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.
CHAPTER NINE
By Monday Severine has found an additional medium through which to make her presence felt: print. The case is making enough waves in France to be worthy of several column inches in the European news section of the Telegraph. There’s a political angle I don’t fully comprehend, not being an expert on French politics over the last ten years; another unsatisfactory gap in my knowledge base. They have a picture of Severine—of course they do; she is nothing if not photogenic, especially in a bikini as in the chosen photo. She lounges unsmiling in black and white on a sunbed, looking at the camera with no trace of concern about being framed on all sides by the words that attempt to capture her life and death and the chaos left by both.
Channing Associates is in the press, too. Paul comes into the office, a perfect storm of tailored suit, energy and enthusiasm, waving a copy of Legal Week. He pulls up his calendar as I take the paper off him to read it. It’s a good article. Apparently despite being newly established, “Channing Associates, headed up by Kate Channing, is comprised of experienced hands who are fleet of foot” and are “the team to watch.”
“I reckon I can lobby Cadfields again on the back of this publicity,” Paul is saying. “They kind of left the door open. I’ll try them, and then there’s Wintersons, and I heard about an in-house general counsel role at BP from a mate at . . .” He babbles away. The Haft & Weil win has given him renewed vigor beyond all expectation; I wonder if he’s further up the bipolar curve than most.
I put Legal Week down on my desk, next to Severine. One article where I’m mentioned by name; one where I’m simply one of the “English holidaymakers staying in the neighboring farmhouse” at the time, who are “helping the police with their inquiries.” It’s not an even match. Severine continues to gaze from her sun lounger, and I can think of nothing else.
I need a lawyer. Which ought to be funny given I’m a legal headhunter, except that it’s not funny at all. Because I need a lawyer.
* * *
—
Modan again.
He’s waiting for me when I emerge from Pret, clutching my coffee and my lunch in a bag. I stop short in the doorway when I spot him lounging against a lamppost. “Bonjour,” he greets me, inclining his head.
I sigh and start walking. “Bonjour. I’m afraid I don’t have any time for you today.” And I don’t have a lawyer yet.
He falls in beside me and shrugs. “Surely a few minutes.”
“Not really, I’m afraid.”
“Perhaps I talk and you listen. While you are eating your lunch, non?”