The Paris Secret

by Karen Swan

  Ines shrugged, not sure where Flora was going with this. ‘OK. Do you want to introduce me?’

  ‘Actually, you already know him.’

  ‘I do?’ Ines knew there was no point in reminding her she’d just said she’d never heard of him.

  Flora cast her a sidelong glance. ‘It’s Xavier Vermeil.’

  Ines’s mouth dropped open and Flora watched as incredulity morphed into bemusement. ‘Xavier Vermeil – work? Do me a favour!’ she laughed, smacking the table with her hand.

  ‘It’s true. I saw his hat in the gallery.’

  There was a beat. ‘His hat? You recognized his hat?’

  ‘He was ahead of me in the crowd when I was on my way to his grandmother’s gallery. I assumed he was going there too.’

  Ines snorted again, reaching for her cigarettes. Flora went to offer hers back but Ines shook her head. ‘Keep it. Looks like you need it.’

  She lit up again and watched Flora closely, Flora keeping her attention on Bruno’s match; he was being thoroughly whipped by the older man. ‘So when you say you saw Xavier in the crowd, you didn’t try to walk with him? Have a chat, be friendly with your client’s son . . .’

  ‘No, he was ahead of me.’

  ‘You just followed him.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Flora didn’t need to look at Ines to know she had the devil’s imp on her shoulder.

  ‘Well, that’s a normal thing to do.’

  Flora took another drag, ignored her friend’s sarcasm, pushed the information out with minimal emotional output, maximum efficiency. ‘I saw his work in the window of another gallery. Didn’t know it was his. The owner invited me to meet him but he refused to come out and speak to me.’

  Ines leaned in, her elbows splayed on the table. ‘He actually refused?’

  ‘Hid in the back,’ Flora said, taking another deep drag and jerking her chin in the air.

  There was a pause as Ines mulled it over. ‘Well, perhaps he’s pissed because you made him crash his car.’

  ‘I didn’t make him do anything.’

  ‘You cycled past him in a bikini. He crashed his car. Go figure.’ Ines threw her head back and laughed, stabbing her cigarette in the air. ‘I knew it! I knew something was off between you. I saw it that night at the Hermès party.’

  ‘Saw what?’

  ‘His face. He looked like he didn’t know whether to throw you off the roof or slam you against the wall and ravish you.’

  Flora looked away, her heart pounding.

  ‘Say it,’ Ines said, watching her closely. ‘He’s gorgeous.’

  Flora didn’t pause. ‘He’s gorgeous.’

  ‘Oh, shit!’ said Ines, panicking now that her bluff had been called. ‘Listen to me, I’ve told you from the start, he’s trouble. Not right for you at all. He’s chaos and danger and darkness, and you’re calm and light and serenity. You are completely wrong for each other. He is everything you’ve ever said you don’t want. The further you stay away from him, the better.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I fully intend to,’ Flora said, viciously grinding the cigarette into the ashtray and scanning the menu, hating the way her stomach twisted at the thought of following her friend’s kindly advice. She changed the subject. ‘D’you recommend anything in particular here?’

  Ines watched her for a long moment before answering. ‘. . . Go for the moules. Amazing.’ Her family had been coming to the town for generations. It went without saying that she knew all the best places to eat.

  Bruno came over, kissing his girlfriend square on the lips and ruffling Flora’s hair as he sat down. ‘Have you ordered yet? I’m starving.’

  ‘You’re just in time, baby,’ Ines smiled. ‘Were you humiliated?’

  ‘Completely,’ he grinned back. ‘Don’t mess with these old boys.’ He picked up one of the menus, saw that it had burgers and dropped it down on the table again. ‘Did you hear the town ball’s on tonight?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s always fun.’

  Bruno tore off a hunk of bread from the bread basket. ‘Fancy it?’ he asked Flora. ‘You can both be my dates and I get to look like a player.’

  ‘Ha! You wish!’ Ines snorted at the suggestion.

  ‘No, thanks, Bruno,’ Flora muttered.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Flora would make a very sour gooseberry at the moment, isn’t that right?’

