The French Girl(9)
Suddenly Tom appears at my elbow waving an empty bottle of champagne. “Caro, are there any more of these?”
“Oh, crates of them, literally. Let me sort that.” She grabs the bottle gratefully and disappears quickly through the crowd.
Tom turns a stern eye on Lara and me. “Didn’t I tell you guys to behave?” he says, running a hand through his hair in exasperation.
“You want us to behave?” asks Lara archly. “Caro’s the one who wants to airbrush our response to the police to make sure there’s no mention of drug-taking. You might be happy to forget that she smuggled Class A drugs through customs in Kate’s bag, but I don’t think I ever will. And nor will Kate.” I can’t stop a smile spreading across my face: this is so unexpectedly combative of my easygoing best friend, and in that moment I love her fiercely for it. It seems I was wrong: where Caro is concerned, even Lara is naturally suspicious.
“I haven’t forgotten,” says Tom quietly. “If you remember, I was furious with her. But you don’t have to rub her nose in it now. It was a long time ago and she did apologize.”
“Not until the next day,” I mutter mutinously, temporarily forgetting my previous inclination to a generosity of spirit toward Caro. “And as far as apologies go, it was distinctly underwhelming.” Her so-called apology had been accepted as it was offered: with no charm at all, and under clear duress.
“You really want to go into all that again right now?” asks Tom. He is glaring at me with an expression I can’t quite interpret. Suddenly the exasperation melts away, and he tilts his head. I’m close enough to see the gray flecks in his eyes. “Come on, Kate, let’s not dredge up the past,” he says softly.
I breathe out slowly. He’s right. I’ve no desire to let those particular memories out of their box; though they seem to be seeping out regardless. I find a smile and clink my glass against Tom’s. “To the present.”
“And to Tom,” says Lara, clinking her glass against Tom’s also. She smiles winningly at him. “Nice to have the voice of reason back.” Tom shakes his head and smiles back, then glances round the room. The crowd is thinning out; I glance at my watch and am surprised to see it’s past 1 A.M.
“Come on,” he says. “Let me escort you two home.”
We get a cab together. It makes geographical sense to drop me off first; I hug them both good-bye and climb out, then watch the taxi disappear. In my mind I replay the scene of them intervening with Seb, Caro and myself, in the glory of their birthday suits. Lara’s impressive frontage jiggles hypnotically until Theo throws a towel round her, discomfort making his cheeks as red as his hair. When Tom works out what’s happened, he rounds on Caro; I’ve never seen Tom angry, and it’s majestic. I’m surprised she can remain upright in the face of such a biting onslaught. Lara is openmouthed in awe, but I’m too full of hurt and acid fury and cheap wine to truly appreciate the display. Mostly hurt, because Seb thinks I’m overreacting. His lack of support is a physical blow; it literally takes my breath and speech away. The shock of it strips away all my defenses and forces me to face the truth: it’s over.
At the time amidst the mayhem I barely noticed Severine, but now she has my attention. She sits casually to one side, observing detachedly as she calmly finishes a cigarette, then collects her sandals and walks unhurriedly to her cottage, leaving the chaos behind. I stumble alone to the bedroom Seb and I should be sharing, tears streaming down my cheeks. Six months, even two months, previously he would have followed me, but no longer.
Back in the present, I’m also going to bed alone. Seb is presumably in bed somewhere with his wife, give or take a time difference impact. Who knows what Caro’s sleeping arrangements are? Theo—well, Theo is dead. Severine, too, though death seems to hold her too loosely as far as I’m concerned. And Tom and Lara are together in a taxi.
CHAPTER THREE
Monday morning. I’m immersed in Excel spreadsheets, surveying the health, or lack thereof, of my company, when Gordon Farrow rings. The pleasantries don’t take long, but he is pleasant, and genuine. A decent man. Even without Tom’s damning account of Caro’s mother, if Caro is the average of Gordon and his ex-wife, I have no desire to meet the ex-wife.
“So who’s on your list, Kate?” asks Gordon. We’ve moved on to first-name terms. He means who would I target for the open positions at his firm; I’ve been prepping for exactly this question, only I’m a little thrown to be answering it on the phone on Monday rather than at lunch on Tuesday. Still, I move smoothly into my “here’s-one-I-prepared-earlier” answer, and we bat back and forth on that for a few minutes.
Paul enters the office we share as I’m talking, loosening his silk tie as he sinks into the chair behind his desk. His blond eyebrows, so pale as to be not worth having, rise as he listens to my half of the conversation while drinking his take-out coffee. “Haft & Weil?” he mouths.
I nod, then my attention is fully caught by Gordon’s next comment, stated with such deliberate casualness that it’s clear this is what he’s been waiting to talk about all along. “You haven’t mentioned Dominic Burns.”
“Not Dominic,” I say instantly. It’s an instinctive response—I should have prevaricated, I should have given myself time to find out if Gordon is hell-bent on hiring this man, but it’s too late for that now. Across the room Paul is choking on his coffee.