Then Lara is walking toward us in short, quick steps, the color still high in her cheeks. Her eyes are remarkably dry. “Oh, honey.” I step out from the tree as I speak and move to hug her, but she gives a quick shake of her head and I realize she will fall apart if I do. “Come back to mine. Let’s find a cab.”
She nods. Tom reaches out a hand and touches her cheek briefly. “I’m sorry,” he says, with what seems like genuine empathy. He looks like he has more to add, but he checks himself; her face crumples briefly at that, but she catches herself. I link an arm through hers just as Tom spots a taxi and hails it for us. Lara climbs in first. I glance down the street and see that Modan is still standing there, his long face indescribably bleak. I look away hurriedly and move to follow Lara, but Tom stops me, gesturing me toward the front of the cab, out of earshot of Lara.
“We need to talk,” he says, decisively, looking me straight in the eye for possibly the first time today.
“I know.” I feel relieved almost to tears to have him make the first move. “I mean, I can’t right now, what with Lara, but I am so sorry—”
He cuts me off with a sharp, flat chop of one hand. “Not about that.” My face freezes, and something flickers in his eyes. “I don’t mean . . . Look, I know we do, but not now. I meant we need to talk about the case. Severine.”
“Right. God forbid I should put our friendship higher up the priority list. Only—that’s strange, isn’t it? Because according to you I don’t care a jot.” I know I’m lashing out, I know it’s destructive, but I’m hurt. I’m hurt and he did the hurting and I can’t just put it aside.
“Kate,” he says, running an exasperated hand through his hair. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate the biting sarcasm, but we just don’t have time for it. This—the car—it changes everything. It—”
“Not now, Tom. I’m going home to take care of Lara.” I turn away and start climbing into the taxi.
“Tomorrow then,” he insists through the open door.
“Whatever.” I pull the door sharply shut and give the driver my address.
“I had to do it.” The words spill out of Lara as soon as we are under way. “It was fine when it wasn’t real, when none of us were really under suspicion. But it’s not a game anymore, is it? Success for him is finding enough evidence to arrest one of us. Me—well, probably not me, but maybe you. Or Tom, or Seb or Caro . . . I can’t spend time with him wondering if something I say, something completely inconsequential to me, might make all the difference to him . . . I can’t be part of that. I can’t . . . I can’t . . .” Her blue eyes are swimming now, her breaths are shuddering gasps and the tears are starting to stream down her cheeks. I pull her into a hug, not the easiest thing in a moving cab, and she sobs into my neck in painful, body-racking gulps.
“Oh, honey,” I say helplessly, past the lump in my own throat. “I’m so proud of you.” It’s true. Having seen firsthand exactly how giddy and reckless Modan makes her, I’m in awe of the strength she has just displayed. I wonder if I would be able to do the same, but I can’t quite put myself in her shoes. Was I ever as swept away by Seb as she is by Modan? The memories are there to suggest it, but they don’t re-create the feeling within me. I say again, “I’m so proud of you. You chose to protect your friends from him.” After a moment, I add blackly, “Though on balance I’m starting to think that maybe he can have them all except you.”
“You don’t. Mean. That.” Her gasped words are muffled by my now-damp collar.
“No, I suppose not,” I concede with a sigh. “Except maybe—”
“Caro,” she finishes for me, and for a moment we are both laughing as well as crying and I think perhaps she’s going to be all right after all.
* * *
—
I call my lawyer first thing the next morning, though it’s mid-morning before she gets back to me. Thankfully Paul is out of the office so I am free to talk uninhibitedly; she listens intently to my account of the meeting and asks a couple of pertinent questions before she gives her verdict. “He’s got more up his sleeve,” she says in her usual decisive manner. “That the girl on the CCTV isn’t Severine—well, it was never a given that it was; that’s not a game-changer. So he has more. He wouldn’t still be here without it. Do you think any of the others will speak to him without a lawyer?”
“I don’t know.” I think about it. Not Lara, I don’t think; not anymore. And not Seb. Probably not Caro, either, unless she’s playing some angle that I can’t foresee. Tom? I don’t know about Tom. “Probably not, but I don’t know for sure.”
“Mmm.” I imagine her tapping her teeth with her fingernail, hopefully whilst wearing a less garish lipstick. A soft taupe, perhaps. “Obviously what I said before still stands: you mustn’t allow yourself to be questioned without me present, but the trick is to appear cooperative. Antagonizing the police is never a good strategy.”
“Appear cooperative?” I stress the first word with an ironic twist.
She laughs. “Well, yes, appear. If you actually happen to be cooperative, too, that’s fine, but not actually necessary.” She pauses, and I sense the shift of gear; the moment for humor has passed. “Have you thought any more about what happened on that Friday night? If there was some piece of information, however small, that you hadn’t mentioned before, you could come forward with it—with me present, I hasten to add—which would go a long way to demonstrating cooperation.”
“Or demonstrating a desire to shift blame.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that. Believe me, right now the lawyers for all of your little band will be advising their clients to shift the blame.” She waits to allow her words their full impact. “So,” she finally continues, “is there anything you can think of, anything at all, that you haven’t mentioned?”
I’m silent. There’s so much I haven’t mentioned, both from that night and since. The smuggled cocaine and subsequent blazing row, Caro and Seb’s recent conspiratorial assignations, Tom’s continual absence of surprise (apart from during last night’s meeting), Modan and Lara’s relationship . . . “I’ll need to spend some time thinking about that,” I say at last.
“You do that.” Her voice has hardened; there’s a warning note in it: I haven’t fooled her at all. “I can’t help you if I don’t have all the facts. I don’t want you bringing up things at the eleventh hour when you’re already under arrest.”
I’m temporarily unable to breathe. “Arrest,” I croak when I finally find my voice. “Is that likely?”
“Well, not off the current known facts, but as we’ve already discussed, Modan must have something more up his sleeve. He isn’t here for nothing.”
“Right.” I rub my forehead. “Right.”
“I think we should meet again and go over everything once more.” Her voice has softened a little. “My assistant will call you to set something up. In the meantime, promise me you’ll rack your brains about that evening.”
“I will. I promise.” One would think I would have dwelled on little else since yesterday, but last night Lara’s emotional state had required a certain amount of dedicated focus. And if I’m honest, I’ve always shied away from memories of that week. But now . . . now the stakes are growing day by day, it seems. I should approach this as I would a problem with my company, I think; I should set aside time to apply dedicated thought. I look at my online calendar for today and decisively block out 5 P.M. to 6 P.M. I can’t think of what to put in the subject box, so I mark it private so that Julie can’t see the content and leave the subject blank, which in retrospect strikes me as highly ironic—marking an appointment private to hide the fact it says nothing at all. Then I wonder who else is speaking to their lawyer and setting aside thinking time, and it doesn’t seem at all funny anymore.
* * *