JOJO MOYES

Honeymoon in Paris

PENGUIN BOOKS

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

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Chapter One

Paris, 2002

Liv Halston holds tight to the guard rail of the Eiffel Tower, looks down through the diamond-strung wire at the whole of Paris laid out below, and wonders if anyone, ever, has had a honeymoon as disastrous as this one.

Around her, families of tourists squeal and duck back from the view, or lean against the mesh theatrically for their friends to take pictures, while an impassive security guard looks on. From the west a glowering clump of storm clouds is moving towards them across the sky. A brisk wind has turned her ears pink.

Someone throws a paper aeroplane, and she watches it travel its corkscrew course down, buoyed by passing winds, until it grows too small and is lost from view. Somewhere down there, among the elegant Haussmann boulevards, and the tiny courtyards, the classically laid-out parks and the gently undulating banks of the Seine, is her new husband. The husband who had informed her, two days into their honeymoon, that he was really sorry but he was going to have to meet someone that morning for a work thing. The building he had been telling her about on the edge of the city. Just for an hour. He shouldn’t be long. She’d be okay, wouldn’t she?

The same husband she had told that if he walked out of the hotel room he could bugger right off and not come back.

David had thought she was joking. She had thought he was. He’d half laughed. ‘Liv – this is important.’

‘As is our honeymoon,’ she had replied. The way they had stared at each other then, as if they were each facing someone they had never seen before.

‘Oh, my. I think I’m gonna have to go back down.’ An American woman, with a huge money-belt around her waist and hair the colour of gingerbread, pulls a face as she inches past. ‘I can’t do heights. You feel it creaking?’

‘I hadn’t noticed,’ Liv says.

‘My husband’s like you. Cool as a cucumber. He could stand there all day. My nerves were shot coming up in that darned lift.’ She looks at a bearded man, who is taking pictures intently with an expensive camera, shivers and makes her way towards the lift, holding on to the rail.

It is painted brown, the Eiffel Tower, the same shade as chocolate, an odd colour for such a delicate-looking structure. She half turns to say as much to David before realizing that, of course, he isn’t there. She had pictured herself and David up here from the moment he suggested a week in Paris. The two of them, their arms wrapped around each other, perhaps at night, looking down at the City of Lights. She would be giddy with happiness. He would look at her the way he had when he proposed. She would feel like the luckiest woman in the world.

Then a week had become five days, because of an unmissable meeting in London on the Friday. And of those five days, only two had passed before another apparently unmissable meeting had popped up.

And now Liv stands, shivering ‒ in the summer dress she had bought because it was the exact shade of her eyes and she’d thought he would notice ‒ as the skies grow grey and a fine spit starts. And she wonders whether her schoolgirl French is up to hailing a taxi back to the hotel, or whether, in her current mood, she may as well trudge home in the rain. She joins the queue for the lift.

‘Are you leaving yours up here too?’

‘My what?’

The American woman is beside her. She smiles, nods towards Liv’s shiny wedding band. ‘Your husband.’

‘He – he’s not here. He’s … busy today.’

‘Oh, are you here on business? How gorgeous for you. He gets to do the work, and you get to have a lovely time seeing the sights.’ She laughs. ‘You worked that out right, honey.’

Liv takes a last look out at the Champs-Élysées and something settles in the pit of her stomach. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Aren’t I the lucky one?’

‘Marry in haste …’ her friends had warned her. They had said it jokingly but, given that she and David had known each other for all of three months and eleven days when he’d proposed, she could detect the faint edge of truth in it.

She hadn’t wanted a big wedding: her mother’s absence would have hung over it, colouring it a darker shade. So she and David had fled to Italy, to Rome, where she’d bought a white dress off the peg from an understated and terrifyingly expensive designer in the via Condotti and had understood almost none of the church ceremony until David slid a ring onto her finger.

David’s friend Carlo, who had helped organize it and acted as one of their witnesses, had kidded her afterwards that she had just agreed to honour, obey, and accept any further wives that David might wish to add to the collection. She had laughed for a solid twenty-four hours.

She had known it was right. She had known it from the moment she’d met him. She’d known it even when her father had looked downcast at the news, and masked it immediately with hearty congratulations, and she had realized guiltily that, while she had never particularly dreamt about her wedding, her surviving parent might have done. She’d known it when she’d moved her few belongings to David’s house – the glass structure on top of a sugar factory by the Thames had been one of the first things he’d designed and built. Every morning in the six weeks between her wedding and her honeymoon she had woken up in the Glass House, surrounded by sky, gazed at her sleeping husband and known that they were right together. Some passions were too great not to act upon.

‘Don’t you feel … I don’t know … a bit young?’ Jasmine had been waxing her legs over her kitchen sink. Liv had sat at the table and watched her, smoking a contraband cigarette. David didn’t like smoking. She had told him she’d stopped a year ago. ‘I mean, I’m not being funny, Liv, but you do tend to do things on impulse. Like the whole cutting-your-hair-off-for-a-bet thing. And the jacking-in-your-job-and-going-round-the-world thing.’

‘Like I’m the only person ever to do that.’

‘You’re the only person I know who did the two things on the same day. I don’t know, Liv. It just … it all seems so fast.’

‘But it feels right. We’re so happy together. And I can’t imagine him doing anything that makes me angry or sad. He’s …’ Liv blew a smoke ring towards the strip light ‘… perfect.’

‘Well, he’s definitely lovely. I just can’t believe you of all people are getting married. You were the one of us who always swore you wouldn’t.’

‘I know.’

Jasmine pulled up a sheet of wax and grimaced at its grim residue. ‘Ouch. Fuck, that hurt … He’s bloody fit, though. And that house sounds amazing. Better than this hole.’

‘When I wake up with him I feel like I’m in the pages of some glossy magazine. Everything is just so grown-up. I didn’t bother bringing hardly any of my stuff. He has linen bed sheets, for God’s sake. Actual linen sheets.’ She blew another smoke ring. ‘Made of linen.’

‘Yeah. And who’s going to end up ironing those linen sheets?’

‘Not me. He has a cleaner. He says he doesn’t need me to do that stuff. He’s worked out I’m a rubbish housekeeper. In fact, he wants me to think about doing a postgrad.’

‘A postgrad?’

‘He says I’m too smart not to do something with my life.’

‘Shows how long he’s known you.’ Jasmine rotated her ankle, looking for stray hairs. ‘So. Are you going to?’

‘I don’t know. There’s so much going on, what with moving into his house and getting married and everything. I feel like I should get my head round being married first.’

‘A wife.’ Jasmine grinned at her slyly. ‘Oh, my God. Wifey.’

‘Don’t. It still freaks me out a bit.’

‘Wifey.’

‘Stop it!’

So, obviously, Jasmine had kept saying it until Liv flicked her hard with a tea-towel.

He’s at the hotel when she returns. She had decided to walk, and the heavens had opened, so she’s soaked through, her dress clinging to her wet legs. As she walks through Reception she swears the concierge gives her the look reserved for the kind of woman whose husband takes business meetings on their honeymoon.

David is on the telephone when she walks into their room. He turns, spies her, and breaks the call. ‘Where have you been? I was getting worried.’

She pulls her wet cardigan from her shoulders, reaches into the wardrobe for a hanger. ‘I went up the Eiffel Tower. And walked back.’

‘You’re soaked. I’ll run you a bath.’

‘I don’t want a bath.’ She does. She’s thought of nothing else the whole, long, miserable walk back.

‘I’ll order up some tea, then.’

As he picks up the phone for room service she turns away, walks into the bathroom and shuts the door. She can feel David looking after her long after it has closed. She doesn’t know why she’s being mulish. She’d planned to be nice when she got back, to recover the day. It was only one meeting after all. And she had known what he was like, from their very first date, when he had driven her around London and told her about the background and design of modern glass and steel structures they passed.

