CHAPTER EIGHT
I call Tom the next morning.
It’s not the first thing I do when I wake up, and I didn’t wake early. In fact, it’s barely still morning when I finally allow myself to pick up the phone.
“Kate,” he says after a couple of rings. His voice is sleepy, and deeper, more gravelly than usual.
“Sorry, did I wake you?” I’m not the least bit sorry. At this time of day I feel well within my rights to wake anyone.
“No, I’ve already been to the gym.” Maybe the alcohol is responsible for the gravel in his voice then. I hear him yawn. “I figured you’d call. Want to come over? I’ll throw something together for lunch.”
It’s both a relief not to have to ask to see him and embarrassing to have him find me so predictable. “Done.” I glance at my watch and perform the mental maths. “I can be there around half twelve if that works for you?”
“Perfect, see you then.”
The tube is full of the weekend crush. Tourists and families and self-consciously cool teens, all in pairs or groups, as if nobody travels alone on a Saturday or Sunday. I turn my head to stare out of the window. This part of the tube runs through a series of tunnels and open-air sections; I see overgrown leafy embankments interspersed with the bleached-out reflection of the carriage. Neither gives away much about London. I’m thinking of Tom’s words, as I have done repeatedly since I woke up, as I must have done somewhere in my subconscious all night. Jealous rage. Spurned lover. I won’t allow myself to think beyond that; I have my imagination on a tight rein. Just those words are permitted: jealous rage, spurned lover, then an abrupt stop to all thought. Severine should be here now, gloating, that smirk hovering millimeters from her mouth, but for once she’s conspicuous by her absence.
Jealous rage. Spurned lover. It doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter. But here I am, in a grab-handbag, brush-hair, that-will-do kind of hurry, on my way to Tom’s flat—which Tom entirely anticipated. It’s surprising how little surprises Tom.
Tom’s flat is in a quiet, wealthy street lined with Regency town houses, all high ceilings and sash windows and expensive heating bills. I press the bell for the top floor, and after a moment there is an obnoxious buzz and the front door releases. The communal hallway is on a dignified slide into genteel shabbiness, the once thick carpets now worn in the center from years of use. I climb the creaking stairs to find Tom’s front door ajar; I can see a two-inch-wide slice of his hallway, with a newspaper dumped casually on a side table. I can’t quite remember the last time I was here; actually, I can’t remember being here more than three or four times, and always with a crowd, for a party or some such. Rapping on the door solo, I feel an unexpected twinge of nerves.
“In the kitchen,” calls Tom’s deep tone; he has expelled some of the gravel now. I close the front door behind me then aim for Tom’s voice and find myself spilling into an open-plan room, with the kitchen at one end, a living room type space at the other, and a large glass dining table separating the two. At the living space end, floor-to-ceiling windows open out onto a small terrace. Tom is at the stove in the kitchen, working on something in a frying pan.
“I don’t remember this,” I say, making my way over to him. I may have only been in this flat a handful of times, but I’ve never been in this room.
He pulls me in for a one-armed hug, the other hand occupied with the frying pan, which contains the world’s largest Spanish omelet. “I remodeled before I went to Boston. Just in time for a tenant to enjoy it instead of me. Do you like?” he asks casually, but I can see he cares about my answer.
“It’s great,” I say truthfully. It’s modern without being sharp; it still feels warm and livable. Unlike Caro’s place. Unlike Caro. “You’ve done it really well.” I gesture toward the hob. “Can I help?” It’s not the question I want to ask, but I don’t know how to get there from discussions of renovations in a sun-drenched kitchen.
“Nope, nearly done, just grab a pew,” he says, gesturing to the bar stools on the other side of the counter. “I take it omelet is okay?”
“Perfect. Thanks.” I clamber aboard a stool and watch the back of him cook, given the layout of the kitchen. He can’t be long out of the shower; his hair is still wet. He’s wearing jeans and a casual shirt with the sleeves rolled up. For no reason at all I see Seb alongside him—Seb as he was, the Adonis, the man among the boys; I don’t know the Seb of now. Jealous rage. Spurned lover. Tom, a man now, too, glances over his shoulder with a quick smile. I instinctively look away quickly, as if caught staring.
“Done,” he says, efficiently cutting the omelet in two and delivering it to waiting plates. “Voilà.”
“Merci bien.” I pause. I force myself to ask something conversational. “Do you like cooking?”
He settles himself on the bar stool next to me. “Not particularly, but I like eating fresh food, so . . .” He shrugs his shoulders.
