London South Bank is the setting for a sharp reversal in Emma Morley’s expectations on 15 July 1997: what she had imagined as a celebratory lunch with her new editor becomes a solitary walk through a riverfront construction site. The area’s unfinished landscape gives physical form to her disappointment and to the distance between the life she pictured and the afternoon she actually has.

Setting and narrative contrast

The chapter places Emma on London South Bank while, barely two miles away across the River Thames, Dexter Mayhew is told that Game On is being cancelled. Emma is in an ascending lift with her old friend Stephanie Shaw, whose advice is not to feel intimidated. Their meeting ends with Stephanie mouthing an apologetic farewell and miming a phone call as the doors close, leaving Emma to descend alone.

The crossing between the lift and the riverfront is presented as a swift deflation. At three in the morning, unable to sleep, Emma had pictured an impromptu lunch at the Oxo Tower with her new editor, accompanied by crisp white wine and stories about school life. Instead, in less than twenty-five minutes, she has been spat out onto London South Bank. The precise interval makes the gulf between anticipation and reality feel abrupt rather than gradual.

Emma’s afternoon on the riverfront

In May, Emma had celebrated the election result on London South Bank; on this July afternoon, that earlier euphoria is absent. She has declared herself to be suffering from gastric flu and cannot attend the staff meeting, where she expects arguments, recriminations, and sly remarks. The location therefore holds two contrasting memories: recent political celebration and the present wish to avoid conflict at work.

Emma sets off in the direction of Tower Bridge to clear her head. She is hungry, but finds nowhere to eat and has nobody to eat with. When her phone rings, she reaches for it hoping to vent her frustration, then realizes who is calling: the headmaster, who challenges her claim of gastric flu. The riverside walk offers no escape from the obligations and tensions she has left behind.

Renovation and mood

The stretch of London South Bank is being renovated, cluttered with scaffolding and tarpaulin. Bankside Power Station looms derelict and oppressive on the midsummer day, while the unfinished surroundings deny Emma the ease and pleasure she had imagined for her meeting. Even the River Thames fails to lift her spirits.

The setting’s force lies in this mismatch rather than in any single landmark: London South Bank is at once a place Emma previously associated with public celebration and, now, a bare, disrupted landscape through which she walks alone. Its construction works echo the unsettled state of her afternoon, while the phone call brings the unresolved pressures of school life back into view.