Intrusion: A Novel Page 6

  “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.”

  “She’s got a house in Ojai? I thought she lived in Malibu?”

  “Malibu is her beach house. I’m hearing that the Ojai place is huge. Anyway, she asked if you would come, too.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Kat said.

  “You’re not curious about her house? How she lives? James has been out there, says it’s quite something.”

  “No. I’m not curious.”

  Scott sighed.

  “Look, she asked
if you would come when Miyamoto was right there in the conference room,” he said slowly. “Miyamoto asked if his wife was also invited. And Sarah said yes. I think if you don’t go, well, Mrs. Miyamoto might feel uncomfortable. The only wife there.”

  Kat stood and took a breath before looking into her husband’s eyes.

  “I don’t care if Mrs. Miyamoto feels uncomfortable,” she said. “Mrs. Miyamoto has a daughter at Yale. A daughter, alive and healthy and beautiful, who has been home for the summer. Okay? Do you see the difference here, Scott, between Mrs. Miyamoto and me?”

  Scott got to his feet at once, moved toward her, and held her by the shoulders.

  “Of course I do. But it’s just an overnight trip. A small group. You know them. You like them. They like you. It’s my job, Kat. It’s work.”

  Kat pulled back. She had become, she realized, so self-centered, so self-absorbed, she could not see anything beyond her own pain.

  “Okay. I’ll think about it. I’d prefer you went alone though.”

  “I don’t want to go alone. I want you with me.”

  EIGHT

  Scott turned off the 101 and took a narrow road up into the hills. The GPS on the dash showed that they were on the right street, but no signs or numbers were visible and the homes they passed were set way back from the road, surrounded by walls and electronic gates. Sarah’s house was right at the top of the hill; James had said it had a distant view of the ocean.

  Kat stretched in the car, flexing her shoulders. She wore tailored pants and felt corseted and tethered.

  “What exactly did she do to Maggie?” Scott asked unexpectedly. “Sarah Harrison?”

  Kat thought for a moment.

  “To Maggie,” she said. “And to me.”

  “You?”

  He glanced at her quickly.

  “A boy I was involved with. Sven. They had an affair.”

  “Involved? How involved were you?” Scott asked.

  “We dated for one semester,” said Kat. “I thought I was in love with him. I thought he felt the same about me. I was thinking about doing an exchange-student year in Denmark.”

  “It was serious, then?”

  “It was serious at the time,” Kat said, trying to be honest. “I think I might have got bored with him eventually. He was very attractive. But a bit—solemn. Sven was Paul’s best friend. They’d been pen pals for years and used to spend summers together, and it was Paul who persuaded him to do the course in the UK. He was going to be the best man at Maggie and Paul’s wedding. The day before the wedding, I went back to the flat. I’d forgotten my satin shoes. My bridesmaid shoes. And Sven was there, with Sarah.”

  “He was with her? You mean screwing her?” Scott asked.

  “Pretty much. Sven didn’t turn up for the rehearsal dinner that night. Paul couldn’t track him down and he was so worried and upset. They had to ask another friend to be best man at the last minute.”

  She did not want to discuss with Scott the scene in the early hours of the morning of Maggie’s wedding day, when Sarah came to their house, sobbing out apologies. Maggie had confronted her, their raised voices echoing between the houses, while Kat stayed crying in the bedroom.

  “In the middle of the wedding reception, Paul got a call from the hospital that Sven had been badly hurt,” she said. “Maggie and Paul canceled their honeymoon because of it.”

  Scott gave her a swift look.

  “He recover?”

  “I don’t know. He was taken back to Denmark. We all lost touch after that.”

  “And Maggie blames Sarah?”

  “Yes. She thought Sven was just a pawn in one of Sarah’s little games. She’s never forgiven her.”

  “You never talked about this,” Scott said quietly.

  Kat bit her lip, rested back in the seat.

  “No. It was a long time ago.”

  How to explain to Scott the odd mix of guilt and pain she had felt? The sympathy heaped on her by friends made her uncomfortable, as did their anger at Sarah. They behaved as if her loss was huge, as if her soul mate had been snatched from her. It had not felt like that, she admitted to herself. Not at all. If she had loved Sven, it had been a pale, diluted love compared to what she would feel later, when she met Scott.

  “What was he like, this Sven guy?” Scott asked casually, after a minute or two.

  “Good-looking. But not as good-looking as you. Not as sexy as you. Not as intelligent, as charming, or as altogether masculine—”

  “Fine, fine,” he said, smiling. “I only asked.”

  They drove another half mile along a wooded lane that came to a dead end at a walled estate hidden behind wrought-iron gates. Scott studied the GPS.

  “This is it.”

  He moved forward to the gates, looking for an entry phone or keypad.

  “It’s like a movie set,” he said to Kat.

