LIttle Girl Lost
Christine is pale and icy-blonde, so thin she looks as though she could break. She's like bone china, a doll from my childhood, the sort that chips easily if it knocks against something and shatters into a million pieces if dropped. As much as I want to suspect her, hate her, scream at her that she's the reason my best friend is probably dead, I can't. I want it to be her fault that Danny and I never talk, that Harry's in hospital. But I don't know how my world got this way and Christine is here in the flat, sitting on my couch, looking back at me with doe-eyed innocence. She expects me to trust her and I don't know if I can. She shouldn't even still be in this country. She should have been recalled home by now, after that fiasco.
Instead she's here, sitting on my couch, clutching a mug of tea in both hands as though she's cold. London, she tells me, isn't the sort of place the CIA can go into with all guns blazing. Nice to know they've noticed. Instead they have to act with a degree of decorum and at least the appearance of actual co-operation. Christine, apparently, plays well with others. And there hasn't yet been time to train her replacement.
Christine will be recalled and replaced. She suspects she has only a few weeks left here, and she doesn't know what will happen once she's sent home. She bites her lip, little girl lost, all fear and vulnerability and long blonde hair. I didn't know she could look vulnerable.
We've never talked much, Zoe and I. A couple of phone conversations between our offices, polite phrases when work throws us together. I'm not even sure why I came here tonight. I shouldn't be anywhere near anyone in MI-5, but it's not as though I have a career left to worry about. We've certainly never been the sort of friends to end up sitting on each other's couches drinking tea, or the white wine that Zoe is getting from the refrigerator.
It's not easy to make conversation, but we're both trying. She shares this flat with Danny, I know that much. It turns out he's not home that much anymore. He has a romance going with a colleague of theirs. I've never heard anything more than rumours about Zoe's personal life, and I can't help wondering whether she's jealous.
Anyone with an inch of observational skill can see that Zoe is lonely. She's tired as well. I know the look of someone who has cried regularly -- I've seen that face too much in the mirror these last few days. That same redness and puffy skin is visible on Zoe's face. Her eyes dart around the flat and she never quite ceases fidgeting.
She's uncomfortable having me here, and yet she's refilling my wine glass. It's not as though I have anything to go home to.
Danny and I are the last two standing, but we're barely in the same room at the same time anymore. Ruth cries without warning, and I try to avoid her. The last time I had an actual conversation was with Mariella, before she died. Too many people die in this job. If I was insecure, these last few months would have made me think that people keep leaving me, through death or of their own volition. Tessa's been in Majorca for a while now.
Even this stilted, awkward conversation with a woman I barely know and certainly don't trust is an improvement. She's not one of us, and if Tom didn't lose his mind, then someone had to have set him up. She keeps telling us that she loves our country -- she's telling me this even now. It doesn't ring true, not those words, not from her. You can't be CIA and love someone else's country. Words like 'treason' have a tendency to be used, and those aren't nice words to hear.
You can't be Intelligence and love someone in another country's service, either. That's where Tom went wrong, set up or insanity notwithstanding. It's not easy to be told you have to stop loving someone. Tom is more human than Harry, I saw the way it broke him. I wouldn't have minded so much if I'd thought she truly loved him back. As she talks, now, it's clear she misses him. There's longing behind every word, and maybe she really did love him. If she really knew nothing, then she's lost the person she loved. Maybe she knows he's alive, but he's out of reach, somewhere she can never follow.
We talk about psycho-Vicki instead of directly about Tom. It's easier for both of us, and we enjoy tearing apart the reputation of a woman whom we both equally detest. She tells me what happened during her President's visit, and I can't help feeling a curl of guilty pleasure when she tells me about the search. I'm thankful I was never a rival of hers. That would be a dangerous game.
She's searching me and my motives. It seems harmless enough, but that's her skill. Running an interrogation while still seeming to care deeply about the person under the bright light. The sweet, caring little English Rose, desperately lonely after the loss of her best friend less than a month after her former lover fled the country.
She'd be surprised how much I know. Some of it came from Tom -- dear boy, the service should have trained him to be careful about pillow talk. And then there's just the regular gossip, the same way Harry and my superiors got to know about Tom and I. The intelligence community is small, and we're all trained to keep our eyes open.
Poor Zoe, coping with so much betrayal all at once. Yet she holds herself in. She doesn't want me to see how much she's hurting -- she's forgotten who she's talking to. This much wine will go a little way, though. And there are always other ways to dull the pain.
I've been here before, and yet here I am again. I've seen the magic she weaves, the results of what she's done and yet I'm jumping in feet first. It seems like the thing to do: at this moment in time, the right thing to do is to lean across the space between us and kiss her.
It won't be enough, because it never is. Because the need grabs hold and desire coils up inside and it's been too long. We both need this; we must, or we wouldn't both be so terribly desperate for each other. We know what we're getting into, and although we both know we shouldn't -- we tell each other that we shouldn't -- neither of us is going to stop. I don't care if Danny comes home to find us here. She understands me, and I understand her, and tonight we're all each other has. It's about comfort and empathy and feeling alive and needed. That's all. No politics. No strings. No mental breakdowns, no commitment. And no one in a farmhouse with a gun.