But something had happened as she’d crossed the threshold of the hotel room. She’d seen him on the telephone and just the simple fact that she’d known, immediately, it was a work call had skewed her fragile sense of goodwill. You weren’t worried about me, she thinks crossly. You were discussing what thickness of glass to use on the new building entrance, or whether the roof brace could support the weight of the extra ventilation shaft.

She runs a bath, filling it with expensive hotel bubbles, then slides in, letting out a sigh of relief as she immerses herself in the hot water.

Some minutes later, David knocks on the door and enters.

‘Tea,’ he says, and puts the cup on the side of the marble bath.

‘Thank you.’

She waits for him to leave, but he sits down on the closed lid of the lavatory, leaning forwards, and watches her.

‘I booked us a table at La Coupole.’

‘For tonight?’ ‘Yes. I told you about it. It’s the brasserie with the amazing murals painted by artists who –’

‘David, I’m really tired. I walked a long way. I don’t think I want to go out tonight.’ She doesn’t look at him as she speaks.

‘I’m not sure I’ll be able to get us reservations for another night.’

‘Sorry. I just want to have some room service and go to bed.’

Why are you doing this? she yells at herself silently. Why are you sabotaging your own honeymoon?

‘Look. I’m sorry about today, okay? It’s just that I’ve been trying to get a meeting with the Goldsteins for months. And it just turns out they’re in Paris, and they finally agreed to see my designs. This is the building I was telling you about, Liv. The big one. And I think they liked it.’

Liv stares at her toes, which emerge pink and shining from the water. ‘Well, I’m glad it went well.’

They sit in silence.

‘I hate this. I hate that you’re so unhappy.’

She looks up at him, his blue eyes, the way his hair is always a bit messy, the way he is resting his face in his hands. After a moment’s hesitation she reaches out a hand, and he takes it. ‘Ignore me. I’m being silly. You’re right. I know this building’s a big deal for you.’

‘It really is, Liv. I wouldn’t have left you for anything else. This is the thing I’ve been working towards for months. Years. If I can pull it off, the partnership is made. My reputation is made.’

‘I know. Look, don’t cancel dinner. We’ll go. I’ll feel better after my bath. And we can plan our day tomorrow.’

His fingers close around hers. Because of the soapsuds it’s hard for hers not to slip away.

‘Well … here’s the thing. They want me to meet their project manager tomorrow.’

Liv goes very still. ‘What?’

‘They’re flying him over specially. They want me to meet them at their suite in the Royal Monceaux. I thought maybe you could go to the spa there while I was with them. It’s meant to be amazing.’

She looks up at him. ‘Are you serious?’

‘I am. I heard it was voted French Vogue’s best –’

‘I’m not talking about the bloody spa.’

‘Liv – this means they’re actually keen. I have to capitalize on it.’

Her voice, when it emerges, is strangely strangulated. ‘Five days. Our honeymoon is all of five days, David. Not even a week. You’re telling me they couldn’t wait to have a meeting for another seventy-two hours?’

‘This is the Goldsteins, Liv. This is how billionaires do things. You have to fit around their timetable.’

She stares at her feet, at the pedicure she had booked at great expense, and remembers how she and the beautician had laughed when she’d said that her feet looked good enough to eat.

‘Please go away, David.’

‘Liv. I –’

‘Just leave me alone.’

She doesn’t look at him as he rises from the lavatory. When he closes the bathroom door behind him, Liv shuts her eyes and slides under the hot water until she can hear nothing at all.

Chapter Two

Paris, 1912

‘Not the Bar Tripoli.’

‘Yes, the Bar Tripoli.’

For a big man, Édouard Lefèvre could bear an uncanny resemblance to a small boy informed of some imminent punishment. He looked down at me, his expression pained, and blew out his cheeks. ‘Ah – let’s not do this tonight, Sophie. Let’s go and eat somewhere. Let’s have an evening free of financial concerns. We’re only just married! It’s still our lune de miel!’ He waved dismissively at the bar.

I reached into my coat pocket for the handful of IOUs I had folded in there. ‘My beloved husband, we cannot have an evening free of financial concerns for we have no money to eat. Not a centime.’

‘But the money from the Galerie Duchamps –’

‘Gone on rent. You were behind from the summer, remember.’

‘The savings in the pot?’

‘Spent two days ago when you were minded to treat everyone in Ma Bourgogne to breakfast.’

‘It was a wedding breakfast! I felt the need to mark the occasion of our return to Paris somehow.’ He thought for a moment. ‘The money in my blue pantalons?’

‘Last night.’

He patted his pockets, coming up only with his tobacco pouch. He looked so downcast I almost laughed.

‘Courage, Édouard. It won’t be so bad. If you prefer I’ll go in and ask your friends nicely to settle their debts. You need have nothing to do with it. They will find it harder to refuse a woman.’

‘And then we will leave?’

‘And then we will leave.’ I reached up and kissed his cheek. ‘And we will go and get some food.’

‘I’m not sure I’ll wish to eat,’ he grumbled. ‘Discussing money gives me indigestion.’

‘You will wish to eat, Édouard.’

‘I don’t see why we have to do this now. Our lune de miel is meant to last a month. A month of nothing but love! I asked one of my society patrons and she knows all about such things. I’m sure there is money somewhere in my … Oh, hang on, here’s Laure. Laure! Come and meet my wife!’

In the three weeks that I had been Madame Édouard Lefèvre, and, in truth, for some months beforehand, I had discovered that the number of my new husband’s creditors was even greater than his skills as a painter. Édouard was the most generous of men – but with little, financially, to support such generosity. He sold his paintings with an ease that must have been the envy of his friends at the Académie Matisse, but rarely bothered to demand anything as unpleasant as cash for them, settling instead for a steadily growing pile of tattered IOUs. Hence Messieurs Duchamp, Bercy and Stiegler could afford both his exquisite artistry on their walls and food in their bellies, while Édouard lived for weeks on on bread, cheese and rillettes.

I had been horrified when I uncovered the state of his finances. Not because of his lack of funds – I had known when Édouard and I met that he could not be wealthy – but because of the casual disregard with which these so-called friends seemed to treat him. They promised him money, which never came. They accepted his drinks, his hospitality, and gave little back. Édouard would be the man suggesting drinks for all, food for the ladies, good times for everyone, and when the bills came, he would somehow find himself the last soul in the bar.

‘Friendship matters more to me than money,’ he had said, when I went through his accounts.

‘That is a perfectly admirable sentiment, my love. Unfortunately friendship will not put bread on our table.’

‘I have married a businesswoman!’ he exclaimed proudly. In those days after our wedding, I could have announced I was a lancer of boils, and he would have still been proud of me.

I had been peering through the window of the Bar Tripoli, trying to make out who was inside. When I turned back, Édouard was talking to this Madame Laure. This was not unusual: my husband knew everyone in the fifth and sixth arrondissements. It was impossible to walk a hundred yards without him exchanging greetings, cigarettes, good wishes. ‘Sophie!’ he said. ‘Come here! I want you to meet Laure Le Comte.’

I hesitated for only a second: it was clear from her rouged cheeks, her evening slippers, that Laure Le Comte was a fille de rue. He had told me when we’d first met that he often used them as models; they were ideal, he said, being so unselfconscious about their bodies. Perhaps I should have been shocked that he wished to introduce me, his wife, to one, but I had quickly learned that Édouard cared little for conventional etiquette. I knew he liked them, respected them, even, and I did not want him to think less of me.

‘A pleasure to meet you, Mademoiselle,’ I said. I held out my hand, and used the formal vous to convey my respects. Her fingers were so ridiculously soft that I had to check I was actually holding them.

‘Laure has modelled for me on many occasions. You remember the painting with the woman on the blue chair? The one you’re particularly fond of? That was Laure. She’s an excellent model.’

