Harm's Way (23 page)

‘Know about us? No. There's no way she knows, Anna. This is not about us. Her father's dying and she wants to be
with him. It's as simple as that. And grief makes you behave in strange ways. I think she's concentrating solely on him and has forgotten about us for the time being. I don't really blame her, to be honest.'

It irritated me that Christian, usually either silent or basic in his powers of expression, became so eloquent when speaking of Beth.

I rang Stephen myself on my way to the museum and was as reassured as Christian by his tone. He was on his way to work, and despite the fact that none of us had yet been able to get hold of Beth, things seemed to be returning to normal. I was fully expecting her, in a few days' time, to call and explain in that mellifluous voice which made everything all right that she had needed this time to herself, and would stay in Ireland long enough to ascertain what the real state of her father's health was. By the time she returned, having given me the time to feel sufficiently satiated by Christian, her liaison with him would conveniently have petered out, but our friendship would be stronger than ever. As I walked through the doors of the museum that day, I felt happier than I had done in a long time.

My landlady had been predictably hard work.

‘Well, I'm sorry you've had trouble with Monsieur Abitbol,' she had said in a deferential voice. ‘Of course I realise that he can be a little odd, but he's always been perfectly civil to me. He doesn't like loud music. Have you been playing loud music?'

‘No, I haven't,' I stopped myself from shouting down the receiver. ‘I've not done anything wrong. And can I remind
you that he nearly assaulted me last night? On my own doorstep? You're damn lucky I didn't go to the police because you'd have a job renting that place out again if I did. And I won't, but only if you give me back my deposit. He's your problem, not mine.'

We settled on a reimbursement of three quarters of a month's rent, ‘because you really have left me
dans la merde
,' and I rang my father to inform him that I would be staying with a friend until I found something more suitable.

‘Are you sure you shouldn't report it, my darling? That's terribly sweet of Beth to put you up.'

I had been forced to lie, not wanting to have to explain something I didn't fully comprehend myself.

That night Christian escorted me back to my flat for the last time, where we collected the remainder of my belongings. They amounted only to a few boxes, and the sight of the derisory pile by the front door, and the drooping plant I had once so cherished but which I would have to leave on the balcony, tweaked my heart. Perhaps I somehow knew that this was the moment that everything would change, that my emotional stumble, gaining gradually in momentum, would precipitate a fall.

Neither Christian nor I felt like cooking, so we collected a selection of savoury ready-prepared dishes destined for the very rich from the delicatessen beneath his flat. Lying on his bed afterwards amongst the wrappings, I felt perfectly content. I was at peace with the idea of Beth's temporary absence now, and felt pleasantly debauched in this flat where the walls were so thin that you could hear the Algerian man living opposite extemporising into his mobile phone.

‘I love it here,' I told Christian, as he stood with his back to me scraping the remaining grains of couscous into the bin.

He turned with a look of surprise. ‘Do you? You're easily pleased. If things were different, I'd get another place, but for the moment, well, it has to do.'

I hated seeing him look so serious. Choosing a sweet Turkish pastry from a box on the floor, I raised myself up on my knees and carried it slowly to his mouth, watching as an amber tear of honey fell idly on to his shirt.

‘Anna,' he scolded smilingly, wiping his chin. ‘It's all a game to you, isn't it?'

I was up in an instant, wrapping my arms around his waist, breathing in the scent of sweat and stale aftershave imbued in his collar. He pushed his mouth hard against mine, refusing to let me open it with my tongue, until I could no longer breathe.

‘So how come you're staying with Isabelle?' asked Stephen, as I hung my coat up in his hallway. ‘I didn't think you two were that close.'

Unprepared for the question, I feigned surprise.

‘I think Isabelle's great, I always have. She's very kindly letting me stay in her spare room for a few weeks until I find another flat, and it's all working out fine.'

‘What I don't get is why you'd rather stay there than here. I could really do with the company at the moment. You could have stayed in Beth's room until she gets back.'

