“Understandable given there’s no relevance to the murder investigation and she was anxious not to get a friend into trouble. It’s certainly not a case of obstruction of justice. Your continued interest in my client without any evidence to link her to the murder is bordering on harassment. It’s disrupting her business and putting enormous stress on her, and I’ll be extremely happy to explain that in detail to a judge. So I suggest you either charge her with something or leave her be.”
Stress. I blink at the stark reference and open my mouth to protest but then shut it again silently. In truth I’m a good bit further down the line than stressed, and perhaps this is not the time to display a stiff upper lip. I glance round quickly for Severine and find her loitering near the doorway, drawing lazily from a cigarette. The smoke curls upward, partially obscuring a no smoking sign stuck to the wall. I know she stood there deliberately, and I fold my lips to stifle a grin.
Modan is not in the least bit fazed by Ms. Streeter’s attack. “Noted,” he says, deep lines bracketing his smiling mouth. He turns to me, and the smile drops, though the lines remain. I feel him assess me, though again, I see a kindness in his eyes that confuses me. “I truly do hope you are not too . . .”—he clicks his tongue briefly in frustration, searching for the word—“agitated by the situation. You have been most helpful.”
I look at Ms. Streeter again, completely nonplussed. She smiles back encouragingly, with a slight air of satisfaction, as if this is all a game and it has played out exactly as she expected. Modan, too, seems satisfied. I’m the only one in the room who doesn’t have the script. Well, Severine, too, but she doesn’t care. She doesn’t need to care about anything now. Not for the first time I wonder why she cares to hover around me.
I don’t go back to my office afterward. I should—of course I should; there is plenty to do—but I can’t focus. I can’t even care that Caro will win today. I call Julie and tell her I’m feeling unwell, which I most definitely am, and that she should cancel my appointments and calls, and then I head for the tube. Severine joins me; she’s been sticking very closely to me today. I can’t imagine that’s a good sign vis-à-vis my mental state, but there’s something comforting about her presence, so I’m certainly not going to complain. I think carefully about my route home, determined to be conscious of it; on the packed train, I look around at the individuals with the trappings and cares of their lives on display in their clothing, their bags, their faces buried in newspapers and Kindles and phones. That one with the Financial Times must be a banker, I think, and perhaps that one an accountant, but it’s nothing but a label. I cannot imagine their lives. I cannot think of anything but the wreckage of my own.
I wish Tom was with me. It’s not a physical wish—though a strong arm wrapped round me certainly wouldn’t go amiss right now. No, I wish Tom was with me metaphorically: I wish I could reach inside myself and know as an absolute truth that Tom is always there for me, that Tom is mine. But Tom is going back to Boston—I’d have heard from him by now if he’d changed his mind about that—and I’m sitting alone on a tube.
Of course, I’m not completely alone. There’s Severine.
My flat feels cold when I get inside, but the thermostat needle points exactly where it normally does, and I realize it’s me that feels cold. Perhaps I really am getting a virus. I should have a bath and go to bed, but I know I won’t sleep well. Still, I can’t think of anything else to do, so I start to run the hot tap into the tub, then drift into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. It takes me a moment to notice an odd buzzing noise above the sound of the kettle boiling, and even longer to identify it as someone at the front door. I open the door cautiously. The burly chap who lives in the flat across the hallway—Ben, I think he is—is at the door, looking mildly impatient.
“These came for you,” he says, pushing a tall flower box into my arms. “Sorry, got to dash.”
“Oh,” I say blankly. “Thank you,” I call after him, but he’s already taking the stairs two at a time, and simply raises a hand in acknowledgment without turning around. I close the door and put the box on the table, ripping open the top in a quest to find a card. It’s nestling inconspicuously among the heads of white lilies interspersed with some pretty green foliage, my name written on the envelope in curly, unmistakably feminine handwriting, presumably by a woman in the flower shop. For a moment I don’t dare open the envelope. There is only one person I want these to be from; until I open the card there is still that possibility.
