Intrusion: A Novel (5 page)

“It was wonderful,” she said now. They stood for a while longer looking at the pictures on the dresser.

“I was hoping you were making coffee,” Scott said. “And maybe a sandwich. And a slice of Brooke’s date loaf.”

“Oh, you are so subtle! Well, keep hoping, buddy.” She turned then, to look at him. “I’ll make something in a minute. Okay?”

He placed a gentle, closed fist against her cheek for a moment.

“Thanks.”

Later, as she carried a mug of coffee and a sandwich into Scott’s den, she saw that he was bent over his desk, studying plans and blueprints.

“You almost done?” she asked.

“I’m getting there.”

Kat looked over his shoulder; the plans made no sense to her.

“I’m going to have a bath, then read in bed.”

Scott glanced at his watch.

“Already? It’s barely eight.”

“So?” she said.

Scott did not respond. He had returned to the blueprints, had begun to make notes on a yellow legal pad, engrossed in his work.

SEVEN

W
hile Scott showered and prepared for work on Monday morning, Kat carried her laptop through to the dining area, next to the kitchen in their contemporary open-plan home. She placed it on the table, along with a legal pad and pen, and then she made a pot of strong coffee. When Scott came downstairs, dressed for the office, he studied her, puzzled.

“What’s this?”

“Job search.”

He came to kiss the top of her head.

“That’s good, sweetheart. That’s really good.”

Over the next week, Kat studied prospective jobs, listed agencies, made notes of phone numbers. The few phone calls she made were difficult. She tried to sidestep questions about why she was moving from a job she had done well for five years, that was well paid, to positions that were sometimes described as “entry level.”

A recruiter was astonished when Kat, calling about a job for an admin assistant in a school, mentioned her previous salary. Kat decided to downplay the salary, downplay her responsibilities. She did not want a job that involved public relations, or customer service, or any kind of position that meant she had to smile at strangers.

“They want someone perky,” the recruiter said. “With good communication skills.”

“I am not
perky
,” Kat murmured. “I was never that.”

Eventually, she stopped making the calls, and instead sat at the dining table reading the online ads, imagining the calls, the interviews, the responses. Occasionally, moments from the past few months would flash into her mind: the funeral, choosing the flowers, the awkward visits of Chris’s friends. These memories dropped softly, completely intact, into her mind. Sometimes, they were in strong, primary colors, occasionally in a kind of sepia, like old movies.

One morning, she was transported right back to the room where they chose the coffin. The funeral director took them down in an elevator, an elevator with brass rails and frosted dark glass. It seemed to sink far down, underground, under the earth. When the doors opened, Kat and Scott stepped out into an enormous room. It was ballroom size and it was full of coffins: polished wood coffins of oak and mahogany, metal ones of silver and gold and brass, and tiny ones of white wood, some with satin or silk or ribbon, or elaborate decoration. The light was strange, silvery, ethereal. Scott took her hand and they walked fast through the aisles that separated the different types, the expensive ones first, the cheaper ones at the end of the ballroom. They whispered to each other, saying what about this one, this will be fine, or this, looking at the prices so quickly, barely able to look inside these caskets, one of which would cradle their son for eternity. They chose a light oak one, then walked, with knees that trembled, back to the elevator, and Kat pressed the elevator button so fast that the director had to squeeze in as the doors were closing. Scott recited the number of the casket they had chosen, and the price. He quoted it to the funeral director without moving his eyes from the elevator doors. It was surreal. They were actors in a movie. They were not real. Nothing was real.

Immobilized at the dining table, the laptop open in front of her, Kat waited until these strange dreamlike sequences ended, then began again to scan the job listings.

When Maggie called from England, Kat heard herself telling smooth lies and was surprised at how easily her sister believed her: Yes, she had interviews; there was some work out there. She wanted to be sure, though, wanted to find something that was just right. Maggie agreed.

“Take your time, darling. Might take a little while. How’s Scott holding up?”

“Oh, he’s doing better. He’s busy. Very busy.”

In fact, Scott was so busy that he was often distracted and vague or irritable with the brittle edge of exhaustion.

“New client, new challenges,” he explained to Kat, apologizing for a sudden snap of temper. “And Jesus, Sarah Harrison has a whole bunch of subsidiaries. Wish I’d known that going in. I’ve had to farm out some of the routine stuff on my old clients to other partners.”

