I should have said no. Every instinct, both lives and Hanna said in chorus: don’t go. But the Ahlenbergs had power, and power is at its most dangerous when you ignore it completely. Besides, I was curious. Curiosity has done for bigger women than me.
No bus went to that part of town. Nothing public went there at all, as though the whole idea of the public ended at the first railings. I got off at the terminus and walked for a quarter of an hour along walls, behind which stood a silence of a density you can only buy with a great deal of money. The snow here was whiter than ours. Presumably it was paid to be.
The Ahlenberg estate was not a home. It was an argument against equality: white columns, black gates, a garden clipped into total obedience. A maid, no longer young, with the face of a woman who has seen everything and repeats none of it, led me through a hall where a chandelier the size of my kitchen hung from the ceiling, and into the winter garden. There, among little orange trees, at a low table set with porcelain, sat Charlotte. The tiny sandwiches on the cake stand were the kind made by people who have never eaten out of hunger. She wore a pale pink dress, and her face revealed nothing.
“Klara. Thank you for coming.”
“I had a free hour.”
Her smile lost some of its shine but held. The tea was already poured. Neither of us touched it. Charlotte looked out into the garden.
“It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?”
“Very. Especially the quiet.”
“The quiet is the most expensive thing there is here.” She turned her cup on its saucer without lifting it. “Mama says that truly rich people don’t buy things. They buy distance.”
“From what?”
“From everything that makes a noise.” Charlotte looked at me, and for a second it seemed to me that she had said more than she intended. Then the façade slid back into place. “Julian values you.”
There it was, laid carefully down between us like poisoned sugar.
“He valued what I did for him,” I said.
“Do you really believe that?”
“Yes.”
She turned towards me.
“I suppose that’s easier.”
“Easier than what?”
“Than admitting he values you. And chose me anyway.”
The winter garden grew colder. For a moment I saw her clearly: not the rich heiress, not the rival, but a girl raised from childhood to win by one method only, which was to be chosen. And now she was furious because Julian had chosen her but failed to make her feel safe. Charlotte hated me because Julian loved me. And she hated me more because he needed me in a way her beauty could not replace.
“Perhaps both are true,” I said. “Why am I here, Charlotte?”
She sat back in her chair.
“The board of the Windhagen Foundation is considering Julian for a private award. He needs a strong dossier.”
“I won’t plead for him.”
“Plead?” She raised an elegant eyebrow. “Nobody is talking about pleading. A formal statement from you about your tutoring experience would clarify the context of his earlier results.”
I laughed. She went still.
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s just remarkable. For months you’ve been letting everybody know I was a clinging little helper. And now you need me to confirm in writing that my help mattered.”
Charlotte’s fingers closed on her napkin.
“I am trying to help him.”
“No. You’re protecting an investment.”
“And what are you protecting?”
“A name. Mine.”
She leaned forward, and the porcelain gave a thin chime.
“Klara. Julian’s future is at risk.”
“Every time I handed him a piece of my future, mine was at risk. And nobody invited me to tea about it.”
A red patch was rising up her neck. For the first time in my memory Charlotte von Ahlenberg looked less than flawless.
“Do you think I don’t know that he searches for you with his eyes when he panics?” Her voice went thin. “Do you think I don’t know that he hears your voice when he writes? He reads a sentence and mutters, ‘Klara would have cut that.’ He gets stuck and whispers, ‘Klara built a ladder here.’ Do you know what it is to stand beside a man who chose you, and hear him thinking in somebody else’s voice?”
The words went deeper than I was prepared to admit. So that was where my revenge had turned out to live: not in his failure and not in her disappointment. Winning a man who cannot stand on his own is not a prize. It is captivity with a view of the garden.
“I do know,” I said quietly. “I stood beside him for years while he built a future around people who couldn’t be bothered with my name.”
Charlotte looked away. The winter garden went very quiet, with exactly the bought silence her family used to wall itself off from everything alive. I stood up.
“There will be no statement.”
“You understand that you’re leaving him without the award?”
“No. His dossier has to stand on its own.”
“He will never forgive you for this.”
I looked back from the door of the winter garden.
“He has survived hating poverty, teachers, trustees, his own father, your world and himself. He’ll survive this too.”
I walked out into the cold and only noticed in the street that my hands were shaking. The way back along those walls was exactly long enough for one unpleasant admission: Julian’s future was at risk, and to my own disgust I still cared. The difference from the first life came down to one thing: this feeling no longer had a vote.
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