CHAPTER ONE
Looking back, the most striking thing is that she knew I didn’t like her and she didn’t care. That type of self-possession at the tender age of nineteen—well, it’s unnatural. Or French. She was very, very French.
It’s Tom who calls to tell me the news. Perhaps that should have tipped me off that something was wrong. I can’t remember when he last called me. Which is not to say he isn’t in touch: unlike most of my male friends, he’s remarkably good on e-mail. I suppose I thought he would be calling with glad tidings: an invitation to a party, or a wedding—Tom’s wedding—after all, he’s been engaged to Jenna for what seems like years.
But what he says is: “Kate, do you remember that summer?” Seven years in Boston hasn’t changed his accent a bit: still unmistakably a product of the finest English schooling money can buy. An image jumps into my mind of him, as I last saw him two summers ago: his blue eyes standing out against tanned skin with freckles across his remarkable hooked nose, his rumpled dark hair long enough to curl. He won’t look like that now after a hard New England winter, but the image won’t shift.
I know exactly which summer he means: the summer after we finished university, when six of us spent an idyllic week in a French farmhouse. Idyllic, or mostly idyllic, or idyllic in parts . . . It’s hard to remember it objectively since Seb and I split up immediately afterward. I opt for a flippant tone. “Isn’t it a bit like the sixties? If you can remember it you weren’t there.”
He ignores my teasing. “The girl next door—”
“Severine.” I’m not flippant anymore. And I no longer expect a party invitation. I close my eyes, waiting for what I know must be coming, and a memory floats up unbidden: Severine, slim and lithe in a tiny black bikini, her walnut brown skin impossibly smooth in the sun, one hip cocked with the foot pointing away as if ready to saunter off the moment she lost interest. Severine, who introduced herself, without even a hint of a smile to soften her severe beauty, as “the mademoiselle next door,” and who disappeared without a trace after the six of us left for Britain.
“Yes, Severine.” Tom pauses, the short silence pressing down the phone line. “They found her. Her body.”
I’m silent. Yesterday, if I’d thought about it all, which of course I hadn’t, I would have said I didn’t know if she would ever be found. With Tom’s stark words it suddenly seems entirely fated, as if all possible paths were destined to converge on this discovery. I imagine her bones, clean and white after a decade left undiscovered, the immaculate skull grinning. She would have hated that, the inevitable smile of death; Severine who never smiled.
“Kate? Still there?” Tom asks.
“Sorry, yes. Where did they find her?” Her? Was a corpse still a her?
“The well,” he says bluntly. “At the farmhouse.”
“Poor girl,” I sigh. Poor, poor girl. Then: “The well? But that means . . .”
“Yes. She must have gone back. The French police will want to talk to us again.”
“Of course.” I rub my forehead, then think of the white skull beneath my own warm flesh and drop my hand hastily. The well. I didn’t expect that.
“Are you okay?” asks Tom, his deep voice concerned.
“I think so. It’s just . . .”
“A shock,” he supplies. “I know.” He doesn’t sound shocked. But I suppose he’s had longer to get used to the idea. “Will you tell Lara? I’m not sure I have her number.”
“I’ll tell her,” I say. Lara is my closest friend, another of the six. The police will want to talk to all of us, I suppose, or at least the five of us who are left; Theo at least is beyond the jurisdiction of any police force now. Probably Tom has called Seb and Caro already, or is about to. It would doubtless be polite to ask how they are, but I don’t. “Will you have to fly back from Boston?”
“Actually, I’m in London already. I got in this morning.”
“Great!” Good news at last. “For how long?”
“For good.”
“Wonderful!” But there is something odd about his demeanor, such as can be gleaned over the phone. “Is Jenna with you?” I ask cautiously. I’m beginning to suspect I already know the answer.
“No.” I hear him blow out a breath. “It’s for the best,” he adds awkwardly.
As it happens I agree with him, but it’s probably not the time to say so. “Right,” I say decisively. “Sounds like you need to turn up on my doorstep one evening very soon with a bottle of wine.”
“This might be more of a bottle of whiskey type of conversation.”
“You bring whatever alcohol you like and I’ll cook the meal. Badly.”
He laughs down the phone, a pleasant sound. “It’s a deal.”
It occurs to me he used to laugh more, all those years ago. But then, we were twenty-one, with no responsibilities or cares, and no one had mysteriously disappeared yet. Probably we all laughed more.