Act like yourself, I admonish myself. You don’t believe in putting things off.
So I slide a finger under the lip of the envelope and rip it open to pull out a small square card with the flower shop’s logo on one side. On the other, it says, in the same jarring curly writing:
Kate,
I thought about it. I’d like to try.
Tom x
Something inside me leaps. I read it again, and again, and then I find a smile is spreading across my face. There’s a fizzing running through me that I don’t recognize, a lightness, as if I could float upward.
Happiness, I realize. It’s been a long time.
I reach for my phone to call Tom, to thank him for the beautiful flowers, but there’s another buzz from the front door. Tom in person? But I know that’s too hopeful; he wouldn’t expect me to be home and in any case he would have called first. Severine is leaning against the door when I get there, blocking me from opening it. I gesture her out of the way, but she remains in place, her dark eyes fixed on me expressionlessly. The buzzer sounds again. I sigh and reluctantly swing the door open through Severine and have the disconcerting experience of seeing her face replaced by the dark wood and then by the face of the last person I expected to see on my doorstep.
Caro.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Caro.
It is Caro, but for a moment I’m thrown, disorientated by the flash of Severine, then the door, then who? For a moment it could be . . . But no, it’s Caro, encased in a smart dark coat and wearing a very trendy trilby that hides the dirty blond of her hair. She has unusually dark skin and eyebrows for a blonde; with her hair hidden one might easily mistake her for a brunette. Something jerks in the recesses of my mind. I find I’m staring at her.
“Well,” says Caro, and the moment she speaks she is Caro; all suggestions of anything otherwise are swept away. I pull myself together. There is something in her eyes, some sly satisfaction that has me on guard—more on guard, that is. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
“Actually, Caro, I’m really not feeling well.” I’ve kept the door only a couple of feet ajar: enough not to be rude, but not wide enough to invite an entrance. “Didn’t Julie call you?” But Julie must have called her, otherwise Caro would have expected me around this time at her offices . . .
“She did. I thought any combination of these might help.” She holds up a bottle of wine, a packet of Lemsip and some handbag-sized tissues.
“Oh. Well, that’s . . . Well, that’s kind of you.” Confronted with gifts, normal behavior demands I swing the door wide, and after all, I have resolved to follow normal behavior. “Come in.”
She enters, and I take the gifts from her as she unbuttons her coat and removes the dark red trilby, looking around her with sharp, greedy glances, stripping away every detail to store in that carnivorous mind of hers. I glance around myself, trying to see things as she must see them. It’s a nice flat in a Georgian block, small but welcoming, with some lovely old features such as the original bay windows, but it can’t hold a candle to Caro’s own apartment. Or Tom’s. Just the thought of him is a delicious secret inside me, to be held tight and treasured. The florist’s card is still in my hand; I shove it surreptitiously into my pocket.
“Lovely flowers,” says Caro. “A secret admirer?” Her eyes scan me, eager and hot and hungry—and something else, too, something like anger, but why on earth should she be angry at
me receiving flowers?
“Hardly.” I give a careless laugh.
“No? Who then?” she presses insistently.
“They’re from a very happy client. Anyway, come on through to the kitchen,” I say quickly, self-conscious in my lie; anything to do with Tom is too new for me to be sure I can hide it. I lead her through the flat; it’s hard to overstate just how uncomfortable I feel with her inside my home sanctuary. Severine isn’t proving helpful, either: she’s trailing Caro, never more than a foot away, more present and more insistent than I’ve ever seen her before. “Tea, coffee?” And then because Caro is looking expectantly at the bottle she gave me, which I’ve placed on the kitchen counter, I add reluctantly, “Wine?”
“Yes, please. Is it a flu bug?”
I find some wineglasses and pull a corkscrew out of a drawer as I answer her. “The beginnings of one, I think. I’m all achy and my head is pounding.” That’s all true, actually, or it was before the flowers arrived and boosted my endorphin count, but a flu bug has nothing to do with it. Before the flowers . . . suddenly I remember—“Fuck, the bath!”