‘You’re too kind, Monsieur,’ she said.

I smiled warmly. ‘I do know the painting. It’s a beautiful image.’

The woman’s eyebrow lifted just a fraction. I realized afterwards that it was unlikely she was often complimented by another woman. ‘I always think it an oddly regal work.’

‘Regal. Sophie is quite right. That is exactly how you appear in it,’ Édouard said.

Laure’s gaze flickered between us, as if she was trying to work out whether I was mocking her.

‘The first time my husband painted me I looked like the most awful old maid,’ I said quickly, wanting to put her at ease. ‘So severe and forbidding. I think Édouard said I looked like a stick.’

‘I’d never say such a thing.’

‘But you thought it.’

‘It was a terrible painting,’ Édouard agreed. ‘But the fault was entirely mine.’ He looked at me. ‘And now I find it impossible to paint a bad picture of you.’

It was still hard not to meet his gaze without blushing a little. There was a brief silence. And I looked away.

‘My congratulations on your wedding, Madame Lefèvre. You are a very lucky woman. But, perhaps, not as lucky as your husband.’

She nodded to me, and then to Édouard, as she lifted her skirts slightly from the wet pavement and walked away.

‘Don’t look at me like that in public,’ I scolded him, as we watched her go.

‘I like it,’ he said, lighting a cigarette and looking ridiculously pleased with himself. ‘You go such an endearing colour.’

Édouard saw a man he wanted to speak to over in the tabac, so I let him go, walked into the Bar Tripoli and stood at the counter for a few minutes, watching Monsieur Dinan at his usual spot in the corner. I asked for a glass of water, and drank it, exchanging a few words with the barman. Then I walked over and greeted Monsieur Dinan, removing my hat.

It took him a few seconds to register who I was. I suspected it was only my hair that gave me away. ‘Ah. Mademoiselle. And how are you? It’s a chill evening, is it not? Is Édouard well?’

‘He is perfectly fine, Monsieur, thank you. But I wonder if I might have two minutes to discuss a private matter.’

He glanced around the table. The woman to his right gave him a hard look. The man opposite was too busy talking to his companion to notice. ‘I do not believe I have any private matters to discuss with you Mademoiselle.’ He looked at his female companion as he spoke.

‘As you wish, Monsieur. Then we shall discuss it here. It is a simple matter of payment for a painting. Édouard sold you a particularly fine work in oil pastels – The Market at Grenouille – for which you promised him …’ I checked my paper ‘… five francs? He would be much obliged if you could settle the sum now.’

The convivial expression disappeared. ‘You are his debt collector?’

‘I believe that description is a little strong, Monsieur. I am merely tidying Édouard’s finances. And this particular bill is, I believe, some seven months old now.’

‘I am not going to discuss financial matters in front of my friends.’ He turned away from me in high dudgeon.

But I had half expected this. ‘Then I’m afraid, Monsieur, that I will be forced to stand here until you are ready to discuss it.’

All pairs of eyes around the little table had now landed on me, but I did not so much as colour. It was hard to embarrass me. I had grown up in a bar in St Peronne; I had helped my father throw out drunks from the age of twelve, had cleaned the gentlemen’s WC, had heard talk so bawdy it would have made a street girl blush. Monsieur Dinan’s theatrical disapproval held no terrors for me.

‘Well, you will be there all evening, then. For I do not have such a sum on me.’

‘Forgive me, Monsieur, but I was standing at the bar for some time before I came over. And I could not help but notice that your wallet was most generously stocked.’

At this his male companion began to laugh. ‘I think she has the measure of you, Dinan.’

This seemed only to enrage him.

‘Who are you? Who are you to embarrass me so? This is not Édouard’s doing. He understands the nature of a gentleman’s friendship. He would not come here so gauchely, demanding money and embarrassing a man in front of his friends.’ He squinted at me. ‘Hah! I remember now … You are the shop girl. Édouard’s little shop girl from La Femme Marché. How could you possibly understand the ways of Édouard’s circle? You are …’ he sneered ‘… provincial.’

He had known that would hurt. I felt the colour rising slowly from my chest. ‘I am indeed, Monsieur, if it is now a provincial concern to eat. And even a shop girl can see when Édouard’s friends have taken advantage of his generous nature.’

‘I’ve told him I will pay him.’

‘Seven months ago. You told him you would pay him seven months ago.’

‘Why should I answer to you? Since when did you become Édouard’s chienne méchante?’ He actually spat the words at me.

Briefly, I froze. And then I heard Édouard’s voice, behind me, reverberating from somewhere deep within his chest. ‘What did you call my wife?’

‘Your wife?’

I turned. I had never seen my husband’s expression so dark. ‘Are you deaf as well as charmless now, Dinan?’

‘You married her? That sour-faced shop girl?’

Édouard’s fist shot out so fast that I barely saw it. It came from somewhere behind my right ear and caught Dinan so hard on the chin that he actually lifted a little into the air as he flew backwards. He crashed down in a pile of chairs, the table overturning as his legs swung over his head. His female companions shrieked as the wine bottle broke, spraying Medoc over their clothes.

The bar fell quiet, the fiddler stopping mid-note. The air felt electrified. Dinan blinked, struggling to right himself.

‘Apologize to my wife. She is worth a dozen of you.’ Édouard’s voice was a growl.

Dinan spat something, possibly a tooth. He lifted his chin, a thin scarlet trickle bisecting it, and muttered, so quietly that I thought only I could have heard him: ‘Putain.’

With a roar, Édouard went for him. Dinan’s friend launched himself on Édouard, throwing punches at his shoulders, his head, his broad back. They bounced off my husband as if they were gnats. I could just make out Édouard’s voice: ‘How dare you insult my wife?’

‘Fréjus, you blackguard!’ I turned to see Michel Le Duc landing a punch on someone else.

‘Arrêtez, Messieurs! Arrêtez vous!’

The bar erupted. Édouard pushed himself upright. He shook Dinan’s friend from his shoulders, as if he were shrugging off a coat, and swung a chair behind him. I felt, as much as heard, the wood crack on the man’s back. Bottles skimmed the air over our heads. Women shrieked, men swore, customers scrambled for the doors, while street boys ran in through them to join the mêlée. In the chaos, I saw my moment. I stooped, and pulled the groaning Dinan’s wallet from his jacket. I took a five-franc note from it and tucked a piece of handwritten paper in its place.

‘I have written you a receipt,’ I shouted at him, my mouth close to his ear. ‘You may need it if you ever choose to sell Édouard’s painting. Although, frankly, you would be a fool to do so.’ And then I straightened. ‘Édouard!’ I called, looking around for him. ‘Édouard!’ I was unsure whether he had heard me above the commotion.

I ducked to avoid a bottle and made my way through the scrum towards him. The street girls were laughing and catcalling in a corner. The patron was shouting and wringing his hands, the fight spilling out onto the street now, tables crashing. There was not a man in there who wasn’t throwing punches – indeed, they had all embraced the prospect of pitched battle with such relish that I wondered if it was a fight at all.

‘Édouard!’

And then I spied Monsieur Arnault in the corner by the piano. ‘Oh, Monsieur Arnault!’ I yelled, as I fought my way over to him, holding up my skirts as I trod over the bodies and the upturned chairs. He was sliding along a banquette, evidently hoping to make his way to the door. ‘Two charcoal sketches! The women in the park? You remember?’ He glanced at me and I mouthed the words: ‘You owe Édouard for two charcoal sketches.’ I crouched, one hand raised to protect my head and used the other to pull the IOUs from my pocket, flicking through them and ducking to avoid a shoe. ‘Five francs for the two, it says here. Yes?’

Behind us, someone screamed as a tankard hit a window, smashing it.

