Chapter 55

The Bar Association dinner was on a Friday.

Becky went every year. It was the kind of event that was professionally necessary and personally unremarkable – the same faces in slightly different configurations, the same conversations about the same cases, the same hotel ballroom with the same lighting that made everyone look slightly more important than they were.

She had told Freen she didn’t need to come.

Freen had come anyway.

This had stopped surprising Becky approximately three weeks ago.

—

They arrived at seven.

The ballroom was already filling – lawyers and judges and legal academics and the occasional journalist who had been invited for reasons nobody fully remembered. Becky moved through it the way she always moved through these events. Easy. Purposeful. Saying the right things to the right people without appearing to calculate who the right people were.

Freen moved beside her.

Not behind. Beside – which was new, which was the thing that was different from all the professional events of two months ago where Freen had been positioned at adjacent tables and side walls and the backs of rooms. Beside was not operational. Beside was something else.

Becky was aware of the beside.

She was aware of most things involving Freen at this point. This was not new information.

—

At eight they were in a conversation with a judge Becky knew from the commercial court and a senior partner from a firm she had worked against twice and a man she didn’t recognise who had introduced himself as being from the Singapore office of something she hadn’t caught.

The man from Singapore was doing what confident men at legal events sometimes did – directing his conversation at the most senior person in the group, which was Becky, while including everyone else just enough to appear inclusive.

He was talking about a case.

Becky was listening and responding and tracking three other conversations in the room simultaneously because that was what these events required.

Then the man from Singapore gestured at Freen.

“Could your assistant get me another drink?” he said. Pleasantly. Without malice. The assumption of someone who had looked at the configuration of the group and reached the wrong conclusion.

The conversation paused.

The judge looked at the man.

The senior partner looked at the man.

Becky looked at the man.

Then she put her hand on Freen’s arm.

Not a gesture – a placement. Her hand on Freen’s arm, warm and deliberate, and she looked at the man from Singapore with the particular quality of attention she used in court when something needed to be addressed directly and without drama.

“She’s my partner,” Becky said. Quietly. Precisely.

The man blinked.

“I apologise,” he said. Immediately. Genuinely.

“Not necessary,” Becky said. She had already moved on – back to the conversation, the next point, the judge who was saying something about a recent ruling that she had views on.

Her hand stayed on Freen’s arm for another two seconds.

Then it came down.

—

Freen said nothing.

She stood in the conversation and listened and responded when something was directed at her and was completely professionally normal about all of it.

She looked at Becky sideways.

Just briefly. Just a glance – the angle of the ballroom meant nobody else caught it. Becky was looking at the judge, making a point about the ruling, one hand moving slightly the way it moved when she was building toward something.

Not looking at Freen.

Almost smiling.

Freen looked back at the judge.

She thought about she’s my partner said in that particular voice. The same voice she used for things she had decided and was not revisiting. The same voice from I don’t want a cover story. I want you and you’re not getting the distance back and come home with me.

The voice that didn’t leave room for misunderstanding.

She thought about the hand on her arm. The two seconds of it. The deliberate placement of it.

She looked at the conversation.

She was completely professionally normal about all of it.

—

Across the room Nam saw the whole thing.

She had been at these events before – not this specific one, but the category of event. She knew how to stand in a ballroom and look like a guest and see everything. She was currently standing near the bar with a drink she had been holding for forty minutes and watching the group near the window.

She saw the Singapore man’s gesture.

She saw Becky’s hand go to Freen’s arm.

She heard – she was too far to actually hear but she was good at reading mouths – she’s my partner

She reached for her phone.

She found Heng in her contacts.

did you see that she typed.

Across the room – she could see him from here, near the entrance with two of the other firm staff – Heng’s phone lit up. He read it. He looked up. He found her across the ballroom with the unerring accuracy of someone who had been watching the same thing.

I’ve been watching this for six months he typed back.

Nam read this. She looked at him across the room.

He looked at her.

They raised their glasses at the same moment without looking away from each other and without appearing to coordinate it.

Nam drank.

Heng drank.

Neither of them smiled. It would have been unprofessional.

They were both smiling.

—

The evening went on.

Becky moved through it the way she always did – efficient, warm, saying what needed saying. Freen moved beside her. The beside was established now, the configuration of them understood by anyone paying attention, which at this event included a judge, a senior partner, a man from Singapore who had learned something, and two people on opposite sides of the room who had known it was coming for considerably longer than anyone else.

At nine thirty they found a quieter corner.

Not hiding from the event – just the corner that existed at every event where the noise was slightly lower and the density of people slightly less. Becky had a glass of wine. Freen had water. The ballroom went on around them.

“The man from Singapore,” Freen said.

“Yes,” Becky said.

“He apologised.”

“He did.”

“You didn’t need to correct him,” Freen said. “It would have been easier not to.”

Becky looked at her. “I know.”

“This is a professional event. These are professional contacts.”

“I know that too.”

“So.”

Becky held her gaze. “So I didn’t want to not correct him,” she said. “That’s all.” She looked at her wine. “I’ve been not saying things for two months. I’m done not saying things.”

Freen looked at her.

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay,” Becky said.

They stood in the quieter corner with the ballroom going past around them. The event was what events were – noise and lights and people being professionally warm at each other. None of it was particularly relevant to the corner.

“Partner,” Freen said.

Becky looked at her.

“Is that-” Freen paused. “Is that what we are.”

Becky held her gaze for a moment.

“Yes,” she said. Simply. Without managing it.

Freen looked at her.

She looked at the ballroom.

She looked at Becky.

“Okay,” she said.

Something happened in her expression. Small. Quick. The thing that happened when something landed exactly where it was supposed to land and she wasn’t expecting to show it and showed it anyway.

“Okay,” Becky said.

She went back to looking at the event.

Freen went back to looking at the event.

Their shoulders were touching.

Neither of them moved.

—

In the taxi afterward Becky’s phone buzzed.

She looked at it.

Heng.

A photograph. Taken from across the ballroom – slightly grainy, slightly distant. It showed two people standing in a quieter corner with their shoulders touching and neither of them looking at the camera or apparently being aware of it.

Below the photograph: *for the record.*

Becky looked at it for a moment.

She turned the phone to show Freen.

Freen looked at the photograph.

“Heng took a photograph,” she said.

“Heng took a photograph,” Becky confirmed.

“At a professional event.”

“Yes.”

“Of us.”

“Yes.”

Freen looked at the photograph for another moment. Then at Becky. Then back at the road ahead.

“Nam put him up to it,” she said.

“Almost certainly,” Becky agreed.

“I’m going to have a conversation with Nam about appropriate use of-“

“You’re not,” Becky said.

“I’m not,” Freen agreed.

Becky looked at the photograph one more time.

She saved it.

She put her phone away.

The taxi moved through the Friday night city. Outside Bangkok was doing what it always did – loud and lit and completely indifferent to the two people in the back of a cab who had just agreed on a word and were sitting with it in the particular quiet of something that had been said and was not being taken back.