Zara wanted to hear about Kate’s first set job, and she promised that after they had wrapped she would take her for lunch. It was no small thing, she said to Kate on the phone, and they needed to celebrate properly.
“We’ve been meeting with developers all morning,” Zara said when they met on Greek Street in Soho. “They’re full of shit, bless them. Promising things they don’t know if they’ll be able to deliver. I’m afraid it’s a slippery ladder you’re climbing.”
“What were they promising?”
“Money for projects, big names, that sort of thing. Fortunately”—Zara put on her sunglasses as they stepped across the road—“I’ve got just about enough influence that I don’t have to put up with too much of that these days.” She got out her phone. “Is Max coming?”
Kate hadn’t said anything to Max about lunch, and because Zara hadn’t mentioned him when they’d arranged to meet she had assumed it would be just the two of them.
“I’m not sure,” she said.
Zara was scrolling through her messages. “No, I think Max is busy. Nicole’s in Holborn today, though, so we can drag her away from her desk. And Rupert’s meeting us at the restaurant. You’ve met Rupert?”
“At Christmas,” Kate said.
As they walked north, Zara tried calling Nicole: the street narrowed, and Kate fell behind her. Zara was wearing a large cashmere scarf and impossibly white trainers. She was walking incredibly quickly, turning her shoulders as she slipped through the busy street. Kate caught up with her when she stopped outside a small Japanese restaurant.
“You like sushi, don’t you?”
“Perfect,” Kate said. Inside, they waited for Rupert and Nicole to arrive. Kate sat opposite Zara and looked down at the menu, flipping backward and forward between its crowded pages. Zara ordered a jasmine tea, so Kate did the same, even though she was hot from keeping up with Zara as they’d walked here.
“So, a fortnight?” Zara said. “That’s good for a first job. Not too full-on.”
“A fortnight,” Kate said, “and I learned such a lot. Just from watching, you know? I had no idea how many times they reshoot. I really liked watching the camera crew.”
“Good, good,” Zara nodded. She was looking at the menu as she spoke. “It’s very important to observe. So many people want to throw themselves in headfirst, take charge straightaway, and they just make a mess of it. Though, of course”—she winked at Kate—“those people are usually male.”
Kate laughed. “Really?” she said. “That doesn’t seem at all likely.”
The tea had arrived, just cool enough so she could hold it in both hands.
“It’s because they don’t have great big ovens pumping out heat,” Zara said when Kate commented that it wasn’t too hot in the restaurant. “The skill is all in the knife work rather than the cooking, you see.”
Kate was not sure if this was true, but she was grateful to Zara for engaging with her mundane comment. She couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t to do with sexual assault, or trauma, unless she started talking about Gristle again, but Zara had already called the waiter over and started ordering for everybody. Nicole and Rupert both arrived just as the food began to come to the table. Walking through the doorway they made an unlikely pair: he in his worn navy jacket, she in her high-waisted suit trousers. Rupert sat down next to Kate.
“Delicious,” he said to her. “What have we got here?”
“No idea,” she said. “Fish, of different kinds.”
Nicole pulled a plate of sashimi toward her. She couldn’t stay long, she said, dousing the tuna in sauce. Kate watched what she was doing and copied her. It wasn’t that she hadn’t had sushi before, but it was always in a little supermarket-bought box with preassigned sauce, and she usually ate it with her fingers.
“How is he, the slave driver?” Zara said to Nicole.
“Who?”
“David? Daniel? The partner you’re working for.”
“Oh.” Nicole frowned at her mother across the table. “Duncan. He’s long gone. Left about six months ago. Or I should say he was ‘asked to leave.’ ”
“He was fired?” Kate said.
“No,” Nicole said. “Definitely not fired. But his departure was negotiated, shall we say, after he got caught in the stationery cupboard with a trainee.”
Zara made a loud noise, which Kate took a moment to recognize as laughter.
“Do modern offices even have stationery cupboards? I thought it was all iPads nowadays. How very eighties of them.”