Monsieur Arnault’s eyes were wide with fear. He peered swiftly behind me, then scrabbled in his pocket for his wallet. He peeled off the notes with such haste that I discovered later he had given me two francs too many. ‘Take it!’ he hissed, then bolted for the door, his hat pressed to his head.

And there we had it. Eleven – no, twelve francs. Enough to keep us going.

‘Édouard,’ I called again, scanning the room. I could just make him out in the corner, where a man with a ginger moustache, like a fox’s brush, was swinging vainly at him, as Édouard held him by the shoulders. I put my hand on his arm. My husband looked at me blankly, as if he had forgotten I was there. ‘I have the money. We should go.’

He didn’t seem to hear me.

‘Really,’ I said. ‘We should go now.’ He dropped the man, who slid down the wall and felt in his mouth with a finger, muttering something about a chipped tooth. I had hold of Édouard’s sleeve now, pulling him towards the doors, my ears ringing with the din, fighting my way through the men who had come in from outside. I cannot believe they had any idea what the fight was about.

‘Sophie!’ Édouard pulled me backwards sharply as a chair swung in a great arc before my face, close enough for me to feel the disturbance it created in the air. I cursed with fright, and blushed that my husband had heard me.

And then we were outside in the evening air, onlookers gazing in at the windows, through cupped hands, the distant sound of shouting and breaking glass in our ears. I stopped by the empty tables and brushed my skirts down, dislodging splinters of glass. Beside us a bloodied man sat on a chair, holding his ear with one hand, and smoking contemplatively with the other.

‘Shall we go and eat, then?’ I said, smoothing my coat and glancing up at the sky. ‘I think it may rain again.’

My husband pulled at his collar, then ran his hands through his hair, letting out a short breath. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes. I’m ready for some food now.’

‘I must apologise for cursing. It was not very ladylike.’

He patted my hand. ‘I did not hear a thing.’

I reached up to pull a wooden splinter from the shoulder of his coat, and flicked it away. I kissed him. And arm in arm we walked briskly towards the Panthéon, the sound of the gendarmes’ clanging bell echoing over the Paris rooftops.

I had moved to Paris two years previously, and had lived in lodgings behind the rue Beaumarchais, as did all shop girls who worked at La Femme Marché. The day I had left to be married, all the girls lined up on my corridor and cheered and banged saucepans with wooden spoons.

We were married in St Peronne, and in the absence of my father I was given away by Jean-Michel, my sister’s husband. Édouard was charming and generous, and behaved like the perfect groom for the three days’ celebrations, but I knew how relieved he was to escape the provincial confines of northern France and make his way swiftly back to Paris.

I cannot tell you how happy I was. I had never expected to love, let alone marry. And I would never have admitted as much in public but I loved him with such a passion that I would have stayed with Édouard Lefèvre even if he had not wanted to marry me. In fact, he had so little time for convention that I had assumed it would be the last thing he wanted.

But it was he who had suggested marriage.

We had been together a little under three months when Hans Lippmann visited his studio one afternoon (I was washing our clothes, as Édouard had forgotten to put by any money to pay his laundress). Monsieur Lippmann was something of a dandy and I had been a little embarrassed that he saw me in my house garments. He walked around the studio, admiring Édouard’s latest works, then paused in front the painting he had done of me on the evening of Bastille Day, when he and I had first revealed our feelings for each other. I remained in the bathroom, scrubbing away at Édouard’s collars, trying not to be embarrassed that I knew Lippmann was looking at a picture of me in my underclothes. Their voices dropped for a few minutes and I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Eventually curiosity overcame me. I dried my hands and walked out into the studio to find them gazing at a series of sketches Édouard had done of me sitting by the large window. Monsieur Lippmann turned and, after the briefest of greetings, asked if I would I model for him too. Fully dressed, of course. There was something fascinating about the angles of my face, something about my pale skin, he said. Didn’t Édouard agree? Why he must do – he had seen it himself. He laughed.

Édouard didn’t.

I was about to say yes (I liked Lippmann: he was one of the few artists who treated me as an equal), but I saw Édouard’s smile tighten.

‘No. I’m afraid Mademoiselle Bessette is far too busy.’

There was a brief, awkward silence. Lippmann gave us an amused glance.

‘Why, Édouard, we have shared models before. I merely thought that –’

‘No.’

Lippmann looked at his feet. ‘If you say so, Édouard. A pleasure to meet you again, Mademoiselle.’ He tipped his hat to me and left. Édouard did not wish him goodbye.

‘You funny thing,’ I said to him later. He was in the tub, and I was kneeling on a cushion behind him, washing his hair. He had been quiet all afternoon. ‘You know I have eyes only for you. I would have worn a nun’s habit for Monsieur Lippmann if it meant keeping you happy.’ I poured a jug of water slowly over the back of his head, watching the suds slide away. ‘Besides, he’s married. Contentedly so. And he’s a gentleman.’

Édouard was still silent. Then he turned his whole body abruptly, so that a slew of water went over the side of the tub. ‘I need to know you are mine,’ he said, and his face was so anxious, so miserable, that it took me a moment to speak.

‘I am yours, you fool.’ I took his face between my hands and kissed him. His skin was wet. ‘I have been yours since the first time you came to La Femme Marché and bought fifteen ridiculous scarves in your determination to see me.’ I kissed him again. ‘I was yours from the moment you told Mistinguett I had the best ankles in Paris, after she tried to humiliate me because I wore clogs.’ I kissed him again. He closed his eyes. ‘I was yours from the moment you drew me and I realized nobody else would ever look at me like you do. As if you saw only the best of me. As if I was someone more magnificent than I knew.’

I took a towel and tenderly rubbed the moisture from his nose and eyes. ‘So, you see? There is nothing to fear. I am yours, Édouard, utterly and completely. I cannot believe you would doubt it.’

He looked at me, and his big brown eyes were steady and oddly determined. ‘Marry me,’ he said.

‘But you always said –’

‘Tomorrow. Next week. As soon as we can.’

‘But you –’

‘Marry me, Sophie.’

So I married him. I never could deny Édouard anything.

The morning after the fight at Bar Tripoli, I slept late. We had become giddy with our riches, eaten and drunk too much, and stayed awake until the small hours, lost in each other’s bodies, or in fits of giggles as we remembered Dinan’s outraged expression. I raised my head blearily from the pillow, and pushed my hair from my face. The small change that had been on the table was missing: Édouard must have gone for bread. I became dimly aware of the sound of his voice in the street below, and let my memories of the previous evening flow and recede in a happy blur. Then, when he did not sound as if he were coming upstairs, I pulled a robe around me and went to the window.

He had two baguettes tucked under his arm and was talking to a striking blonde woman in a fitted dark green coat-dress with a broad-brimmed fur hat. As I looked down, her gaze slid up to me. Édouard, following it, turned and lifted a hand in greeting.

‘Come downstairs, cherie. I want you to meet someone.’

I did not want to meet anyone. I wanted him to come upstairs and for me to wrap my legs around him and smother him in kisses as we ate. But I sighed, pulled the robe around me, and walked downstairs to the front door.

‘Sophie, this is Mimi Einsbacher. An old friend of mine. She has bought several paintings, and posed for some of my life drawings too.’

Another? I thought absently.

‘Congratulations on your marriage. Édouard gave me … no clue.’

There was something about the way the woman looked at me when she said this, her flicker of a glance towards Édouard, that made me uneasy.

‘Enchantée, Mademoiselle,’ I said, and held out my hand. She took it as if she were handling a dead fish.

We stood there, studying our feet. Two road sweepers were working on opposite sides of the street, whistling in tandem. The drains were overflowing again, and the smell, teamed with the amount of wine we had consumed the previous evening, made me feel suddenly queasy.

‘You will excuse me,’ I said, backing into the doorway. ‘I am hardly dressed for company. Édouard, I will light the fire and put the coffee on.’