The omelet is good, very good. We munch away, or at least Tom does; my appetite is letting me down. I’ve eaten with Tom any number of times, though never at his kitchen counter by his own hand. But still, there should be companionable silence; there always has been for Tom and me. Not today. Something is different—we are different. I glance over in his direction. He looks tired, the crinkles round his eyes more pronounced. Perhaps he is paler; his freckles seem to stand out more.
“So . . .” he says, between bites. “Lara and Modan? Is that for real?”
I grimace. “Well, she certainly seems smitten,” I say apologetically. I wonder if that question has itched away at him all night.
“Yeah, that much was obvious.” There’s no emotion in his voice. He takes a bite and chews thoughtfully, staring unseeingly across the kitchen. “It’s not ideal.”
Not ideal. It’s an oddly phlegmatic turn of phrase for heartbreak. “I guess. On any number of fronts.” I put down my fork, unable to eat and unable to wait, and twist on the bar stool to face his profile. “What did you mean last night?”
He turns to look at me, his head cocked to one side analytically. Then he lays his cutlery down, too, but he’s actually finished, the enormous omelet polished off in a handful of bites. He knows exactly what I’m referring to, and to his credit he doesn’t try to dissemble. “Severine was an attractive girl,” he says carefully. I nod and wonder where she is. Surely she wouldn’t want to miss out on this conversation. “Modan seems to find it hard to believe that none of us were sleeping with her. He’s playing a ‘what if’ game right now. What if . . . well, what if Tom was sleeping with Severine? But that’s unlikely because everyone knows I hooked up with Lara that week, and Modan clearly thinks Lara is more than enough for one man to cope with.” His tone is heavy with irony. He pauses for a moment; I can’t tell if he’s remembering the past or looking to the future, but regardless, it seems the view is bleak. “But what if Seb was sleeping with Severine? Well, that would certainly make things interesting . . .”
He stops, holding my gaze. The question that we both know I’m going to ask hangs in the air between us, solid enough to reach out and touch.
“I want to know,” I say quietly.
Tom looks away and runs a hand through his hair, then fixes me in his gaze again. “Do you really care?” There’s an edge to his voice. “After all this time? Ten years have passed since that week in France—ten years and a bloody marriage ceremony.”
“I care about whether I was made a fool of.” I sound bitter. I feel bitter. And impatient. “I care about whether all my friends knew what was going on under my nose but didn’t tell me.”
“So it’s all about pride.”
“Yes. No. I don’t know—look, was he fucking her or not?”
“Yes,” he says simply.
I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes to mind. I close it again. Pride, I think. Tom is right on that score: my pride is well and truly hurt. Severine has finally made her entrance: she’s watching me from across the kitchen and my fingers curl in an urge to drag my nails down those perfectly smooth cheeks, an urge so strong that I almost recoil from myself: the poor girl is dead; no one can possibly feel envious of her ever again. She watches me, and I fancy she knows what I’m thinking: she looks coolly to the side, as if utterly uninterested in my opinion. Tom is watching me, too, his brow furrowed in concern. I start to slide down from the bar stool.
“No,” says Tom assertively, bringing me up short by grabbing my arm. “You don’t get to disappear now. You wanted to know, so you have to listen to it all instead of building up all sorts of crazy scenarios in your head.” His eyes are fiercely intent. “Kate, this is not some conspiracy theory; nobody has been whispering behind your back. It was a onetime thing, on the last night only. Hardly anyone knows about it. Seb doesn’t even know that I know about it.”
I process that for a moment, fighting my urge to flee. The last night. “After the fight, then.” He nods. His grip loosens on my upper arm; instead he rubs his hand reassuringly up and down from my shoulder to my elbow. The last night, after the fight. “You said hardly anyone. Who else?”
“I don’t know for sure,” he says uneasily. “But maybe . . . Caro.”
“Caro. Of course. It would have to be Caro.” Of all people it would have to be her. I bet she has loved having that piece of knowledge secreted away, ready to be deployed at just the right moment for maximum personal advantage. I can just imagine how superior it has made her feel. I find my hands have clawed; I force myself to breathe out slowly and relax them. “How do you know about it then?”
