The French Girl

by Lexie Elliott

  “Maybe he needs to concentrate on one thing at a time. Maybe he just wants to get the case over so you two can stop skulking around.” I can’t believe I’m defending the man who seems intent on painting me as a murderer. But I’ve seen how Modan looks at her. It’s unmissable, it’s cinematic—as if he’s a reformed alcoholic and she’s the very drink he’s been craving for years: that man has no intention of letting her go. “Maybe he’s worried about how you will feel when he puts your best friend in prison,” I add sourly.

  “But she got on the fucking bus!” She smacks her hand into the sofa in frustration.

  “I know, I know. But that aside . . . if you were constructing the case, who would you have as your prime suspect?”

  She pauses, considering. “Not Tom, or me, for obvious reasons—and don’t think you’re off the hook on Tom, I’m coming back to that—and I know it wasn’t you; you didn’t even know about the affair till just now, so what possible motive would you have?”

  “Not a rock-solid basis for excluding me,” I tease.

  “Oh, hush. If I’m going to have to think about this, let’s not waste time on definite no-no’s. Theo: no motive. He knew her forever, and apparently they’d always gotten on well. I’m sure he fancied her, but let’s be honest: even if he tried it on and got a knock-back, I can’t quite imagine Theo summoning up a murderous rage.”

  “Fair point.” I see Theo, his cheeks flooding pink at the slightest jibe, his back covered in thick factor-50 to protect the milk-pale skin that is the curse of the true redhead. I cannot imagine Theo, with all his good intentions and awkwardness, having the courage to make a pass at Severine. Come to think of it, I don’t remember Theo ever making a pass at anyone.

  “Is it totally un-PC to say I was really surprised about the way he died?” Lara asks hesitantly. “I didn’t know he had it in him.”

  “Totally un-PC. But yeah, me neither.” Theo died by throwing himself on a live grenade, thereby saving four of his colleagues. I can only imagine it was an instinctive reaction. At the funeral, Tom said that Theo’s parents were unimaginably proud, astonished and despairing in equal measures.

  “Yeah . . .” She shakes herself after a moment. “But anyway. That leaves Caro and Seb.” She frowns. “I can’t see why Caro would . . . or Seb . . . but he was with her . . .” I’m quiet, reluctant to influence her thinking. This is a test, in a way, and I’m almost holding my breath. If Lara alights on the same theory that has been slowly building in my subconscious, I can’t dismiss it as another product of my demonstrably overactive brain. “So, Seb was with her, but why would he kill her? I mean, he wouldn’t, not on purpose”—here it comes—“. . . God, not intentionally, but what if something happened by accident?” Her eyes widen. “You know, Kate, it could all have been just a tragic accident. Something went horribly wrong, and rather than face up to it all he stuffed her body in the well. I mean, he’s strong enough.”

  Bingo. We look at each other, wide-eyed.

  “Last night Seb seemed very keen to stress that he came back to the room and passed out,” I say quietly.

  “And did he?” she asks.

  “I’m not sure. I pretty much passed out myself. He woke me up going to the bathroom at something like six in the morning, so sometime before then I suppose.” The clock, Seb stepping out of his boxer shorts, those glowing golden hairs . . . the clock, Seb . . .

  “So he could have come in anytime before that.”

  “I suppose . . .” Only it has just occurred to me that in my memory Seb is on my side of the bed. The side with the chair, where he’d got into the habit of tossing his clothes when he undressed. And he’s stepping out of boxer shorts. In the entire time we’d been in France, he’d always grabbed a towel from the hook behind the door and wrapped it round him to go to the communal bathroom—or on occasion run the gauntlet naked. He’d never ever bothered to fish around for a pair of boxer shorts. “Or maybe . . . maybe that was him coming to bed for the first time. I don’t know . . .” What do I really remember and what is a reconstruction? I can’t trust in anything anymore.

  “How do you accidentally kill someone?”

  I shrug. “Unlucky blow to the head, perhaps? She could have tripped and smacked her head on something. I suppose the autopsy would show that.”

  “And how long do you suppose you need to accidentally kill a girl and dump her body?” Lara asks, with deliberate drollery.

