfortable. A note about a conversation with Margaux that was careful and tender and said everything about who he was in the space of four lines.

Then, near the end.

An entry dated the week before he died.

Not the day before. Not the day of. A week before. When he had known something was coming, Pennick had confirmed that he had received a warning, and had been finishing things and had still, somehow, found time to write in his notebook.

The entry was short.

Eight lines.

I read them once.

Then again.

Had a dream last night about Seraphine. She was older, I couldn’t have told you by how much. Standing in the lobby of this building. Looking like she belonged there completely. Not visiting. Not performing belonging. Actually there, in the way you’re actually somewhere when it’s yours.

She was smiling.

Not at me. At someone off to the left. I couldn’t see who. The dream didn’t show me that part.

I woke up thinking… good. That’s good. I don’t need to see who. I just need to know she’s smiling like that.

I think she will be.

I sat at my desk.

The morning continued around me… Priya in the outer office, the building doing what it did, the portrait of my father in the lobby below where a dream had placed me twenty-three years ago.

He had dreamed me standing in his building.

Smiling at someone off to the left.

Someone he couldn’t see.

He hadn’t needed to see.

He had written… I just need to know she’s smiling like that. I think she will be.

The week before he died.

Still certain.

Still building toward something he couldn’t see clearly and trusting it would arrive.

My phone chirped on the desk.

Zael.

A message.

How’s the morning?

I looked at the notebook open on my desk.

Then at the message.

Then at the window… the city, the actual angle of morning light that my father had chosen when he designed this building, the view he had wanted from this floor.

I typed back.

Come to the office. I need to show you something.

Three seconds.

On my way.

I looked at the notebook entry again.

The week before he died.

I don’t need to see who. I just need to know she’s smiling like that.

Off to the left of the dream.

Zael’s direction.