The Paris Secret (38 page)

‘But he’s not!’ she cried, growing angry now.

‘You’re his sister! Of course you would say that!’

Flora stared at him, open-mouthed, scarcely able to believe this was happening. ‘You’re Natascha’s brother! Why can’t you believe me the way I believed you? I’m
telling you, he’s innocent! If you met him, you’d know it too.’

He grabbed his shirt off the floor, throwing it on, violently shrugging his arms through the sleeves, wincing as he remembered too late his injured shoulder. ‘You’re deluding
yourself,’ he sneered, fastening the middle buttons incorrectly, striding into the sitting room and picking up his shoes.

Flora jumped off the bed and ran after him. He was heading for the door. ‘I can’t believe this,’ she cried. Tears were beginning to slide down her cheeks but she rubbed them
away furiously. ‘You’re the
only
person I’ve told. The only one I trusted! I was trying to show you that I understand the devastation it’s caused you. I thought
you’d understand – Freddie’s the victim too.’

‘No!’ Xavier whirled on the spot in the open doorway, one finger pointed at her and stopping her dead in her tracks. ‘
He
is not the victim.’

She stared after him as he strode outside, back into the blackness of the garden. ‘Xavier!’ she called. ‘Where are you going? You can’t go like this!’

He turned, ten metres up the lawn but already a hundred miles from her. ‘I can’t make my parents fire you, Flora, so I’ll leave. I’ll leave here tomorrow.’ He
blinked at her, that black look back. ‘I don’t ever want to see you again.’

The moon was still in the sky as she let herself into the flower room, long shadows stretched out over the floor, the riot of colours bearing down from the walls muted and
subdued in the pale light. She switched the desk lamp on and opened up her laptop, firing off the email:

She watched it send, aware of a weight lifting off her at the prospect of freeing herself from this gilded cage and this once-illustrious family.

She got up and made herself a coffee, the roiling of the kettle sounding amplified in the stillness of the house. Her hands clasped the steaming mug – she had no intention whatsoever of
drinking it but she couldn’t stop shivering – as she sat on the back step by the French doors and looked out again into the garden. Dawn was just a breath away, the first chink of light
beginning to bleed up from the horizon like a curtain that was about to be lifted above a stage.

Only, the players had well and truly left this theatre now. Xavier would be in Paris in a few hours, she would be home in London and this night – its exquisite pleasures and drubbing pain
– would be nothing more than an aberration, something she’d forget soon enough, just as she always did. What was it Freddie always said about her? Teflon-coated. Nothing and no one
stuck to her!

She pressed her hands to her eyes again, stemming the tears that had been falling as silently and endlessly as snow since he’d left. It had been three hours and forty-two minutes now but
it would get better soon, she knew that. Her anger was beginning to settle and harden already. This wasn’t heartbreak, there was no point in being hysterical about it. Just look at the facts
– she barely knew the man, not really. Sharing a few dark secrets didn’t make them soulmates; just because they were heavy in subject matter didn’t make them more significant than
the myriad tiny humdrum details that define people’s lives, the ones you really have to know to know a man truly – like how he took his coffee or where he bought his socks, the name of
his best friend and his first pet.

No. This wasn’t heartbreak. Someone couldn’t break your heart unless you placed it in their hands first, and she hadn’t done that. What she’d thought was a primal
connection between them had been nothing more than a thrilling game of chicken. Who would look away first? Who would run?

She put down the mug and lay on the floor, curling herself up as tight as a shell. No. This wasn’t heartbreak. She was Flora Sykes, twenty-seven years old. And she’d never been in
love.

The splash in the pool awoke her and she moved with a groan, at first confused as to why she was asleep in the doorway which opened onto the garden. A cool breeze must have
been blowing over her as she slept for her neck felt stiff when she lifted her head, trying to see who was in the water, instinctively trying to get out of their sight. Was it Xavier? She blinked
several times, trying to focus, but she knew he wouldn’t be so stupid as to swim metres from her door when his last words to her had been that he never wanted to see her again.