“It was quite a big deal,” Nicole said. “They nearly fired her, too.”
“But she got a promotion instead?” Zara said. She still appeared to be amused.
“No,” Nicole said. “And she definitely won’t any time soon. I’m not sure it’s entirely fair, actually. He got a pretty tidy severance package.”
“It’s an abuse of power, isn’t it?” said Rupert. Of the four of them, Kate least expected this observation to come from Rupert.
“Quite,” Zara said, her tone more serious than it had been a moment ago. Clearly, Rupert’s comment had surprised her as well.
Nicole stayed to drink the rest of her tea, and before she left she tried to give Zara a twenty-pound note from her purse. Zara brushed it away.
“My treat,” she said, squeezing Nicole’s arm. “You’ve worked hard for that.”
When it came to paying, then, Kate reached for her purse in what she knew would be only a nominal gesture: Zara refused to let either her or Rupert contribute, and Kate did not argue because she knew it would be ridiculous to insist on paying for lunch when every week Zara put more than three times the amount in her account to pay for her therapy sessions. Rupert smiled wryly.
“I would have been very impressed if she’d let you,” he said. “I’ve been trying for years to pay my own way but it’s impossible in the company of this woman.”
“That’s not even remotely true,” Zara said.
“It isn’t,” Rupert said, winking at Kate, “but you’re so easily wound up, I can never resist.”
“You should have come to lunch,” Kate said to Max when she saw him that evening, “you would have enjoyed it.”
“I think it’s nice you hang out without me,” Max said. He was drunk, but fairly steady considering he’d been out with Elias that evening. “She’s helped you, hasn’t she? And Rupert. She’s very…” He paused, unsure of the word.
“Generous?” Kate offered.
“Yeah, generous. That’s it.”
Neither of them said anything for a moment.
“Rupert was there,” Kate said. “He seemed pretty well.”
“Oh, good.”
Max slid out of his chair and opened the fridge. He stared into the bright light, not knowing what he was looking for, or looking for something that wasn’t there. He shut it and opened the cupboard, stared into that, too.
“He looks a lot like you, actually,” Kate said, smiling. “Same eyes.”
“Hopefully that’s where the comparison ends,” Max said. He had found a box of cereal in the back of the cupboard, the contents of which he poured out into a bowl. He caught Kate’s expression. “I’m joking, obviously. I love him. Uncle Ru. Cheerios?”
“No, thanks.”
“Are you sure? They taste almost exactly like cardboard.”
“I’m going to bed,” Kate said. “I have to get up early tomorrow, I’ve got another set job.”
“Look at you,” said Max through his mouthful of Cheerios. “I’m proud of you,” he shouted as she left the kitchen.
He was proud: Kate knew this. He’d told her before, would continue to tell her, how strong he thought she was, the way she kept going. But she wondered, as she brushed her teeth, looking at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, how he would feel if she had given up after that first panic attack. If, instead of stepping onto the train that would take her home, she had simply stepped off the platform. Would he be angry with her, like he was with Rupert? What Max didn’t understand was that Rupert was in fact stronger than both of them. He had to be, given the depths he had been to, given the fact that he was still standing. There was so much Max did not know: what it was like to have invisible weights around the ankles, a fog in the mind, a clamp on the chest. She looked at herself square in the mirror, as she imagined how she might have cut Max off so that he’d put down that box of childish cereal and really listen to her, really hear not just the optimism but the dark notes, too.
In the next room, she heard Max bashing around as he put the light on and kicked off his shoes: she remembered the familiar pattern from last year, when they’d lived together at university, how comforting it had been to know that he was home, sleeping just the other side of the wall. That year felt so long ago now. She spat toothpaste into the sink. It was not his fault he gravitated toward the joyful things in life. She should be grateful that he wanted her to rise to his level rather than to come down to hers. But as it was, she felt not gratitude but a deep disconnect. Kate heard the light flick off next door, which meant Max had gone to bed without brushing his teeth, which really was none of her business. She splashed water on her face and dried it, and looked at herself once more in the mirror before turning off the bathroom light.