  “Well, in my vast experience of accidental homicide . . .” I reply, equally drolly. I have definitely had too much wine if I’m being this flippant about the girl that haunts me. “Jesus, I don’t know. I suppose he must have spent some time screwing her first, though God knows how long that would have taken in his drunken state.”

  “And then surely there must have been a period of panic, deciding what to do . . .” She trails off. “But, you know, this is all just a thought exercise. It’s not even hypothetical; after all, she got on the bus. Right?”

  Her eyes catch mine and hold, and I recognize the uncertainty in them; it matches the tight knot in my belly. She wants me to reassure her. I wanted her to reassure me, and look where that landed me.

  “Right,” I say quietly.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I suggest Lara stays the night, half expecting to hear, No thanks, I’d rather wake up in my own bed, but she accepts gratefully. I try to remember the last time she did that; we used to stay with each other a lot in the years just after leaving university, a subconscious attempt to re-create the messy hubbub of student housing, where nobody need ever be alone. It occurs to me that now I am almost always alone: long periods of isolation broken by short human interactions that don’t leave me feeling any less solitary. It’s probably not good for me—at least, it’s probably not good for me that I don’t mind. In any case, I think with dark humor, now I have Severine for company.

  I have a spare bedroom, but Lara crawls into bed with me like days of old, and turns on her side, resting her head on her bent arm. In the warm glow of the bedside light I can see her eyeliner is smudged and her eyelids are heavy with the wine; she looks blowsy and sloppy and decadently sexy. Modan wakes up to this, I think. Does the effect ever wear off? One day will he look at her and move on without lingering, his brain ticking over his to-do list for the day? Or will he always stop for a moment, arrested by the sight, and perhaps touch the back of his hand to her cheek? And Tom, does he remember what she looked like in his bed all those years ago? Does he yearn to see her there now? I cut off that train of thought quickly and turn on my back to look at the ceiling instead. There were times at Oxford, and in the years after, when I had stabs of jealousy toward Lara: for her effortless magnetism, her easygoing take-it-or-leave-it flirting, for how her very presence dimmed mine in the eyes of the male population. Then I would reason those feelings away; I would console myself that I appealed to the more discerning gentleman . . . I thought I had grown up, cast off my insecurities, but here we are a decade on: it’s so demeaning to realize that actually nothing has changed.

  “Tom,” says Lara uncannily if sleepily, pulling my gaze back to her. “Come on, time to tell all.”

  I rub a hand over my face, not trusting my voice for a moment, then recover and say, “Not much to tell.”

  “You’re pretty upset for not much to tell.”

  “I was drunk—well, we both were. We were sharing a cab, and I went up to his flat for a cup of tea—no, really, just tea!” I protest on Lara’s raised eyebrow. “Then somehow, I don’t know, we were kissing and then . . . God, I think I passed out.” I pull the pillow over my face. “It’s beyond humiliating,” I say, lifting it enough to let the words out. “And then this morning Tom was livid with me—he thinks I abused our friendship—and he was . . . mean. And it upset me.” I shrug and put the pillow down, concentrating on the ceiling. “It’s fine that he doesn’t want to . . . doesn’t want anything between us”�
��no it’s not, no it’s not, it doesn’t feel fine at all—“but he was pretty nasty.” It doesn’t feel fine to be confessing my humiliation at not being wanted to the girl he really wants, either. I wonder if she’s pleased that she hasn’t been usurped, and then I’m promptly ashamed of myself.

  “Tom nasty?” Lara’s eyebrows are raised in astonishment, the hairs glowing golden in the light.

  “Believe me, he’s very good at it when he tries. Very efficient.” Of course he is. Tom is the man who does what needs to be done, no matter what.

  “I know, but . . . nasty to you? What did he say?”

  “It doesn’t matter—no, really, it doesn’t.” I shake my head at her. “I don’t want to drag you into anything.” I look at the ceiling again. Does it need repainting? Or is it just that the lamp is casting uneven shadows? I wonder where Severine is sleeping—does she even sleep? She’s only in my head, so I suppose she must sleep when I do, except that I can’t imagine that at all. I can imagine her still, even imagine her with her eyes closed, but there’s a readiness there, like a panther in repose. At the slightest movement or sound she would unhurriedly raise her eyelids and survey the surrounds with her dark, secretive eyes. The thought is oddly comforting, like having a guard dog on the premises. Severine, my protector. I almost laugh out loud.

