The French Girl

by Lexie Elliott

  “It’s not—”

  “Don’t give me that. I saw your face when he kissed Alina. His wife, Kate, and Christ, it’s been ten years! He kissed his wife and you had to leave the fucking room—”

  “That’s not . . .” I start, but he’s still in full flood, and in any case, what can I say? Actually, I realized last night that I’m over Seb. I left the room because Severine’s skull appeared on the table. Yes, I see her regularly. I would ask her who killed her except she never speaks.

  “—you were near as dammit physically ill at the sight. So don’t tell me you don’t care about Seb. Only next time you’re looking for a pick-me-up shag to make you feel better, have the decency to try someone other than me.”

  He stops, breathing hard, his blue eyes boring into me. In that moment I see myself as he sees me and it’s at such odds to how I imagined that I’m temporarily cut off from speech. The hurt is staggering.

  “Oh,” I hear myself say eventually. There’s nothing else I can say. It doesn’t matter that I’m not in love with Seb; it doesn’t matter that the corridor memory is something precious to me. All that matters is what Tom thinks, and now that I know his opinion I can’t look at him. I turn and gather up my shoes, bag and coat from the chair in the corner and push past him without resistance into the corridor—the corridor. Can I really have this memory of the intimate darkness, the sweetness, the desire, while Tom holds something entirely different inside him? Is this really Tom? I turn as if to check before I leave; he’s still standing by the bedroom door, but I can’t see his face in the shadow. I don’t know who this is.

  The hurt hasn’t ebbed, nor the excruciating humiliation, but my sense of injustice is fanning those embers of anger. “So,” I say slowly, deliberately. I hear my voice, but it doesn’t sound like me; it’s too high and clipped. “In your eyes I’m a desperate, lonely old spinster looking for anybody or anything to take my mind off Seb.” He makes a movement with his hand, but I go on. “Well, there were two of us there last night. What’s your excuse?”

  “Kate—” he says, moving toward me, but I don’t wait for his answer. In truth it has just occurred to me: ironically the accusation he’s thrown at me is more appropriate for him. I was a substitute for Lara. I pull the door closed sharply behind me and go down the tattered steps to the front door of the block of flats, only pausing at the bottom to put on my shoes. I had tights on last night, I think inconsequentially; they must still be in Tom’s flat. Did he undress me and put me to bed, the pathetic old basket case who couldn’t hold her drink? I see a cab as soon as I spill out of the lobby onto the street, and it stops for me.

  “Where to, love?” asks the driver.

  Where to, indeed? I look at my watch. My head is pounding from the hangover, and I feel greasy and gritty, but I don’t have time to go home for a shower before I’m due to meet my lawyer. I give him the address of my office instead. I half expect Severine to join me in the cab, but I spend the journey alone, gritting my teeth and focusing solely on staying above the riptide of hurt that beats up inexorably at my throat and threatens to drag me down.

  I make it into the bathroom at my office before I give in to that current, sitting on the loo seat in the cramped WC sobbing soundlessly into my hands. It’s an indulgence, I know, but I’m temporarily unable to restrain myself. It’s hard to even pinpoint why I’m crying, other than through battered pride. But that dark, thrilling corridor encounter . . . I never thought of Tom that way; he was Lara’s, or Lara was Tom’s, or something—and anyway, there was always the intangible presence of Seb between us. But it turns out I haven’t been in love with Seb for a very long time, if I ever was at all; I’m starting to wonder if the Seb of my memories ever existed. Nobody seems to be who I thought they were. Tom’s words echo in my head. Next time you’re looking for a pick-me-up shag . . . Nobody is who I thought they were, and that apparently includes me.

  There’s a rap on the door. “Kate?” I hear Julie’s muffled voice. “You probably ought to leave for your next appointment soon.”

  “Um, thanks. Be right out.” I blow my nose on toilet roll and wipe my eyes then survey the damage in the mirror. The combination of a hangover and a crying fit clearly doesn’t suit my skin, and splashing cold water on my face turns out to be an ineffectual remedy. Grin and bear it, I tell myself, forcing my mouth into a smile. Then I see Severine’s grinning skull superimposed on my own reflection and it’s all I can do not to vomit.