  Flora narrowed her eyes in warning. She wasn’t in the mood for being teased right now.

  Bruno shook his head, not understanding. ‘Listen, you’d like it. It’s not grand – why do you think I’m going? It’s open to everyone – you just eat wherever you want at long benches and the dancing is some old folk dances and a disco.’

  Flora pulled a sarcastic face. ‘Love to but I’ve got nothing to wear.’

  Ines reached over for some bread too. ‘That’s OK. We’ll go back to that boutique. I already saw a dress that would be great on you.’

  ‘Ines, I’m not going,’ Flora said sharply.

  ‘Flora! Yes, you are!’ Ines grinned, matching her tone. ‘You’re being a cow. If you’re not going to get laid, you need to get dancing. Your choice, mon amie.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  A note had been slipped under the cottage door by the time Bruno and Ines dropped her back. She picked it up and read it, leaning with her back against the door.

  Dear Flora,

  We have our first heir! He is coming tomorrow at 11 a.m. Would you join us in the library? Your expertise shall be much appreciated.

  Yours,

  Jacques

  An heir? That was quick, she thought, dropping the note on the coffee table and padding over to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. She switched the kettle on, then wandered through to the bathroom, stripping off and turning on the shower, deploring Ines’s obstinacy.

  She was about to step in when her phone rang in her bag and she had to make a dash to get to it before it switched to voicemail.

  ‘Hello?’ she asked breathlessly.

  ‘Floss, it’s me.’

  Her stomach tightened. ‘Freds! How are you?’ She sank onto the side of the sofa, her eyes falling to the tight stretch of water in the pool outside, just visible through the shutter’s slats. There wasn’t so much as a breath of breeze to ruck the surface today and the temptation to dive in was almost overwhelming. She loved swimming naked but clearly that wasn’t going to be an option with the number of CCTV cameras on the estate.

  ‘Well, the CPS is pushing on with it. They’ve set a date for the preliminary hearing at the Crown Court,’ he said tightly.

  Oh God. She closed her eyes, devastated and berating herself for even being surprised. She had set herself up for this fall; by the time of that weekend at Little Foxes, he had already been held and questioned, charged, hauled in front of the Magistrate for a first hearing and bailed – but something in her had dared to hope it would all still go away.

  She took a deep breath, as though bracing herself for a body blow. ‘When?’

  ‘September the twenty-sixth.’

  Five weeks from now. Shit! She rubbed her temples, feeling the pressure building up in her. ‘. . . Are you OK?’

  ‘Bearing up.’

  Flora doubted that. ‘And you’ve spoken to Mum and Dad, obviously.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘Are they still in London?’

  ‘Just gone back to Little Foxes – the pavements here are bad for Bolly’s arthritis.’

  ‘I wish you’d go back to Little Foxes too.’

  ‘No. I think it’s probably better if I stay here. They need a rest from looking after me before the trial. Mum’s going to run herself into the ground and even Dad’s reached his limit on shepherd’s pies at the Antelope. There’s only so many fatherly chats he can give – he’s run out of ways to put an optimistic spin on it. It just is what it is.’

  She looked around the plush cottage. What the hell was she doing here? ‘Freds, I’ll catch the next flight home. We should all be together a
t a time like this.’

  ‘No,’ he said, a little too quickly. ‘. . . Sorry, Bats. I just mean, it’s actually easier for me this way. There’s no point in us huddling around and crying. It won’t change anything. This is still happening.’

  Yes, it was. The flatness in his voice told her that.

  ‘Look, I’m gonna go. Talking . . . sucks. I just wanted to let you know.’

  ‘Sure,’ she said quietly.

  ‘I’ll give you a call in a few days, OK? Honestly, don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.’

  He kept saying that.

  He hung up, Flora sliding sideways off the arm onto the sofa, her body inert. Had anyone walked into the room just then, they would have thought her catatonic, but inside, she was a maelstrom, despair and fury whirling and roiling inside her like an electrical storm.

