Chapter 13

Irin arrived at twelve thirty on the dot.

She always did. In fifteen years of friendship Becky could count on one hand the number of times Irin had been late to anything and each time there had been a reason that justified it completely. Irin was the kind of person who considered punctuality a form of respect and practiced it accordingly. It was one of approximately many things Becky appreciated about her.

She came through the glass partition door with the energy she brought everywhere — not loud, just present, the kind of presence that made a room feel slightly more inhabited. She was wearing the green dress she had bought in Chiang Mai two years ago that she claimed she was going to stop wearing and never did, and she was carrying the bag that meant she had come straight from a client meeting because it was her formal bag and she only used it for clients.

She stopped when she saw Freen.

Not dramatically. Irin didn’t do anything dramatically. She just — paused. One beat. Her eyes went to Freen at the desk outside Becky’s office, took her in completely in the way that Irin took everything in, and then moved to Becky in the doorway.

The look she gave Becky said: explain.

It was a very efficient look. Irin had spent fifteen years developing looks that communicated complete sentences without requiring words and this one was among her best.

Becky stepped back into her office. “Come in.”

—

They sat across from each other at the small table in the corner of Becky’s office that existed for exactly this kind of lunch — the Thursday arrangement that had been running since they were both junior lawyers at different firms, eating whatever they had brought or ordered in, talking about everything and nothing for an hour before the afternoon pulled them back.

Irin had brought food from the place two streets over that did the green curry Becky liked. She set it out on the table with the efficiency of someone who had done this many times and looked at Becky and said: “Who is she.”

Not a question. An opening.

“New associate,” Becky said. She opened her container. “Charlotte brought her in. Transfer from Chiang Mai.”

“Charlotte brought her in.” Irin said this back in the particular tone she used when she was repeating something to examine it rather than accept it. “During the Viroj trial.”

“Yes.”

“While you’re three weeks from closing arguments.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re training her.”

“Charlotte asked me to.”

Irin looked at her. She picked up her fork. “Charlotte never asks you to do things without a reason.”

“She had a reason. We’re understaffed. The trial has taken up most of the team’s capacity and there are other cases that need—”

“Becky.”

Becky stopped.

Irin was looking at her with the expression that was worse than the efficient look. The patient one. The one that meant she had already decided she knew what was happening and was waiting for Becky to catch up.

“She’s fine,” Becky said. “She’s competent. More than competent, actually. She read the entire evidence bundle overnight on her first day and produced a brief that was genuinely good.” She paused. “She’s unusual but she’s good at the work.”

“Unusual how.”

Becky thought about how to answer this. She had been thinking about how to answer this particular question — not from Irin, just in general, to herself — for a week and she had not arrived at a satisfying answer. Unusual was the best she had managed. It was not a precise word and Becky preferred precise words but in this case precision was failing her.

“She watches things,” Becky said finally. “The room. The exits. The people.” She paused. “She watches me.”

Irin said nothing. She ate a forkful of curry and looked out through the glass partition at the outer office where Freen was at her desk, head down, working through something with the focused stillness that Becky had come to recognise as her default state.

The lunch hour moved around them. Outside the glass the office was its usual afternoon self — Noey at her desk, the associates along the far wall, the ambient sounds of a working firm on a Thursday. Normal and unremarkable and completely indifferent to the fact that Becky had been trying to work out who Freen Sarocha actually was for seven days and had not made as much progress as she would have liked.

Irin watched Freen for a long time.

Freen did not appear to notice. She turned a page. Made a note. Turned another page. The unhurried efficiency she brought to everything, like the office around her was background noise and the document in front of her was the only thing that existed.

“She’s watching you,” Irin said. Quietly. Not looking away from the outer office.

Becky followed her gaze. Freen was not looking at Becky’s office. She was looking at her document. “She’s working.”

“She was watching you thirty seconds ago. Before you looked.”

Becky said nothing.

“She knows exactly where you are in this office without looking,” Irin said. “She’s known it since I sat down.” She turned back to Becky. “She tracks you. The way you track something you’re responsible for.”

The word landed quietly. Responsible.

“She’s supposed to watch me,” Becky said. “She’s learning from me. That’s the arrangement.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

Irin said it simply. Not as a challenge. Just as a fact she was offering across the table the way she offered most facts — without drama, without emphasis, just placed there for Becky to do something with.

Becky looked at her.

Irin looked back. Patient. Unhurried. Fifteen years of knowing each other meant that Irin knew exactly when to push and exactly when to put something down and let Becky come to it in her own time. She was very good at the second one. She picked it up now, this thing she had just placed on the table, and put it back down without another word.

She went back to her curry.

Becky changed the subject.

She asked about Irin’s client meeting this morning — the property dispute that had been running for eight months and showed no sign of resolving. Irin answered fully and without any indication that they had just been talking about something else entirely and the conversation moved into the comfortable rhythm it always found, the one that had been running since they were twenty-four and didn’t know yet what they were doing with their lives.

But Irin glanced through the glass partition twice more during the lunch hour.

Becky noticed both times.

The first time Freen was writing something — head down, pen moving, completely absorbed. The second time she had looked up. Not at Becky’s office. At the main entrance to the floor, where someone had just come through the door. She tracked them — three seconds, assessment, dismissed — and went back to her document.

Irin said nothing about either glance.

But when she was packing up at one twenty-five, folding the containers back into the bag she had brought, she looked through the glass one more time and then looked at Becky with an expression that was different from all the others.

Softer. More careful.

“She’s not going to hurt you,” Irin said. Like she had been thinking it for the past hour and had decided at one twenty-five that it was worth saying.

Becky looked at her. “I’m not worried about being hurt.”

“I know.” Irin picked up her bag. “I’m just saying.”

She said goodbye to Noey on her way out, the warm easy exchange of two people who liked each other, and then she was through the glass door and gone and the office settled back into its afternoon rhythm like she had never been there.

Becky sat at her desk.

She looked at the open door. At the outer office. At Freen, who was exactly where she had been for the past hour, doing exactly what she had been doing, head down and working with the steadiness of someone who did not appear to need anything from the world around them.

She watches you.

That’s not what I mean.

Becky picked up her pen.

She opened her notebook to the page that had one line at the top — the line she had written after the courthouse, after the corridor, after the two words that had carried more weight than they should have.

Who is she really.

She looked at it for a moment.

Then she turned to a fresh page and went back to work.