Caught in the knot of my own lies, and excited at spending every night with Christian, Stephen's logic hadn't even occurred to me.

‘Oh, Stephen.' It was perfectly obvious that I should be staying there. Of course I should. I had to think fast now. ‘To be completely honest,' I began hesitantly, as though forcing myself to pronounce a difficult truth, ‘the idea of staying here … in Beth's bedroom …'

He looked baffled.

‘I mean she'll be coming back soon, won't she? So it just doesn't seem right.'

But he needed more.

‘It felt odd, that night I spent here in her bed, sort of wrong, if that makes sense.'

A glimmer of something akin to understanding had appeared in his eyes, and I knew that I was on to something.

‘Fair enough. So where is it?'

‘Where's what?'

‘Isabelle's flat?'

‘In the sixteenth,' I replied without thinking.

‘Really? Crikey, I thought the museum didn't pay very much.'

I waited for the mental connection to be established.

‘Doesn't Christian live in the sixteenth? In Auteuil somewhere? According to Beth, his place is absolutely tiny. I think she only went there once. Are you anywhere near him?'

‘I don't think so, it's a fairly big neighbourhood and Isabelle's on the other side.' I scrabbled around in my head for a convincing detail. ‘Near the Musée Marmottan.' I had once taken Beth there to show her a darkened basement full of Monet's water lilies. ‘I get off at métro La Muette, so it's not that bad a journey home from work. Here, shall we open this bottle of white or is it too early?'

‘It's Beth's but I don't suppose she'll mind. Having said that, I got into huge amounts of trouble the last time you and I did that. Do you remember? It turned out it was some really special burgundy her boss had given her for Christmas.'

He gave a sad little laugh and I realised how much he was missing her.

‘So you haven't heard anything more?'

‘No. The police say they are finding out for sure whether she's left the country or not, which she obviously has, but it'll put my mind at rest to know for certain. As soon as they tell me that, I'll feel much better. And I think I won't even mind so much that she felt she couldn't, well, confide in me.'

‘It's not just you, Stephen, it's all of us. I mean Christ, Christian's her boyfriend and she hasn't even been in touch with him.'

‘I know. And when she gets back I'm going to tell her that she needs to let us in a bit more. I mean, haven't we all endlessly bored her with our problems?'

He had stopped talking and was scrutinising me with a quizzical expression.

‘Look at you …'

‘What?' I asked twitchily, getting up and wandering out of his line of vision into the sitting room.

‘Have you had your hair cut or something?'

‘No.'

‘I don't know. You look … good.'

‘Don't sound so surprised.'

‘No, I mean … different. Sort of … oh, I don't know. I think I'm suffering from sleep deprivation or something. Every morning I wake up just before six when I hear the water come on next door. I keep thinking she's let herself in and is having a shower.'

‘Have another glass of wine: it'll help knock you out.'

Suffocated by those mustard-coloured walls and the turn of the conversation, I suggested we continue our drinking in a local bar on the boulevard St Denis. But as we walked past Beth's open bedroom door on our way out, we both fell silent.

‘I miss her,' Stephen admitted.

‘Me too. But she'll be back soon.'

It was while we were waiting for the lift that the call came. I recognised the brutal slang of Inspector Verbier's voice from a foot away, as soon as Stephen answered his mobile phone. The conversation lasted a mere second, before he pulled his
keys from the pocket of his jeans and turned back towards the front door.

‘That was the police. They've got some news apparently. They're on their way here.'

The landing seemed to shift around me as I tried to take in the significance of those three clipped sentences.

‘Did they say why? Have they found her?' I put a hand on his arm: ‘Stephen, they must have said something.'

‘They didn't,' he said, trying to control the wobble in his voice. ‘Just that – and that they'd be here in a second. OK?'

