“Mmm,” I say noncommittally. “Oh, I wanted to ask you, how come Caro has a different surname than her dad? I know her parents are divorced, but still . . .”
“Well, it was pretty acrimonious.” He takes a swallow of his beer and looks to one side, remembering. “From what I recall, Gordon had an affair, and Camilla—Caro’s mum—did not take it well. Hell hath no fury, et cetera . . . though hers was a very passionless type of fury.” He frowns, trying to find the right words. “Like she wasn’t so much angry with Gordon for cheating on her as angry with him for disrupting her perfect life. Anyway, Caro took her mum’s side. She must have been about thirteen at the time. She officially changed her surname to her mum’s maiden name, though to be fair, I imagine her mum put her up to it.” His lips twist ruefully. “I always felt sorry for Gordon, to be honest. If I was married to Camilla, I expect I’d’ve been having an affair a darn sight sooner than Gordon.”
“She’s difficult?”
“Not exactly difficult.” He shrugs, trying to find the right word. “She’s cold. And nothing is ever good enough for her. Caro’s got the same sharp tongue, but at least she can have a laugh.” He glances at me, one eyebrow raised, as if waiting for me to make a snide comment, but I don’t, partly because what he says is true—Caro can indeed have a laugh; even I have to admit she can be wickedly funny—but also because I didn’t know any of this before. It adjusts the picture somewhat. “Well, anyway, it was a tough time for Caro. That’s when Seb and I”—he glances at me quickly—“started spending a lot more time with her; I think she just wanted any excuse to get out of the house.”
Seb. Tom usually avoids that name with me; tricky since they are not only best friends but also cousins, but nonetheless he tries. I keep my face expressionless. “Is her dad still with whoever he had the affair with?”
Tom shakes his head. “No. Caro refused to see him if he was still seeing her, so he stopped.” I absorb that for a moment: the child laying down the law to her father. There’s a reason children are not supposed to have that kind of power; I wonder how that felt, for both of them. But Tom is still speaking: “You know, now I wonder if her mum put her up to that, too. My parents seemed to think it was a crying shame, that Gordon and this woman would have been very happy together. But Caro was adamant, so . . .” He shrugs. “That was that.”
“Interesting that she works at his firm.”
“Yeah, I didn’t really know what to make of that when I heard she’d joined Haft & Weil.” He is frowning, still trying to puzzle it out. “It’s not like she didn’t have other offers, either.” He finishes his beer with one swallow, then eyes the empty glass. “Time for another? How late is Lara going to be?”
“She should be—ah, here she is.” I start waving to catch Lara’s attention as she scans the bar from the doorway. Half of the bar is scanning her in return. As she spots us, her open smile breaks out and she heads our way.
“Tom,” she says, hugging him warmly. “Look at you! Do you have a job anymore or do you just lift weights?”
He laughs and climbs off his bar stool to offer it to her. “You’re one to talk, looking gorgeous as ever.”
“I’m at least six pounds overweight. But since it all seems to be residing in my boobs I can’t really be bothered to do anything about it,” she says complacently, perching her bottom on the proffered bar stool.
“How is it that you’ve only been in the bar thirty seconds and already we’re talking about your boobs?” teases Tom. I’m used to their easy, affectionate flirting, but suddenly I’m more alert to it. The context has changed: Tom is single. I’m not uneasy, exactly, but it would change the dynamic if they were to become a couple. I like things how they are.
“Well then, how about a much more macabre subject: did you guys get a call from the police today?” Lara asks, and immediately Severine reaches through time to tug me back. She sinks with studied elegance into a chair by the farmhouse pool, dressed in a loose black linen shift, and crosses one leg over the other; after the slim brown calf comes a slender foot, complete with shell-pink-painted toes from which a sandal casually dangles. Seb can’t take his eyes off that sandal.
I knock back the remains of my vodka tonic and wrench myself into the present. Tom is nodding. “About interviews next week? Yeah, I did.”
“Me too. Though I don’t know what help we can be a decade on.” I add, almost defiantly, “I can hardly remember a thing.”
“Me either,” says Lara. “I wonder if it will be the same one.” She has an odd look on her face.
“Same what?” I ask, confused.
“Same detective. Only they don’t call them that in France, do they? Investigator. Officer of judiciary police, or whatever the phrase is.”
“I shouldn’t think so,” says Tom dismissively. “Wasn’t he about sixty? He’ll have retired.”
“You two have finished your drinks,” Lara says, in a sudden change of gear. “Can I get us all another?”
I shake my head, grimacing. “Shouldn’t we really screw our courage to the sticking place and venture forth?”
“Macbeth? Isn’t that a little dramatic?” protests Tom, but he’s laughing. “It’ll be fine. Especially since you two are going to behave impeccably.” He fixes us both with a mock-glare that lingers longer, and with more steel, on me than Lara.
“Such blind optimism,” Lara says, fluttering her eyelids in a deliberately over-the-top fashion. “A man after my own heart.”
I wonder.
* * *
—
Caro’s flat smells of vanilla. Later I track the source to a number of expensive candles dotted around the space, the sort that have three wicks and cost more than a boozy restaurant meal for two. The enticing smell, the cozy lighting and the welcome warmth of the flat after the driving rain outside add up to give a Christmassy feel even though it’s March. Caro has a couple of teenage girls with heavy eyeliner answering the door, taking coats and pouring champagne. It’s all exceedingly grown-up.
There are perhaps twenty-five people already there when we arrive. At a quick glance I know a few, and there are others I recognize but can’t put a name to; all from Oxford days. I spy Caro across the room, wearing a severe black minidress and truly lethal black suede ankle boots, with her dark blond hair scraped back from her face. Skinny, blond, self-assured and possessing of a delicate bone structure that screams English aristocracy: posh totty. I almost drowned in an army of girls just like her at Oxford before I learned how to swim in a big pond. It’s important to kick.
“Relax, Kate,” says Tom quietly, amused.
I exaggerate taking in a deep breath and letting it out slowly. His blue eyes, similar to Seb’s but flecked with gray, are crinkled at the corners at my theatrics.
Caro breaks off a conversation when she spots our entry and crosses to us quickly, zeroing in on Tom with a delighted smile spreading across her face. She’s even thinner than I remember, and older, of course—we all are—but for Caro the extra years have gnawed away any softness. Now she appears brittle. I try to imagine the thirteen-year-old girl that she once was, taking refuge in her friendships with Tom and Seb, but I can’t form an image in my mind. Still, Tom’s words drift around me; they herd me into a corner where I can’t help but feel that my dislike of Caro reflects badly on me. Surely I ought to like her: she’s a strong, smart, ambitious woman who is working very hard in what is still a heavily male-dominated workplace; she’s sharp and cleverly funny, and moreover, Tom likes her, which has to count for rather a lot . . . and yet . . . and yet . . . She’s too sharp. She cuts. Or at least, she used to.