Intrusion: A Novel (6 page)

“It’s good that you’re doing this, Sarah. Really.”

“Fun to see the old names come up. The daughters of our old friends and enemies. Oh, remember Bunty Kelly? Face like a glazed ham?”

Kat did. Head girl for one term, and a bully.

“Yes. You had a fight with her over something.”

“Monstrous girl accused me of stealing her St. Bernadette medal. Remember that?”

“I remember the day in the showers when she accused you of taking it,” Kat said.

“Well, I fixed her,” Sarah said with grim pleasure. “Recently.”

“Fixed her? Just because of a false accusation?”

Sarah looked up. Her eyes were dancing.

“False? Who said anything about false?”

“So you did steal the medal?”

“Of course I did. She left it there in her locker, right on top of a prayer book, and the locker door wide-open. So prissy. Fake faith. So, yes. I took it. Just to annoy her. But the fact is, she never saw me take it. No one did. There was no one in the gym at the time. So she made that accusation in public, with all my friends listening, when she had
no evidence at all
!”

“So—what did you do to her?”

“Her daughter applied for a scholarship. Perfect candidate. Bunty had been grooming her for years, apparently. I turned her down.”

“You turned her down?” Kat asked. “Because of Bunty? But why should the daughter suffer?”

“It’s the parents who suffer,” Sarah said. “When they don’t get the funds. Let Big Bully Bunty pay for the girl. Anyway, it entertains me a bit. I’m involved in a Catholic adoption charity, too. That’s rather fun.”

Sarah, noting Kat’s startled expression, laughed.

“Now, that did surprise you, didn’t it? As an alternative to a termination. Well, you know why. You were there. Remember?”

Kat, after a small tremble of shock, gulped at her wine. She recalled the tall Georgian building on a Brighton terrace, the ground-floor clinic, and Aunt Helen’s annoyance. Sarah did not want to go through with the termination but had given in finally, demanding that Kat come, too, for support. Nobody else knew about it. Sarah and Kat were both fifteen years old. Kat had waited in a wide corridor, watched as a tall male doctor came for Sarah, placed a hand on the small of her back, and guided her forward as if leading her onto the dance floor. He took her along the corridor and through double doors into the clinic. Helen followed behind, her hands clenched into fists. An interminable time later, Sarah emerged through the double doors with Helen’s arm tight around her shoulders. Both looked pale and shaken; neither of them spoke. That night, at Lansdowne, Sarah had been shivering badly, unable to get warm, and Helen gave her a whisky toddy, made with hot water and honey. Kat offered her the duvet from her own bed, piling it on top of the extra blankets that Mrs. Evans, the housekeeper, had produced earlier.

In the middle of the night, Kat woke to hear Sarah whimpering. The sheet and duvet were dark with blood; she had bled right through the bulky sanitary pad.

“I need more pads,” she whispered to Kat, her face ghostly white in the dim bedroom light. “I daren’t move.”

“I’ll get Helen,” Kat had said, terror causing her voice to shake.

Throughout their school years, and even during college, Sarah rarely spoke of that day, or the surgery that was necessary afterward, and never to anyone but Kat. She referred to the experience always as
that clinic visit
. Kat had never heard her use the word
termination
before.

Now, Sarah waited.

“You do remember?”

“Of course I remember,” Kat said.

“Well, the reason I got involved with the adoption charity is not only because of that clinic visit. No, it’s so that those nice Catholic girls who make one silly mistake don’t ruin their lives by being saddled with a baby. And go on to have a dozen more, just like their mothers. And so many couples want babies desperately and can’t have their own. So—perfect. A solution! You’re amazed, aren’t you, that I should become a charity matron?”

“Surprised. Yes.”

“I have a number of them. Sam had his own favorites. Alcohol abuse, drugs, those kinds of things.”

She studied Kat’s face and smiled.

“There are good solid tax reasons for this, Kat. Ask your husband. I see his firm is involved in pro bono work. Some gangland project. A lad called
Chiller
! Well, that could be fun for everyone.”

Sarah reached for the wine bottle to pour more wine. Kat held her hand over her glass, suddenly tired. Since Chris’s death, she had avoided social lunches and casual conversation. Sarah’s energy and intensity, once invigorating, now felt exhausting.

“Sorry,” Kat said. “But I have to get ready for the interview. I rescheduled my appointment for four o’clock.”

“You can’t cancel?” Sarah said.

“No. I really can’t.”

Sarah shook her head, then stood and lifted her bag.

“Would you like to meet for lunch in Beverly Hills sometime? Make a nice change for you.”

“Maybe in a week or so?” Kat said evasively.

“I hope we can be friends again, Kat. We’re going to be meeting from time to time. At least, I hope we are.”

Kat was not sure whether Sarah meant to remind her that she was Scott’s client, or whether she was hinting at some future social meetings.

“Of course,” she said.

Sarah moved to the hallway. Kat held the door as Sarah stepped outside, adjusting the bag over her shoulder, slipping on her sunglasses. As she did so, Brooke’s red Miata turned the corner and with a screech of brakes slammed into the driveway across the street. As Brooke climbed out of the car, she looked over to Kat, waved, and then took in Sarah. Kat imagined her doing a swift assessment of Sarah’s clothes and shoes.

“And is that big-hearted Brooke?” Sarah said. “You’re right. She doesn’t look like the home-baking type. Well, so lovely to see you.”

“Thank you for the lunch,” Kat said.

“My pleasure. Absolutely. I’ll be in touch,” said Sarah, before walking briskly down the path to her Jaguar.

