The French Girl(69)

“And you think he wanted you to look?”

“Yes. He tapped the file.” She spreads her hands wide again, her eyes pleading for absolution. “He tapped it.”

“Don’t feel bad. He meant you to look,” I say decisively. “We’re talking about Modan; he doesn’t just accidentally”—I sketch quotation marks around the adverb—“leave a sensitive file in plain view of someone with a vested interest in it.” Which begs the question as to why he chose to do just that. Focusing on the strategy is making me feel better. Don’t think about being arrested. Don’t think about being arrested.

“He’s using me,” she says with sudden fierceness. She’s almost vibrating with the intensity of her emotions. “He shouldn’t be doing that. He shouldn’t be putting me in this position.”

“I know. I don’t think he would if he had another option.” But so much hinges on whether that is really true. If he really cares about Lara, he would only use her as part of a last-ditch attempt to try and help her friend: ergo, I’m in real, undeniable trouble. But if Lara is merely a passing fling, then he might well use her if his investigation is stalling, to try and flush out more information. Here I am questioning that which only moments ago was an incontrovertible truth—wasn’t I only just thinking that he would never give up on Lara? He loves her, he loves her not, he loves her, he loves her not . . . I find myself examining the woman sitting opposite me again, as if I can read the truth of Modan’s feelings for her in the tilt of her nose, the curve of her lips, the sweep of her cheek. A garden rake. How does one accidentally kill someone with a garden rake? Don’t think about being arrested.

“Either way he thinks I know more than I’m telling,” I say aloud. What if it wasn’t an accident? I see a long wooden handle whistling through the air, landing squarely on Severine’s temple. A garden rake.

“Either way?” Lara wrinkles her nose, puzzled.

“Nothing,” I say quickly. Clearly Lara hasn’t considered the possibility that she is being used for ill rather than good. She at least is convinced of his affections. Does that signify? I wonder what Tom will make of it all; there’s no question in my mind that I will tell him. Tom may not want a relationship with me, but presumably I can trust a man who was once in love with me to be on my side. Will Tom trust in Modan’s feelings for Lara? It suddenly strikes me that I’ve been wrong before where Lara is concerned; wrong for years, in fact.

“Lara, when—” Something slams into the window right beside us with a loud thud. We both jump, knocking the table; our coffees slop everywhere. I feel the instant prickle of adrenaline sweeping over me again.

“Jesus, what was that?” gasps Lara, her face utterly drained of color.

The window is intact. I’m standing up, craning my neck with my head pressed against the window to look through it, past the coffee shop slogan stuck on the glass to the pavement below. “A bird,” I say. “A pigeon.” The dirty, gray-feathered body is lying in a heap on the paving. “It’s stunned itself.”

“Jesus,” says Lara again.

I straighten and glance around the coffee shop. The barista continues to serve, conversations are continuing among the paired clientele, mobile phones continue to be inspected by those sitting alone. Nobody else seems to have noticed. I look out of the window; passersby hurry on, unheeding. Severine is among them, in her black shift, blood trickling from her right temple. It doesn’t seem to be affecting either her balance or her self-possession.

“That was weird.” I grab some napkins and start to mop up our spilled coffee. “There must have been a reflection in the window; it must have thought it was flying into sky.”

“That used to happen at school in Sweden sometimes.”

I settle down again and return to my almost cold coffee. “Lara, why did you and Tom never give things a proper go?”

She looks up from her coffee, startled. “After France, you mean?”

“Yes.” I’m suddenly very self-conscious. Should I be holding eye contact, or not? What impression am I giving about how vested I am in this answer? “I always thought he wanted to but you didn’t.”

“Oh.” She’s blushing a little. It underlines how pale she’s been this afternoon. “Actually . . . it was more the other way round. To be honest, I would have been up for it—at the time, I mean, not now—but he was definitely not into anything more.”

“Oh.” I consider that. “Why did I think it was the other way round?”

“I don’t know.” But she really is too honest to leave it like that. “Except maybe . . . perhaps I gave you that impression. I felt a bit, well, rejected, I suppose. You weren’t really around at the time; right after France you and Seb were splitting up and your dad died and then you were up north for ages, and in quite a state even when you got back . . . I think you made the assumption and I never really corrected it, out of pride I guess.” I can see the guilty embarrassment squirming inside her; I can see the Lara of years ago, hardly unable to comprehend the concept of a man who doesn’t want to climb back in the sack with her. “It hasn’t messed things up for you and Tom, has it?” she asks, suddenly anxious.

“I don’t think there is a me and Tom.” Just like there was never a Lara and Tom. I got that wrong, for all those years, along with just about everything else. Am I wrong about how Modan feels about Lara? Am I being played? “Would you mind if there was?”