Sussex Drive: A Novel by Linda Svendsen Page A

about to call Greg back and leave a caustic version of her original message when somebody appeared at the pool entrance. Silhouetted and in uniform, he wasn’t anyone she recognized from the 24 Sussex staff. She had the insane feeling that she was in danger. She eyed a kayak paddle glistening on the deck six feet away. The boys hadn’t put it away again. Here was the sting: an official residence full of inebriatedguests singing an ABBA hit with the Governor General and here she was, far from the literally madding crowd, by a roiling hot tub haunted by the ghosts of prime ministers’ families past, with unnurtured children, and the lonely, loyal, preoccupied wives. Security was anywhere but upon her. Oh, for the
cojones
of Madame Chrétien.
    Then she realized from the man’s gait, as he walked toward her, that it was Corporal Shymanski.
    “Madame Leggatt.”
    “Corporal Shymanski. What are you doing here? How did you get in?”
    “The door—it was unlocked.”
    Becky stared at him, supremely ill at ease. “It locks automatically.”
    “Martha gave me the code.”
    She was supposed to have the indelible upper hand, the authority of her husband’s office as chief executive of the dominion, but she didn’t. She felt violated, even threatened. “I need to get back,” she said. “My guests.”
    “I am wondering how Martha is.”
    “She’s sick.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that.”
    “She’s probably got a virus. We all have to keep washing our hands. Take one of my party favours when you leave.” Becky got to her feet then, and moved past the paddleboards and mini-kayak. “I’ve packed little pocket-size dispensers. Rosemary and lavender. So soothing.”
    Corporal Shymanski stepped in front of her.
    Becky made herself taller, using some of the Mountain pose techniques—pushing the balls of her feet, in her high heels, against the tiles, pressing on the inside of her thighs, pretending there was a string, make that steel wire, lifting the crown of her head to the low ceiling.
    “It was you who transferred me to Her Excellency.”
    Becky’s voice was measured, calm. “You should not be addressing me. This is inappropriate.”
    “It’s important.”
    “You’re out of line, sir.”
    “We both care about her.”
    “Her Excellency?”
    “Martha.”
    “Corporal, the conversation is over and you’re out of here.”
    “Elle est enceinte.”
    Becky heard,
Elle est
a saint.
    “She’s pregnant.”
    Becky couldn’t breathe. This couldn’t possibly be happening. Yet, like the illustrations in the Christian pop-up books she still read to Pablo, events of the past weeks sprang from the page like a giant Noah’s Ark, or Burning Bush, so to speak: her knowledge of their relationship, Martha throwing up, the secrecy, her questions about Becky’s love life—all loomed, leered, waggled their collective misery at her, sticking out of the flat, uniform, linear, orderly and distinguished progress of her constructed life.
    “That’s a lie,” Becky said.
    It was hard not to recollect Corporal Shymanski’s recordin Kandahar at the Provincial Reconstruction Team and his heroic work with Lieutenant-Colonel Aisha K. She didn’t know much about him, but in a way she didn’t have to: they kept him close in Ottawa and that told her just about everything she needed to know. He was a boyish young man, desperate to reconnect with normalcy, and he had targeted her very young, serious, just-about-married-to-Jesus daughter. They’d been together or in close proximity all the hot summer. She had to tell Greg what had gone down; she could not possibly tell Greg.
    “That is why the doctor is coming back tomorrow,” Shymanski said. “Tonight, Martha’s thinking about what to do. She needs your support. We need it.”
    “You were supposed to take care of her, not pass on Stockholm Syndrome.”
    “She is eighteen, Madame Leggatt.”
    “Don’t tell me my own daughter’s age.” Becky pushed him. “You don’t know what