  She’d never been one to ‘make a fuss’. Her entire family was famously understated, even her mother – when Freddie had fallen out of the crab-apple tree behind the kitchen, she had calmly rounded off the phone conversation she’d been having with the line, ‘Must go, Jill. Freddie’s broken his arm.’ Flora was cut from the same cloth, always calm in a crisis, even when she didn’t feel it, even when others called her a ‘cold fish’ for not showing more panic / angst / vulnerability (delete as appropriate). But there was no handbook on how to get through a situation like this. What were you supposed to do when lies tore through your life like flames, reducing your world to ashes? Just watch? Let it happen?

  He had been right that day on the roof. It was as though a bomb had been dropped on their small square of green-carpeted England, leaving a crater where their home had once stood, obliterating in an instant all the carefully chosen antiques and worn-in decors, the unshowy vintage sports cars and dusty fine wines that had defined who they were and presented their family’s game face to the world.

  Instead, they were stripped back, raw and vulnerable in the face of the accusation, bitter, white-cold winds of shock and disbelief howling around them. In an instant they were reduced to nothing but this lie and although she knew that was what it was, other people wouldn’t; they couldn’t be certain the way that she could, they’d say there was ‘no smoke without fire’. This would always follow him, it would be on his records, it would be the added whisper after every introduction when he turned his back.

  It had fallen to her to tell the rest of the family. Freddie couldn’t meet their eyes, he could barely stand up. It had taken almost all his reserves to gather them there without provoking suspicion – not entirely successful – to pretend that life was normal, to hold on, even if only for a few hours, to the illusion that their perfect family and the idyllic life they shared was still intact, pristine, untouched.

  But the story was already half-told, anyway. They had all instinctively known that there was something devastating behind the dramatic weight loss, something that even Freddie’s louche poses, lazy wit and easy smiles couldn’t mask. Who was it who’d told her that animals could sense fear? Smell it, even? They’d all done the same, tapping into something feral and broken in him. But even so, when her words had clapped like thunderclouds over the room, her father had dropped his drink (Austrian ice wine, the lemon mascarpone cheesecake called for it) and her mother, who for so long had worried about such small things, had buckled at the knees as she stood nervously by the fireplace.

  Flora quickly fired off a text before she could stop herself. There was no longer any reason not to. Her family had spent the past few weeks fearing this day was coming and now, finally, it was. Soon everyone would know their dark secret – not just Freddie’s employers and friends and friends of friends, their collective acquaintances and old family friends, godparents and former colleagues; but complete strangers, people reading the newspapers on their way to work, office workers scanning the Sidebar of Shame for something scandalous to gossip over at the water cooler.

  They were all going to read about Freddie Sykes.

  Her brother, the rapist.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  ‘Ball’ was a loose term for the event, Flora decided unkindly as she and Bruno and Ines walked towards the heaving crowds. A stage and dance floor had been set up at the foot of the outer town walls, the countryside falling away beyond them towards the distant sea.

  The outdoor space looked beautiful, the huge plane and eucalyptus trees so densely threaded with lights it was as though their canopies had been bleached white, and miniature French flags – threaded as bunting – looped between the trees that encircled and defined the space. Long tables flanked the dance floor on three sides and a small guitar trio was providing the background music to the surging chatter.

  The crowd was a riotous mix of ages and backgrounds. Many of the local elders were in attendance, already occupying the tables nearest the stage, but there were young children too – some only toddlers – playing on the currently empty dance floor as their parents chatted and drank wine from the carafes dotted along the tables. Clearly, some of the teenagers from the ritzy villas in the high valleys had come along, the girls showing off their tans in second-skin bandage dresses and wedge heels, the boys looking moody in jeans and Lacoste shirts. And she thought she could tell the Antibes crowd by their low-key, stealth-wealth style: the watches gave them away and the Dinh Van jewellery, their coconut-oil glossed hair and skinny Paris-by-winter limbs. They were well heeled and well connected, their links with the town stretching back generations, no doubt.

