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“Reeva,” said Lee, jerking his head toward her. “I don’t know why you’re not going up for partnership too. You could have fought it out between you.”
She shrugged. “I just want to focus on the cases I care about. Being partner takes me further away from the stuff I love.”
“All right, Pollyanna,” he said. “There’s champagne—well, prosecco—downstairs. May as well celebrate your win.”
“Nice move,” said Lakshmi, nodding approvingly. “I hope you’ve ordered enough for when I get made partner.”
Lee scoffed and muttered something to himself about “women” and “the death of me” as he walked out of the office.
“That man,” said Lakshmi. “I swear, if he makes Maria partner over me, I’ll fuckingkillhim.”
“As if he’d dare.”
Lakshmi hesitated. “You know, I just, uh... I hope you’re not not going for the partnership because of me. I’d be fine with it. The competition, I mean. And if you were made partner over me, I’d be genuinely happy for you.” She paused. “Well, eventually.”
Reeva smiled. “I know. But I promise, it’s not about you. I just don’t want it. I’d rather go sideways than straight up the career ladder, you know? Build up a rep on the cases I want, and then maybe go out on my own one day.”
“Which you would beincredibleat, though you know you’d also have to take on the cases you don’t like. Where you rep the bad guys. And don’t just palm them off onto me.”
“Hey, I’ve represented my fair share of dickheads.”
Lakshmi sighed. “True that. Well, at least our resident dickhead got us some prosecco. Coming?”
“I’ll meet you there,” said Reeva. “I just want to finish up the paperwork.”
“Only you celebrate a win by doing paperwork. Remind me why we’re friends again?”
“BecauseI celebrate a win by doing paperwork. See you down there!”
—
When Lakshmi hadgone, Reeva pulled down the blinds of her office door and rushed over to the mirror. The paperwork was a lie; she needed to see if things had gotten worse. Lakshmi knew everything—what was the point of a best friend who didn’t?—but Reeva couldn’t bear the pity that appeared in her eyes whenever they spoke about it. She needed to do this alone.
She took a deep breath and looked straight at the woman in front of her, in her ecru silk blouse, wide-legged charcoal trousers, and pointed heels. Her wavy hair, dyed in various shades of browns, was cut above her shoulders, gently framing her slightly too-angular face. It was, as reflections went, a pretty good one. But Reeva was too focused on her task to notice.
Slowly, she used her little finger to push a large chunk of herhair over from the left to the right side of her head. It revealed a perfectly round bald patch. Reeva felt the sickening lurch in her stomach that hit her every time she looked at her bare scalp (at least twenty times a day) in the hope that it had shrunk. But it hadn’t. Instead, it was now so large that with the LED office lights shining straight onto it, it looked like a round lightbulb poking out the side of her head. Trying not to cry—or think about the fact that she now resembled a human lamp—Reeva reached for her ruler.
Just then her phone rang with a FaceTime call. Reeva looked down at the screen and frowned. Her mum. The last time they’d spoken, she’d forced Reeva to sit through a guided video tour of her villa on a private island in the Seychelles “right where George proposed to Amal!” It had lasted thirty-seven minutes. Reeva’s finger hovered over the reject button. She had too much going on in her life to deal with her mum right now. But at the last second, her finger slid over to “Accept.” She sighed in resignation; no matter how much she tried, Reeva was incapable of taking her younger sisters’ lead and rejecting their mother’s calls.
She quickly pushed her hair back to cover the patch as she held up the phone in front of her. The last thing she needed was for her mum to notice that she was going bald.
“Darling?” Her mum’s perfectly made-up face slowly appeared, pixel by pixel, on her phone screen. “Can you hear me?”
Reeva nodded. “Yep. Is everything okay?”
There was a dramatic silence before Saraswati replied with a pregnant monosyllable: “No.”
Reeva waited expectantly for the ensuing monologue on the latest crisis—last time, a Bollywood actor had dared to (accurately) suggest that Saraswati was in her sixties—but the sound cut out and the screen froze. She sighed, placing the phone downon a shelf so she could see her mum, but her mum couldn’t see her. Then she picked up the ruler. It was time.
“Reeva, where are you?” The pixels slowly rearranged themselves back into her mum’s familiar Botoxed face.
“I’m here, Mum,” she called out, looking at the ruler with trepidation. “Shall we just talk later? I’m quite busy and your connection isn’t great.”
“Oh, the bloody Taj,” muttered her mum. “I don’t know why they can’t fix their Wi-Fi.” As Saraswati began ranting about the five-star hotel’s poor facilities, Reeva focused on her task. She quickly flicked her hair back and reached up to measure the diameter of the patch. She gasped out loud—6.5 centimeters. It was growing.
“I know,” said Saraswati. “It’s shocking. Anyway, I suppose I should tell you why I’m calling.”
Reeva rummaged around her bag for her makeup. She had a date that evening—her twentieth with Nick, not that she was counting—and she wanted to look perfect. “Please do.”
