Harm's Way (22 page)

‘You're not here today, are you? You're somewhere else.'

It was Isabelle, peering down at me from a billowing ethnic dress the colour of seaweed, the sleeves hemmed with tiny circular mirrors.

‘I'm not, no, sorry.'

I was pleased to see her. In those amorphous clothes that hid everything that was feminine about her, she suddenly appeared to me as a delightfully uncomplicated being. It occurred to me that out of everyone I knew she was the only person I could be honest with – because she didn't matter.

‘How much longer do we have? I can't see the clock from here.'

‘Three quarters of an hour.' ‘Are you busy later?'

Of course she wasn't. Anyone could see that by the desperate glint in her eye.

‘No.' She smiled hopefully. ‘Why?'

‘I thought we might go for a coffee. Or even a real drink?'

She was crouching now, too close, visibly excited by my invitation, probably hoping that Stephen would join us later. People looking straight at me, fixedly like that, has always enervated me. It gives me a sudden wish to escape, breeds a furious impulse to do something with my hands, shuffle my
feet, anything to avoid that immovable glare. I later realised that only the guilty feel that way.

‘Is something wrong?'

Maybe by telling her the whole story, I might be able to cleanse myself of the doubts cluttering my conscience.

‘Yes. And I really need to talk to someone. If you don't mind, that is …'

I watched as the corners of her mouth trickled into a smile.

‘I'd love to help out, if I can,' she said, adding smugly, ‘I knew something was bothering you.'

Against the maroon and gold backdrop of our favourite local brasserie, La Frégate, Isabelle looked more alive than she did in the museum. Her pre-Raphaelite features worked in harmony with the organic curls of the wooden banisters and snowdrop lights. And then she smiled and I should have paid more attention to the insecurities implicit in that smile. Still, I had held in my story for too long. Without lifting my eyes I told her everything.

‘So,' she said slowly, after a silence so complete that I could hear the man behind me stirring his coffee. ‘So, if I've got this right, you think that Beth running off might have something to do with you.'

I nodded, still staring at the lacy froth eddying in my cup, surprised at how easy it was to reduce everything to one simple sentence. But looking up I saw only a kind of pragmatism – no signs of judgement – in her face.

‘Listen Anna. I don't know Beth very well, so I can't pretend to know how her mind works, but it seems to me pretty obvious that she has just decided to take a bit of time out. You probably haven't even crossed her mind, given
everything else that's going on. I bet she'll ring Stephen,' here Isabelle suppressed a smile, ‘at some point over the next few days, because she's known him all her life and he's, well, closer to her age. And remember: she may see you as being far too young to understand any of this.'

I stopped in mid-nod.

‘I think you've missed the point, Isabelle. I don't blame you for not understanding; it's hard to explain. Beth is the closest friend I've ever had, and I'd like to think she could tell me anything.'

‘She'd probably like to think the same.'

The disingenuous eyes were wide, but the tone had been unmistakable, and she began to backtrack.

‘Well, haven't you ever felt that way? When you've been going mad with worry about something that even those closest to you can't really help you with? Sometimes it's easier to just go off and deal with it on your own.'

I shook my head.

‘Beth isn't like that. I mean yes, she'd hate to think of us worrying about her. She puts others first, always – I'm constantly having to tell her off for it – but we could all see what she was going through. I was even the one telling her to go and see her father so as to put her mind at rest.'

Isabelle shrugged.

‘Perhaps she thinks it'll be obvious to you guys that she's gone to see him then. But Anna, I don't think you can ignore the possibility …' She stopped short, looking up hesitantly at me.

‘That?'

‘Well, you know: that she's found out that you … well, that you have betrayed her.'

I knew then that Isabelle was enjoying herself. Why did the French always have to be so melodramatic? Even their modern vocabulary seemed to be borrowed from the tragedies of Racine. My behaviour may not have been impeccable, but ‘betrayed'?