  She stared at the high gates, looking for a bell or button to push.

  “Fortress,” she whispered. Immediately, the iron gates opened.

  “You whisper ‘Open Sesame’?” Scott asked.

  “Must have an electronic eye.”

  “With our picture programmed in?”

  Kat was not listening. She gazed at the gardens, clouded with a late-afternoon mist, and saw manicured lawns and, beyond them, the glimmer of a lake. The driveway was edged with a series of silver birch and beech trees with leaves that shimmered in the breeze. Far in the distance, a grayish-blue line, the ocean, was just visible.

  “Lord, will you look at this,” she said.

  Scott glanced sideways.

  “Pretty yard,” he said.

  It was all Sarah dreamed of and more, Kat was quite certain. The intense young girl with her patched-up sweaters who wanted so badly to be rich. This was about as rich as any reasonable person needed to be. As they turned a corner, she saw the house: a mansion in the Georgian style, silvery-white in the misty light, with graceful long lines and elegant frontage.

  “Wow, it’s beautiful,” Kat said. “It’s just like Lansdowne, the house in Sussex her aunt had. Except newer. And maybe bigger. And in much better shape.”

  “It’s certainly big,” said Scott.

  A sweeping gravel driveway curved in front of the house, and a uniformed attendant waited for them.

  “And valet parking, too,” said Scott. “Miyamoto will be a happy camper. He loves this stuff.”

  As they climbed out of the car, Scott studied the house.

  “Make a good country hotel,” he said.

  Kat smiled, just as Sarah appeared at the top of the front steps.

  “At last! Come in.”

  She hurried forward to hug Kat and shake hands with Scott, then ushered them into her house. Both Scott and Kat paused in the hallway. The house was furnished with French and English antiques, and yet it was a light and airy home with high ceilings and French doors that stretched the entire length of the living areas, showing off the acres of wide green lawn and rose gardens. To the south, a paved path of pastel slate led to tennis courts and a pool.

  “Come on, come see your room,” Sarah said, leading them upstairs. “It’s one of the nicest, I think.”

  Scott stood at the bedroom door as Sarah held Kat by the arm and led her into the room.

  Kat gazed at the four-poster with drifting cream lace and chiffon, the window seat with tapestry cushions, a French writing desk. Casement windows opened to the gardens below.

  “It’s beautiful, Sarah. It reminds me of Lansdowne.”

  Kat moved to the writing desk, stroked the smooth wood. A silver bowl containing white roses and gardenias had been placed on it. She could smell their sweet scent.

  “Remember the desk in Aunt Helen’s bedroom?” Sarah asked. “Took me ages to find one just like it. That beauty had to be shipped from France.”

  “It’s lovely.”

  “I knew you’d like it. I remember how you just flipped when you saw Lansdowne. And remember . . . remember Aunt Helen’s bathro
om? The big, grotty old tub with the claw feet? I’ve tried to reproduce it. See?”

  Sarah opened the door to the bathroom and Kat felt disoriented for a moment. It looked just like the old bathroom in the Sussex mansion. But there the paint had been peeling, the tub old and stained. Here, the textured walls were carefully decorated with an expensive color wash.

  “It’s exactly right,” said Kat. She turned to Sarah. “You loved that house.”

  “Yes. I did. I suppose I cared for Helen, prickly old gal though she was.”

  “She was a character,” Kat said, recalling the patrician Englishwoman, in her pearls and shabby tweeds, pouring tea into porcelain cups. “You couldn’t keep the house after she died?”

  “No. I really, really wanted to buy it, but Sam said absolutely not. It was triple-mortgaged and had been so badly maintained. It needed everything replaced or repaired. So someone else bought the land, demolished Lansdowne, and built a hideous modern structure. I kept the gatehouse, though, at the edge of the estate. Remember that? Overlooking the water?”

  “The little cottage with the view?” asked Kat. “Yes. Of course I remember it. How lovely. Do you visit it?”

  “I do. Once in a while I go back and hike the cliffs. It refreshes me.”

  Sarah laughed, amused at herself, and then turned to Scott.

  “You’d prefer something more modern, Scott?”

  He nodded.

  “Yep. Maybe.”

  “There’s a shower room through this door, just for you.”

  Sarah opened the door of what looked like a closet and revealed a modern tiled steam shower, pristine, with clear glass doors.

  “Perfect,” he said.

  “See you in about an hour,” Sarah said. “For cocktails.”

  When the door closed behind her, Scott turned to Kat.

  “It’s not going to be so bad, sweetheart. At least we’ll be comfortable.”

  “Comfortable indeed,” said Kat. She had pulled her dress out of the suitcase and was shaking it to remove the wrinkles when someone tapped on the door. Scott moved to open it.

  “Steam and press available for evening clothes,” said a young woman in a starched apron. “Please give me.”