I dash out of the kitchen, leaving Caro and her surprised expression behind. The bath hasn’t flooded yet, but it has reached the level of the overflow, and the bathroom is misty with steam. I turn off the tap quickly, looking at the tub longingly. Perhaps I can get rid of Caro quickly enough that it will still be warm . . . but then I see Severine under the surface, clothed and completely still, her eyes closed and her hair fanning out lazily around her head. For all that I’ve become accustomed to having Severine around, it’s an arresting image. Arresting and chilling. Then she sits up abruptly, her soaking wet hair slicked back tightly against her head, and opens her eyes, staring straight at me. I have to stifle a small scream.
But in that instant something unlocks in my brain, and suddenly I know exactly what happened, all those years ago in France. I stand there for a moment, staring at Severine, letting it all unfurl in my mind, like leaves touched by the first rays of the morning sun . . . yes, that’s how it must have been; yes, that, and that . . . I see a plan of the farmhouse from above, laid out in miniature, like looking down on a doll’s house: there’s a tiny version of me asleep in the bedroom I shared with Seb, my tear-streaked face calm in unconscious oblivion; a mini-doll Lara dozes in Tom’s bedroom, tangled in sheets redolent of sex; Seb’s figurine is passed out in the barn, where a stray rake lies abandoned near the door, while a tiny Severine and tiny Tom are grouped by the pool. And only one question remains: where to place Caro and Theo? But I know the answer to that too now.
And then another question follows: what can I do about it? A cold, hard fear is growing inside me, too, but this is different from the fear I have been living with of late; that was paralyzing, diminishing, it made me less than I want to be, less than I am. This fear is steel cold and equally as hard, and it’s forging me into the same. Or perhaps it’s stripping me back to what was always there, underneath: the Kate I like best, who faces life head-on. Kate of the high-risk strategy.
Severine sits in the bath, water still streaming off the ends of her long hair, her soaked black shift plastered to those eternally perfect tiny breasts. She sits and looks at me whilst I puzzle and plan, and there is not a jot of expression in those black eyes.
I leave the bathroom abruptly, closing the door tight. In the living room I grab my handbag and find what I’m looking for buried at the bottom of it; I sweep it into my pocket to lie snugly against the florist’s card: all my secrets in one dark, warm place.
Back in the kitchen, Caro has opened the wine and poured out two glasses; she looks up inquiringly as I reenter. “Sorry, I forgot I left the tap on; I was just running a bath when you arrived.” I sound unnatural, but Caro doesn’t seem to notice. Severine has joined us, too, thankfully no longer dripping wet. She prowls the kitchen, unusually active. Caro removes her suit jacket, turning to lay it carefully on the counter; as she does so I notice that she has a ladder in her stockings, running in an ever decreasing inverted V from the back of one of her patent heels to disappear under her skirt. She would hate it if she knew: chinks in her armor, I think, though without the rancorous glee that might once have called up within me. I’ve had a glimpse of what lies beneath Caro’s surface, and I can’t unsee it.
She starts off with small talk—business talk, around the candidates we’re winning over to Haft & Weil, but it’s small talk nonetheless. We sip our wine and verbally circle each other. Five minutes pass. Ten even. I can’t quite understand why she’s delaying. It’s an effort to keep my hand from the dark, snug pocket of secrets.
“You must be wondering what’s so urgent that I turned up on your doorstep unexpectedly,” says Caro with a small laugh, settling herself onto one of my bar stools. Now, I think, and my hand slips unremarkably into my pocket and just as unremarkably out again whilst I remain standing, my back resting against the countertop.
“Yes.”
“It’s not so much to do with the partnership process—”
“No?”
