The French Girl(49)
“Thanks. I was hoping you might have some time tomorrow to drop by my office and bring me up to speed. Does that work for you?”
“Absolutely.” I glance at my electronic calendar, these days gratifyingly checkered with meetings and calls, my smile doggedly in place. “I can do 11 A.M. or anytime after 3:30 P.M. tomorrow.”
“Let’s do 11 A.M. and then we can grab a bite to eat afterward. Sound good?”
“Perfect,” I manage. “See you then.”
Paul comes in just as I’m putting the phone down. “Kate!” he exclaims. He’s definitely on an uptick these days. “Glad I caught you. We should discuss the Cavanagh account, and I really think I’m close to getting Struthers to bite, and—”
“Slow down,” I say, laughing. “I’m not going anywhere. At least take your coat off first.”
Severine glances at him with disdain, and suddenly I wonder: if Severine is a creation of my mind, are her reactions my own deeply hidden feelings? I observe Paul as he struggles out of his smart spring raincoat, trying to see him afresh. You could mock him if you wanted to, with his sharp city clothes, his urbane manner and his unflinching ambition. But I’ve seen him gray faced and crumpled with exhaustion on a Friday evening, having worked a seventy-five-hour week; I’ve drunk champagne out of mugs on the floor of this very office with him. I have no wish to mock him. I’m willing to concede that Severine—this Severine—is my creation, but she’s not me.
“What?” says Paul, looking up to find my eyes on him as he pulls his chair across to my desk.
I clear my face. “Nothing, nothing. Just . . . just thinking we’ve been gratifyingly lucky of late.”
“It’s not luck,” he says seriously, his vanishingly pale eyebrows drawing earnestly over his eyes. “It’s hard work.”
He really, truly believes it. Did I believe that once? Did I think that good things came to those who earned them? “Well,” I say equivocally, unwilling to burst his bubble, “it’s both.”
* * *
—
Modan, Alain Modan, Investigateur, OPJ and lover of Lara . . . a man of many talents. Later that day I start to realize that one of them is the ability to toss everybody else off balance with an elegantly judged metaphorical tap-tackle; I should think he has put effort into that talent over the years, carefully honing it to cause maximum consternation with minimum effort. He starts this particular campaign with the simplest of requests: a meeting.
“All of us, mind,” says Lara again, through the mobile that’s clamped between my ear and shoulder to leave my hands free to pack up my briefcase for a meeting. Either she’s exceptionally tired or she has just been speaking to her family in Sweden: there’s a slight lilt to her voice that only ever comes out in specific circumstances. “He says he’d rather not repeat everything five times.”
“Mmmm.”
“You don’t believe that’s the reason,” Lara says. It’s a statement, not a question.
“No.” I would have expected Modan to prefer five separate interviews, which would provide five separate opportunities for analyzing reactions—why the change of tack? I pause as I flick through the documents I’m adding to the bag. “And neither do you, I suspect.”
“No.” She lets out a long sigh that sweeps through the city and delivers her frustration into my ear. “It’s . . .”
“Infuriating?” I give up on choosing which documents I need and just drop them all in.
“No. Well, it is, but mostly it’s just . . . unsettling. He’s lying, I know he’s lying, he knows I know he’s lying—I think he even wants me to know he’s lying, like that makes it less awful or something . . . How the hell are we supposed to base a relationship on this?”
“You’re not,” I say sweetly, snapping the briefcase shut. “That’s why policemen aren’t supposed to fraternize with witnesses.”
“Oh, fuck off,” she says, half laughing.
“I shall. I’ve got to run to a meeting.” I switch the mobile into my hand. “Listen, Lara—this will pass; it won’t be like this forever for you guys. You just need to . . . ride it out, as best you can.”
“I know.” This time the long sigh curls around me, heavy and brooding. The sunshine girl is fast losing her sun. If this thing runs for another two years . . . It doesn’t bear thinking about. “Well, I’ll see you there. Tonight at six thirty.”
“Got it. And everyone is coming?” I ask this as casually as I can, but of course Lara isn’t fooled.
“Yes. Though now I don’t know who you’re most worried about seeing, Seb or Tom.”
“Caro, actually,” I say dryly. “Always Caro.”
* * *
—
It’s 6:30 P.M., and we are meeting at the enormous 1960s glass and concrete monstrosity that is New Scotland Yard, the home of the Met Police. I didn’t pay much attention to that when Lara gave me the details over the phone, but now, standing outside by the familiar triangular sign that I must have seen in thousands of TV news items, I feel the knot in my stomach tighten. Modan is not just the tricky Frenchman who’s screwing my best friend. He’s a man with the weight of the law behind him—both the law of his own country and of mine. Recognizing that this intimidation is intentional doesn’t make it any less effective. I look around in the vain hope that perhaps Lara might be arriving at just this moment and we can brave it all together, but no. I am on my own. I square my shoulders and push through the door.