“And Caro?”
“The evidence seems to be stacking up against her. She’s suspended pending the final results of the investigation.” He pauses, then says delicately, “She claims the evidence is fabricated. So I suppose I will find out the answer to your question in time.” I can’t help it; I start to laugh. After a beat he joins in with a half-hearted chuckle or two. So my most fervent wish is to be granted: Caro will not now be a partner at Haft & Weil, or any other legal firm for that matter. I can’t imagine how she will reconcile herself to that: for the first time in her life, there is a boundary she cannot bend or cross. And then it also occurs to me that a disgraced, struck-off lawyer is much less likely to be believed when attempting to spread scurrilous rumors . . . I try to imagine Caro in disgrace, stripped of her stellar career, robbed of her brittle artifice, and disturbingly find myself imagining a defenseless baby bird.
“It’s not actually in the least bit funny,” Gordon says sadly when the black humor has subsided.
“Yes,” I say, soberly, both Severine and the baby bird image still stuck in my mind. “I know.”
* * *
—
We are lying, Tom and I, propped on our sides in the darkness of Tom’s bedroom; he has blackout blinds, a concept he liked in Boston and brought back to London, and the darkness is a complete absence of light. It’s a comfort to me now; I think of it like a physical place—a retreat we like to run to where we are safely cocooned and can just be. Tom’s hand is idly running up and down the length of my arm from shoulder to elbow. The promise that always lurked in his hugs is borne out in the bedroom: he touches with just the right amount of pressure, firm and deliberate but never too much. He makes me giddy and he makes me safe.
I know I have to tell him; I can’t think of a way to do it except to just do it.
“I see Severine,” I blurt out. Tom’s hand halts, a short hitch, then continues on its route, at a slower pace. “I mean, obviously I don’t really see her; this isn’t The Sixth Sense . . . But I see her. Ever since you told me they found her in the well. It used to be her bones sometimes, her skull . . . but now it’s mostly her. She went away, for a bit, after I hit my head, but she’s back again.” Tom doesn’t say anything. “Do you . . . do you think I’m crazy?”
“Kind of,” he says, but I can hear the smile in his voice.
“I take it you don’t see Theo then.”
“No.” He’s quiet for a moment, his hand arrested in its trail; my skin misses it, the bones within miss it. “It’s more like . . . sometimes I see his absence. Once I notice it, it’s hard to get past it: a space where he should be.” I can hear rather than see a wry smile on his face. “Maybe I don’t have your imagination to fill the gap.”
I think about that as we lie there, the darkness folding around us, holding us safe. Am I filling the gap? Though Severine was never a part of my world, or my friendships. It doesn’t seem to quite fit, as an explanation, but perhaps there’s something to it.
“Does she talk?” asks Tom suddenly.
“No.” Except perhaps for one vital occasion. “Silently enigmatic.”
He laughs softly. “I imagine she would have liked that description. Sounds like you’ve re-created her perfectly.” His hand takes up its trail again. “It’s strange, though. I mean, it’s not like you two were friends or anything—”
“Hardly.”
“—so it’s strange your mind should fix on her, of all people.”
“I’m sure a shrink would have a field day with it all.” I say it with a small laugh, but I’m really waiting for his response. This, after all, is the crux of this conversation.
He hesitates, unusually awkward for Tom, feeling his way. “Do you want to speak to someone about it?”
I hadn’t imagined that question. I consider it. “Not really. It’s not normal, exactly, but it’s not a problem, either. I’ve become . . . accustomed to it.” I’ve become accustomed to her, I should say. I like to think she has become accustomed to me also.
Tom falls silent, thinking. The trail is moving up and down along my hip now, from just under my breast sweeping over the swell of my hip bone and along the line of my thigh. “Then I don’t see a problem.” I smile to myself. Bless him for his pragmatism. “Is she here now?”
“No,” I say, though in truth it’s too dark to tell.
“Good.” He starts to follow his trailing hand with his lips. “I’d rather not have an audience . . .”
* * *
—
And so the lovely ribbon of time keeps slipping through my fingers.
We see Lara and Alain, we see Seb and Alina; as a group we don’t talk of the week in France and we don’t talk of Caro. For a while it’s an awkward subject we’re all avoiding, a stain across our memories that we slide our eyes away from—we were all guilty of suspecting one another; we are all tarred—but life moves on, and in time we have so much else to talk about; and after all, no one sees Caro. I see Severine, but I know I’m the only one. From time to time I notice that Tom doesn’t see Theo.
Tom and I talk about France; we talk about Severine. We both dread the day someone across the Channel takes it in their mind to trawl through cold cases and decides to reopen this one. I know there will never be enough evidence to convict Caro, so all that can happen is months of distress and no satisfactory outcome. Not that this current outcome is satisfactory, though it is an outcome—ultimately Darren Lucas went to the police and Caro was prosecuted for fraud, though her sentence was suspended. It’s hardly a murder conviction or even an attempted murder conviction, but she can never practice law again, she can never be a partner at her father’s firm and Seb has cut her off completely. A messy, oblique sort of justice, if it’s justice at all, though I think for her it’s somehow fitting. I don’t know what she is doing now, or where she is doing it. I don’t think of the baby bird.
And then one day I do see Caro, in an airport lounge. I’m hunched over my phone in an armchair, trying to connect to the airport Wi-Fi, and she sits next to me. “Hello, Kate,” she says; my head lifts, and there she is.
“Caro.” I’m completely floored; her name slips out before I can stop myself from saying anything at all. She’s dressed in casual clothes, jeans and a blazer, typically stylish. She looks older, of course, and just as thin. Her hair is a brighter color than I remember.
“I’m sure you don’t want to talk to me—” she begins. High color is climbing her cheeks.
“I don’t. Leave.”
“I just—” But I’ve grabbed my bag and I’m out of the armchair before the rest of her sentence can reach me. I cannot allow myself to expend one iota more of mental energy on Caro. I don’t even tell Tom I saw her; I refuse to waste the seconds it would take. I never see Caro again.
Severine, though, I do see. If I’d ever entertained the notion that once the case was “solved” she would depart—turn and walk happily (not happily, exactly, not Severine, but at least not reluctantly) into a bright light, perhaps, or evaporate slowly like an early-morning mist that fades with the rising of the sun—well, if I’d ever expected that, it’s not to be. Severine still hovers.