The Prisoner(14)

I bend and reach along the floorboards for the tray. I find the bowl, and next to it, a spoon. He didn’t notice that the old one was missing. I smile; he doesn’t know yet that he’s playing my game. That finally, I have control over something.





CHAPTER SIXTEEN


PAST

Justine tipped her head back and closed her eyes.

“Isn’t this weather glorious?” she murmured.

“It’s perfect,” I said. “Everything’s perfect. So perfect that I don’t want it to come to an end.”

Justine opened an eye and squinted at me. “Why should it?”

It was a Thursday evening in late August, and we had moved from the café where we usually met to speak French, to a bench in Hyde Park.

“Because I can’t stay at Carolyn’s forever. I’ve been there for over a year and a half now. And at some point, she and Daniel might want to move in together.”

“It’s lovely that she’s met someone,” Justine said. “But it’s still early days. And if they do move in together, and you need to find another job, you can come and work at Exclusives with me and Lina.”

I shook my head. “I’m going to be a lawyer, don’t forget.”

She turned curious eyes on me. “Was it your father who influenced you to study law?”

“Not as such.” I rarely spoke about Papa, maybe because the memory of his death was still too painful. “When my mother died in childbirth, he sued the hospital in France for negligence. But he was passed from lawyer to lawyer and never managed to get very far. I don’t think that living in England helped.” I paused. “Nor did the whisky. His illness made him rely on it to relieve the pain. He was never a horrible drunk,” I added hastily. “It just made him retreat into himself.”

She reached out and gave my hand a squeeze. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“No, it’s fine,” I said, realizing that it was. “I just wish he’d managed to get justice for my mother and baby brother before he died. It was all he wanted, an acknowledgment from the hospital that they’d been negligent. It consumed him as much as the cancer did. It’s why I want to be a lawyer, to help people like him.”

Her phone beeped, a message coming in. She dug in her bag, took out her phone, glanced at the screen.

“Ned,” she said with a grimace. “You’d think he’d take no for an answer.”

“What do you mean?”

She put her phone away without answering it. “He is always asking me to have dinner with him and I tell him no, that I don’t date men I work with. And you know what he says?”

“What?”

“That I don’t work with him, I work for him. He thinks it’s funny.”

I frowned. “He shouldn’t be putting you in that position.”

She sat up. “You’re right, he shouldn’t,” she said indignantly. “Do you know what he said when he heard I was looking for somewhere to live, because I was moving out of Lina’s? He said I should go and live with him. He was joking, but it made me uncomfortable.”

“It must have been fun living with Lina.”

“Yes, it was, we had some great times. It was only meant to be temporary, while I looked for an apartment, because I’d just arrived from France. But we got along so well that she said I could stay as long as I liked.”

“So why did you move out?”

“Because, after about a year, she began going out a lot, and once or twice she didn’t come back until the next morning. That’s when I first suspected she had a boyfriend. I teased her and asked her if she was going to introduce me to him, but she told me that she’d been out with one of her girlfriends. I didn’t really believe her, and I was worried that maybe I was cramping her style, so I began looking for my own apartment.”

“Do you still think she has a boyfriend?”

Justine nodded. “You must have noticed the way she blushes when I tease her about it.”

“I wonder why she doesn’t want to introduce him to you or Carolyn?”

“I think she will, in time. It’s a big thing, introducing a new man to your friends.”

“I suppose,” I said distractedly. “When I move out of Carolyn’s, I want to stay in the area. You, Carolyn, and Lina are like my family now. I feel so lucky to have met you.”

Justine laughed. “We are the privileged ones. You keep us young—and yet you are very wise for someone who is just nineteen. When I was your age, I knew nothing. When I think of you coming to London without knowing anyone, of being alone in the world at sixteen, well, you’re quite amazing, Amelie Lamont.”

“Lina was even younger than me when she was orphaned,” I said, remembering what Lina had told me. “She has no family either.” I paused. “I am an orphan like Lina and half-French like you, and Carolyn is like my big sister. It makes me feel as if I belong, as if I have a family.” I gave a contented smile. “What more could I want?”

“I don’t know—a man, maybe?”

I shook my head. “It would be too much of a distraction. Maybe once I’m a lawyer, but not before.”

We were interrupted by her phone ringing. She peered into her bag. “Ned. Oh God, I hope he’s not going to start phoning me now.”