Had the news been good, surely they would have said? They would not have wanted to put us through this. The reflux of all the fears, all the suspicions I had pushed out of my head caused my legs to buckle. Leaning against the wall as Stephen struggled with the lock, I felt the unfamiliar sensation of tears needling the corners of my eyes. Stephen turned towards me, just in time to see me blot one away.

‘Anna, for God's sake, don't. You're so strong, and you've been amazing over the past few days. Do you know what Beth says she loves about you? That you're young enough always to be confident that everything will be fine.'

Stephen enveloped me in a protracted, soothing hug, and for once I felt no need to pull away.

‘Everything will be fine, I'm sure of it,' I murmured into his neck.

‘You're right, but God, am I going to have words with that woman when she does come home.'

Minutes later the gulp of the lift, like an apprehensive messenger, informed us that they were on their way up.

‘
Bonjour, Monsieur, Bonjour, Mademoiselle
.'

Verbier was alone this time, wearing a long waxed coat, like a British Barbour jacket but down to his knees, and a burgundy scarf wrapped in the kind of contrived knot that only the French can achieve, high around his throat.

‘Well, I thought we should tell you that we've spoken to passport control and checked all the immigration software on our computers: there's no sign of any Beth Murphy leaving the country.'

We stared back at him.

‘Is there anywhere else she might have gone? A friend or an ex-boyfriend in another part of France she might be visiting?'

Stephen was shaking his head.

‘No, no, no,' I explained. ‘She must have gone to see her father. It's the only thing that makes sense. If she hasn't, then this is something different … if she hasn't, then something terrible must have happened.'

I didn't hear what the inspector said next, sitting down heavily and waiting for the cumbrous calculations of my mind to produce their result. Luckily, Stephen short-circuited the process.

‘So what does all this mean, exactly?'

‘It means that your friend is still in France, and most definitely a missing person.'

‘But you do …' My throat was dry and I swallowed hard. ‘You do think she's all right though?'

It was an infantile question, full of hope and devoid of logic. I thought I saw a flicker of pity cross his face.

‘Well, it's not good news, obviously. But I can assure you that in many instances of this kind there is a reasonable
explanation and the person either returns home or is found safe and well.'

‘How many days …?' I asked falteringly. ‘Because that's the way it works, isn't it? How many days before you guys accept that something has happened to her?'

The colour had drained from Stephen's face, sickly white now with frondy blond eyelashes which gave his eyes a rabbitlike quality.

‘We don't like to say …'

‘How many?' cut in Stephen.

‘After seven,' Verbier was looking at the lino floor now, delineating a hexagonal outline with his foot, ‘we generally fear the worst.'

Stephen began to sob.

I took the inspector to the door.

‘Please let us know immediately if you hear anything.'

He traced a flat line through the air with his right hand, which signified ‘That goes without saying', and left.

Bent over the table with his head in his hands, Stephen was whimpering now. It was the annoying, pining sound of a dog trapped. Incapable of consolation I went straight to the phone.

‘I'd better call Christian and tell him what's happened.'

He was at work when I reached him, the clatter of the kitchen too loud for us to have a proper conversation. A half-hour later he stood, grim-faced, outside the front door of the flat.

‘She's not gone to Ireland,' I filled him in, walking briskly in front of him towards the kitchen. ‘In fact, there's no record of her leaving the country at all.'

I was aware that I sounded cold, that my speech was measured and its intonations duller than they should be. But I
didn't care. If the alternative was to let myself succumb to the mawkish grief Stephen was displaying, hunched over the table as he still was, then I preferred to deal with it my way.

‘Stephen.' Christian stood in the doorway with his legs apart in a way which ordinarily would have provoked desire in me. ‘Stephen, look at me.'

He made no attempt to look up. I watched with fascination the blood discolouring the back of his neck in large, flower-shaped patches. In one deft movement Christian was beside him, inserting four fingers beneath his chin and jolting it sharply upwards.

‘What are you crying about? Stephen, look at me. Why are you in this state? We don't know any more than we did before. So what that she didn't go to Ireland. What does that prove?'