“I’ll be on time.”
Naomi walked down to the port. She was dreading dinner, but it had to be endured. The swallows massed in the sky, an air of mad poetry and derangement. She had a quick drink at the Pirate Cove to steady her nerves, then climbed up the steps sunk in plumbago to the villa. When she got to Belle Air it was Carissa who opened the door for her, and the expression on her face was somber. The maid was tarted up, the cosmetic polishing almost professional.
“Madame is in a bad mood.”
They stood together for a moment in the secluded cool of the vestibule among the old Turkish swords, and Carissa filled her in on the day’s observations. They spoke in Greek, and the humor flowed easily between them in that language. They knew each other well. More than that, a calm telepathy existed between them. They had known each other for years, since Naomi was an early teenager and Carissa not much older. That night madame had said that her stepdaughter was a parasite.
“Well, I knew she thought that,” Naomi said grimly. “What else?”
“Your father defended you. They had a row.”
“That bitch. At least you are priceless, Carissa.”
“She also said you should go back to London and get a job.”
“She did?”
“She did.”
But why should it be me who goes back to London? Naomi thought.
“Never mind,” she said. “I’ll prepare myself for dinner.”
She went up to her room. She shut the door and showered for half an hour. It was her childhood room, older by far than Phaine’s tenure in her father’s heart, and it gave her a reassuring sense of entitlement at the core of the house. Her bed, her old books and childhood things moldering away in the salty air. In every other room the intruder had carefully expunged all traces of her dead mother and replaced their former warmth and coziness with her own chilly taste.
Naomi sat in front of her dressing-table mirror and put on a little makeup. Her father always appreciated the effort at a family dinner; his eyes shone for a second and the compliment was made without words. She put on a simple dress and pulled her hair back and then went quietly down to the terrace, where Carissa had set the table with a touch of magnificence: asphodels in a vase, the family silver from Nottingham. Jimmie and Phaine were already there, with Frank Sinatra from the salon turned up loud and “Fly Me to the Moon” belting out to subdue the cicadas. Jimmie was smoking a stupendous Havana and reading the Wall Street Journal; Phaine was drinking a vodka tonic. When she saw Naomi she stiffened and casually shouted out: “So there you are!”
Jimmie looked up over his half-moons and smiled at the sight of his only child looking subtly elegant and, in some inexpressible way, contrite. He put down the paper and playfully hit the side of his wineglass with his spoon, making it ring like the announcement of a toast.
“Let’s have Carissa bring out the paté,” Phaine said. “She made some black olive paté—it’s an old recipe, you know.”
But in fact the maid was already bringing it out. Jimmie poured the Bandol for his daughter and for a few minutes he was curious about the Haldanes. The old guy was a bit of a stiff, wasn’t he? The wife wasn’t bad, though. Bit of a looker and light on her feet, eh? The boy had shifty eyes, though.
“What about the daughter?” Naomi said.
“Oh yes. I forgot about her. You’ve gotten to know her a bit, haven’t you? Is she sweet?”
“Of course she’s sweet.”
“Did you hear that, Funny? She’s sweet. But I can’t remember her.”
“Jimmie, let’s face it: you only remember what you want to remember.”
Since this was undeniable, he held his tongue for a few seconds and tried to come back with a better line.
“All the same,” he resumed, “it’s not like me to forget someone sweet. There must have been something ordinary about her. Or something very unsweet. Or maybe I didn’t like her.”
It was the usual dinner à trois at the Codrington manor, with constant small talk about neighbors and commercial developments in the ports (invariably unwelcome) and dishes cooked by Carissa in the vast kitchen brought out on an assortment of antique plates. That night she presented lavish servings of fish oven-baked with lemon and olives, and oily roasted potatoes sprinkled with sea salt and blades of thyme as long as eyelashes.
“We’re happy to take your new friends around the island tomorrow,” Phaine said. “But first Jimmie and I thought we should have a talk with you about your situation. Your work situation, I mean. It seems to me, anyway, that you haven’t been entirely forthcoming about what is going on with you or why you had to leave the firm. You know perfectly well that your father put a lot of effort into helping you get that job—and now it has evaporated from one day to the next without any explanation from you.”
She began stabbing at the potatoes with her fork, and this formed an interlude that served as an invitation to Naomi to refute her.
“That’s unfair,” the girl said weakly. “I—”
“You just show up here saying you’ve lost your job and expect us to accept it. It’s a little baffling. Apart from anything else, we could help you if you come clean and told us exactly what happened. We’re not saying that it was your fault—we don’t know either way. We can’t know anything unless you tell us and stop being so evasive about it.”
“I lost my job. I think that’s all you need to be aware of.”
“It’s not the end of the world to have lost your job, it happens all the time. But one thing you can’t do is just pretend that nothing happened and then expect us not to ask any questions. We have a perfect right to ask questions.”
“I didn’t say you didn’t.”
“Darling,” Jimmie said to his daughter, “I’d rather like to know why you were fired, if you were fired. Were you fired?”
Naomi put down her fork, and her whole body tensed.
“It’s a private matter,” she stammered. “I would have thought it was obvious why—”
“But if you want me to help you—”
“I don’t. I just need a place to think it over.”
“You have that and you will always have that. But we need to know what happened so we can help you. Don’t you think? Phaine says that honesty is the best principle, and I’m bound to say I agree with her.”
“You can tell us,” Phaine said emphatically, putting down her fork as well. “We can’t be in the dark about things like this.”
“I know you were having trouble with your boss—”
“It wasn’t that, it wasn’t. It’s more complicated.”
Naomi felt herself crumpling; she wanted to put her hands over her ears and drown out both them and the Sinatra with a long scream.
“Was it the Weaver case?” Jimmie persisted. “You told me about that and I googled it.”
“What if it was? The only thing that matters is that they fired me. So yes, they fired me.”
“I see.” Phaine sighed triumphantly.
“Did they really?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“What a despicable thing to do. What was the reason, then?”