Natascha then? The prospect didn’t repel her as once it had. Not now. She felt nothing but compassion and tenderness for the girl, all her ugliness explained away – but how could she
ever express that? Flora sensed Natascha would see her brother’s revelation as an indiscretion, a betrayal.

To her surprise, as she haltingly pulled herself up to sitting, she saw it was Jacques ploughing up and down the pool, almost as driven as his son as he furrowed deeper and deeper tracks in the
water.

Her hand touched the cold cup of coffee on the floor beside her; it was remarkable that she hadn’t knocked it in her sleep and she realized that she mustn’t have moved. Her body
stiff and sore, she slowly stood up and took the coffee cup to the sink, rinsing it and leaving it to dry on a tea towel on the counter, before splashing her face with cold water. Her eyes –
she was thankful to note she’d stopped crying at least – were puffy and swollen, the feel of her lids, one upon the other as she blinked, thick and leaded.

She stared around at the room – there was still so much work to do, this collection’s histories as hidden now as they had been a month ago, but she would never know them now. She was
done, here. The Vermeils’ past was none of her business any more, much like their future.

Beyond the locked door into the house, she could hear activity in the hall and she knew the family were up – or some of them anyway. Her eyes closed again in despair at the thought of
going out there and telling them she was leaving, but it was unavoidable. Though she had done everything in her power to avoid running into Magda or Natascha or Xavier whilst working here, Lilian
and Jacques deserved to be told to their faces that she was leaving. And if she were to see Natascha, she knew she would be able to let the barbs slide right off her now: let the girl be heard; let
her be right even if she was wrong. She deserved that at the very least.

With trepidation, Flora unlocked the door and stepped out into the hall. The French doors through to the garden were open, the breeze tickling the flowers frothing from the urns. Her footsteps
were silent on the floor and she realized, as she stepped into the kitchen, she was still barefoot, still naked beneath the loose Ba&sh dress she had slipped over her head before lurching up
the lawn in the dead of night to send that email and begin her escape.

Her hands flew to her hair, smoothing it quickly, but she was too late – they were in there. At least, Xavier and Natascha were, Genevieve standing by the oven as she poured pancake
mixture into a pan.

Natascha was sitting with her feet up on the chair beside her so that her bare knees peeped over the top of the table, a bowl of chopped fruit uneaten before her, her fingers swiping listlessly
on an iPad.

Xavier was sitting beside her and staring down at the table, one arm flopped over it as though it was broken, his fingers loosely pinching the handle of a mug of espresso – short, black,
strong; she supposed that was one more detail she could add to the tally of things she knew about him. Pointless now, though.

The bandages on his hands were grubby, loosened from their bath together; tiny bloodstains had seeped through marking them like stigmata, outward testament to his devotion to his sister. His
hair was wild, like Flora’s, and the rings around his eyes were so dark he looked as though he’d been punched in both. Well, he damn well should’ve been, she thought angrily.
After what he’d said and done last night, he deserved it!

She watched him for a moment, feeling that familiar rush of longing and confusion that she got any time she saw him. What a fool she’d been to think that sex – even sex as good as
theirs – had brought her closer to him than any of his other women, and it was all her own fault; he’d warned her himself he was no angel. She’d allowed herself to believe she was
different from the rest, that he was a better man than he made out, but they weren’t, either one of them. They were both totally and utterly ordinary.

‘Oh, Mam’selle Flora!’ Genevieve said in surprise, turning and spotting her standing frozen in the doorway. She frowned. ‘. . . Are you OK?’

‘Oh . . .’ Flora felt herself panic as both Xavier and Natascha looked up, Xavier visibly jolting at the sight of her. She remembered his last words to her and unwittingly took a
step back, half in, half out of the kitchen, as though trying to obey. ‘I’m just looking for—’

But she didn’t get a chance to finish. In the next moment, Natascha had flown across the kitchen in a tawny streak and was throwing her arms tightly round Flora’s neck. ‘Thank
you,’ she repeated over and over.

Flora stood agape, her gaze as stuck on Xavier’s as if bolted in place. She saw the disgust in his eyes for what he considered her hypocrisy, her treachery.

‘Really, I didn’t do anything,’ Flora said quietly as Natascha put her down.