A dead body has been found, but life goes on. For most of us, anyway—perhaps time stops for the nearest and dearest, but then again time probably stopped for them a decade ago when she went missing. For the rest of us, it’s back to the same old, same old, which today means a meeting with a potential client. A very hard-hitting potential client: a contract with Haft & Weil could put my fledgling legal headhunter business firmly on the map. I stand in front of the mirror in the bathroom of my short-lease office in Bloomsbury. Smart business trouser suit: check. Tailored silk shirt, clean and ironed: check. Thick dark hair pulled back into a tidy chignon and discreet makeup accentuating my green eyes: check. Altogether a pleasing picture of a professional businesswoman. I smile to check my teeth for poppy seeds from the bagel I had for lunch; the image of Severine’s grinning skull immediately jumps into my head. In the mirror my smile drops abruptly.
My assistant, Julie, looks up from her computer as I exit the bathroom. “The cab’s here,” she says, passing me a folder. “All set?”
“Yes.” I check the folder. Everything is there. “Where’s Paul?” Paul is my associate and a very, very good headhunter. He’s here because he has faith in me and even more faith in the proportion of profits he’s due if all goes well. I try to keep a close eye on his diary. Paul won’t stick around if the business plan fails to materialize.
Julie is checking on the computer, one hand working the mouse as the other pushes her glasses back up her nose. “He’s meeting that Freshfields candidate over on Fleet Street.”
“Oh yes.” I check the folder again.
“Kate,” Julie says, a touch of exasperation in her tone. “It’s all there.”
I snap the folder shut. “I know. Thank you.” I take a deep breath. “Right, see you later.”
“Good luck.” She has already turned back to the computer, but stops suddenly. “Oh, you had a call that you might want to return when you’re in the cab.” She looks around for the telephone message pad. “Ah, here we are. Caroline Horridge, please call back. Didn’t say what about.”
Caro. Calling me. Really? “You’re kidding.”
Julie looks up, nonplussed. “If I am, the joke has passed me by.”
I take the message slip she’s holding out. “She went to university with me,” I explain, grimacing. “We weren’t exactly bosom buddies. The last time I saw her was about five years ago, at someone’s party.” I look down at the telephone number recorded under the name in Julie’s neat hand. “This is a Haft & Weil number,” I say, surprised. I’ve been dialing it enough lately that I know the switchboard number off by heart.
“Maybe she wants to jump ship.”
Maybe. There isn’t really any other reason for a lawyer to call a legal headhunter. But I can’t imagine Caro choosing to ask for my help. I sit in the cab and think of ghosts: of poor dead Severine, her bones folded like an accordion to fit in the narrow well; of poor dead Theo, blown into disparate parts on a battlefield; of Tom-that-was, back when he laughed more; of me-that-was; of Lara; of Caro; and of Seb. Always, always of Seb.
I met Seb in 2000, the summer of my second year at Oxford. Lara and I had been there long enough to stop feeling green and naive and not long enough for responsibility to loom large: no exams all year, or at least none that counted officially, and no requirement to think about jobs until the third year. Our tutors felt it was a good year to bed down the solid groundwork for the following exam year. We thought it was a good year to bed down in actual bed after late nights clubbing.
The favorite summer pastime was ball-crashing. Unthinkable now—to dress up in black tie and sneak into an event without paying, to avail oneself of everything on offer just for a lark. But it was a lark; no one made the connection with stealing that would be my first thought now. Perhaps I’ve spent too much time thinking about the law now, or not enough back then. Anyway, the point was never the ball itself, those were always more or less the same—perhaps a better band at one, or shorter bar queues at another, but the same basic blueprint every time. No, the point was the breaking in: the thrill of beating the security teams, and getting away with it. The high of that was worth far more than the illicitly obtained alcohol.
The night I met Seb the target was Linacre Ball. Linacre isn’t the richest Oxford college, and it isn’t the largest; there was no reason to think the ball would be particularly good. The only distinguishing feature was that Linacre is a graduate college: right there lay the challenge. Them against us, graduates against undergraduates, security team against students. Drunken students at that, due to the pre-ball-crashing council-of-war at one of the student houses that lay across the sports field from Linacre, where cheap wine was flowing freely. I remember going to the toilet and tripping on my high heels; I’d have crashed headlong into a wall if it hadn’t been for unknown hands catching and righting me. It occurred to me then that we’d better go before we were all too smashed to cross the field, let alone scale the walls surrounding the college.
