Chapter 23

The dinner was at a restaurant on Silom that the firm used for client entertainment — the kind of place that was expensive without announcing it, where the lighting was low and the service was quiet and the food arrived without anyone having to ask twice.

Becky had mentioned it to Freen that afternoon. “Client dinner tonight. Seven o’clock. You don’t need to come.”

“I’ll come,” Freen said.

Becky had given her the look — the one that meant she was deciding whether to argue. Then she had gone back into her office and not said anything else, which Freen had taken as agreement.

—

The Singapore lawyer’s name was Daniel Koh.

Freen had looked him up in the forty minutes between leaving the office and arriving at the restaurant. Corporate litigation, twelve years, three major firms across Asia. Excellent reputation. Tall. The kind of face that had clearly been useful to him professionally and socially and that he was clearly aware of.

He arrived at the restaurant already talking — not loudly, just comfortably, the ease of someone who moved through rooms without having to think about it. He shook hands with Becky’s client first, then turned to Becky.

“Rebecca Armstrong,” he said, like he was confirming something he already knew. “I followed the Viroj case from Singapore. Impressive work.”

“Thank you,” Becky said. Warm, professional, the exact temperature she used for people she had just met and was not yet sure about.

“Genuinely impressive. The procurement chain documentation alone—” He shook his head slightly. “How long did that take you to build.”

“Eight months.”

“Eight months.” He said it with the appreciation of someone who understood what eight months of that kind of work meant. “I’d love to hear how you approached it.”

Becky smiled. “Over dinner.”

They went in.

—

Freen was at the adjacent table.

Not so close that it was strange — the restaurant was busy enough that the tables were reasonably close together anyway, and she had arrived first and positioned herself correctly and ordered something and looked like what she was supposed to look like, which was a woman having dinner alone.

The earpiece was in.

Nam had eyes on the street outside and the restaurant entrance and was running the evening’s threat assessment from the car two streets over. Standard coverage for an off-site client event. Routine.

“He’s sitting next to her,” Nam said in her ear.

“I can see that,” Freen said. Quietly. Without moving her lips more than necessary.

“He’s very — present.”

“He’s a corporate litigator from Singapore. They’re all very present.”

“He keeps leaning in when she talks.”

“She’s interesting when she talks.”

A pause. “That’s very equanimous of you.”

Freen looked at the menu she wasn’t reading.

Across the table from Becky, Daniel Koh was doing exactly what he had been doing since they sat down — directing most of his conversation at her, asking questions that were genuinely good questions, listening to the answers with the attention of someone who was actually interested and not performing interest. Becky was answering him. Comfortably, precisely, the way she answered anyone who asked intelligent questions.

She was not flirting back.

Freen noted this.

She also noted that he was very funny and that Becky laughed twice in the first twenty minutes and that the client between them was clearly delighted by the whole dynamic and that Daniel Koh had somehow already ordered Becky’s preferred wine without being told what it was.

“The wine,” Nam said.

“I noticed.”

“He did his research.”

“I noticed that too.”

“How’s the equanimity holding up.”

“Fine,” Freen said.

“You’re reading the menu very intently for someone who isn’t ordering anything.”

Freen set the menu down.

—

The main course arrived.

The conversation had moved from the Viroj case to something broader — the landscape of corporate litigation in Southeast Asia, differences in approach between jurisdictions, a case Daniel had handled in Hong Kong two years ago that had some structural similarities to something Becky was describing. He was good. She had to give him that. He was genuinely good and the conversation was genuinely good and Becky was engaged in the way she was engaged when she was talking to someone worth talking to.

Which was fine.

That was fine.

Freen ate her dinner and monitored the room and was completely fine about all of it.

Then Daniel said something that made Becky laugh — the real one, the undefended one, the kind Freen had seen for the first time across the office last week — and he put his hand briefly on Becky’s arm.

Just briefly. A second. The natural gesture of someone making a point and emphasising it with contact. Completely ordinary.

Something in Freen went very still.

Not visibly. Nothing changed on the outside — she was too trained for that, too practiced at keeping the inside and the outside separated. She sat at her table with her dinner and her expression was exactly what it had been thirty seconds ago.

Inside was a different matter.

“His hand is on her arm,” Nam said.

“I’m aware.”

“Your face right now is remarkable.”

“My face is fine.”

“It is not fine. It’s very—” Nam paused. “Are you calculating something?”

“Exit routes,” Freen said.

A beat. “For him specifically?”

Freen reached up and removed the earpiece.

She set it in her jacket pocket and looked at her dinner and ate a forkful of something that was very good and that she did not taste at all.

Across the room Daniel Koh removed his hand from Becky’s arm and reached for his wine glass and said something else that Becky responded to with her professional smile. The client was talking now. The moment had moved on.

Freen’s dinner continued.

—

Daniel left at nine thirty.

He had another commitment — said so with genuine regret and the slight reluctance of someone who would have preferred to stay. He shook hands around the table and when he got to Becky he held it a beat longer than the others.

“I hope our paths cross again,” he said. “I mean that.”

“I’m sure they will,” Becky said. Warm. Professional. Exactly the right temperature.

He left.

The client left ten minutes later, happy and well-fed and satisfied with the evening. Becky and Freen walked out together into the Silom night — warm, loud, the Friday evening crowd on the pavement.

“Good dinner,” Becky said.

“Yes,” Freen said.

They walked toward the car. Freen put the earpiece back in.

“You removed it,” Nam said immediately.

“Technical issue.”

“It absolutely was not a technical issue.”

“How’s the street.”

“Clear. He’s gone. You didn’t do anything, by the way.”

“I didn’t need to,” Freen said.

A pause on the line. Then Nam said, slowly: “That’s somehow more unsettling than if you had.”

“Goodnight Nam.”

“It really is though—”

Freen took the earpiece out again and put it in her pocket.

—

Becky had noticed the jaw.

She noticed most things. It was the quality she found most useful professionally and most inconvenient personally and tonight it had shown her something she didn’t entirely know what to do with.

Freen’s jaw had tightened when Daniel put his hand on her arm.

Just for a second. Just barely visible. Becky had caught it in her peripheral vision and filed it the way she filed everything — quietly, precisely, for later examination.

She was examining it now in the back of the cab.

The jaw. And before that — the stillness. The way Freen had gone very still at the adjacent table for about three seconds and then gone back to whatever she had been doing. If Becky hadn’t been watching she wouldn’t have caught it. She had been watching.

She thought about this for most of the drive home.

She thought about the jacket still on the back of her chair. About not particularly. About one second across the office on Friday and three stars in a straight line and a cab ride with their shoulders touching.

She let herself into her apartment and changed and got into bed and lay there.

She thought about Freen’s jaw.

She thought about Daniel Koh, who was objectively good company and objectively good-looking and had held her hand a beat longer than necessary at the end of the evening.

She had not thought about him once on the drive home.

She had thought about the jaw the entire time.

She closed her eyes.

She was not going to examine any of this tonight. She had a closing argument to finish and two weeks to finish it in and a trial that had cost her eight months of her life and she was not going to lie awake thinking about a jaw.

She thought about the jaw for another twenty minutes.

Then she went to sleep.