  When I emerge some minutes later Julie’s eyes sweep over me, her face anxious, but she has the good sense not to comment. Thankfully Paul is not there, and for once I couldn’t care less whether that’s a good or a bad sign. It’s only on the route to my lawyer’s office that it occurs to me all this emotional drama has distracted me from the fact that last night I was wondering whether Seb and Caro had something to do with the death of a young girl in France ten years ago.

  * * *

  —

  “Well,” remarks my lawyer from behind her desk, looking at me over the top of her reading glasses. I’m not quite sure why she’s wearing them; it’s not as if she has anything in front of her to read right now. Instead she’s been in listening mode, a small frown appearing from time to time on her narrow forehead, occasionally a nod of her neat, dark head as she takes in my disjointed account. I’m trying to get the measure of her, Mrs. Streeter—or was it Ms., or Miss?—but it’s hard in the small, hot room with my head pounding so fiercely. She reminds me of a magpie, dark and bright and quick, though she must be almost fifty; there are gray streaks in that black close-cropped hair. “Well,” she says again, more thoughtfully, pursing her lips, which are incongruously painted with uneven layers of a greasy lipstick that’s far too pink for her. I want to pick up a tissue and wipe it off her. She hasn’t offered me a cup of tea, which I’m irrationally resentful over. I’m sure her fees are going to bankrupt me, so surely a tea bag and a splash of milk isn’t too much to ask?

  She leans back in her chair and adjusts her reading glasses. This will be the pronouncement, I think; this is where I find out exactly how much of a mess I’m in. “You’re a lawyer, yes?” she says abruptly.

  “Yes. Well, no, not anymore. I run a legal recruitment company.”

  She waves a hand. “But you have the training. You know, for example, that we have an adversarial system here in Britain: the police and prosecution gather evidence likely to convict, and the defense gathers evidence likely to acquit, and then it’s all hashed out in open court. Given your training, you likely know an awful lot more detail than that. In practice, in high-profile criminal cases, what tends to happen is that the police very quickly establish a theory and work to find evidence to support that. Anything they turn up that doesn’t quite fit the working theory is not exactly overlooked, but it certainly gets less attention.” She grimaces, her mouth a slash of uneasy pink. “It’s imperfect. All systems are imperfect. But we have habeas corpus, and presumed innocence until proof of guilt, and the court framework in which the trial takes place is very open.” She fixes her dark, bright eyes upon me, and I realize I’m expected to respond in some way.

  “Um. Yes.”

  She nods briskly. “The French system is very different. It’s based on civil law, rather than common law, which as you know means there is no concept of precedent . . . but I digress. The important point vis-à-vis your situation is that it is not an adversarial system. All criminal cases—at least, all criminal cases of a serious nature such as this—are investigated by a, well, the technical term is juge d’instruction, which translates roughly as examining magistrate, I suppose. This magistrate is independent of the government and the prosecution service, but nonetheless works closely with the police. It’s their job to analyze all the evidence and opine in a report as to whether the case should go to trial.” She pauses and looks at me closely again. This time I’m quick to nod. “The important point here is that, generally speaking,
weak cases don’t even get to trial; they’re thrown out by the investigating magistrate before that. The corollary is that the conviction rate is very high, and whilst there’s the concept of innocent until proven guilty, in practice . . .” She shrugs her shoulders and executes that queasy pink grimace again. “There’s a high presumption of guilt if the case gets as far as trial.”

  My mind is racing ahead. “But what of the checks and balances on the magistrate?”

  She shakes her head almost apologetically. “Next to none. It’s one of the major complaints against the system; effectively a huge number of cases are tried in secret by a single person rather than in open court subject to a jury of peers. On the whole the magistrates are very good, but as a principle . . . I should probably add there’s no concept of habeas corpus, either, though in most circumstances a juge d’instruction would need another magistrate to sign off before a person can be held. Oh, and while trials are generally very quick, the preceding investigations can be very long.”