‘Oh, come on, Isabelle. That's a pretty strong word for something which is, basically …' I shifted uncomfortably on my chair, suddenly thirsty for something cold, astringent, alcoholic. ‘… well, unimportant. And anyway, she'll never know,' I added with conviction.

‘So why are you bothering if this thing with Christian is not important? Is it really worth risking everything for some guy you don't feel anything for?'

This was why I quietly got on with things, satisfying my own desires without subjecting them to someone else's approbation, without having them thrown back at me in layman's terms.

‘I never said that I didn't feel anything.'

I told myself that it was like talking to a child, that she didn't understand. How could I ever have thought that she would? And the past few days, the way Christian had struggled to maintain his composure while being quizzed by the inspector, the beauty spot on his right haunch, his hand on the steering wheel, assailed me, and I wondered whether one thing explained everything and exonerated me.

‘I think I might be in love with him.'

She gave a smile, newly sympathetic and sodden with sentimentality, while a tiny flame of interest was rekindled in her eyes.

‘Anna … I must admit I'm quite surprised. I never really thought of you as the kind of girl who “falls in love”.' She
paused, searching my face carefully for signs of it. ‘But well, if it is love, then that is a whole different thing.'

I had acquitted myself well, not just in her eyes but mine too, and the evening continued in a blaze of mutual confidences. When it came to discussing Stephen, I was taken aback by her honesty – and her ardour. She thought of him continually, she told me, and yet their conversations had never strayed away from the basic courtesies of two people thrown together through circumstance.

‘I wish you could have fallen for someone a little easier,' I'd eventually managed, pitying Isabelle her pointless crush. ‘But then I suppose none of us can really choose, can we?'

Fending off her cloying embrace on a street corner, I told her, ‘Thank you for being such a good friend.'

‘Always, Anna. Don't forget that: I am always here.'

As I walked off it occurred to me that I had no idea where she lived, how far she would have to walk, or whether she would get home safely.

The hallway was pitch black when I pushed open the front door of my building, and, tapping the walls, reached into the obscurity for the light switch. Had I been right to confide in Isabelle? A sense of unease crept over me as I wondered whether she was well-balanced enough to deal with the information in the right way. I wasn't sure I wanted to pursue the discussion we had had that night, and suspected Isabelle might attempt to use it, revive it periodically, in a bid to intensify our friendship.

Suddenly I was in darkness. The timer had run out, and I had three more floors to go. Street lights reflected in a skylight above were enough to guide me, but as I started
on the final flight, I stubbed my toe loudly on the banister. The clink of a key above made my heart quicken. There were only two flats on my floor: mine and Monsieur Abitbol's. Anxious to avoid a midnight encounter, taking two steps at a time, I reached the landing with a sense of relief, and began to rummage around in my bag for the keys.

I felt his presence in the darkness before the creaking floorboards confirmed it, and my fingers were no closer to touching the metal I so desperately needed. My keys fell from the chaos of my handbag and as I bent down to pick them up I heard a voice from behind.

‘So! The little slut comes back in the middle of the night, does she?'

‘Go away,' I said deliberately, marvelling at the calmness of my voice. ‘Or I'll call the police.'

‘What's that you say? The police? Yes, why don't you do that, you slut? And I'll tell them all about what you've been up to. I'll tell them about the banging in the middle of the night, I'll tell them about the men, I'll tell them that you're charging.'

I lunged forward and swiftly inserted the key into my door. He was still babbling incoherently behind me, plucking at my clothing, but I was saved. Slamming the door behind me I collapsed against it, only to spring away a moment later when the smack of a flat palm resonated through the wood at the height of my head.

‘Slut!'

Safe but scared, I automatically dialled Christian's number.

‘I'll be right over. Don't move an inch. Don't even talk to him through the door. Don't do anything. Just sit tight.'

Despite the drama, I felt a smile of satisfaction break out across my face.

Disinclined to watch his arrival from my balcony, lest Monsieur Abitbol should climb out on to his, I waited, pacing to and fro the length of my tiny flat, until I heard the squeak of a trainer on the stairs.