“Well, it is, but . . . the thing is, in the office they’ve obviously heard about the investigation, what with all the rumors flying round about, well, you. Someone asked Gordon about it, and he let slip I was there, too . . .” A flash of irritation makes a dash across her face. “Anyway. There’s beginning to be a perception that it might be too much, that if I’m distracted by that, it’ll be hard for me to really shine through this crucial period.” She rolls her eyes. “I mean, it’s completely ridiculous; I’m totally focused on partnership, but it’s hard to fight this kind of thing.” Twin spots of color are burning faintly over her cheekbones. She blows out a breath, then admits grudgingly, without meeting my eye, “They’re talking about pulling me off the slate. Holding me over to next year.”
For a moment, I’m lost for words. On the worst interpretation of facts, this is deliciously—maliciously—ironic. If Caro is indeed the source of the rumors about me, then she is very much being hoisted on her own petard. Despite the cold steel within me, I realize how much I want to be wrong. I want the sum of the layers of Caro to be something better than the surface shell. I search for something neutral to say. “I see. And I suppose you were thinking, with the issues I hear Darren Lucas is facing, that you had rather a clear field—”
“Exactly,” she rushes in. “This is my year. My year.” She finally looks me directly in the eye, and I’m taken aback by the desperation I see within her. It’s as strong as the cold, hard fear that still fills my belly. “I can’t be held over,” she says with quiet ferocity. “This is my year.”
Her words are solid, impermeable, immovable. I gaze at her helplessly for a moment, then try one more doomed attempt: “Caro, I know you don’t want to hear this now, but there are other law firms—”
“No.” It’s a statement of finality: for Caro, it’s Haft & Weil or bust, partnership or nothing. I’ve met many driven candidates over the years, all of whom display a similar single-mindedness, but nonetheless something about Caro seems particularly extreme. I realize I’m staring at her bent head as I sip my wine, trying to puzzle her out.
I shake my head and remind myself of my endgame. I have a plan, after all, and solving Caro’s partnership woes is not part of it. After a moment, I say casually, “Do you still speak to Mark Jeffers?”
Her head whips up. “No,” she says carefully, after the barest hesitation, but it’s enough: I am not wrong about her. I sip my wine to hide the irrational disappointment that runs through me. “Why do you ask?” she adds, with just the right amount of mild curiosity.
“He’s been shooting his mouth off round the market about the investigation; specifically, about how one Kate Channing is about to be arrested,” I say evenly. “I’ve even had prospective clients asking me about it.”
“Well, I know him quite well from days of old,” she says smoothly. “He’s a dreadful blabbermouth,
but I could speak to him and try to get him to pipe down if you like.”
“I rather think you’ve spoken to him already, haven’t you?” She is gazing at me steadily, her eyes still burning over-brightly, as if she’s the one with a fever, but her face is carefully blank. “He had my name, and that hasn’t been in any of the papers.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she exclaims. It’s a very good performance of outrage, such that a part of me can’t fail to be impressed. “What on earth would I have to gain from that?”
It’s a valid question, and one I can’t answer; I continue as if she hasn’t spoken. “And now this Darren Lucas situation. He’s a very formidable opponent, but he’s already been stitched up, hasn’t he? So now your own rumormongering has come home to roost, in the very year that everything is miraculously in your favor.”
Now her eyes have narrowed and her lips are almost invisible, clamped in a tight line. “If you have something to say, perhaps you should come right out and say it,” she says, in a tightly controlled voice.
“I thought I was.” I take another sip of wine. It’s a sauvignon blanc, absolutely not what I would have chosen, and there’s an aftertaste that definitely isn’t winning me round. “I think Darren Lucas was in your way and you found a way to remove him. And now you need a way to make sure you can capitalize on that, which means you need the investigation to disappear.”
She picks up her glass and swirls it carefully before looking at me again, with those greedy, hot eyes. The desperation within her lies not quite hidden beneath. “You should be careful throwing around accusations you can’t prove.”
“You’re right.” I pull back my hand before it can sneak into my pocket—later—and take a drink myself. “I can’t prove it. Anyway. Back to the point. You’re here to ask me to blame Theo for all of this.”
Her glass pauses halfway to her mouth, then smoothly resumes its trip. “You’ve been talking to Alina.”
The French Girl Page 25
