It’s another of Lara’s unexpectedly perceptive moments, though she hasn’t followed through to the implications. Tom’s gaze and mine jump to lock together, and for a moment it’s like the darkened corridor never happened, like I’ve never ever doubted him, and I can see exactly what he’s thinking. “But who?” I say to him.
“I don’t know.” Tom shakes his head, then frowns again. “I can’t see who could possibly benefit.”
“Who what?” asks Lara, thoroughly lost.
“Who put him up to it,” I explain. “You’re right, it’s extremely odd behavior. So either he’s an irredeemable gossip, or someone put him up to it.” I think for a bit. “I can take a look in his file and ask Paul about him. If he’s known to be the town crier then maybe it’s just incredibly bad luck that he’s got hold of this.”
Tom turns his attention to the oven. The last few moments have stripped away some of my distrust, or perhaps my growing exhaustion has done that—suspicion is so damn tiring. Things would be so much simpler if Tom was on my side. I’m almost sure he is; I’m almost sure Tom is Tom and all the rest of it is just noise. It’s certainly what I want to believe. “That night . . . with Severine,” I start hesitantly. Tom looks up in the act of removing the pizzas, with a lightness in his eyes that warms me: he recognizes the olive branch. “At first I thought—well, I thought she went to the bus depot the next morning, so I thought it was nothing to do with all of us. Then afterward, when Modan said it wasn’t her, then I started thinking. And the thing is, I don’t know what time Seb came to bed. I was pretty upset, and pretty drunk, to be honest; I think I just passed out, so I really don’t know. But then Seb was really insistent that he was there all night . . .” Lara and Tom are both watching me, letting the words run out of me. “And he and Caro are acting so strangely, so . . . complicit, I actually wondered if they were shagging, but I think actually—I think it’s all to do with this. With Severine.” I take a deep breath, looking at Tom. If I say this it becomes possible. If I say this, I can never take it back. “So I guess I’ve been wondering if Seb killed her—by accident—and if Caro helped cover it up.”
I hear Lara mutter, “Jesus,” and in my peripheral vision she reaches for the wine bottle, but I’m focused on Tom. He nods calmly. Thoughtfully. He’s not surprised, and by now I’m not surprised about that.
“Caro,” he says. He’s speaking dispassionately, simultaneously carving up the slightly burned pizzas with a circular cutter, as if we’re discussing interest rates or car insurance. “Not me for the cover-up?”
In the moment I am unable to think of anything to say but the truth. “It could have been you. But like you said, I don’t think you would have had enough time to manage it without Lara suspecting something. And . . .”
“What?” His cutting of the pizza continues unhurried, and his question is casual, but his eyes on me are anything but.
I shrug again. “I guess I think that if it had been you, it would have been a better cover-up.”
“Thank you, I think,” he says dryly, but the tension has left him, and a smile lurks round his mouth.
“Was it such a bad cover-up?” asks Lara. “It took ten years for the body to be found.”
Severine has perched her bottom on the granite surface beside the sink. She crosses her legs and supports her upper body with her arms braced behind her. She doesn’t shock me with her sudden appearances anymore. I wonder if I would miss her if she were to go wherever ghosts go when they’re done haunting.
“If it was a random stranger, then it’s a poorly executed cover-up that just got lucky,” says Tom. “You’d have to expect the well to be searched sometime early on, and a stranger wouldn’t know it was due to be filled in soon. But we knew that. Even so, even with it being filled in, you’d have to think it would be searched sooner rather than later.”
“What would you have done?” I ask curiously.
“Taken your car keys and dumped her somewhere far away,” he says promptly, so promptly that I know he’s thought about this before.
“Modan asked about cars . . .” I trail off. There’s a tendril of something in my brain that I can’t quite catch. Severine has a cigarette in her hand now. She blows out smoke in a slow, languid breath, her eyes fixed on me, as dark and unreflective as always.
“We’re really considering this, then?” says Lara to no one in particular. “That it could have been Seb? One of us?” There’s nothing to say to that. She reaches for a slice of pizza, then pauses with it partway to her mouth to remark, “If Caro was involved, it would have to be for Seb. I can’t imagine her doing that for anyone else.” She thinks for a moment more, then gestures with the pizza. “Caro and Seb. God, I hope he’s not that stupid.”
“He’s pretty stupid at times, but even so . . .” Tom grimaces, but then shakes his head. They’re both sneaking wary glances at me. The instinct not to talk about Seb in front of me has become so ingrained over the years that they’re struggling to shake it. Tom shakes his head again. “I’m sure he’s not. He must know it would mean too much to her.”
“Has everybody always known that?” I ask hesitantly. “I don’t think I did back then—did I miss it? I knew she didn’t like me going out with Seb, but I thought she just didn’t like me.”
“She didn’t like you,” Tom says, not without humor, at the same time as Lara says, “She still doesn’t like you.”
A smile curls my lips despite myself. “No, really, guys, don’t beat around the bush on my account.” Tom grins and Lara giggles. “I knew she didn’t like me, but I didn’t think it was me so much as what I represent—or what I don’t represent. I didn’t go to the right school, I didn’t spend my summers in Pony Club and winters in Verbier, I don’t have the right accent.”
“Val d’Isère,” says Tom. I roll my eyes. How is it that we’re now back at this easy ebb and flow? Surely there has to be a reckoning at some point? “But I take your point: she’s a snob. Of course she wouldn’t like you. But especially not since you were dating Seb.”
“You’re right, though; she’s more obvious now,” Lara observes.
I munch on the pizza and let this marinate. The trick is to take in the new without polluting the old, and I don’t think I’ve got the hang of it: it’s too easy to project what I know now on what I remember from then. I remember Seb; I remember the faint disbelief I carried around inside me that Seb—silver-spooned, silver-tongued, golden-hued Seb—that he was with me. Part of me expected all girls to want him. And Seb . . . well, Seb expected it, too; he took it as his right, and any suggestion that he encouraged it was instantly labeled “jealousy.” I decided early on that I would not allow him to brand me with that, but that required a lot of hard work and, in retrospect, willful ignorance. Perhaps it’s no wonder I dismissed Caro’s long-held unrequited love too lightly.
I finish my slice before I break the companionable silence. “Anyway, we’ve strayed from the point. Tom, what do you think happened? You’ve always known more than us.”
He doesn’t dispute it. “I was actually trying not to drag you guys into it.”
“We’re pretty firmly mired in it all now.”
“Speak for yourself,” yawns Lara. “I’m sure I’m off the hook.”
I give her arm a gentle poke. “So much for solidarity. Well, I’m pretty firmly mired in it all, at least.”
He doesn’t dispute that, either.
“You saw something,” Lara prompts.
He nods. “I did. I . . .” A loud buzz interrupts him. He cocks his head and turns toward his door. “Probably a mistake. A drunk or something.” The buzzer sounds again, in three short blasts then a long hold. “A highly obnoxious drunk.” He crosses the kitchen quickly and exits to the hall. We hear him speaking tersely to the intercom by his front door. “Hello?”
“It’s me,” comes an unmistakable voice, unexpectedly loud through the speaker. Lara’s guilt-filled eyes fly to mine, which no doubt display the same. Speak of the devil . . . “Let me up. I’m the glad bearer of tidings—the bearer of glad tidings. Or something . . .”