‘Coffee!’ he exclaimed, rubbing his hands. ‘So very good to see you, Mimi. I will come – sorry, we will come and see your new apartment soon. It sounds marvellous.’

He was whistling as he came up the stairs.

While Édouard shed his outer clothes, I poured him a cup of coffee and climbed back into bed. He put a plate between us, broke me off a piece of bread and handed it to me.

‘Did you lie with her?’ I didn’t look at him as I spoke.

‘Who?’

‘Mimi Einsbacher.’

I have no idea why I asked him this; I had never done such a thing before.

He gave a slight shake of his head, as if it were of no consequence. ‘I may have done.’ When I said nothing he opened an eye and looked at me gravely. ‘Sophie, you know I was not a priest before I met you.’

‘I do.’

‘I am just a man. And I was alone for a long time before we met.’

‘I know this too. I would not wish you to be any different from the way you are.’ I turned and kissed his shoulder lightly.

He reached out and pulled me to him, letting out another great sigh of contentment. His breath was warm on my eyelids. He slid his fingers into my hair and tilted my head back so that I was looking at him. ‘My darling wife. You need only remember this: I never knew happiness until I knew you.’

What should I care for Mimi and her ilk? I thought, as I dropped my bread and slid my leg across him, breathing in his scent, taking possession of him yet again. They were no threat to me.

I almost convinced myself.

Mimi Einsbacher just happened to be passing as we came out of the studio the following Wednesday (I was rushing to la poste to send a letter to my sister); it made sense for Édouard to have breakfast with her. What was the point in him eating alone? And then again, two days later. It was a cold November day, and Édouard was placing my good felt hat on my head as I pulled open the huge oak door that led onto rue Soufflot. I was laughing and batting away his hands. ‘You have it back to front! Édouard! Stop! I will look like a madwoman!’ His great hand rested on my shoulder where it met my neck. I loved the weight of it.

‘Why, good morning!’ Mimi was dressed in a mint green cape and fur stole. Her waist was pulled in so tightly that I suspected her lips were blue under the red stain. ‘What a happy surprise!’

‘Madame Einsbacher. How fortunate we are to see again you so soon.’ My hat felt suddenly skewed and ridiculous on my head.

‘Mimi! How delightful.’ Édouard released my shoulder, bent his head and kissed her gloved hand. I protested inwardly at the sight, and then chided myself: Don’t be childish. Édouard chose you, after all.

‘And where are you off to this brisk morning? Back to the post office?’ She held her bag neatly in front of her. It was crocodile skin.

‘I have an appointment in Montmartre with my dealer. My wife is off to buy us some food.’ I turned the hat around on my head, wishing suddenly I had worn my black one. ‘Well, I might,’ I said. ‘If you behave yourself.’

‘See what I endure?’ Édouard leant forwards to kiss my cheek.

‘Goodness. She’s very hard on you, I am sure.’ Mimi’s smile was unreadable.

Édouard wrapped his muffler around his neck, surveying the two of us for a moment. ‘You know, you two should get to know each other. It would be good for Sophie to have a friend here.’

‘I am not without friends, Édouard,’ I protested.

‘But all your shop friends are busy during the day. And they live over in the ninth. Mimi is someone you could meet for coffee when I’m busy. I hate to think of you alone.’

‘Really.’ I smiled at him. ‘I’m quite content in my own company.’

‘Oh, Édouard is quite right. You don’t want to be a drain on him, after all. And you are hardly familiar with his circle. Why don’t I accompany you? As a favour to Édouard. I’d be delighted.’

Édouard beamed. ‘Marvellous!’ he said. ‘My two favourite ladies, taking a jaunt. I’ll wish you both good day then. Sophie, chèrie, I’ll be home for dinner.’

He turned and walked off in the direction of rue St Jacques.

Mimi and I gazed at each other and, just for a moment, I thought I detected something glacial in her eyes.

‘How lovely,’ she said. ‘Shall we walk?’

Chapter Three

2002

They’d had the morning planned: a lazy start, breakfast at Café Hugo on place des Vosges, a wander around the little shops and boutiques of the second, perhaps a walk along the Seine, stopping off to look at the second-hand-book stalls. David would disappear after lunch to his meeting for perhaps two hours; Liv would use the magnificent spa at the Royal Monceaux while he discussed business. They would meet in the bar for an afternoon cocktail, have a relaxed dinner at a local brasserie. The day had been salvaged. She would be nice. She would be understanding. This was what marriage was about, after all: the great art of compromise. She had told herself this several times since waking up.

And then, during breakfast, David’s phone rings.

‘The Goldsteins,’ she says, when he finally stops talking. Her tartine sits untouched in front of her.

‘Change of plan. They want to meet me this morning, at their offices near the Champs-Élysées.’

When she doesn’t say anything, he puts his hand over hers and says, ‘I’m really sorry. I’ll be gone for a couple of hours at most.’

She cannot speak. Great fat salty tears of disappointment are building behind her eyes.

‘I know. I’ll make it up to you. It’s just ’

‘that this is more important.’

‘This is our future, Liv.’

Liv looks at him, and she knows her frustration must be clear in her expression. She feels perversely angry with him for making her behave like this.

He squeezes her hand. ‘Come on, sweetheart. You can do something I didn’t particularly want to do, and I’ll come and meet you. It’s not like it’s hard to kill a couple of hours here. It’s Paris.’

‘Sure. I just hadn’t realized my honeymoon was going to be five days in Paris thinking up ways to kill time.’

There is a slight edge to his voice: ‘I’m sorry. I don’t have a job that I can just switch off.’

‘No. You’ve made that very clear.’

It had been like this all the previous evening at La Coupole. They had struggled to find safe subjects to talk about, smiled stiltedly, an unacknowledged conversation running underneath their too-polite spoken one. When he did speak she had winced at his obvious discomfort. When he didn’t, she had wondered if he was thinking about work.

When they returned to their suite, Liv had turned away from him on the bed, somehow too angry to want him to touch her ‒ then lain there panicking when he didn’t even try.

In the six months they had been together she wasn’t sure they had ever argued with each other until they’d come to Paris. The honeymoon was slipping away, she could feel it.

David breaks the silence first. He refuses to let go of her hand. He leans over the table and pushes a strand of hair back from her face tenderly. ‘I’m sorry. This really will be it. Just give me a couple of hours and I promise I’ll be all yours. Maybe we’ll extend the trip, and I’ll … make up the hours.’ He tries to smile.

She turns to him then, disarmed, wanting them to feel normal again, wanting them to feel like themselves. She stares down at her hand in his, the brassy shine of her new wedding ring, still unfamiliar on her finger.

The last forty-eight hours have left her completely unbalanced. The happiness she has felt for the last few months seems suddenly fragile, as if it is built on shakier foundations than they had realized.

She searches his eyes. ‘I do love you, you know.’

‘And I love you.’

‘I’m a horrible, needy, grumpy girlfriend.’

‘Wife.’

A reluctant smile spreads across her face. ‘I’m a horrible, needy, grumpy wife.’

He grins and kisses her, and they sit on the edge of the place des Vosges, listening to the roar of the mopeds outside, the traffic crawling up towards rue Beaumarchais. ‘Luckily, I happen to find horrible and grumpy desperately attractive traits in a woman.’

‘You forgot needy.’

‘That’s my favourite.’

‘Go,’ she said, pulling away from him gently. ‘Go now, you smooth-talking architect, before I drag you back to that hotel bed and make sure you don’t get to your very annoying meeting at all.’

The air between them expands and relaxes. She lets out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

‘What will you do?’

She watches him collect up his belongings: keys, wallet, jacket, phone. ‘Go and look at some art, probably.’

‘I’ll text you the moment we’re through. I’ll come and meet you.’ He blows a kiss. ‘And then we can continue this pinning-to-the-bed discussion.’