And then we were going, streaming out of the new-build house to congregate on the sports field. The darkness was periodically split by flashing lights from the college some two hundred meters away, the grass fleetingly lit too emerald green to be believable whilst the rugby goalposts threw down shadows that stretched the entire length of the field. Someone was giving orders in a military fashion that set Lara off into a fit of giggles as she stumbled and clutched my forearm. I glanced round and realized in surprise that there must be thirty or forty of us ready to storm the college. Lara and I found ourselves split into a subgroup with barely anyone we knew. It was hard to tell in the dark, but at least two of them were men with definite potential. Lara’s smile notched up a few watts as she turned her attention to them.
But there wasn’t enough time for her to work her magic—we were off. It was sheer numbers that made the plan work. We went in waves, ten or so at a time in a headlong dash across the field—how did we run in stilettos? I cannot think but I know we managed it. Come to that, how did Lara make it across without ripping her skintight dress? Mine ended up hiked high, dangerously close to my crotch. I remember the adrenaline coursing through my veins with the alcohol; the battle cries and the shrieks around me; the fractured picture when the lights flashed of black-tie-clad individuals in full flight. Lara and I huddled at the base of the wall of Linacre College, trying to get our breath through helpless giggles. That was probably why we got in: the security team were too busy dealing with the first bunch that surged the wall. I lost track of Lara as we awkwardly climbed the wall, hopelessly hindered by utterly inappropriate clothing and footwear. As I reached the top a hand stretched down from broad shoulders to help me. I caught a glimpse of gleaming white teeth beneath a remarkably hooked nose, topped by wayward dark hair. I grasped the proffered hand and felt myself yanked unceremoniously upright just as the lights flared, leaving me temporarily blinded, blinking awkwardly on the top of the wall as I tried to thank my helper and regain my footing and eyesight.
“Jump!” someone called below, barely audible above the music. “I’ll catch you.”
I looked across at the stranger on the wall with me. He nodded, gesturing to the black-tie-clad individual below. As the lights flashed obligingly I looked down into a pair of spectacular blue eyes: Seb. Of course it was Seb.
I jumped. He caught me.
Halfway through the meeting with Mr. Gordon Farrow, senior partner at Haft & Weil, when he rearranges his papers for the umpteenth time and continues to gaze a little to the right of me, I realize I’m losing this piece of business. Shortly after that, whilst trying to explain the relative merits of choosing my firm over more established competitors, I realize I never had a chance in the first place. I’m the stalking horse: a competitor brought in to make sure the firm they really want puts in an honest and fair quote. I wind down mid-sentence and snag an oatmeal cookie instead. It takes Mr. Gordon Farrow a moment or two to notice. For the first time, he looks at me properly.
“Is there something wrong?” he asks.
I hold up a finger as I finish chewing my bite of cookie. He waits patiently, his eyebrows raised inquiringly. “Not really,” I say when I’ve swallowed. “Only I just realized I’m wasting your time and mine, since you’ve already made up your mind. I appreciate you need a stalking horse, but if that’s the case I’d sooner eat your cookies and drink tea than knock myself out trying to pitch for unavailable business.”
A gleam of appreciation shows in his eyes. He’s nondescript in every respect: mid-height, mid-gray in his hair, neither fat nor thin, not obviously fit but not particularly out of shape for a man in his mid-fifties. He wears well-tailored suits, but nothing flashy or unusual. I’ve heard the only exceptional thing about him is his intellect, though he’s yet to show me much of that. “Do you always speak your mind?” he asks after a moment or two. It doesn’t escape me that he hasn’t refuted my stalking horse claim.
“Less and less as I grow older,” I say, smiling a little. “It’s a high-risk strategy. Many of the best things that have happened to me came about because of it, but . . .” I grimace. “Many of the worst things also . . .”
He actually smiles at this. “What would you consider one of the best things to happen to you?”
I answer without hesitation. “Getting into Oxford.”
He cocks his head, his eyes gleaming again. “How so?”
“I don’t have the typical Oxbridge background. Getting into Oxford really opened up my horizons. I don’t mean just in terms of job prospects—it showed me paths and possibilities I could never have believed achievable if I followed a different route.”
“My daughter was at Oxford,” he says. “I wonder if she would say the same.”
“I suppose that might depend on her background. And her personality.”
He shrugs with a wry smile. “Caro falls into the category of typical Oxbridge candidate.”
I blink. “Not Caro Horridge?” But of course not Caro Horridge; his surname is Farrow—
“Yes,” he says, surprised. “You know her?”
