Chapter 31

Becky made the decision on Saturday morning.

Not dramatically. She was standing in her kitchen waiting for the coffee to finish and she thought about the table and the lamp and the shoulder and the three inches and she put it all in a box and closed the box and said – out loud, to her empty kitchen – “No.”

The coffee finished.

She poured it and drank it and opened her laptop and worked on the closing argument for four hours and it went well and that was that.

—

Monday she was at the office at seven forty.

Normal time. She went into her office and closed the door and opened the closing argument and worked. At nine she came out with a task list for the day and went through it with Heng without stopping at Freen’s desk.

Freen was at her desk. Working. She looked up briefly when Becky came out and then looked back at her screen.

Becky gave Heng three tasks and went back into her office.

She gave Freen one.

—

It continued like this.

Not obviously. She wasn’t cold – she was professional. There was a difference and Becky was careful about the difference because cold would require an explanation and professional didn’t. She was simply – at the temperature she had been in week one. Correct. Measured. The exact warmth appropriate for a senior lawyer and her junior associate.

She stopped bringing the extra coffees.

She stopped leaving the office door open when she was working late.

She gave Freen fewer tasks, which meant fewer reasons to come to her office, fewer conversations, fewer moments where the conversation could go somewhere that required the box to be opened.

The box stayed closed.

This was the right decision. She was twelve days from closing arguments. She was prosecuting the most important case of her career. She had an evidence chain to protect and an expert witness to prep and a final section of the closing argument that was almost right but not quite. She did not have space for anything else and she had made a sensible decision and she was fine.

—

Freen accepted all of it.

That was the thing.

Becky had expected – she didn’t know exactly what she had expected. Some resistance. A question. Something that would give her the argument she needed to justify the distance. Instead Freen just – adjusted. Took the one task and did it. Stopped appearing in the kitchen when Becky was there. Stopped staying at the conference table. Sat at her own desk and worked and was professional and correct and completely, infuriatingly fine about all of it.

By Wednesday Becky was significantly more tense than she had been on Friday.

She told herself this was the closing argument.

It was partly the closing argument.

—

Thursday Irin came for lunch.

They went to the cafe two streets over – not the one with Becky’s coffee order, the other one, the quieter one that had good soup and small tables and enough ambient noise that you could have a private conversation without trying.

Irin ordered. Becky ordered. They talked about Irin’s property case for twenty minutes, which was going badly in an interesting way, and then the soup arrived and Irin looked at her over the bowl.

“You seem tense,” she said.

“I’m fine,” Becky said.

Irin picked up her spoon. “How’s the case.”

“Good. Closing arguments in ten days.”

“And otherwise.”

“Fine.”

Irin ate some soup.

“The associate,” she said. “Freen.”

Becky looked at her bowl. “What about her.”

“Nothing. How is she getting on.”

“Fine.”

Irin put her spoon down. “You’ve said fine three times.”

“Because things are fine.”

“Four times,” Irin said.

Becky ate some soup.

It was good soup. She focused on that.

“You seem tense,” Irin said again. “Specifically. Not case-tense. Different tense.”

“I’m not tense.”

“You’ve straightened your spoon twice.”

Becky looked at her spoon. It was very straight. She put it down.

“I made a decision,” she said. “To be professional. To focus on the case. It’s the right decision.”

“Okay,” Irin said.

“It is.”

“I said okay.”

“You said it in the voice that means you don’t think it’s okay.”

Irin picked up her coffee. “You wanted her to say something.”

Becky looked at her. “I wanted her to be professional.”

“Right.”

“I did.”

“I know.” Irin drank her coffee. “And she is being professional.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s-“

“Fine,” Becky said.

Irin looked at her over the rim of the cup.

“Five times,” she said.

Becky ate her soup.

“How’s the closing argument,” Irin said after a moment.

“The last section is almost there.”

“Almost.”

“I’ll get it.”

“I know you will.” Irin set her cup down. “Does Freen read it? The sections. Like she did before.”

A pause.

“She did,” Becky said. “I haven’t asked her this week.”

“Why not.”

“Because I don’t need – because I have Heng.”

“Heng is excellent,” Irin said. “But you always got further on the nights Freen read it back.”

Becky said nothing.

Irin looked at her with the patient expression. The one that had fifteen years of friendship behind it. The one that meant she had already arrived at a conclusion and was waiting for Becky to catch up.

“I’m being sensible,” Becky said.

“You are,” Irin said. “You’re very good at being sensible.”

“That’s not a compliment.”

“It’s an observation.” Irin picked up her spoon again. “Ten days. Then the case is done.”

“Yes.”

“And then?”

Becky looked at her soup.

“And then I’ll see,” she said.

Irin nodded. She ate her soup. She didn’t say anything else about it for the rest of lunch and Becky was grateful for this and also slightly frustrated by it which was very Irin.

—

Back at the office Becky sat at her desk and opened the closing argument.

The last section.

She read it through. It was good – she could see that objectively. The structure was right, the evidence references were clean, the language was precise. It was a good closing argument section.

It wasn’t quite right yet.

She knew what it needed. It needed the thing she had been doing on the nights she and Freen worked late – reading it aloud, hearing where it wobbled, having someone say *that sentence twice* or *the fourth paragraph loses the thread.* It needed another pair of ears.

She looked through the glass at Freen’s desk.

Freen was reviewing something. Head slightly down, pen in hand. She had been at it all afternoon with the same focused quiet she brought to everything. At some point she had gotten coffee from the kitchen and it was sitting untouched on the corner of her desk, which meant she had been working for a while.

Becky looked at the closing argument.

She looked at Freen.

She looked at the closing argument.

She typed a message to Heng: Can you review the last section tonight? Need another set of eyes.

Heng replied in two minutes: Of course. Send it over.

She sent it.

She went back to the closing argument and read the last section again. It was good. It was almost right.

Almost.

She closed it and opened the expert witness prep notes instead.

Through the glass Freen turned a page and kept working. She hadn’t looked up. She had been at her desk all day and had done the one task Becky had given her and had not asked for more and had not looked through the glass with any particular frequency and had been, throughout, completely and professionally fine.

Which was the right thing.

Which was exactly what Becky had asked for.

Which was absolutely fine.

She straightened the items on her desk.

She opened the expert witness notes.

She was fine.

—

At five thirty Freen packed up her bag.

She stood and put on her jacket and picked up the threat assessment folder she had been working through since two o’clock. She had run a complete update today – every surveillance point, every variable, every known and unknown in the network. It had taken three hours and was thorough and she was going to send it to Engfa tonight and it was good operational work and it had kept her fully occupied all afternoon.

She walked to the lift.

In her earpiece Nam said: “Full threat assessment. That’s thorough.”

“The situation warrants it,” Freen said.

“The situation has warranted it for two months. You’ve never done a full update on a Thursday afternoon before.”

“There’s new information.”

“There’s the same information there was this morning.”

Freen pressed the lift button.

“How’s Becky,” Nam said.

“Professional,” Freen said.

A pause. “Right,” Nam said. In a voice that sounded slightly like Irin’s voice when Irin said right.

The lift arrived. Freen got in.

“The threat assessment is good work,” Nam said. “Very thorough. Very – focused.”

“Goodnight Nam.”

“It’s not a coping mechanism if it’s operationally-“

Freen took the earpiece out.

The lift doors closed.