A series of client meetings meant that a couple of suits had to be taken to the cleaners and a new suit purchased. When Kat told him how smart he looked, he told her he felt like a salesman. That when he’d finally been able to revisit the Compton project, young Chiller had told him he should be pimping on the Westside. He was late getting home so frequently that Kat often ate her own dinner alone and left his meal to be reheated in the microwave.

He asked about the job search, and as she did with Maggie, she tried to make it sound active and interesting. She created entire phone conversations with headhunters, pretended that she was setting up interviews. She did not describe the mornings when, once Scott had left for the office, she checked again that hidden bottle of sleeping pills, saved for the day it became too hard to navigate the simple pathways of a normal life. She did not describe the hours at the dining table and the strange dreamlike state that sometimes enveloped her: flashbacks, memories, long minutes lost.

It was on one of these days, when Kat had the laptop open on the table in front of her, that the doorbell rang. She frowned, saw through the etched glass of the front door the shape of a woman. She opened the door reluctantly, ready with her excuses, expecting to see a concerned ex-colleague from Waters & Chappell.

“Hello, Kat,” said Sarah.

The sun shone onto Sarah’s face, and her dark hair hung loose and gleaming on her shoulders. She held peach roses, a bottle of wine, and a bag of what appeared to be food from a delicatessen. Kat could smell lemon chicken. A green Jaguar was parked at the curb.

“Lunch,” said Sarah.

It was a shock to see her there. She looked so polished, a creature from a smoother, shinier world.

“Sarah! So sorry. I’m just on my way out,” Kat lied. “I have a job interview.”

“Oh, what a bore. You can surely reschedule it,” Sarah said, stepping into the house. Her voice sounded warm and light. A young voice. She followed Kat into the kitchen, holding her packages.

“Pretty home,” Sarah said, looking beyond the dining area to the living room, with its long leather sofas and view of the garden.

“Thank you,” Kat said, aware at once of the stained blue smock she was wearing and the untidy state of her hair.

She found a vase for the roses and turned to find Sarah watching her.

“I was just going to change,” Kat said, pulling at the smock. “For the interview.”

“You have time for a quick bite, surely?” Sarah asked.

“I don’t think so.”

Sarah, unpacking the food regardless, continued to look over at her and smiled.

“Come on, Kat. Greek salad and stuffed mushrooms? And can’t you smell this absolutely fabulous chicken? Lemon, lime, and herbs. Reschedule your appointment. Tell them you’ll come tomorrow.”

“I’ll tell them later this afternoon,” Kat said, snapping the laptop shut. “Excuse me a minute.”

In the bathroom, Kat rinsed her face, changed into a cotton shirt, and ran a comb through her hair. When she returned, Sarah had laid out the food on the dining table, found napkins, silverware, and wineglasses. It looked almost festive. She had pushed the legal pad aside. Kat wondered if she had looked at those scrawled notes:
admin assistant
,
secretary
,
receptionist
.

Sarah, studying the Rothko print on the wall, turned to her.

“You didn’t grow out of him, then?”

At Kat’s puzzled frown she added, “You had a different Rothko in Birmingham. The one with fuzzy green and violet and that orangey-red. In the flat.”

“Oh, you’re right. I did. Why should I grow out of him?”

“He’s so popular now. His prints are everywhere.”

“And why should that diminish his work?” Kat asked.

Sarah laughed, as if pleased with this response, and waved toward the table.

“Please. Try this wonderful food. And I found this bread on the counter—it looks delicious. You’re making your own?”

“No. Brooke bakes it for Scott. We shouldn’t eat it. He loves it.”

“Brooke?”

“My neighbor. Friend.”

“Nice to have a homely baking type for a neighbor.”

“She’s not exactly homely. Blonde divorcée. Outrageous flirt. Big heart.”

“And she makes this specially for Scott?” Sarah asked in a teasing tone.

“Yes,” Kat said. “She does.”

When they were seated, Sarah did not begin to eat immediately but indicated the notepad she had pushed to one side and said, “You need a job you’ll like, Kat. In something you’re good at.”

“I know. Something will turn up.”

“Will you let me help? I know people everywhere. Newspapers, radio, television.”

“That’s not necessary,” said Kat. “But thank you anyway.”

Sarah reached for the wine and poured it into their glasses.

“You prefer to stay in public relations? Or would you rather go back to journalism?”

“Not sure right now.”

“Remember when you were fourteen and you wanted to be a war correspondent?” Sarah asked.

“At that age—well.”

“You wanted to be a war correspondent and you wanted a house that was not a council house and lots of children.”