  Certainly, Ines moved through the crowd with the ease of someone who felt at home. She knew the mayor and his wife – apparently their daughter had once babysat her as a child – and fell into immediate conversation with a woman with candyfloss hair set so hard, it would have cracked teeth. Flora wanted to smile at the odd couple they made – the older woman in Escada, Ines in her Grecian maxi dress and flip-flops. Flora hoped her own dress wasn’t de trop: a Missoni special, it was lilac gazar and embroidered with tiny flowers. The skirt fell to the floor and was swoopingly full, counterbalanced by a simple bodice with a high T-shirt neck and long sleeves that puffed slightly at the wrists. Apart from a nude slip underneath, it was entirely sheer, with daisies embroidered in a tumbling fashion. It had been the dress Ines had winkled out for her and there was no doubt it had the ‘wow’ factor, but was it too much for tonight? There didn’t seem to be a cohesive dress code. Some people were in glitter and sequins, others in white jeans and heels. At least she’d brought the dress ‘down’ by teaming it with nude scalloped Chloé flats and pulling her hair into a simple ponytail, barely any make-up.

  Not that she cared about how she looked. She was here to drink. She wanted to get so drunk tonight she couldn’t stand, much less dance.

  ‘Come on,’ Bruno said, used to his girlfriend’s social-butterfly status and taking Flora by the arm, steering her towards a gap in the crowd, near one of the tables. He poured them each a hearty glass of local red wine, chinking the glasses together. ‘Santé.’

  ‘I hate this bit. All the talking – y’know? Who do you know? Where are you from . . . ?’ he said, leaning in slightly to her, his eyes on the crowd as though he was standing outside of it. It struck her how much more natural and relaxed he looked twisting on a board three metres in the air, than here, in a pressed shirt and trousers. It wasn’t lost on either of them that Ines was smack bang in the centre of everyone, her head thrown back in laughter and her white, perfect teeth an indicator of her pedigree and belonging. She could literally fit in anywhere, any crowd.

  Flora drank the wine down in big gulps. Bruno laughed in surprise but refilled her glass without comment.

  ‘You mustn’t worry. She really loves you, you know,’ Flora said, jogging him gently with her elbow as she began on the second glassful. ‘You’re all she wants.’

  Bruno glanced at her before looking back at his girlfriend. ‘Yeah.’ But his tone was sceptical.

  ‘What, you don’t believe me?’

  ‘No, I do. I do, but . . .’


  ‘But what?’

  ‘Will I always be what she wants, I guess? I dunno . . .’ He narrowed his eyes, watching with concentration as another woman joined Ines’s conversation – huge aquamarines sparkling at her ears, a Chanel Timeless bag dangling from her wrist. ‘I guess I feel like I’m on borrowed time with her. I mean, four years on and I still can’t believe she fell for me. Me! I’m no one.’ He looked at Flora and shrugged apologetically. ‘You know?’

  ‘No, I don’t know. You’re a total catch. Talented and funny and gorgeous. Why wouldn’t she have fallen for you?’ she asked, slapping his arm playfully and taking another glug of wine. ‘Enough of this nonsense.’

  ‘You know what I’m saying, though. I’m never going to be part of that world. I can’t give her that life – and I don’t want to. It’s alien to me.’

  ‘Listen, Ines knows that world, she grew up in it. It holds no mystique or glamour for her. If she wanted it to still define her everyday existence, she’d be with someone else, you can be sure of that. She chose you. She’s with you because she wants to be.’

  He looked hesitant. ‘Yeah? You think?’

  ‘I know! Honestly, she drives me bonkers banging on all the time about true love and following your destiny, like I’m just being difficult not doing it too. She has no idea that what you and she have got is exceptionally rare. Contrary to popular opinion, it’s actually not that easy to fall in love.’

  Bruno turned to face her, his interest seemingly piqued. ‘No?’

  She shook her head, taking another swig of the wine. ‘Nope.’

  ‘Who were you last in love with, then? You’ve not been serious with anyone in all the time I’ve known you.’

  ‘Actually, I’ve never been in love.’

  Bruno almost dropped his glass. ‘What, never? Oh, come on! You’re kidding, right?’

  ‘Nope. God’s truth. I am twenty-seven years old and I have never been in love.’ She gave a sudden nervous laugh.

  ‘But Ines says you’ve gone out with lots of guys.’