Chapter 34

Freen arrived at the office at nine on Sunday morning because the threat assessment needed updating and the building was quiet on Sundays and quiet buildings were easier to work in.

That was the reason.

She let herself in with her access card and took the lift to the fourteenth floor and pushed through the glass partition into the empty office. The overhead lights were off. The city outside the windows was doing its Sunday morning thing — slower than the weekdays, more diffuse, Bangkok in its weekly exhale.

She went to her desk.

She had been there for twenty minutes when she heard the lift.

—

Becky came through the glass door with her laptop bag and a coffee from somewhere and stopped when she saw Freen.

They looked at each other.

“Sunday,” Becky said.

“Yes,” Freen said.

Becky looked at the office around her. Empty desks. Off lights. The particular weekend quiet of a building that was used to being full.

“I needed to finish the last section,” she said.

“I have a threat assessment update,” Freen said.

They looked at each other for another moment.

Becky went to her office. She put her bag down and turned her lamp on and took her laptop out. Freen turned back to her screen.

The office settled into its Sunday morning quiet.

—

At twelve thirty Freen’s stomach made a decision for her.

She had not eaten since seven. She looked at the time and looked at the building across the street where there was a Thai place that did Sunday lunch deliveries and picked up her phone.

She ordered enough for two without thinking about it.

She thought about it.

She ordered enough for two.

—

When the food arrived she knocked on Becky’s office door.

Becky looked up from her screen. She looked at the bag in Freen’s hand. Then at Freen.

“I ordered too much,” Freen said.

This was not true. She had ordered exactly enough for two people.

Becky looked at her for a moment. Then she closed her laptop. “Where.”

“Conference room?” Freen said. “The table’s bigger.”

Becky picked up her coffee and followed her out.

—

The conference room table was big enough for twelve people.

They sat on the floor instead.

This was not planned. Becky had sat down on the floor beside the window while Freen was unpacking the food — just sat, the way people sat when they were tired of chairs — and Freen had looked at the floor and looked at the table and sat on the floor too.

The Sunday light came through the conference room windows at a good angle. Warm. The city outside quiet enough that you could hear it rather than just feel it.

They ate.

For a while they didn’t talk. Just ate, the way people ate when they were hungry and the food was good. Pad see ew and som tum and something with basil that Freen hadn’t ordered before but was glad she had.

“This is good,” Becky said.

“The place across the street.”

“I’ve walked past it a hundred times.” She tried the basil dish. “Why haven’t I eaten here before.”

“You walk past things,” Freen said.

Becky looked at her. “What does that mean.”

“You walk fast. You’re always going somewhere.” Freen picked up her fork. “You don’t stop.”

Becky considered this. “That’s probably true.” She ate some more. “What about you.”

“I notice things when I’m moving. Stopping is harder.”

“Yet here you are. Stopped.”

“Here I am,” Freen said.

—

The food sat between them and the Sunday went by outside and at some point the conversation started.

Not about the case. Not about the mission. Neither of them decided not to talk about those things — they just didn’t come up, the way certain things didn’t come up when you were sitting on a conference room floor on a Sunday with nowhere to be.

Becky talked about her first memory.

She had been maybe three. A garden somewhere — her grandmother’s house, she thought, though she had never been able to confirm it. A very specific quality of light in the late afternoon. Yellow and low, the kind you only got in October. She had been sitting in the grass and she had been aware, for what felt like the first time, that she was somewhere. That she existed in a place.

“That’s a strange first memory,” Freen said.

“I know.” Becky looked at the window. “I’ve always thought it meant something. That my first conscious moment was about location. Where I was.”

“Lawyer,” Freen said.

Becky laughed. “Maybe.”

Freen thought about her own first memory. A small apartment. Her mother cooking something. The specific sound of a particular radio station her mother always had on. She had been very small and she had been sitting under the kitchen table for reasons she couldn’t remember and the world had been the underside of the table and her mother’s feet and the radio.

She told Becky this.

Becky listened the way she listened to everything — completely, without filling the space while Freen was talking.

“Under the table,” she said when Freen finished.

“The world was very manageable from there,” Freen said.

“And now you manage it from a different angle.”

Freen looked at her. “Something like that.”

—

The afternoon went.

They talked about other things. Becky asked about Freen’s favourite place and Freen said — before she had decided to say it — a particular hillside in the north. She had been there for work, she said, which was true. In the early morning when the light was just starting. There was a point where you could see three provinces. She had sat there for twenty minutes and it had felt like the most alone she had ever been in the best possible sense. Just her and the three provinces and the light coming.

Becky was quiet for a moment. “You’ve never told anyone that.”

“No.”

“Why me.”

Freen looked at her container. “You asked.”

“I ask a lot of things,” Becky said. “You don’t always answer.”

This was true. Freen turned it over for a moment. “It felt like the right answer to the right question,” she said finally.

Becky looked at her.

The Sunday light had shifted — later now, the angle lower, the conference room warmer. The food was mostly gone. Outside the city had picked up slightly from its morning pace, Bangkok easing into its Sunday afternoon.

“What would you do,” Becky said. “If you weren’t doing this.”

Freen thought about it honestly. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve been doing this for a long time.”

“Guess.”

“Something with my hands,” Freen said after a moment. “Something where you could see the result. Where at the end of the day there was something that hadn’t been there at the beginning.”

Becky nodded slowly. “I’d teach,” she said. “I think. Not full time. But some.”

“You’d be good at it.”

“How do you know.”

“You explain things clearly when you want to,” Freen said. “And badly when you’re impatient. Which means you can do it, you just choose when.”

Becky stared at her. “That’s very specific.”

“I’ve been watching you explain things for two months.”

Becky opened her mouth. Closed it. Looked at her container. “Right,” she said.

She said it in the voice that wasn’t quite the professional voice and wasn’t quite the other one. Somewhere in between. The Sunday voice.

—

At five Becky started gathering the empty containers.

She stacked them neatly, the way she stacked everything, and stood up and stretched. Freen stood too. They carried the containers to the kitchen and threw them away and came back and the conference room was just a conference room again — chairs around a table, windows, the ordinary space it was during the week.

Becky picked up her coffee cup from the floor. Cold by now. She looked at it and put it on the table.

She picked up her laptop bag from the doorway where she’d left it.

She stood at the door for a moment.

“This was—” she started.

She didn’t finish the sentence. She looked at Freen and the word hung in the air between them and didn’t need finishing because they both already knew what it was.

“Yeah,” Freen said. “It was.”

Becky looked at her for one more moment.

Then she left.

Her footsteps across the outer office. The glass partition. The lift arriving, the doors closing.

Gone.

Freen stood in the conference room.

She looked at the floor where they had been sitting. The window. The Sunday light going lower outside.

She sat back down on the floor.

She stayed there for a while.

—

On Monday morning everything was professional.

Becky arrived at seven fifty-nine and said good morning and went into her office. Freen said good morning and went back to the threat assessment. Heng arrived and asked about a document. Noey arrived and made coffee and offered Freen a cup.

The professional distance was in place.

It fit differently than it had on Friday.

Neither of them said so. But Becky’s office door was open — not all the way, but open. And when Freen brought the cross-reference update to Becky’s desk at ten, Becky looked at it and then looked at Freen and said “thank you” in a voice that was the professional voice and also slightly the Sunday voice.

Freen went back to her desk.

She opened the threat assessment.

Nine days until closing arguments.

She turned a page.