He’s halfway up the road when he turns and lifts a hand. ‘À bientôt, Mrs Halston!’

Her smile lasts until he disappears from view.

The concierge had warned her that the queue for the Louvre would be hours long at this time, so she heads to the Musée d’Orsay instead. David had told her the architecture of the building was almost as impressive as the art it housed. But even at ten o’clock in the morning the queue here stretches backwards and forwards around the front of the building, like a coiled snake. The sun is fierce already, and she has forgotten to bring a hat.

‘Oh, great,’ she mutters to herself, as she takes her place at the back. She wonders whether she will even make it into the building before David has finished his meeting.

‘It shouldn’t take too long. They shift people through pretty quickly.’ The man in front of her turns and nods towards the front of the queue. ‘They do free entry sometimes. Now that’s a queue.’ He wears a crisp linen jacket and the air of the independently wealthy.

When he smiles at her, she wonders if the fact that she’s English is actually writ large all over her. ‘I’m not sure all these people will even fit inside.’

‘Oh, they will. It’s like the Tardis in there.’ When she smiles, he holds out a hand. ‘Tim Freeland.’

‘Liv Worth – Halston. Liv Halston.’ The change of name still wrongfoots her.

‘Ah. That poster says there’s a big Matisse exhibition on. I suspect that’s the reason for our queue. Here. Let me put up my umbrella. That will protect you from the worst of the sun.’

He comes over for the tennis every year, he tells her, as they shuffle forwards a few paces at a time, zigzagging their way towards the front of the queue. And then fills his non-tennis time with a few of his favourite places. He much prefers this gallery to the Louvre, which is too full of tourists to see the paintings. He half smiles as he says this, apparently aware of the irony.

He is tall and tanned with dark blond hair, which is swept back in a way she imagines it has been since his teens. The way he talks about his life suggests freedom from financial concerns. His reference to children and the lack of a wedding ring suggest some distant divorce.

He is attentive and charming. They discuss restaurants in Paris, tennis, the unpredictability of Parisian taxi drivers. It is a relief to have a conversation that is not loaded with unspoken resentment or littered with traps. By the time they reach the front of the queue she is oddly cheerful.

‘Well, you made the time pass wonderfully quickly.’ Tim Freeland folds up his umbrella and holds out his hand. ‘It was lovely to meet you, Olivia Halston. And I’d recommend the Impressionists on the top floor. You should get the best views now, before the crowds get too unbearable.’

He smiles at her, his eyes crinkling, and then he is gone, striding off into the cavernous interior of the museum as if he is already sure where he is headed. And Liv, who knows that even if you are on your honeymoon you’re allowed to feel cheered by twenty minutes’ conversation with an attentive, handsome man, who may or may not have been flirting with you, walks with a slightly perkier stride towards the lifts.

She takes her time, walks slowly along the Impressionists, studying each painting carefully. She has time to kill, after all. She is slightly ashamed to calculate she has not set foot in a gallery since finishing her degree two years previously. She decides, on reflection, that she loves the Monets and the Morisots, and dislikes the Renoirs. Or perhaps they have just been overused on chocolate boxes and it’s hard to disassociate the two things.

She sits down, and then she stands up again. She wishes David was here. It’s odd to stand in front of the paintings and have nobody to discuss them with. She finds herself looking surreptitiously at other people who might be alone, checking them for signs of freakishness. She wonders whether to call Jasmine, just to talk to someone, but realizes this will signal publicly the failure of her honeymoon. Who calls anyone from their honeymoon, after all? She feels briefly cross with David again and has silently to argue herself out of it.

The gallery fills steadily around her; a group of schoolchildren is led past by a theatrically engaged museum attendant. They stop in front of Déjeuner sur l’herbe, and he motions to them to sit down as he speaks. ‘Look!’ he exclaims in French. ‘They placed wet paint on wet paint – the first artists to do so! – so that they could move the colours like this …’ He gesticulates wildly. The children are rapt. A cluster of adults stops to listen too.

‘And this painting caused a huge scandal when it was shown! Enormous! Why was the lady wearing no clothes, and the gentlemen were dressed? Why do you think, young sir?’

She loves the fact that eight-year-old French children are expected to debate public nudity. She loves the respect with which the attendant addresses them. Again, she wishes David were here because she knows he would have felt like this too.

It is several minutes before she realizes how many people have poured into the series of rooms and that it has now become stiflingly crowded. She keeps hearing English and American accents. For some reason they annoy her. She finds herself irritated suddenly by small things.

Keen to escape, Liv ducks away, through one, two rooms, past a series of landscapes, until she reaches the less popular artists, where the visitors are sparse. She slows now, trying to give these lesser artists the same attention she gave the big names, although there is not much that draws the eye. She is about to look for the way out when she finds herself in front of a small oil painting, and there, almost despite herself, she stops. A red-haired woman stands beside a table, laden with the remains of a meal, wearing a white dress that may be some kind of undergarment; Liv can’t tell. Her body is half turned away from view, but the side of her face is unobscured. Her gaze slides towards the artist but will not meet it. Her shoulders are hunched forward with displeasure, or tension.

The title of the painting reads: ‘Wife, out of sorts’.

She gazes at it, taking in the exquisite limpid quality of the woman’s eye, the points of colour on her cheeks, the way her body seems to suggest barely suppressed rage, and yet a kind of defeat too. And Liv thinks suddenly: Oh, God. That’s me.

Once this thought has popped into her head it will not be dislodged. She wants to look away but she cannot. She feels almost winded, as if she has been punched. The painting is so strangely intimate, so unsettling. I’m twenty-three years old, she thinks. And I have married a man who has already put me firmly in the background of his life. I’m going to be that sad, quietly furious woman in the kitchen whom nobody notices, desperate for his attention, sulking when she doesn’t get it. Doing things alone and ‘making the best of it’.

She sees future trips with David: herself, flicking through guidebooks of local attractions, trying not to show her disappointment when, yet again, there is some important work thing he cannot miss. I’m going to end up like my mother. She left it too late to remember who she actually was before she became a wife.

Wifey.

The Musée d’Orsay is suddenly too crowded, too noisy. She finds herself pushing her way downstairs, going the wrong way through the advancing crowds, muttering apologies as she meets the resistance of shoulders, elbows, bags. She slips sideways down a flight of stairs, and weaves her way along a corridor, but instead of heading towards the exit, she finds herself beside a grand dining room, where a queue has started to build for tables. Where are the bloody exits? The place is suddenly ridiculously full of people. Liv fights her way through the art-deco section – the huge pieces of organic furniture grotesque, overly flamboyant, and realizes she is at the wrong end. She lets out a great sob of something she can’t quite articulate.

‘Are you all right?’

She spins round. Tim Freeland is staring at her, a brochure in his hand. She wipes briskly at her face, tries to smile. ‘I – I can’t find my way out.’

His eyes travel over her face – is she actually crying? – and she’s mortified. ‘I’m sorry. I just – I really need to get out of here.’

‘The crowds,’ he says quietly. ‘They can be a bit much at this time of year. Come on.’ He touches her elbow, and steers her along the length of the museum, keeping to the darker rooms at the edges where fewer people seem to congregate. Within minutes they are down a flight of stairs and exiting onto the bright concourse outside, where the queue to enter has grown even longer.

They stop a short distance away. Liv pulls her breathing back under control. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says, looking back. ‘I don’t think you’ll be able to get back in.’

He shakes his head. ‘I was done for the day. When you reach the stage where you can’t see anything for the backs of people’s heads, it’s probably time to leave anyway.’

They stand there for a moment on the bright, wide pavement. The traffic crawls along the side of the river, a moped weaving noisily in and out of the stationary cars. The sun casts the buildings in the blue-white light that seems peculiar to the city.