“We were at Oxford at the same time.”
Suddenly I have the full force of his attention; it’s a little unnerving. “And do you think Caro would say getting into Oxford was one of the best things to happen to her?”
Caro would never consider the question; Caro would view entry into Oxford as right and proper, exactly what she was due. “Well,” I hedge, “we weren’t particularly close.”
His lips quirk. “No longer pursuing the high-risk strategy?”
I laugh. “Like I said, less and less as I get older.”
The corners of his mouth tug upward, then he glances at his watch. “Well, Miss Channing, I know someone as direct as you will forgive me for cutting to the chase. You are the stalking horse. I like your business, I like the pitch book you sent through and your fees are ballpark, but you’d be a hard prospect to sell to committee, as you don’t have a proven track record yet. I’m not sure it’s worth my while to have that fight.”
“What would make it worthwhile? A reduction in fees?”
He purses his lips. “It would help, but even that might not be enough. You just—”
“Don’t have the track record,” I finish for him.
He nods ruefully. “But I can honestly say it’s been a real pleasure.” His eyes are smiling; it takes ten years off him. I can’t see the slightest resemblance to Caro.
In the cab on the way home I record my post-meeting notes on my pocket Dictaphone for Julie to type up later and then I call Lara and rant for five minutes about how I was an idiot to give up my lucrative job to start my own firm, how aforementioned firm will be bankrupt in six months at this rate, how no one will ever hire me again after such an appalling error of judgment, and so on and so forth . . . Lara has heard it all before. She doesn’t even bother arguing back.
“Finished now?” she asks when I finally run out of steam.
“For now. Come round tonight—I’ll probably bore you with more of the same, but I promise to at least treat you to a curry and some nice wine first.” A giggle with the ever-sunny Lara is exactly what I need.
“Sorry,” she says, yawning. “I’m knackered. Can we do tomorrow instead?”
“Knackered . . . What were you up to last night?” I couldn’t remember her saying she had a date, but Lara picks up men like the rest of us pick up newspapers. She puts them down in the same way, too. She is and always has been unrelentingly and unashamedly promiscuous, but somehow in her it seems . . . wholesome.
“I met someone in the pub after work. Just a bit of fun.”
“Lucky you,” I say, unable to keep the envy out of my voice. I’m not sure I’ve ever just “met someone in the pub.” I can’t recall anyone ever approaching me cold. Unless Seb counts.
“Ah, Kate.” I can hear the smile in her voice. “Like I keep telling you, you need to drop your standards. Then you’d have as much action as you could wish for.”
“Maybe.” But I don’t think that’s it. I scrub up well—I’m tall and fairly slim, I’ve got good hair and I’ve been told I’ve got beautiful eyes—but none of that quite has the appeal of a buxom beauty of Swedish descent with an easy smile and a relaxed attitude to sex.
“Your place tomorrow, then?” Lara asks.
“Perfect.” I’m about to ring off when I remember I still haven’t told her about the body. About Severine. “Wait—Tom called me.”
“How is he? Is he back in London?”
“Yes, actually, but that isn’t why he called. They found . . .” I swallow. “They found the body. I mean, Severine. They found her in the well at the farmhouse,” I finish in a rush.
“Oh God,” Lara says bleakly. “That’s horrible. Though maybe it will help her parents get closure or something. Do they think it was that boyfriend she was talking about?”
“I suppose so.” It’s an obvious question, but I hadn’t considered how she got into the well. Who put her there. Even now, my mind shies away from it. “I don’t know. Tom says the French police want to talk to us all again.”
I can almost hear Lara’s grimace. “Really?”
“It’s probably just procedure; after all, we were the last people to talk with her properly.” Before she went into town and was never seen again. “She must have gone back, though, since she was found in the well; I suppose that’s new information.”
“Still, it must have been that boyfriend, surely. I don’t mean to be insensitive, but I really hope it doesn’t take up much time. We’re soooo busy at work right now.” She yawns down the line again. “I suppose that explains why Caro’s been trying to get hold of me.”
“You too?” That’s a surprise: if anything, Caro likes Lara even less than me. “She left me a message; I haven’t called back yet. But she must have known Tom would tell us; she can’t have been calling about that.”
“Only one way to find out.” She yawns. “Shotgun: you first,” she adds impishly.
“All right,” I say reluctantly. “I’ll call her.” I don’t want to talk to Caro any more than Lara does, but I may as well find out what she wants sooner rather than later. If Caro wants something, she won’t be deterred.