  “Did you want it to turn into anything?” Lara asks carefully after a moment. I turn my head to look at her, but this time she’s the one inspecting the ceiling. There are mascara flakes on her eyelashes; I will find smudges on my bed linen in the morning that are hell to get out. “You always just seemed like . . . mates. What about Seb?”

  It crosses my mind that Seb never looked to Lara first. Right from our very first meeting he honed in on me. In retrospect I wonder if that was part of the attraction. “Seb and I broke up a decade ago.” She turns her head to look at me with unashamed skepticism, and I can hardly blame her for it. If I didn’t know myself that I was over Seb, how could I expect anyone else to? “Seb now . . . he isn’t the same as the Seb I knew back then. Or thought I knew . . .” I’m not sure Seb was ever who I thought he was. “Maybe if I’d seen him in the intervening years I’d have been over him long ago.” Or maybe not; maybe it’s the stark contrast of now versus then that allows me to see things more clearly.

  “Closure,” she says thoughtfully. Then again, with a tired smile and an American accent: “Clo-sure.” A large yawn arrives, which she covers delicately, somehow putting me in mind of a cat, and then I think of her again on that car journey back from France, golden and sated, the cat that got the cream. I close my eyes tightly, but the image remains. “But Tom,” she is saying. “Did you really want something more?”

  Is she being more or less tenacious than I expect? Is she schooling her expression or is this a natural reaction? I can’t stop the second-guessing. “God, I don’t know. I never thought of him like that, and then suddenly . . .” Was it so sudden? I think of coming to the surface in his car after the journey back from lunch with his folks: wakey wakey, sleeping beauty, of that instant before the world rushed back in. Perhaps that fleeting moment lingered in my head, setting off ripples . . . I shrug, somehow disturbed by that thought. “I don’t know.” Her yawn is catching; I’m yawning myself now.

  “Mmm,” she says, her eyelids drifting closed.

  I reach out and flick off the bedside light. How is it that I can feel her warmth stealing across the inches between us, sense the rise and fall of her chest as she breathes evenly: the physical connection plus the intangible webs that link us—how is it that all of this binds us, yet we’re still alone inside our heads?

  * * *

  —

  On Monday Julie has a message for me when I get back to my office after a meeting: Call Caroline Horridge, followed by a Haft & Weil number. There’s no message from Tom, not that he would call my office number, and not that I expect him to call at all. I answer a few e-mails first, but the yellow Post-it with Julie’s curly script sits on my desk and glares at me unrelentingly until I recognize I’m prevaricating. I grit my teeth, pick up the phone and dial, ignoring Severine, who is lounging against the wall inspecting her fingernails.

  Caro answers exactly as she always does, stating her name in crisp tones after a single ring. “Hi, Caro, it’s Kate Channing here,” I say breezily, determined to cut off any of her game-playing tactics. “You left a message at my office.”

  Nonetheless, she leaves a beat or two, as if, even after hearing my full name and exactly why I’m calling, she’s still struggling to place me. “Ah, yes, Kate,” she says warmly, when she finally does speak. “Apologies, I’ve just been immersed in some difficult drafting. Back to the real world, though: I was calling to talk with you about the recruitment progress.”

  I have no idea what she’s talking about. “In relation to . . . ?”

  “Haft & Weil, of course. Our recruitment plans. I’m sure by now Gordon has told you that he’s handing over the reins of that project to me.”

  “Um . . .” My fake smile slides right off my face.

  “He hasn’t? Oh, I am sorry”—no, she’s not—“I didn’t mean to jump the gun”—yes, she did—“I was sure he’d spoken to you.” She knows he hasn’t. “Well, he has, so you and I are going to be working together on it from now on.” She pauses expectantly.

