The French Girl(26)

“But—” I say again. This time I’m stopped by an infinitesimal shake of Tom’s head. He cuts his eyes deliberately to Lara, whose head is down as she recovers her composure, the high spots in her cheeks gradually fading. Then he looks back, and the tiny headshake comes again. The message is clear: not in front of Lara.

Lara lifts her head, and her China blue eyes are full of anxiety. “I shouldn’t have told you that,” she frets, her gaze jumping from me to Tom and back again. “Please don’t tell anyone I told you that.”

“Lara, it’s us,” I reassure soothingly. “Of course we won’t tell.” Tom nods in agreement, while I wonder, who would we tell? And why would Modan mind?

“Okay,” she says, only slightly mollified. “It’s just that, well, he was so disappointed not to be able to rule us all out. We were planning to meet up in Paris next weekend, and now . . .” She looks down at her pizza, tears hovering.

In a moment of alcohol-fueled clarity I see what Lara feels like she’s lost. Not just a weekend away, with all the anticipation and intoxication of clothes-tearing-off sex with someone new. Lara sees it as possibly the first weekend of the rest of her life. I can’t remember if I felt like that with Seb. The clothes-tearing-off phase I remember. But nobody gets married at university these days, or anytime soon after. I always thought we were playing a long game. In France I realized he’d stopped playing altogether.

“In that case, you’ll just have to spend the weekend with us instead,” I say, putting my hand on hers. “I foresee two days of epic frivolity. Shopping on the King’s Road. Maybe some romcom watching in there, too. Certainly a lot of decadent eating out and absolutely too much white wine.” I’m rewarded by a heartfelt, if tearful, smile from Lara.

“I can cope with the romcom, but can I skip the shopping?” asks Tom dryly.

“Nope,” says Lara, gamely trying to recover her equilibrium. “You look like an American. You definitely need to update your wardrobe if you want to be a passably metrosexual male in London.”

“Do I want to be a metrosexual male? What exactly is a metrosexual male?”

I eat my pizza and watch them bat back and forth, the same as they’ve always done. Except I don’t know if it’s the same. They were like this before that week in France, and they were like this when they were sleeping together—but surely there must have been differences, some nuances I missed. And now, Tom has realized that Lara is in love, or at least infatuated, with someone other than himself. How can they behave just the same? Perhaps it’s a pattern, a learned behavior that one drops into by rote. Perhaps I’ll learn something similar with Seb and we’ll skate lightly over the surface together whenever we meet in London. How very British. Everything’s fine, just don’t mention the war . . .

As we’re finishing up, Lara slips off to the bathroom. Tom watches her go, his face unreadable. I dither on whether to attack the situation head-on. He’s never spoken to me directly about her—in the same way that he and I don’t discuss Seb—but maybe in this instance I should extend an invitation.

“Are you okay?”

He doesn’t answer—he doesn’t even acknowledge the question—but as soon as she’s out of earshot he leans forward and speaks urgently in a low tone. “Listen, you can’t tell Lara anything. You can’t talk to her about the case at all. Everything you say is going straight back to Modan.”

His urgency pulls me forward, too, mirroring his position. “I know that—of course I know that. But really, what can I say that makes any difference? None of us have anything to hide.” Except Caro with the drugs . . . Severine looks at me again. She is whole, but her mocking eyes are as dark as the sockets would be in her bleached white skull.

He makes a sharp cutting gesture with one hand. “It’s not about that anymore. The police will be looking to see if any of us could have had a motive.”

“We never met her before; well, none of us except Theo. What kind of motive can they possibly come up with?” If Lara comes out of the bathroom and we have our heads together we will look horribly conspiratorial. I sit back in my chair.

“Some subset of the usual, I expect. Jealous rage. Spurned lover.” He’s watching me closely.

“Spurned lover? But there wasn’t any . . .” I stare at him, at the freckles on that unbowed and unbent nose, and feel my world spinning around. There are many things he could be intending with his words. I don’t know where to start to unpack his meaning.

I don’t get a chance to even try, because suddenly Tom starts talking. “. . . and in the States your vacation entitlement is such an insult. I’m looking forward to some decent looong holidays now I’m back.” I stare at him in bemusement. He looks over my shoulder. “Ah, Lara, we were just talking holidays. Any plans?”

“Kate probably told you we were thinking about a safari . . .”

I stare at Tom as Lara reseats herself and chatters on. He glances at me, but there’s nothing to read in his face. It was so smoothly done; I would never have guessed he was capable of such casual duplicity—once again, he is other. Tom, but not Tom. I wonder, is everyone not who I thought? Maybe nobody ever really knows anyone.

And then I wonder: in that case, does anyone know me?