“Oh. Well, that’s . . . Well, that’s kind of you.” Confronted with gifts, normal behavior demands I swing the door wide, and after all, I have resolved to follow normal behavior. “Come in.”
She enters, and I take the gifts from her as she unbuttons her coat and removes the dark red trilby, looking around her with sharp, greedy glances, stripping away every detail to store in that carnivorous mind of hers. I glance around myself, trying to see things as she must see them. It’s a nice flat in a Georgian block, small but welcoming, with some lovely old features such as the original bay windows, but it can’t hold a candle to Caro’s own apartment. Or Tom’s. Just the thought of him is a delicious secret inside me, to be held tight and treasured. The florist’s card is still in my hand; I shove it surreptitiously into my pocket.
“Lovely flowers,” says Caro. “A secret admirer?” Her eyes scan me, eager and hot and hungry—and something else, too, something like anger, but why on earth should she be angry at me receiving flowers?
“Hardly.” I give a careless laugh.
“No? Who then?” she presses insistently.
“They’re from a very happy client. Anyway, come on through to the kitchen,” I say quickly, self-conscious in my lie; anything to do with Tom is too new for me to be sure I can hide it. I lead her through the flat; it’s hard to overstate just how uncomfortable I feel with her inside my home sanctuary. Severine isn’t proving helpful, either: she’s trailing Caro, never more than a foot away, more present and more insistent than I’ve ever seen her before. “Tea, coffee?” And then because Caro is looking expectantly at the bottle she gave me, which I’ve placed on the kitchen counter, I add reluctantly, “Wine?”
“Yes, please. Is it a flu bug?”
I find some wineglasses and pull a corkscrew out of a drawer as I answer her. “The beginnings of one, I think. I’m all achy and my head is pounding.” That’s all true, actually, or it was before the flowers arrived and boosted my endorphin count, but a flu bug has nothing to do with it. Before the flowers . . . suddenly I remember—“Fuck, the bath!”
I dash out of the kitchen, leaving Caro and her surprised expression behind. The bath hasn’t flooded yet, but it has reached the level of the overflow, and the bathroom is misty with steam. I turn off the tap quickly, looking at the tub longingly. Perhaps I can get rid of Caro quickly enough that it will still be warm . . . but then I see Severine under the surface, clothed and completely still, her eyes closed and her hair fanning out lazily around her head. For all that I’ve become accustomed to having Severine around, it’s an arresting image. Arresting and chilling. Then she sits up abruptly, her soaking wet hair slicked back tightly against her head, and opens her eyes, staring straight at me. I have to stifle a small scream.
But in that instant something unlocks in my brain, and suddenly I know exactly what happened, all those years ago in France. I stand there for a moment, staring at Severine, letting it all unfurl in my mind, like leaves touched by the first rays of the morning sun . . . yes, that’s how it must have been; yes, that, and that . . . I see a plan of the farmhouse from above, laid out in miniature, like looking down on a doll’s house: there’s a tiny version of me asleep in the bedroom I shared with Seb, my tear-streaked face calm in unconscious oblivion; a mini-doll Lara dozes in Tom’s bedroom, tangled in sheets redolent of sex; Seb’s figurine is passed out in the barn, where a stray rake lies abandoned near the door, while a tiny Severine and tiny Tom are grouped by the pool. And only one question remains: where to place Caro and Theo? But I know the answer to that too now.
And then another question follows: what can I do about it? A cold, hard fear is growing inside me, too, but this is different from the fear I have been living with of late; that was paralyzing, diminishing, it made me less than I want to be, less than I am. This fear is steel cold and equally as hard, and it’s forging me into the same. Or perhaps it’s stripping me back to what was always there, underneath: the Kate I like best, who faces life head-on. Kate of the high-risk strategy.
Severine sits in the bath, water still streaming off the ends of her long hair, her soaked black shift plastered to those eternally perfect tiny breasts. She sits and looks at me whilst I puzzle and plan, and there is not a jot of expression in those black eyes.
I leave the bathroom abruptly, closing the door tight. In the living room I grab my handbag and find what I’m looking for buried at the bottom of it; I sweep it into my pocket to lie snugly against the florist’s card: all my secrets in one dark, warm place.
Back in the kitchen, Caro has opened the wine and poured out two glasses; she looks up inquiringly as I reenter. “Sorry, I forgot I left the tap on; I was just running a bath when you arrived.” I sound unnatural, but Caro doesn’t seem to notice. Severine has joined us, too, thankfully no longer dripping wet. She prowls the kitchen, unusually active. Caro removes her suit jacket, turning to lay it carefully on the counter; as she does so I notice that she has a ladder in her stockings, running in an ever decreasing inverted V from the back of one of her patent heels to disappear under her skirt. She would hate it if she knew: chinks in her armor, I think, though without the rancorous glee that might once have called up within me. I’ve had a glimpse of what lies beneath Caro’s surface, and I can’t unsee it.
She starts off with small talk—business talk, around the candidates we’re winning over to Haft & Weil, but it’s small talk nonetheless. We sip our wine and verbally circle each other. Five minutes pass. Ten even. I can’t quite understand why she’s delaying. It’s an effort to keep my hand from the dark, snug pocket of secrets.
“You must be wondering what’s so urgent that I turned up on your doorstep unexpectedly,” says Caro with a small laugh, settling herself onto one of my bar stools. Now, I think, and my hand slips unremarkably into my pocket and just as unremarkably out again whilst I remain standing, my back resting against the countertop.
“Yes.”
“It’s not so much to do with the partnership process—”
“No?”
“Well, it is, but . . . the thing is, in the office they’ve obviously heard about the investigation, what with all the rumors flying round about, well, you. Someone asked Gordon about it, and he let slip I was there, too . . .” A flash of irritation makes a dash across her face. “Anyway. There’s beginning to be a perception that it might be too much, that if I’m distracted by that, it’ll be hard for me to really shine through this crucial period.” She rolls her eyes. “I mean, it’s completely ridiculous; I’m totally focused on partnership, but it’s hard to fight this kind of thing.” Twin spots of color are burning faintly over her cheekbones. She blows out a breath, then admits grudgingly, without meeting my eye, “They’re talking about pulling me off the slate. Holding me over to next year.”
For a moment, I’m lost for words. On the worst interpretation of facts, this is deliciously—maliciously—ironic. If Caro is indeed the source of the rumors about me, then she is very much being hoisted on her own petard. Despite the cold steel within me, I realize how much I want to be wrong. I want the sum of the layers of Caro to be something better than the surface shell. I search for something neutral to say. “I see. And I suppose you were thinking, with the issues I hear Darren Lucas is facing, that you had rather a clear field—”
“Exactly,” she rushes in. “This is my year. My year.” She finally looks me directly in the eye, and I’m taken aback by the desperation I see within her. It’s as strong as the cold, hard fear that still fills my belly. “I can’t be held over,” she says with quiet ferocity. “This is my year.”