‘Anna, it's me: let me in.'

I opened the door, assuming a suitably vulnerable expression, and disguised my amusement as Christian strode across the short length of the flat, securing the catch on the window, before taking me in his arms and kissing me.

‘I was so scared,' I mumbled into his neck. And I had been, quite.

‘Its all right, it's all going to be all right. I want you to pack a bag, and come back now with me. The car's outside. I'm not having you stay here a minute longer. Tomorrow we'll call the landlady and get her to give you your deposit back.'

I began to put some things into an overnight bag.

‘It's bloody outrageous,' he continued. ‘Letting a young girl move into a place next to a complete nutter. And don't try to tell me that she doesn't know about him. You told me yourself that the whole neighbourhood knows.'

I remonstrated weakly, for the sheer pleasure of doing so, and was grateful to Christian for not worsening the situation by attempting to confront Monsieur Abitbol that night.

It was past one when we reached his flat in the sterile streets of the sixteenth arrondissement. The buildings rose higher there, as though fertilised by the riches within, but curved in at the tops, where they diminished into
chambres de bonnes.
These tiny garrets with sloping roofs that were built in the sixteenth century to house the servants had since become trendy with the art and fashion world, but for all their gritty
stylishness, many of them were scarcely habitable. Christian, however, had the largest of four.

‘Walk in front of me,' he had insisted as we climbed the narrowest flight of stairs I had ever seen.

‘Why?'

‘Because then if you fall, I can catch you.'

The stairwell led to a dark, damp-smelling corridor, lined with doors so close together it was impossible to believe that they each opened into an individual living space. We stopped at the last door, and Christian let me in to a room containing only a futon, a chest of drawers with a television on top, and a chair buried beneath armfuls of clothes.

‘Shall I show you the kitchen?' he asked, laughing at my astonished expression. Heads bowed, we walked into another room, a quarter of the size of the bedroom. Dirty crockery lay piled up on a windowsill, the sink being too small to accommodate it. I moved aside a turret of cups to look out over Paris, but instead of rooftops, there were only the affluent rooms of the building opposite. Because of the lateness of the hour, most were obscured by impeccably white shutters, but a single double window was lit, exposing a sitting room with walls and cushions the colour of money. There was nobody there – the owner having no doubt forgotten to turn the lights out before going to bed – but it struck me that the room would have seemed just as empty when filled with people.

He called me ‘
mon amour
' that night, ‘
ma chérie
', ‘
ma puce
' and ‘
mon ange
' and I felt the shackles of my unformed, selfish spirit loosen under so much tenderness. Perhaps love was something which, like drowning, after one last rebellious
buck, you let yourself slip into. But when I awoke next morning to the sight of Christian's downy brown neck, Beth was still the first thing I thought about.

‘We should call Stephen, shouldn't we? And find out if he's had any news?'

Christian moved his body, perfectly curved into the warm groove of my lower stomach, in order to turn and face me. Smeared with sleep, he nodded slowly.

‘Shall I do it now? And then you can call on your way to work?'

He wandered through to the kitchen and I heard the puff of gas flower as he lit the stove.

‘Really? And how does she know that? Right. Well, that's good news, I suppose. And have the police been in touch?'

Snatches of conversation reached me and I craned my neck to listen.

‘Well, I think we should have faith in them, even if that Verbier guy was a Neanderthal … All right. Speak later.'

Wrapped in a towel he brought two bowls of coffee to bed and I propped myself up against the wall.

‘Stephen's spoken to Beth's aunt again. She reckons that Beth has been in touch with her dad – thinks she may have stopped off with a friend en route to Dublin. Stephen's called Ruth though, and she hasn't heard from her.'

It was day three now, but it wasn't beyond the realms of possibility to imagine that Beth would have wanted to break up the long, lonely journey in some way.

‘Christian, I know we've spoken about this and decided … But you don't think …? No, how could she?'