Chapter 22

She almost missed it.

Freen had done her final check of the floor — doors, windows, the security panel by the main entrance — and was heading back through the outer office to get her bag when she glanced through the glass partition.

Becky’s desk lamp was on.

Becky was at her desk. Head down on her arms. Completely still.

Freen stopped.

She stood in the outer office and looked through the glass for a moment. Then she pushed the partition door open quietly and went in.

—

The office was warm and dim, just the desk lamp throwing a circle of light across the desk and Becky’s hair and the closing argument spread out around her. She had fallen asleep mid-page — her pen was still loosely in her hand, the cap off, a half-finished sentence trailing across the margin of a document.

Freen stood in the doorway.

She should leave. Do the check, get her bag, go. Becky was fine. She was in the building, the building was secure, there was nothing here that required Freen to be standing in an office doorway at twelve forty in the morning watching her sleep.

She stood in the doorway.

Becky’s breathing was slow and even. She had her cheek on her left arm and her right hand still loosely holding the pen and she looked — different from how she looked in the day. Without the focus and the precision and the control she wore like a second blazer. Just a person. Just tired.

The lamp light caught her hair.

Freen looked at the document spread under her arms. The closing argument. She had been working on the last section all week — Freen had seen it open on her screen every evening, the same document, getting longer. Getting closer.

She took her jacket off.

She crossed the office. She was quiet — she was always quiet, it was not something she had to think about — and she stood beside Becky’s chair and looked at her for one more second.

Then she draped the jacket over her shoulders.

Becky didn’t stir. Her breathing stayed slow. The pen stayed loosely in her hand. The jacket settled over her and Freen straightened it slightly — not because it needed straightening, just because her hands were there and it was something to do with them.

She stood there.

The city was outside doing what it always did. The lamp made its small warm world. Freen stood in it longer than she needed to and didn’t examine why and then she turned and walked back out through the glass partition door and got her bag and left.

—

In the morning Becky’s first thought was that she was cold.

Her second thought was that she wasn’t, because there was something warm over her shoulders. Her third thought, arriving about two seconds after the second, was that she was at her desk and the lamp was still on and the city outside the window was doing its 7am thing which meant she had been here all night.

She sat up.

The jacket slid slightly. She caught it.

She looked at it.

Dark navy. Well cut. Not hers.

She looked at the outer office through the glass. Freen’s desk was empty — it was seven fifteen, Freen didn’t arrive until seven thirty, she knew this the way she knew all of Freen’s patterns without having decided to learn them.

She looked at the jacket in her hands.

She put it on.

—

Freen arrived at seven thirty-two with two coffees.

She set one on Becky’s desk. Becky was at her computer, jacket on, reading something on her screen. She looked up when Freen set the coffee down.

Their eyes met.

Becky looked at the coffee. “Thank you.”

“The traffic was bad,” Freen said. Which was true and also not what either of them was talking about.

“Right,” Becky said.

She picked up the coffee. Freen went to her desk. She opened the Viroj bundle to the page she had left it on and started reading.

Neither of them said anything about the jacket.

—

By nine Noey had noticed.

She didn’t say anything — Noey was many things and perceptive was high on the list, but she also knew when to leave things alone. She glanced at Becky’s office through the glass, glanced at Freen’s desk, glanced back at her screen and said nothing.

Heng noticed at nine thirty. He brought Becky’s mail around and came back with the expression of someone who had seen something interesting and was choosing not to act on it. He sat at his desk and opened his laptop and said nothing.

By ten the jacket had been on for two hours.

Becky had not appeared to notice she was still wearing it. She was in and out of her office — a quick conversation with one of the associates, a phone call she took standing at her window, a five-minute exchange with Heng about a disclosure document. The jacket went everywhere with her.

Freen noted this each time.

She said nothing.

—

At eleven Becky came out of her office and took the jacket off.

She folded it. Neatly, carefully, the way she did everything. She set it on the back of her chair — not Freen’s chair, her own, the one behind her desk — and smoothed it once and went back to work.

Freen looked at the jacket on the back of Becky’s chair.

She looked at her screen.

She turned a page.

—

It stayed there all week.

On the back of Becky’s chair, folded, in the same position it had been placed on Tuesday morning. Every time Freen walked past the office she saw it. Every time Becky moved around her office it was there — behind her, a dark navy shape that Freen recognised and that stayed exactly where Becky had put it.

Becky never mentioned it.

Freen never mentioned it.

On Wednesday Noey said to Heng, quietly enough that she probably thought no one else could hear, “Is that Freen’s jacket on Becky’s chair?”

Heng said, equally quietly, “I believe so.”

“Has it been there since Tuesday?”

“It has.”

A pause. “Has anyone said anything about it?”

“No one has said anything about it.”

Another pause. “Interesting,” Noey said.

“Very,” said Heng.

Freen turned a page of her document and said nothing.

—

On Friday afternoon Becky was at her office door when she stopped.

She looked at the jacket on her chair. Then she looked at Freen.

“Is this yours,” she said.

Freen looked up. “Yes.”

Becky looked at the jacket. Then at Freen. “Do you want it back.”

A beat.

“Not particularly,” Freen said.

Becky held her gaze for a moment. Something moved in her expression — the thing that didn’t have a name yet, the one from the cab and the stars and the one second across the office. Then she turned and went back into her office.

The jacket stayed on the chair.