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"Vivienne."

"Lara."

"Sit down."

"Lara."

"Sit down."

She sat down.

She sat down on the small grey armchair opposite the sofa. The wool of the camel coat folded under her. Her hands stayed in the pockets of the coat. Her hands, in the pockets, were shaking visibly enough that, if she took them out, the shaking would be visible to the man in the doorway with his hand inside his jacket, and she would not give him that, and so they stayed in.

"Good."

"Lara."

"I am going to tell you what you have done to me. You are going to listen. We will, after that, have a conversation about what comes next. The midnight publication is conditional on the conversation."

"Conditional."

"Yes."

"On what."

"On what I decide tonight."

"What you decide."

"What I decide."

A beat.

Vivienne, in the chair, in the camel coat, with the nausea and the cold hands and the man at the bedroom door with his right hand inside his jacket, looked at the woman she had been in love with all those years ago and who had spent twenty-five years becoming the woman who had, this evening, brought her here. Vivienne knew that she had, in her life, made very few clean errors of judgement. Until today, that was.

She had told no one she was coming.

She had used her own friends as a screen to get out of a building.

She had walked away from her bodyguard.

She had done this.

She had done this herself.

The nausea came up again. This time it crested. She turned her face by a half-degree to the side and she swallowed it and she put her right hand inside the pocket of her own coat against the wool of her own thigh and she pressed, hard, and she swallowed again, and the nausea went down, and her knees did not stop holding, and her face did not move.

"Lara."

"Yes."

"I would like a glass of water."

Lara looked at her.

She looked at her for a long, slow count.

"Maxime."