Kat closed the front door and sat back down at the dining table. Holding her wineglass with both hands, she took a few sips to calm herself. Sven. To hear Sarah say his name had shaken her. Once, to talk of him would have caused tears.

She had heard about the Danish exchange student long before she met him. Paul spent summers with his friend in Denmark and had shown Kat pictures, and so, already interested, she dressed carefully on the day that the blond male was due to join her university comparative literature class. When he walked into the classroom, every girl in the room turned to stare at him. Sven, tall, flushed with radiant good health, seemed to glow. The English boys in the class, pale after a long winter, looked gray and drab in comparison. Kat was surprised when he asked her out, so many prettier girls were flirting with him, and wondered if Paul had suggested it, but Sven seemed genuinely interested and they dated all that semester. They spent a lot of time in bed. In the mornings, she would watch him exercise, a ritual he never missed.

“You’re the poster boy for healthy living,” she told him once as he measured out ingredients for a breakfast shake. “What are you adding to that now? Eye of newt? Toe of dog? It’s a very weird color.”

He looked up, puzzled.

“Those are healthy things? This is fruit only. The blueberries change the color. I will make enough for you.”

“I’ll be the healthiest woman on the planet. All this exercise and fruit shakes, too.”

He smiled a white, wide smile.

Meticulous in courtship as he was in everything else, he asked if she was certain before inviting her to bed, was careful about contraception, sexually considerate. When she introduced him to her roommate, he seemed shy and intimidated. Sarah liked to tease him a little, call him the handsome Nordic god, make him blush.

In private, Sarah chided Kat.

“He’s sweet. And yes, he’s attractive. But, Caitlin, he’s so bland, so wooden. You can’t be serious about going to Denmark? What on earth will you talk about? Or do you plan to stay in bed for a year?”

It was his strong back Kat saw first, on that dark, rainy afternoon. Then, the muscular shoulders, the blond hair curling at the nape of his neck. He was murmuring to Sarah, the urgent intonation quite different from the voice he used with Kat. He seemed to be pleading.

She stood frozen in the doorway, her umbrella dripping, her hair in her eyes. Sarah and Sven. Kat had raced from the room, gone straight home to Rugby. Maggie’s wedding was the next day. Kat never saw Sven conscious again. The next time she saw him, he was just a blank body in a hospital bed.

She recalled the slow-motion minutes during Maggie and Paul’s wedding reception when Paul was called to the phone and returned to the ballroom, his face ashen. He whispered something to his new bride and both turned to stare at Kat as she stood chatting with a cousin. She remembered her sister crossing the room to tell her the bad news, her arms already outstretched.

All three had rushed to the hospital, Maggie in a borrowed raincoat over her wedding dress, to wait for hours in an echoing corridor. Paul, usually so calm, was agitated, his eyes bright with anxiety, hassling the nurses and the young doctors. “Why won’t they tell us anything? Why can’t we see him?” he asked repeatedly. But they were not family; they were not allowed into the ICU. Eventually, a nurse took pity on them and allowed them to sit with Sven, one by one, in the sterile, beeping hospital room.

“This is our wedding day,” Maggie whispered to Kat as Paul took his turn. “We should have left for our honeymoon an hour ago.”

Then, late that night, Sven’s parents arrived from Denmark, so stiff, so formal, and his friends were not allowed to see him again. Sven was moved to a special unit in the hospital. He had a fractured skull, they were told. There was some damage to the spinal cord. Eventually, his parents arranged for him to be taken back to Denmark. Kat never discovered how they managed to do that. He was still unconscious, as far as she knew. His parents would not reply to Paul’s calls or to his letters, causing him, and therefore Maggie, considerable distress.

“They blame me,” Paul said. “He didn’t drink at all before he came here.”

But Paul was not to blame—they knew that. Was Sarah? Though Maggie thought so, Kat was never sure. Sven had been very drunk, as the hospital lab report confirmed. Some friends claimed to have seen him in the pub at lunchtime on the day of the wedding, morose and drinking alone. Another rumor was that Sarah had been with him, had actually gone home with him that afternoon, might have been there when the accident occurred. Kat did not believe that. Maggie did. But nobody knew for sure. Sven’s fall remained a mystery. The young Dane simply disappeared from all their lives.

Kat sat at the dining table for a while, thinking back to that time. When her phone rang, late in the afternoon, she switched it to voice mail. It was Mark Tinsley, the features editor from a local weekly: an interesting paper, full of well-written articles on the arts, books, happenings in Los Angeles. He would like her to come in for an interview, the editor said. He had a position coming up. Mrs. Harrison had highly recommended her. He was free on Tuesday at ten in the morning if that was convenient.

“My God, Sarah,” Kat said to the air. “You don’t waste much time.”

“So Sarah Harrison brought you lunch,” Scott said that evening, spooning the remains of the lemon chicken onto a small plate, creating a starter for himself. “This is really good.”

“Yes. You saw her this afternoon?”

“Yep. She was in the office for a late meeting. Man, she’s got a good head on her shoulders. She sure knows what she wants. Even Woodruff was silenced for once in his asinine life. I talked to her afterward. She said something about a job? At a newspaper?”

Kat hesitated. “I’ve got an interview,” she said. “On Tuesday.”

Scott looked so pleased, his pleasure quite out of proportion to the fact that Kat felt anxiety rising in her gut. Now, she would have to attend the interview. There was no getting out of it.

“Excellent news, sweetheart,” Scott said. “Anyway, she wants us all to go look at the model of the country-club estate. Her husband had it set up in their house in Ojai. They don’t want to move it.”