Chapter 50

She called on a Thursday.

Not about the mission. Not about Becky. Not about anything professional at all – which was why it took her until Thursday to do it, because she had been waiting for a professional reason and there wasn’t one and at some point she had to decide whether she was going to keep waiting or just call.

She called.

Engfa answered on the second ring.

“Charlotte.”

“Are you in Bangkok,” Charlotte said.

“Until Friday.”

“Tonight then. If you’re free.” She looked at her desk. At the tidy stacks and the closed laptop and the city outside her window going into its Thursday evening. “There’s a place near the river. Not the firm. Not anywhere official.”

A pause.

“I know the one,” Engfa said.

“Seven o’clock.”

“I’ll be there.”

Charlotte put the phone down.

She sat for a moment.

Then she picked up her jacket and went home to change.

—

The restaurant was small and quiet and had outside tables that looked over the river.

Charlotte arrived first. She took a table at the edge – the water visible, the city doing its evening behind them, the particular quiet that outdoor riverside tables had in Bangkok when the dinner rush hadn’t fully started yet. She ordered water and looked at the menu and didn’t read it.

Engfa arrived at seven.

She came through the restaurant without looking around – knew where Charlotte would be, apparently, or made a good guess. She sat down across from her.

They looked at each other.

Not the professional look. Not the consultation look. Not the three years of careful managed distance look. Just – looked at each other the way two people looked at each other when there was nothing professional between them and they had run out of things to pretend otherwise.

“You look tired,” Engfa said.

“It’s been a long few months,” Charlotte said.

“Yes. It has.”

The waiter came. They ordered. The waiter left.

The river went past below them. A longtail boat. A tourist ferry further out. The ordinary life of the river in the evening.

“I’ve been thinking,” Charlotte said.

“Tell me,” Engfa said.

“About the three years.” Charlotte looked at the river. “I’ve been thinking about what they cost.” She paused. “Not what they were for. I know what they were for. I made a decision and I stood by it and it was – it was the right decision for what I needed at the time.” She looked at Engfa. “But I’ve been thinking about the cost.”

“What did they cost,” Engfa said.

Charlotte held her gaze. “Three years,” she said simply. “That’s what they cost.”

Engfa was quiet.

“I don’t want to waste another three,” Charlotte said. “That’s all I wanted to say. I don’t want to waste another three years and I don’t want to have a professional reason to call you every time I call you.” She paused. “I’m tired of having professional reasons.”

“So am I,” Engfa said.

“Are you.”

“Yes.” Engfa held her gaze. “I have been for a while.”

Charlotte looked at her.

“You could have called,” she said. Not accusation. Just fact.

“So could you.”

“I know.” Charlotte looked at the river. “I know I could have.”

The food arrived. They ate for a while without talking – not uncomfortable, just eating, the way people ate when they had said something real and needed time to sit with it before the next thing.

“Becky is well,” Charlotte said eventually.

“I know. Engfa’s briefed me.” A pause. “She and Freen.”

“Yes.” Charlotte almost smiled. “She’s pretending it’s uncomplicated.”

“Is it.”

“No. But it’s good.” Charlotte looked at her plate. “It’s good in the way that things are good when they cost something to get to.”

Engfa looked at her.

“Yes,” she said. “I know something about that.”

They looked at each other across the table.

Charlotte picked up her wine glass. “To not wasting more time,” she said.

Engfa picked up hers.

“To not wasting more time,” she said.

They drank.

—

The second call came three weeks later.

Charlotte was at her desk – a Tuesday morning, contract review, the ordinary work of a firm that had moved past its most dramatic period and settled back into its rhythm. Her phone rang.

Engfa.

“I need to tell you something,” Engfa said.

“Tell me.”

“I’ve been offered a promotion.”

Charlotte set down her pen. “What kind.”

“Command level. New unit. It’s significant.” A pause. “It requires relocation.”

“Where.”

“Chiang Mai initially. Possibly further north after the first year.”

Charlotte looked at her window. The city outside. The fourteenth floor view she had looked at every day for six years.

“That’s a long way,” she said.

“Yes.”

“It’s a good opportunity.”

“Yes. It is.”

Neither of them said anything for a moment.

“Why are you telling me,” Charlotte said. Not unkindly. Just – asking.

“Because I wanted to know what you thought,” Engfa said. “Before I decided.”

Charlotte sat with that.

“I think,” she said carefully, “that you should tell me what you want to do.”

“I want to know what you want first.”

“Engfa.”

“Charlotte.”

A pause.

“I want you to stay,” Charlotte said. Simply. Without managing it or framing it or wrapping it in anything professional. “That’s what I want. But I want you to be happy more than I want you to stay. So if this is – if it’s what you want-“

“It’s not what I want,” Engfa said.

Charlotte was quiet.

“It’s a good opportunity,” Engfa said. “It’s the right next step in a career sense. It’s everything I would have wanted three years ago.” A pause. “It’s not what I want now.”

“What do you want now,” Charlotte said.

A pause. Longer than the others.

“I think you know,” Engfa said.

Charlotte looked at her window.

“Have dinner with me,” she said. “When you’re back in Bangkok.”

“When am I ever not in Bangkok when you need me to be,” Engfa said.

Charlotte almost laughed. “Friday.”

“Friday,” Engfa said.

—

Dinner was at a different place from the river restaurant.

Smaller. A place Charlotte had been going to for years – the kind of neighbourhood restaurant that didn’t have a famous chef or a view, just good food and small tables and staff who had known her long enough to bring her usual without asking.

Engfa had never been.

She looked around when she arrived – taking in the space the way she always took in spaces, the particular assessment that Freen had clearly learned from her – and then she found Charlotte at the corner table and sat down.

“I declined the promotion this morning,” she said.

Charlotte looked at her.

“I wanted you to know before dinner,” Engfa said. “Not during. Not as a reason for anything. Just – you should know.”

“Okay,” Charlotte said.

“Okay,” Engfa said.

The waiter came. They ordered. The restaurant went about its Friday evening around them.

They talked.

Not about the mission. Not about Becky or Freen or the faction or any of it. About other things – Engfa’s work before all of this, a trip she had taken years ago that she had never told anyone about, something funny that had happened that week that she had been saving because she wanted to tell Charlotte specifically. Charlotte talked about the firm in its early days, a case she still thought about, the first time she had felt like she knew what she was doing in a courtroom.

The food came and went.

The restaurant thinned out around them.

At some point – Charlotte couldn’t have said exactly when – she stopped being aware of the space between telling Engfa things and just told her things. The particular ease of it. She had forgotten that this was possible. That it could just be – easy.

At nine thirty Engfa reached across the table.

She put her hand over Charlotte’s.

Charlotte looked at it.

Engfa’s hand on hers. The table between them. The small restaurant going quiet around them.

She looked up.

Engfa was looking at her.

“Three years,” Charlotte said.

“I know,” Engfa said.

“Don’t do that again.”

“I won’t.”

Charlotte looked at their hands on the table.

She turned her hand over and held on.

They sat like that for a while – the restaurant doing its last service around them, the Friday night city outside the window, the particular quiet of two people who had finally stopped waiting for a professional reason.

“I should have called sooner,” Charlotte said.

“Yes,” Engfa said. “So should I.”

“We’re very stupid about this.”

“We are,” Engfa agreed.

“For two intelligent people.”

“Remarkably stupid.”

Charlotte almost laughed. “Yes.”

She held on.

Engfa held on.

Outside the city went about its Friday night completely unbothered. Inside the small restaurant at the corner table two women sat with their hands together and said nothing else for a while because nothing else was necessary.