  “How long?”

  “Two years is not unusual.”

  It may be the hangover, but I don’t think so: suddenly I feel sick again. The idea of this hanging over us all for years doesn’t bear thinking about: Modan appearing at intervals with his oh-so-elegant suits and his sly questions, inducing Lara to a permanent state of self-absorbed giddiness, Caro needling and prodding and pecking away at any exposed quarter, Tom—no, not Tom, I can’t think about Tom—and Severine . . . It occurs to me that I’ve been relying on Severine disappearing once this has all gone away. I wonder if she sees it quite the same way.

  “Are you all right?”

  I realize I’m rubbing my forehead with notable force. I drop my hand and attempt to look at her, but another wave of nausea hits me and I have to look down and grit my teeth. The office floor is carpeted with faded blue tiles, which provide nothing to focus on; I try the edge of her desk instead. There’s a scratch in the dark varnished wood that shows the cheap sawdust-like MDF underneath.

  “Perhaps a cup of tea?” She doesn’t wait for my answer; she leans forward and presses a button on her telephone to issue the tea-making instruction to a disembodied voice. Disembodied: a voice without a body. But Severine is the other way round: a body without a voice. Dear God, two more years of Severine . . .

  “Are you all right?” she asks again.

  “Sorry. It’s just a little hot in here,” I say unconvincingly. The nausea is passing.

  “Of course,” she says smoothly. “Ah, here’s the tea.”

  I take my cup gratefully, and also a couple of biscuits, which I nibble at cautiously at first, but then devour rapidly as I realize I’m starving. She takes her own cup, adds milk and stirs in economical movements, then sits back with the cup resting on her leg, the saucer abandoned on the desk. I focus on my own life-giving tea.

  “What do you think happened?” she asks, in a musing tone.

  I look up inquiringly, my mouth full of another biscuit.

  “You’ve told me the bare facts of what happened,” she explains. “All of which I could have got from the French papers, to be frank—of course I’ve been following it; it’s exactly my area and quite a high-profile case over there. But what do you think happened?”

  I take a sip of tea to wash down the biscuit before answering her. “I don’t know. It was so long ago . . . Now I’m not even sure I can trust my memories.” Or my interpretation of those memories.

  “Understandable. But you were questioned quite soon after; that usually helps the details to stick, so to speak.”

  I shrug.

  “So, all caveats notwithstanding, what do you think happened?”

  “Well, at first I thought—well, I thought it was nothing to do with us. Her ex-boyfriend, maybe, or just something totally random, some sick psycho or something . . .”

  “And now?” She tips her head to one side.

  “I don’t know. No, really, I don’t. I suppose since Modan told me it wasn’t the ex-boyfriend I’ve been thinking about whether it could have been one of us. Just hypothetically.”

  “And?”

  “I suppose . . . not Lara, obviously; it’s just not within her. And not Tom.”

  “Why not Tom?”

  “Well, he was with Lara all night. And even if he hadn’t been . . .”

  “Let me guess: it’s not within him; he just couldn’t.” It’s not said unkindly; she’s almost smiling, but I know she’s deliberately holding up a mirror to show me the flaws in my thinking. “That’s what you were going to say, correct?”

  “Something like that,” I concede weakly, but it’s not true actually. Tom could, if it was necessary. He has that steel within him, the ability to get things done. I see his stony face from this morning . . . But if Tom had done it, he’d have done it right. He wouldn’t have allowed a body to be found ten years later. “Anyway, like I said, he was with Lara all night. From what I gather, they didn’t do a lot of sleeping,” I add wryly. I think of Lara and Tom entwined, and my mind immediately skitters away from the image.

  She inclines her head, conceding the point. “Which leaves Caroline, Theo and Sebastian. And you, but you were in bed, later joined by Sebastian, after his assignation with Severine.”

  I wonder if I would have flinched even a day ago to hear her say that so baldly. Now it’s simply a fact. “Yes. Only I didn’t know about the assignation at the time.”