‘But you did. Do you know how many people ignored what was happening? They pretended they didn’t notice. I
saw
them – they turned away.’

Flora looked back, appalled. She didn’t know what to say; how could she say anything without revealing that she knew the full truth? ‘Then shame on them,’ she whispered as
Natascha hugged her again, her arms tight around the girl’s slight shoulders.

‘I was wrong about you,’ Natascha said, tears in her eyes as they pulled apart. ‘I’ve been such a witch to you. Can you forgive me?’

‘There’s nothing to forgive.’

Natascha smiled then and for a moment, Flora was struck by the flash of youth in her face, the world-weary cynicism that she usually wore replaced by an almost winsome innocence. Was this the
girl she might have been? Was she now what Freddie would soon become? ‘Have you eaten? Will you have breakfast with us?’

She took Flora’s hand and tried to tug her towards the table but absolutely nothing would make Flora take a step closer to him. ‘Actually, I was just looking for your parents. I
think your father’s swimming but . . . is your mother around? I’m afraid it’s urgent.’ She felt Xavier’s eyes alight on her inquisitively at the words.

‘Sure. I think she’s in the library.’

‘OK, great. Th-thanks.’ She turned to leave.

‘Hey listen, we should go shopping sometime. Maybe.’ The raised inflection in her voice turned it into a question and behind the breezy demeanour, Flora could see the fear of
rejection in her eyes. ‘How’s tomorrow?’

Flora opened her mouth to reply, hesitating that she was going to have to confess her plans, here, in front of him. ‘I . . . I’d have loved to, Natascha, really I would. But
I’m afraid I won’t be here.’

Xavier’s eyes narrowed upon her.

‘You’re leaving?’ Natascha looked dismayed.

She nodded, keeping her gaze on the floor. ‘I’m afraid so.’

‘You’re going back to Paris?’

‘London.’

‘But who’s going to finish the work? I thought there was months’ worth to do? Granny was making such a fuss about not having the flower room for weeks on end, wasn’t she,
Xav?’

Natascha glanced back at her brother but he was staring at his coffee.

‘The agency have decided to send out a provenance specialist instead. It’s not my area of expertise.’

‘That’s such a shame,’ Natascha said, squeezing her hand. ‘Mum and Dad are crazy about you. I know it was you they wanted.’

‘It’s better for them this way.’ Flora bit her lip, stoppering the words as she felt another rush of tears threaten; her bottom lip wobbled but she would not cry in front of
him. She wouldn’t. ‘I’ll just see if I can catch your mother.’

She extricated her hand quickly, stumbling back into the hall, her heart like a battering ram at the sight of Xavier so far away from her, further than he’d ever been. She made her way
back into the hall and hid in a doorway, pressing her hands to her eyes as the tears began to flow again, last night’s new, wholly alien feeling of hollowness opening up in her as suddenly as
a sinkhole, threatening to pull her down, bury her, crush her.

But it was OK, she told herself. It wasn’t heartbreak. It would pass. She was fine.

Even so, it was a few minutes before she moved, a few minutes before her breathing was steady enough to attempt a conversation. A few minutes before she felt steeled enough to get to the
library.

The door was ajar but she knocked anyway.

She waited.

Nothing.

She knocked again – a little louder.

Still nothing.

‘Hello? Lilian?’ she enquired softly.

When there was, again, no reply, she put her head round the door and peered in. In comparison to the wash of sunlight rushing up the marble hall, the room was dim. Unlike the eastern aspect of
the house – the side where the kitchen and flower room were situated, amongst others – the southern aspect was still in shade, and unlined linen curtains in grass green hung, half
drawn, at the tall windows.

Flora stepped in and turned in wonder. Books, books, everywhere.

Unlike the more traditional dark mahogany or cherry-wood that she’d been expecting to find, the woodwork in the room was white – all the ladders and balustrading and shelving that
spanned the four-metre height of every single wall. In the centre of the room were a couple of chairs, a large round table and on it, another bowl profuse with lime hydrangea balls and white
peonies – Magda really did need that flower room, Flora thought to herself. Some of the shelving on the left wall had been cut around a nook, inside which an ivory linen sofa had been
pushed.