The French Girl(80)

“These came for you,” he says, pushing a tall flower box into my arms. “Sorry, got to dash.”

“Oh,” I say blankly. “Thank you,” I call after him, but he’s already taking the stairs two at a time, and simply raises a hand in acknowledgment without turning around. I close the door and put the box on the table, ripping open the top in a quest to find a card. It’s nestling inconspicuously among the heads of white lilies interspersed with some pretty green foliage, my name written on the envelope in curly, unmistakably feminine handwriting, presumably by a woman in the flower shop. For a moment I don’t dare open the envelope. There is only one person I want these to be from; until I open the card there is still that possibility.

Act like yourself, I admonish myself. You don’t believe in putting things off.

So I slide a finger under the lip of the envelope and rip it open to pull out a small square card with the flower shop’s logo on one side. On the other, it says, in the same jarring curly writing:


Kate,

I thought about it. I’d like to try.

Tom x

Something inside me leaps. I read it again, and again, and then I find a smile is spreading across my face. There’s a fizzing running through me that I don’t recognize, a lightness, as if I could float upward.

Happiness, I realize. It’s been a long time.

I reach for my phone to call Tom, to thank him for the beautiful flowers, but there’s another buzz from the front door. Tom in person? But I know that’s too hopeful; he wouldn’t expect me to be home and in any case he would have called first. Severine is leaning against the door when I get there, blocking me from opening it. I gesture her out of the way, but she remains in place, her dark eyes fixed on me expressionlessly. The buzzer sounds again. I sigh and reluctantly swing the door open through Severine and have the disconcerting experience of seeing her face replaced by the dark wood and then by the face of the last person I expected to see on my doorstep.

Caro.





CHAPTER NINETEEN


Caro.

It is Caro, but for a moment I’m thrown, disorientated by the flash of Severine, then the door, then who? For a moment it could be . . . But no, it’s Caro, encased in a smart dark coat and wearing a very trendy trilby that hides the dirty blond of her hair. She has unusually dark skin and eyebrows for a blonde; with her hair hidden one might easily mistake her for a brunette. Something jerks in the recesses of my mind. I find I’m staring at her.

“Well,” says Caro, and the moment she speaks she is Caro; all suggestions of anything otherwise are swept away. I pull myself together. There is something in her eyes, some sly satisfaction that has me on guard—more on guard, that is. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“Actually, Caro, I’m really not feeling well.” I’ve kept the door only a couple of feet ajar: enough not to be rude, but not wide enough to invite an entrance. “Didn’t Julie call you?” But Julie must have called her, otherwise Caro would have expected me around this time at her offices . . .

“She did. I thought any combination of these might help.” She holds up a bottle of wine, a packet of Lemsip and some handbag-sized tissues.

“Oh. Well, that’s . . . Well, that’s kind of you.” Confronted with gifts, normal behavior demands I swing the door wide, and after all, I have resolved to follow normal behavior. “Come in.”

She enters, and I take the gifts from her as she unbuttons her coat and removes the dark red trilby, looking around her with sharp, greedy glances, stripping away every detail to store in that carnivorous mind of hers. I glance around myself, trying to see things as she must see them. It’s a nice flat in a Georgian block, small but welcoming, with some lovely old features such as the original bay windows, but it can’t hold a candle to Caro’s own apartment. Or Tom’s. Just the thought of him is a delicious secret inside me, to be held tight and treasured. The florist’s card is still in my hand; I shove it surreptitiously into my pocket.

“Lovely flowers,” says Caro. “A secret admirer?” Her eyes scan me, eager and hot and hungry—and something else, too, something like anger, but why on earth should she be angry at me receiving flowers?

“Hardly.” I give a careless laugh.

“No? Who then?” she presses insistently.

“They’re from a very happy client. Anyway, come on through to the kitchen,” I say quickly, self-conscious in my lie; anything to do with Tom is too new for me to be sure I can hide it. I lead her through the flat; it’s hard to overstate just how uncomfortable I feel with her inside my home sanctuary. Severine isn’t proving helpful, either: she’s trailing Caro, never more than a foot away, more present and more insistent than I’ve ever seen her before. “Tea, coffee?” And then because Caro is looking expectantly at the bottle she gave me, which I’ve placed on the kitchen counter, I add reluctantly, “Wine?”

“Yes, please. Is it a flu bug?”

I find some wineglasses and pull a corkscrew out of a drawer as I answer her. “The beginnings of one, I think. I’m all achy and my head is pounding.” That’s all true, actually, or it was before the flowers arrived and boosted my endorphin count, but a flu bug has nothing to do with it. Before the flowers . . . suddenly I remember—“Fuck, the bath!”