Chapter 6: Patricia
Patricia Hale lived in a terraced house in Chiswick with a bay window full of plants and a doorbell that played two notes instead of one.
I had been to her home exactly once before, for a birthday lunch in Julian's first year, when she had quietly refilled my water glass three times and asked me, with genuine interest, what my work actually involved.
She opened the door before I reached the step.
"I wondered when you'd come," she said.
She made coffee without asking whether I wanted it, and we sat at her kitchen table, which was covered in a yellow cloth and had a small ceramic jug of dried flowers at the center.
"How much do you know?" I asked.
"More than Julian thinks and less than Diane believes." She wrapped both hands around her mug.
"I know that Diane has never liked you.
I know that's got nothing to do with you personally and everything to do with the fact that you don't need anything from her.
Women like Diane — they need to be needed.
You walked in self-sufficient and she never forgave you for it."
"Did she say things to Julian?
About me?"
Patricia looked at her coffee.
"Yes."
"What kind of things?"
"That you were secretive.
That you kept your finances separate because you were planning to leave.
That your career mattered more to you than the marriage." She paused.
"That you'd once told a friend — she claimed — that you'd only married him because your visa situation was complicated."
I sat very still.
"That's not true."
"I know it's not."
"Did Julian believe it?"
Patricia looked up.
"He wanted not to.
But she said it more than once, over more than two years, and she said it in the small ways that are hardest to argue with.
Not accusations.
Just — observations.
Concerns.
Dropped into conversation and left there."
I thought about the moments Julian had pulled back from me without explanation.
The times he had asked, too carefully, whether I was happy.
Whether I felt settled.
Whether England still felt like home.
I had answered honestly every time.
I had not understood the question underneath.
"She was building a case," I said.
"Yes."
"Against me.
Before I'd done anything."
"She was protecting her position.
If Julian ever chose you fully — chose your life over hers — she lost her hold on him.
She couldn't allow that."
I looked at the dried flowers in the jug.
Someone had arranged them carefully.
Lavender, mostly.
"Patricia," I said.
"My attorney needs a witness statement.
About the dinner.
The forty-thousand conversation.
What you heard before you left."
Patricia nodded slowly.
"I know."
"You don't have to.
She's your family."
"Julian is my family," she said.
"Diane has always been a force I've managed around." She set her mug down.
"I'll give the statement.
But I want you to know something first."
"Okay."
"Julian called me this morning.
He was — not well.
He's been told things about you for so long that the truth is landing very hard.
He's not a bad man, Claire.
He's a weak one.
There's a difference."
I didn't answer immediately.
"I know," I said finally.
"Does it change anything?"
The question sat between us like something fragile.
"It changes how I feel about him," I said.
"It doesn't change what I'm doing."
Patricia nodded.
She understood the difference.
She picked up her phone and called Serena's office directly, while I sat at the yellow table and listened to her give her name, her relationship to the parties, and the date of the dinner.
When she hung up, she looked at me.
"There's one more thing," she said.
"Diane called me last night.
She asked me to stay out of it."
"What did you tell her?"
"I told her I'd think about it."
May you like
She refilled my coffee without asking.
"I thought about it," she said.
