Chapter 12: Number Four

Jorie stood in the kitchen with rain dripping off her coat and held out the sheet.

I took it.

It was a single page, printed on heavy white paper, headed STUDIO B EFFICIENCY SCHEDULE in plain black capitals.

Under the heading ran twenty-two names in a column, with job titles and a date beside each.

Notice: October 23. Separation: November 30.

At the bottom was a signature in blue ink, broad and slanting, that I had watched write my name on a marriage certificate.

Ewan Sutherland, September 21.

"Read nine," Jorie said.

Number nine was Jorie Pascoe, drafter.

My eyes slid up the column against my will, and stopped at number four.

Briony Falk, junior architect.

Someone had drawn a line through it in black ink.

Beside the line, in a smaller, neater hand, were three characters.

9/25.

"That's the day after the platform," I said.

I hadn't known I'd say it out loud.

"Briony."

He was standing at the bottom of the stairs.

He had pulled on trousers and nothing else, his chest bare, his hair flattened on one side from the pillow.

He looked at the paper in my hand, and at Jorie, and I watched every bit of color leave his face.

"I was going to tell you at six," he said.

"It's six-oh-four."

"I know."

"Tell me now."

He crossed the kitchen and stopped three feet from me.

He didn't touch me.

He had, I noticed, put his hands behind his back.

"On September twenty-first my co-investor and I signed a restructuring of Studio B," he said.

"Twenty-two positions. The consultants said the studio could do the same work with fewer people.

"The names came up through the studio leads' memo.

"I read the totals.

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