  “Interesting,” I say. It is, actually, on a number of levels, but of course she expects something more than that. I recover the fake smile and plaster it on. “Well, welcome aboard.” I’m sure Gordon would have wanted to tell me himself; I wonder how he will react when he realizes he’s been leapfrogged.

  “Thanks. I was hoping you might have some time tomorrow to drop by my office and bring me up to speed. Does that work for you?”

  “Absolutely.” I glance at my electronic calendar, these days gratifyingly checkered with meetings and calls, my smile doggedly in place. “I can do 11 A.M. or anytime after 3:30 P.M. tomorrow.”

  “Let’s do 11 A.M. and then we can grab a bite to eat afterward. Sound good?”

  “Perfect,” I manage. “See you then.”

  Paul comes in just as I’m putting the phone down. “Kate!” he exclaims. He’s definitely on an uptick these days. “Glad I caught you. We should discuss the Cavanagh account, and I really think I’m close to getting Struthers to bite, and—”

  “Slow down,” I say, laughing. “I’m not going anywhere. At least take your coat off first.”

  Severine glances at him with disdain, and suddenly I wonder: if Severine is a creation of my mind, are her reactions my own deeply hidden feelings? I observe Paul as he struggles out of his smart spring raincoat, trying to see him afresh. You could mock him if you wanted to, with his sharp city clothes, his urbane manner and his unflinching ambition. But I’ve seen him gray faced and crumpled with exhaustion on a Friday evening, having worked a seventy-five-hour week; I’ve drunk champagne out of mugs on the floor of this very office with him. I have no wish to mock him. I’m willing to concede that Severine—this Severine—is my creation, but she’s not me.

  “What?” says Paul, looking up to find my eyes on him as he pulls his chair across to my desk.

  I clear my face. “Nothing, nothing. Just . . . just thinking we’ve been gratifyingly lucky of late.”

  “It’s not luck,” he says seriously, his vanishingly pale eyebrows drawing earnestly over his eyes. “It’s hard work.”

  He really, truly believes it. Did I believe that once? Did I think that good things came to those who earned them? “Well,” I say equivocally, unwilling to burst his bubble, “it’s both.”

  * * *

  —

  Modan, Alain Modan, Investigateur, OPJ and lover of Lara . . . a man of many talents. Later that day I start to realize that one of them is the ability to toss everybody else off balance with an elegantly judged metaphorical tap-tackle; I should think he has put effort into that ta
lent over the years, carefully honing it to cause maximum consternation with minimum effort. He starts this particular campaign with the simplest of requests: a meeting.

  “All of us, mind,” says Lara again, through the mobile that’s clamped between my ear and shoulder to leave my hands free to pack up my briefcase for a meeting. Either she’s exceptionally tired or she has just been speaking to her family in Sweden: there’s a slight lilt to her voice that only ever comes out in specific circumstances. “He says he’d rather not repeat everything five times.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “You don’t believe that’s the reason,” Lara says. It’s a statement, not a question.

  “No.” I would have expected Modan to prefer five separate interviews, which would provide five separate opportunities for analyzing reactions—why the change of tack? I pause as I flick through the documents I’m adding to the bag. “And neither do you, I suspect.”

  “No.” She lets out a long sigh that sweeps through the city and delivers her frustration into my ear. “It’s . . .”

  “Infuriating?” I give up on choosing which documents I need and just drop them all in.

  “No. Well, it is, but mostly it’s just . . . unsettling. He’s lying, I know he’s lying, he knows I know he’s lying—I think he even wants me to know he’s lying, like that makes it less awful or something . . . How the hell are we supposed to base a relationship on this?”

  “You’re not,” I say sweetly, snapping the briefcase shut. “That’s why policemen aren’t supposed to fraternize with witnesses.”

  “Oh, fuck off,” she says, half laughing.

  “I shall. I’ve got to run to a meeting.” I switch the mobile into my hand. “Listen, Lara—this will pass; it won’t be like this forever for you guys. You just need to . . . ride it out, as best you can.”

  “I know.” This time the long sigh curls around me, heavy and brooding. The sunshine girl is fast losing her sun. If this thing runs for another two years . . . It doesn’t bear thinking about. “Well, I’ll see you there. Tonight at six thirty.”