‘Would you like a coffee? I think it might be a good idea if you sat down for a few minutes.’

‘Oh – I can’t. I’m meant to be meeting –’ She looks down at her phone. There are no messages. She stares at it, taking this in. Digesting the fact that it is now almost an hour later than when he’d said he’d be through. ‘Um … can you give me a minute?’

She turns away, dials David’s number, squinting as she peers at the traffic crawling along the quai Voltaire. It goes straight to voicemail. She wonders, fleetingly, what to say to him. And then she decides not to say anything at all.

She closes her phone and turns back to Tim Freeland. ‘Actually, I’d love a coffee. Thank you.’

Un café, et une grande crème. Even when she employs her best French accent the waiters invariably answer her in English. After the morning’s various humiliations it is a minor enough embarrassment. She drinks a coffee, orders a second, breathes in the warm city air and deflects any further attention from herself.

‘You ask a lot of questions,’ Tim Freeland says, at one point. ‘Either you’re a journalist, or you’ve been to a very good finishing school.’

‘Or I’m an expert in industrial espionage. And I’ve heard all about your new widget.’

He laughs. ‘Ah … unfortunately I’m a widget-free zone. I’m retired.’

‘Really? You don’t look old enough.’

‘I’m not old enough. I sold my business nine months ago. I’m still trying to work out what to do with my time.’

The way he says this suggests he is not particularly worried about this at all. Why would you be, she thinks, if you could spend your days wandering your favourite cities, taking in art or offering random strangers coffee? ‘So where do you live?’

‘Oh … all over the place. I do a couple of months here in the early summer. I have a place in London. I spend some time in South America too – my ex-wife lives in Buenos Aires with my two eldest children.’

‘That sounds complicated.’

‘When you’re as old as I am, life is invariably complicated.’ He smiles, as if he is well used to complication. ‘For a while I was one of those rather daft men who found it impossible to fall in love without getting married.’

‘How gentlemanly.’

‘Hardly. Who was it who said, “Every time I fall in love I lose a house”?’ He stirs his coffee. ‘Actually, it’s all fairly civil, as these things go. I have two ex-wives, both of whom are pretty wonderful women. It’s just rather a shame I never worked that out while I was with them.’

He speaks softly, his cadences measured and his words careful, a man who is used to being heard. She gazes at him, at his tanned hands, his immaculate shirt cuffs, and imagines a serviced apartment in the first arondissement, a housekeeper, an upmarket restaurant where the proprietor knows his name. Tim Freeland is not her type, and at least twenty-five years older than she is, but she wonders, briefly, what it would be like to be with a man like him. She wonders whether, to a casual onlooker, they look like husband and wife.

‘What do you do, Olivia?’ He has called her Olivia since she introduced herself. From anyone else it might sound like an affectation, but from him it sounds like old-fashioned courtesy.

She is hauled from her reverie, blushes a little when she acknowledges what she has been thinking. ‘I … I’m sort of between jobs at the moment. I finished my degree and did a bit of office work, a bit of waitressing. The usual middle-class-girl stuff. I suppose I haven’t quite worked out what to do either.’ She fiddles with her hair.

‘Plenty of time for that. Children?’ He looks meaningfully at her wedding ring.

‘Oh. No. Not for ages.’ She laughs awkwardly. She can barely look after herself; the idea of having some mewling infant dependent on her is unthinkable. She can feel him studying her.

‘Quite right. Plenty of time for all that.’ He doesn’t take his eyes from her face. ‘If you don’t mind me saying, you’re very young to be married. In this day and age, I mean.’

She doesn’t know what to say to this, so she takes a sip of her coffee.

‘I know I shouldn’t ask a woman her age, but what are you – twenty-three? Twenty-four?’

‘Not bad. Twenty-three.’

He nods. ‘You have good bones. I should imagine you’ll look twenty-three for a decade. No, don’t blush. I’m just stating a fact … Childhood sweetheart?’

‘No – more of a whirlwind romance.’ She looks up from her coffee. ‘Actually, I’m – I’m just married.’

‘Just married?’ His eyes open just a fraction wider.The question is there within them. ‘You’re on honeymoon?’ He says it without drama, but his expression is so bemused, his sudden pity so inadequately disguised, that she can’t bear it. She sees Wife, out of sorts, turning away defeatedly, a lifetime of other people’s faint embarrassment. Oh, you’re married? Your husband is where?

What has she done?

‘I’m so sorry,’ she says, her head down, gathering up her things from the table. ‘I have to go now.’

‘Olivia. Please don’t rush off. I’m –’

Blood is thumping in her ears. ‘No. Really. I probably shouldn’t be here anyway. It was very nice to meet you. Thank you so much for the coffee. And … you know …’

She does not look at him. She raises a smile, throws it somewhere in his direction, and then she flees, half walking, half running, along the Seine back towards Notre Dame.

Chapter Four

1912

The Marché Monge was packed with shoppers, despite the cool winds and miserable spit of rain. I walked half a step behind Mimi Einsbacher, who made her way around the stalls with a determined sway to her hips and had kept up a constant commentary from the moment we entered the market.

‘Oh, you must buy some of these. Édouard does love Spanish peaches. Look, they’re so perfectly ripe.’

‘Have you cooked him langoustines? Oh! How that man can eat langoustines …’

‘Cabbage? Red onions? Are you sure? Those ingredients are very … rustic. You know, I do believe he might enjoy something a little more sophisticated. He is a great gourmand, Édouard, you know. Why, once we went to Le Petit Fils and he ate the entire dégustation menu of fourteen courses. Can you imagine? I thought he was going to burst by the time the petits fours arrived. But he was so happy …’ She shook her head, as if lost in a reverie. ‘He is a man of such appetites …’

I picked up a bunch of carrots, and inspected them closely, trying to look as if I was interested in them. Somewhere at the back of my head a distant thumping pulse had started up and I detected the beginnings of a headache.

Mimi Einsbacher stopped in front of a stall stacked with meat products. She exchanged a few words with the stallholder before picking up a small jar and holding it up to the light. She gave me a sideways look, from under her hat. ‘Oh, you do not wish to hear such remembrances … Sophia. I must suggest the foie gras, though. A lovely treat for Édouard. If you are a little … light on housekeeping, I would be delighted to purchase it as a small gift for him. As an old friend. I know how erratic he can be with these things.’

‘We are quite capable of supporting ourselves, thank you.’ I took the jar from her hand and popped it into my basket, handing the stallholder his money. Half of our remaining food budget, I noted, with mute fury.

She slowed her pace so that I had no choice but to walk alongside her. ‘So … Gagnaire tells me that Édouard has painted nothing for weeks. Rather a pity.’

Why should you talk to Édouard’s dealer? I wanted to ask, but I let it pass. ‘We are only just married. He has been … distracted.’

‘He is a great talent. He should not lose focus.’

‘Édouard says he will paint when he is ready.’

It was as if she hadn’t heard me. Mimi had headed over to the patisserie stall, and was gazing at a tarte framboise. ‘Framboises! At this time of year! I cannot imagine what the world is coming to.’

Please do not offer to buy this for Édouard too, I said silently. I barely have enough money left for bread. But Mimi had other things on her mind. She bought a small baguette, waited while the stallholder wrapped it in paper, then turned halfway towards me, lowering her voice.

‘You cannot imagine how surprised we all were to hear he had married. A man like Édouard.’ She placed the baguette carefully through the handle of her basket. ‘So I wondered … are congratulations in order?’

I looked at her, at her bright, blank smile. And then saw she was gazing pointedly at my waist. ‘No!’

It took me several minutes to grasp how she had insulted me.

I wanted to say to her: Édouard begged me to marry him. It was he who insisted on it. He could not bear the thought of any other man even looking at me. He could not bear the possibility that they would see in me what he saw.