“I saw them,” he admits. “I don’t know for sure, but I think Caro did, too; or at least, she put two and two together.” I can see him gauging my reaction, trying to work out if each additional detail makes things better or worse, but nevertheless he’s unflinching in his delivery. He releases my arm and runs his hand through his hair again instead. He looks as if, on balance, he’d much rather not have seen . . . What did he see exactly? I steel myself for the malevolent march of that thought eating away at me, the rot spreading at a steady rate until I can see nothing without an overlay of Seb and Severine in various different tangles of limbs, artfully backlit Hollywood-style—but a thoroughly unexpected dose of pragmatism hits me. The last night of the holiday, that famously eventful Friday night? Logistically, it couldn’t have happened until after the fight, at which point Seb was already so drunk that, at some point when I have some perspective, I may be impressed that he managed to cheat on me at all. I’m fairly certain there was no cinematic glow involved that night. But . . .
“How do you know it wasn’t happening all week, and you just didn’t see it the other times?”
“Come on,” he says, one eyebrow quirking upward. “We’re talking about Seb. Subtlety and subterfuge have never been his strongest suits.” I don’t react. He sighs then looks at me searchingly, all humor gone. “Did you never wonder? Not even when the two of you broke up?” I shake my head, but we both know I’m lying. “Why did you think you broke up?”
“Christ, Tom. Can anyone ever answer that succinctly? Why did you and Jenna break up?” I counter.
He doesn’t miss a beat and he doesn’t break eye contact. “Because I didn’t love her. Not the way I want to love whoever I’m going to spend the rest of my life with.”
His starkly brutal honesty leaves me speechless, caught in the grip of his ferociously intent eyes. Like Seb’s but not; now all I can see are the differences, not the similarities. I’m still groping around for a response when suddenly his phone starts to ring and dance across the counter. He glances at it long enough to register the caller ID, then picks it up and grimaces apologetically. “Sorry, I’ve got to take this; it’s work. Don’t go away.”
I slide off the stool and wander into the living area of the open-plan space. Why did I think Seb and I broke up? I glance back at Tom. He’s roaming the kitchen as he listens, his tall frame telegraphing alertness and focus. I turn back to the living room, inspecting the few framed photos resting on a shelf. There’s one of him with his parents and his younger sister on his graduation day. His dad has clapped his hand firmly on Tom’s shoulder and is beaming proudly. A wave of longing for my own father crashes over me, taking my breath away with its sudden onslaught. I turn quickly to the next photo: Seb and Tom at perhaps fifteen years old, beside a sailing boat with a gentleman that can only be Seb’s father. The whippet-thin figure of Tom is a step back and half turned, as if he was about to get into the boat when the photo was taken; Seb’s father’s hand is on his shoulder, tugging him into the photo. Seb is square to the camera on his father’s other side, smiling broadly. It’s not a version of Seb I ever knew; he was more complete when I met him. More of a polished product. I look at that photo for a long time and think about all the different versions of Seb, including the one that cheated on me. The bitterness is an all-encompassing sea of bile, roiling around in my stomach and threatening to race up my throat to choke me.
Why did I think Seb and I broke up?
I’m so very, very tired of caring.
Tom has moved from receiving mode into delivery mode on his telephone call. “No, I don’t actually,” I hear him say authoritatively. “The basis risk on this structure is significant. Someone has to take it, and if it’s going to be us then we have to charge for it. But the real problem is that this is the wrong structure for what they really want to do. We should get in front of them with a presentation and educate them.” I find I’m watching him as he talks. He’s still moving around the kitchen, his right hand accentuating his points. For a moment I find myself assessing him as I would any candidate that crossed the path of Channing Associates. It dawns on me that he’s a fixer, a problem-solver; entirely in keeping with his degree in engineering, but somehow I’ve never paid attention to this side of him. He feels my eyes upon him and looks across, mouthing what could be “two minutes” whilst holding up two fingers. I nod and make a show of turning unconcernedly to another photo, and find myself looking back at me.
I’m not the only one in the photo, of course; there’s Tom next to me and Lara on his other side. We’re all sitting on the side of the pool in France, our feet dangling in the water. Lara is almost spilling out of her bikini and looks how she always looks: as if she’s just climbed out of bed after hours of languorous sex, but would be more than willing to tumble back in for another round. Tom is Tom, at least the Tom I know the best: relaxed, laid-back, secure in his own skin but quietly observant. I’m the Kate I like the least, awkwardly folding my arms across my stomach at the glimpse of a camera, a half-hearted smile hung on my face. It’s not surprising; there was no heart in any of my smiles by the end of that week.
Suddenly I realize Tom is behind me, looking over my shoulder at the photo. I hadn’t noticed him finish the call. “Cracking legs you have on display there,” he says mischievously.
