Chapter 20: Four Angles

"She pushed her!" Margaret said again, louder. "Everyone saw it!"

"Everyone saw a hand on a sleeve," said my father-in-law.

He had wheeled himself two feet forward. His voice, thin and hoarse, cut through the room.

"Play the cameras," he said. "All of them. On the big screen."

"You're unwell," Margaret began.

"Not a word more out of you."

Joan was already moving.

She crossed to the hotel's head of security, who stood by the side door with a laptop open on his arm.

He nodded once and plugged a cable into the wall.

The big screen above the dance floor had shown the Foundation's logo all night.

It went black, and then white.

Four small windows opened on it, side by side.

The balcony. The tree. The coat check. The bar.

Two hundred and fifty people stopped talking to look up.

"Start with the balcony," I said.

It played.

On the balcony feed Sabrina came down the staircase in her green satin, slowly, her hand on the rail.

At the ninth step she looked straight into the camera aimed down the stair, and smiled.

Then she threw her weight backward and went off the step.

She did not slip or stumble.

The room made a low sound.

"Again," my father-in-law said. "From the tree."

It played from the tree, then the bar, then the coat check.

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