Page 120 of Under Her Protection

She had loved her the whole time. Every time they fucked, Leo had been in love with her.

The car stopped at her door.

"Will I wait."

"No."

"Copy."

She got out.

She let herself into the staircase. She went up the two flights. She let herself into her own door. She put her keys in the small wooden bowl. She put the SIG and the rig and the spare magazine on the kitchen counter. She did not, this time, take her field jacket off. She walked into the bedroom in the field jacket and the boots and she sat down on the edge of the made bed and she put her hands on her knees, and she did not cry, and she did not stand up, and she stayed there.

23

In the four days between the Saturday on the rue Bichat and the Wednesday evening, Vivienne Strauss had a lot to do.

On Saturday night she telephoned Stefan Hartmann at his house in Königstein. Hartmann did not call the vote. He called, instead, a closed board for the Tuesday morning in Frankfurt, and he agreed to fly to Paris on the Sunday afternoon in order, as he put it in his small flat German way, to sit in a room with her and look at her face. She thanked him. She put down the receiver. She telephoned Hugo Fournier in Geneva. She telephoned the head of communications. She telephoned the head of legal. She telephoned Isabella at one ten on the Sunday morning, and Isabella said the small French word enfin into the receiver, and Vivienne told her quickly what had happened on the rue Bichat keeping it factual, and Isabella said ma chérie once, and Vivienne did not react even though she felt the love from her friend down the phone.

At three in the morning of the Sunday she let Avery walk her up the staircase to bed.

She slept for three hours.

She was at the desk in the small office at six twenty. By the close of business in Frankfurt on the Tuesday she had Hartmann. By the close of business in Hong Kong on the Wednesday she had the Asia chairman. By the open in New York on the Wednesday she had a statement out, and the statement, which had been written by the head of communications and revised by Vivienne in her own handwriting on the small writing pad she kept on the desk, said the only thing the statement could say, which was that the matters in the archive were private matters from a quarter of a century ago, that they did not bear on the operating capacity of any part of her company, and that she would address them in person at a press conference at the foundation offices on the Tuesday of the following week. She did not, in the statement, apologize. She did not apologize for being a person. She had been told, by the head of communications, by Isabella, and by the small private French part of her own brain, that this was the correct call, and she made it.

The share price moved seven point two per cent down at open on Monday. It closed at five point eight down. It opened at three down on Tuesday and closed at one point one. By the close on Wednesday it was up zero point three.

Hartmann did not call the vote.

Avery stayed with her.

Lara was in La Santé prison.

Thursday was the first time Vivienne was alone in her kitchen. She had given her staff the time off and asked Avery to stay upstairs. She was in jeans, a black cashmere jumper with the sleeves pushed up to the elbow, and bare feet on the stone floor, and she was making, with her own hands, a very small dinner.

It was risotto.

It was risotto because risotto required just a little bit of mindful time at the pan. Stirring, adding ingredients. Something she could focus on that was not work for once. She hadn’t made risotto or even cooked for herself at all in many years. But it was amazing how she remembered how. She put the wine in. She stirred. She put the stock in. She stirred. She put more stock in. She stirred.

She thought about Leo.

She thought about Leo because suddenly she had a little headspace for Leo.

Leo fucking her hard and looking in her eyes as she came. Leo holding her while she fell asleep. The way she had spoken to Leo to end things. Leo saving her life. Leo holding her hand firmly yet tenderly after she saved her.

She put the risotto on a plate.

She took the plate, and a glass of the wine, and a small linen napkin, and she carried them out through the glass doors of the kitchen onto the terrace and across the terrace and down the three stone steps to the pool.

The pool was the indoor-outdoor pool her grandmother had put in in 1971. It was under a glass roof. It was eighteen metres long, lit from the bottom in the evenings, kept at twenty-eight degrees, surrounded on three sides by the small private garden, on the fourth by the back of the house. There was, by the long side, a low stone bench her grandmother had brought from a villa on the Cap Ferrat. Vivienne sat on the bench. She put the plate on her lap. She put the glass on the stone beside her.

She ate.

The risotto was good. The wine was good.

She missed Leo.

She missed Leo in a way that made her ache deep inside. In a way she felt completely unable to admit to anyone except now perhaps herself.