Page 112 of Under Her Protection

"Come in."

Vivienne came in.

It was three rooms. A kitchen-sitting-room ahead, a bedroom beyond that with the door open, the room beyond it dark, a small bathroom on the right. There was a bottle of red wine on the low table. Two glasses. A white cloth folded under the bottle. There was a vase with three white winter-cut roses. There was no laptop. There was no phone visible. There was, Vivienne registered, an electric heater under the window, and the window faced the canal.

She did not take the camel coat off.

"You came alone."

"As you asked."

"Mm."

"Lara."

"Sit down."

"I will stand thank you.”

Lara sat. She sat on the small grey sofa with one leg crossed over the other elegantly. Vivienne remembered her effortless grace. Lara looked at her and Vivienne remembered her beautiful blue eyes. They looked colder than they used to. She looked older.

"You have not changed,” Lara said.

"You have,” Vivienne replied as she noted the change in Lara’s eyes.

"What do you want, Lara?” Vivienne asked. She had to know. All these games Lara was playing had to stop.

Lara, on the sofa, did not move her face.

She poured the wine. She poured both glasses. She held one out across the low table. Vivienne did not take it. Lara put it back on the cloth.

"I want," Lara said, "you to look me in the face and tell me why."

"Why?”

"Why you cut me off in the spring of ninety-nine. I have, in the last six weeks, gone to a great deal of trouble to give you a context in which the answer cannot be the answer you have given everyone else for twenty-five years, which I imagine has been the absence of an answer. You will give me one tonight. And then I will, having had the answer, decide what we do."

"What we do."

"Yes."

"Lara, I am fifty-two. You are fifty. I am the chief executive of a company you are trying to break. We are not doing anything."

"You came to me when I called you. You obeyed my orders.”

"I came."

"You made a choice.”

"I came because if I had not come you would have published the Zurich photograph by Monday and the company is a hundred and seventy thousand jobs and I am going to do what I can to keep these people in jobs. That is why I came. Do not mistake it for anything else."

"Mm." Lara raised a perfect eyebrow.

"Tell me what you want."

"I told you."

"Then I will give you the answer, and I will leave."