I smile, touched; it’s gentlemanly of him to comment on me rather than the bombshell that is Lara. I gesture toward the sailing photo. “Did you sail a lot growing up?” It’s the only non-contentious thing I can think of to say.
He shrugs. “Uncle Edwin was really into it. He taught Seb and me.” He looks at the photo a moment longer. “Did you know he paid all my school fees before I got the scholarship?”
Uncle Edwin. Lord Harcourt. I shake my head. “I didn’t.” I think about that for a moment: the younger sister and her penniless academic husband living off the generosity of the lord in the grand house. “I guess that must have created a certain dynamic.”
He glances down at me. “No, it was—” he starts to say, as if parroting the party line, then he stops. “Actually, yeah,” he admits. “My folks never said anything, but I could see how relieved they were when I won the scholarship.” He looks back at the photo. “But it was a bit awkward with Seb, since he just missed out.”
“But you two never seemed competitive with each other,” I say, confused.
He shrugs. “Seb likes to win.” Before I can try to puzzle that out, he shakes himself and turns away from the photos. “Anyway, where were we?”
“Nowhere I want to go back to.”
His lips twist apologetically. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before.”
“Don’t be ridiculous; Seb is your family.” I can’t blame Tom in the slightest for keeping Seb’s secrets. I can blame Seb for having them, though. I can and I do.
“Yes, but . . . Well, anyway. You wanted to know.” He cocks his head and assesses me, lips pursed. “How do you feel now you do?”
I turn away, scrubbing my face with my hands. “God, I don’t know. It’s hard to find perspective.” Does Tom think I’m taking this well, or badly? Should I be more upset or less upset? Exactly how upset am I? What is the proportionate response when discovering decade-old infidelity?
“Kate,” he says, a little too loudly, as if he’s said my name more than once. Maybe he has. I turn back toward him, eyebrows raised inquiringly. “They’re going to try and pin this on one of us,” he says quietly. “Theo’s dad says there’s been a lot of publicity on this case in France; the police are getting hauled over the coals in the press for not finding the body at the time. There’s a lot of pressure on them to get a result.”
“But it wasn’t one of us.” I sound like a child, railing against the injustice of life: it’s not fair! But life isn’t fair, he will say. I know that. After irrevocably losing Seb and my dad in close succession, albeit in different ways, I couldn’t fail to recognize that life lacks a sense of fair play.
Tom doesn’t even bother to argue the point; he’s already moved on. “I think you need to get a lawyer.”
“A lawyer.” I stare at him. “You’re serious.” He nods grimly. “Do you have one?”
“Nope. But my other half wasn’t sleeping with a girl who subsequently turned up folded origami-style at the bottom of a well.”
I can see her bleached skull grinning maniacally from the pinnacle of a pile of clean white bones. My breath catches. “Well, when you put it like that—”
“Modan, the French police—they will put it like that.”
“But they don’t know he and she . . . Ah.”
Tom is nodding. “Yes. Caro. I don’t know for sure that she knows, and I don’t know if she would say anything, but . . .”
He spreads his fingers, palm up. I know he intends to convey uncertainty—she might, she might not—but I know the truth of it: she will. Unless there’s some personal benefit to her that I haven’t yet divined, without a doubt Caro will say something. If she hasn’t already . . . I stare at him, my mind skittering on many levels. “They need hard evidence to prosecute, right? It can’t be purely circumstantial?”
He shrugs. “I’m not exactly an expert in the French criminal judiciary system.”
“Me neither.” Which, at present, seems a wholly unsatisfactory gap in my legal education. Eventually I say again, “So, a lawyer. You’re serious.”
“Yes.” There isn’t a shadow of doubt in his eyes.
“I . . . Okay then.” I’m still staring at him, my mind whirring.
“And stop talking to Lara about the case,” he presses.
“Yes. Okay.” He’s still looking at me as if waiting for more, so I say it again. “Okay.”
He nods and lets out a breath. “Okay.”
I take a cab home. I can’t face the bustle and thrust of the tube; I’m too brittle. I may fracture if jostled. The cabdriver tries to start up a conversation but trails off into silence when I fail to offer a single response. Lara’s name lights up the screen on my mobile as we drive, the shrill ringtone demanding a response. I look at the phone in my hand, and all I can see are spider’s threads leading from it. Lara to Alain Modan. Lara to Tom. Tom to Seb, his own cousin. Tom and Seb to Caro, their friend from childhood. Tom and Seb to Theo, their friend from university. Theo to Severine. Severine to Seb. Tug on any one thread and the reverberations will be felt by all.
The phone falls silent. I don’t call her back.