Kat looked at her, surprised. How clearly she remembered.

“Yes,” she said. “I did.”

Kat could still visualize that fantasy home. It looked like one drawn with precise concentration by a child: a square frontage, symmetrical windows, and a central, brightly painted door. Behind the house she imagined a wild garden and three, sometimes four, laughing children, a leaping dog, an apple tree.

The career dream changed slightly over the years: war correspondent, feature writer, columnist. The house and family dream never did.

“That was then,” she said. “I don’t know what I want to do right now. I’m still in a bit of a fog.”

“Well, of course you are,” Sarah said. “Now, try this. It actually melts in the mouth.”

Kat spooned some of the chicken onto her plate and helped herself to salad and a rice dish that contained chopped celery and raisins and was flavored with a soft, scented herb. Sarah heaped food onto her plate, making little murmuring sounds of pleasure. Kat was reminded of how Sarah loved to eat, how jealous the other schoolgirls had been that she stayed so slim. She was slender still. Kat tasted the chicken.

“This is good,” she said.

“I hoped you would like it.”

Sarah paused, studied Kat’s face.

“Maggie’s still angry, then,” she said.

“Why should Maggie be angry?”

“About Sven.”

“A long time ago. I don’t expect she ever thinks about it,” Kat said.

“And you? Do you think about it?”

“Twenty years ago, Sarah. Water under the bridge.”

“Did you get back together eventually?”

The question shocked Kat. She looked hard at Sarah, frowning.

“What?”

“I thought you might get back together.”

“You . . . you know about the accident?”

“I heard he’d tumbled down some stairs. I left the city, remember. I went straight to Sussex and then on to Antibes.”

Kat knew that Sarah had left the apartment they shared and moved to France to stay with an aunt. She believed that Sarah never contacted Sven again. She had simply taken him and then discarded him. She had not returned to Birmingham. It was rumored, some months later, that she was studying in Montpellier. But Kat had always assumed that someone told Sarah how badly Sven was injured that day.

“He fractured his skull,” Kat said. “He’d been drinking.”

Sarah placed her knife and fork down slowly and stared at Kat. Her face had paled.

“I thought it was just a minor thing. It was serious?” she asked.

“Yes. Very. A fractured skull and damage to the spinal cord. He was unconscious when I saw him. His parents came from Denmark and eventually moved him back there.”

“Didn’t Paul keep in touch with him?” Sarah asked. “And find out how he was?”

“He tried,” Kat said. “But no. No, he couldn’t.”

Sarah seemed at a loss.

“I didn’t know the details,” she whispered eventually. “Nobody would talk to me. No wonder you both hate me.”

Kat gave her a sharp look.

“I don’t hate anyone. Nor does Maggie,” Kat said.

Some of the old pain for Sven bubbled back to the surface. And some of the old anger, too. Had it not been for Sarah . . . well, who knew? A tragedy could occur without anyone being at fault. Kat knew that better than anyone. But Sven’s accident had caused speculation. He did not usually drink, but he had been very drunk that day. His alcohol level, when tested at the hospital, was phenomenally high. The doctors were surprised that he had managed to get himself home, though nobody knew how.

“What can I say?” Sarah began. “I had no idea he would—”

Kat shook her head.

“Stop it,” said Kat. “Please. I don’t want to talk about this, Sarah. Not now.”

Sarah, nodding, looked relieved.

“You ever go back to St. Theresa’s?” she asked.

“No. Never.”

“I set up a scholarship fund, you know,” Sarah said. “For girls who want to go to university to study business, or economics. A different option. Balance out all those ridiculous funds for teachers and nuns.”

“That must have been a first for them,” Kat said. “A scholarship for business majors.”

“Yes, it was. I tried to set up a fund for working-class girls to attend the school, but Sister Judy claims that things are rather different now. There’s still the academic scholarship test, of course. The one you passed.”

Kat remembered the three-hour test, the interview in front of a committee of middle-class governors. She could still visualize the chairwoman: a terrifying woman with shaded equine teeth.

“And do you get many applicants for your college fund?”

“Oh yes. I get to choose the winning ones each year. It’s fun. Like playing God. They give me a short list and I pick the winners. I choose the ones with a bit of a spark in their school histories. None of those Legion of Mary virgins. Though Sister Judy may have sussed me. Wouldn’t surprise me if she didn’t throw in a bit of smoking behind the gym just to get me to choose her favorite.”