  “What time did he join you?”

  “I’m not sure. About 3 A.M. I think.” At least, I think that I think that. It was so long ago . . . Suddenly I’m back in that bedroom in France, groggily opening my eyes to see the glowing red digits of the clock radio showing 6 A.M. in the foreground, and in the background Seb stepping out of his boxer shorts after a trip to the bathroom. Without moving my head that’s the extent of my vision: a sideways image of a clock and Seb, from waist to knee. He’s close enough that I can see the first rays of the morning sun, undeterred by the ineffectual curtains, turning the hair on his legs into golden glowing wires. I can’t face dealing with him, so I close my eyes tightly and pretend he hasn’t woken me.

  Seb’s words of last night (was it only last night?) float back to me: And you and I both know I came to our room that night and passed out, so whatever happened to Severine was nothing to do with me. And I think again of Caro’s and Seb’s heads, conspiratorially close; of Caro watching Seb as he spoke to me last night. Do I think he came to bed at 3 A.M. because he told me that at some point?

  “And you say Caro and Theo were together till they went to bed.”

  “Yes. So I understand.” How do I know that? Certainly there’s no Theo to ask.

  “Was Sebastian the last person to see Severine alive then?”

  “No, the bus driver. And the CCTV.” The bus driver. Of course. I forgot that last night. It doesn’t matter what time Seb came to bed; it doesn’t matter whether Caro and Theo were together: Severine was alive enough on Saturday morning to take a bus. Something inside me unwinds a little.

  “True. If it was indeed Severine.” She frowns for a moment. “Though the chances of another young girl matching that description getting on in that location . . . Mmmm.” She ponders silently for a moment, leaning back and tapping her teeth with a fingernail. I wonder if she will later find that dreadful pink lipstick all over her fingers. She straightens up. “Right. Plan of action. No talking to Monsieur Modan without me present.”

  “Okay. What else?”

  She shakes her head, smiling. “That’s it for now. All we can do is wait.”

  I stare at her, nonplussed. “Wait?” I’m paying painful amounts per hour, and all she can come up with is keep quiet and wait?

  She nods. “Yes, wait. Believe me, Modan is not here on a whim. He has information he’s not yet revealed. Perhaps from the autopsy, or something else . . . At any rate, there’s something he’s not
telling you. Because otherwise, there is literally no evidence to tie any of the six of you to this crime, and it’s quite a stretch to find a motive, too, despite best efforts to paint you as the jilted lover. So if the juge d’instruction still has Modan digging around over here, you can be sure there’s something up his sleeve. So . . . we wait.”

  Jesus. “I’m not good at waiting.”

  “No,” she says contemplatively, as she pushes back her chair to stand up and extend her hand. “I wouldn’t think you are.”

  I’m not quite sure how to take that.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  All day Severine hovers.

  I’ve decided it’s a sign of tiredness, or distraction: like an illness, she can creep in much more easily when my defenses are low. Not that she creeps. She strolls, she saunters, she claims territory as her own with a single languid glance; everything about Severine is on Severine’s terms. Except her death, of course.

  I’m back in my office after the appointment with my lawyer, and despite my hangover, despite Severine, despite the—what? drama, row, contretemps?—with Tom, I’m getting rather a lot done. The trick is bloody single-mindedness, a strong personal trait of mine. Do not pick up the phone and call Lara; do not pay attention to the slim, secretive-eyed dead girl who perches casually on the edge of my desk, swinging one walnut brown ankle; do not descend into introspection and speculation; do not pass go, do not collect £200.

  Gordon calls early afternoon. We now have a weekly catch-up call in the diary for each Friday afternoon, though I’ve been forewarned he will frequently have to reschedule, or skip it altogether: Mr. Farrow is a busy man. I presume he’s calling to reschedule, but instead he says, in his mild manner, “Why don’t you drop by the office instead of having a call today?”

  “Sure, let me just check my schedule.” I have a couple of calls in my diary before then, but I should still be able to get across town in time. “That’s fine, I can come over. Everything okay?”