But I did not want to give her anything of us at all. Faced with her smiling enmity, I wanted to keep every part of Édouard’s and my marriage to myself, where she could not puncture it or skew it or make it resemble something it did not. I felt my face flush with colour.

She stood, staring at me. ‘Oh you mustn’t be sensitive, Sophia.’

‘Sophie. My name is Sophie.’

She turned away. ‘Of course. Sophie. But my question cannot be entirely unexpected. It is only natural that those who have known Édouard longest will feel a little proprietorial towards him. After all, we know so little about you … . other than … You are a shop girl, yes?’

‘I was. Until I married him.’

‘And, of course, then you had to leave your … shop. What a pity. How you must miss your shop friends. I know only too well how comforting it is to be immersed in one’s own social circle, among one’s own kind.’

‘I’m quite happy in Édouard’s circle.’

‘I’m sure you are. Although it can be so terribly difficult to make proper friends when everybody else has known each other for years. So hard to penetrate those shared amusements, all that history.’ She smiled. ‘Still, I’m sure you’re doing quite well.’

‘Édouard and I are happiest alone.’

‘Of course. But you cannot imagine he will want to stay that way for long, Sophia. He is, after all, the most gregarious of creatures. A man like Édouard needs to be allowed the utmost freedom.’

I was struggling to keep my composure. ‘You speak as if I have become his gaoler. I have never wanted Édouard to do other than what pleased him.’

‘Oh, I’m sure you haven’t. And I’m sure you are quite aware of your good fortune in marrying someone like him. I just thought it politic to offer some advice.’

When I did not reply, she added, ‘Perhaps you believe me to be terribly presumptuous, advising you on your own husband. But you know that Édouard does not follow the rules of the bourgeoisie, so I felt that I might also be allowed to step outside the constraints of normal conversation.’

‘I’m sure I am most grateful, Madame.’ I wondered whether I could just turn and leave her then, invent some forgotten appointment. Surely I had endured this for long enough.

She lowered her voice, took a step away from the stall and gestured for me to do the same. ‘Well, then, if we are speaking frankly, I feel it my duty to advise you on another front. Woman to woman, if you will. As you will be aware, Édouard is a man of great … appetites.’ She looked meaningfully at me. ‘I’m sure he is delighted to be married now, but as he begins painting other women again, you must be prepared to … allow him certain freedoms.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You wish me to spell it out, Sophia?’

‘Sophie.’ My jaw had become so tight. ‘My name is Sophie. And, yes, please do spell it out, Madame.’

‘I’m so sorry if this is indelicate.’ She smiled prettily. ‘But … you must know that you are not the first of Édouard’s models he … has had relations with.’

‘I don’t understand.’

She looked at me as if I were stupid. ‘The women on his canvases … There is a reason Édouard gets the images he does, of such delicacy and power, the reason he is able to portray such … intimacy.’

I think I knew then what she was about to say, but I stood there and let the words fall around me, like the blades of little guillotines.

‘Édouard is a man of swift and unpredictable passions. When he tires of the novelty of being married, Sophia, he will return to his old ways. If you are a sensible girl, and I’m sure you are, given your … shall we say practical? ‒ background, I would advise you to look the other way. A man like that cannot be confined. It is against his artistic spirit.’

I swallowed. ‘Madame, I have prevailed upon your time long enough. I’m afraid we must part company here. Thank you for your … advice.’

I turned and walked away, her words ringing in my ears, my knuckles white with the effort of not hitting something. I was halfway to rue Soufflot before I discovered I had left the bag that contained the onions, cabbage and cheese sitting on the ground by the stall.

Édouard was out when I returned. It was no great surprise: he and his dealer would generally retreat to a nearby bar and conduct their business over glasses of pastis, or if it grew late, perhaps even absinthe. I dropped the basket with my purse and the jar of foie gras in the kitchen area and walked through to the washstand, where I splashed my flushed cheeks with cold water. The girl who gazed back at me from the looking-glass was a sombre creature, her mouth set in a thin line of anger, her pale cheeks lit with colour. I tried to smile, to make myself the woman Édouard saw, but she wouldn’t come. I could see only this thin, watchful woman, whose happiness felt suddenly as if it were built on shifting sands.

I poured myself a glass of sweet wine, and drank it swiftly. And then I had another. I had never in my life drunk in the daytime before. Having grown up around my father and his excesses, I had had little appetite for drink until I met Édouard.

As I sat there in the silence I kept hearing her words: He will return to his old ways. The women on his canvases … there is a reason Édouard gets the images he does …

And then I hurled the glass at the wall, my cry of anguish carrying over the sound of the splintering glass.

I cannot say how long I lay on our bed, lost in silent misery. I did not want to get up. My home, Édouard’s studio, no longer felt like our little haven. I felt as if it had been invaded by the ghosts of his past liaisons, was coloured with their talk, their looks, their kisses.

You must not think like this, I scolded myself. But my mind careered around like a runaway horse, headed in new and terrible directions, and I could not rein it in.

It had begun to grow dark, and outside I could hear the man who lit the streetlamps singing softly under his breath. It was a sound I used to find comforting. I got up, vaguely planning to clear up the broken glass before Édouard returned. But instead I found myself walking towards his canvases, which were stacked along the far wall. I hesitated in front of them, then began to pull them out, gazing at each one. There was Laure Le Comte, the fille de rue, wearing a green serge dress, another of her naked, leaning against a pillar like a Greek statue, her breasts small and upright like halves of Spanish peaches; Emmeline, the English girl from the Bar Brun, her bare legs twisted under her on the chair, her arm trailing along its back. There was an unnamed dark-haired woman, her corkscrew curls cascading over her bare shoulder as she reclined upon a chaise-longue, her eyes drooping as if from sleep. Had he lain with her too? Had her slightly parted lips, painted so lovingly, been awaiting his? How could I have thought him immune to that silky, exposed flesh, those artfully crumpled petticoats?

Oh, God, I had been such a fool. Such a provincial fool.

And there, finally, was Mimi Einsbacher, leaning towards a looking-glass, the curve of her bare back perfectly outlined by the unforgiving corset below it, the slope of her shoulder a pale invitation. It was lovingly drawn, his charcoal line a flowing, sympathetic thing. And it was unfinished. What had he done after he had drawn this far? Had he walked up behind her, placed those great hands on her shoulders and lowered his lips to the place where her shoulder met her neck? The place that always made me shiver with longing? Had he laid her gently on that bed – our bed – murmured soft words and pushed her skirts up until she –

I balled my fists in my eyes. I felt unhinged, a madwoman. I had never even noticed these paintings before. Now each one felt like a silent betrayal, a threat to my future happiness. Had he lain with them all? How long before he did it again?

I sat staring at them, hating each one and yet unable to tear away my eyes, inventing whole lives of secrets and pleasures and betrayals and whispered nothings for each of them, until the skies outside were as black as my thoughts.

I heard him before I saw him, whistling as he came up the stairs.

‘Wife!’ he cried, as he opened the door. ‘Why are you sitting in the dark?’

He dropped his great coat on the bed and made his way around the studio, lighting the acetylene lamps, the candles that were wedged in empty wine bottles, wedging his cigarette into the corner of his mouth as he adjusted the drapes. And then he walked up to me and wrapped his arms around me, squinting in the half-light better to see my face.

‘It is only five o’clock. I was not expecting you yet,’ I felt as if I had woken from a dream.

‘So soon after we are married? I couldn’t leave you for long. Besides, I missed you. Jules Gagnaire is no substitute for your charms.’ He pulled my face gently to his and tenderly kissed my ear. He smelt of cigarette smoke and pastis. ‘I cannot bear to be away from you, my little shop girl.’

‘Don’t call me that.’

I stood up and walked away from him, through to the kitchen area. I felt his gaze, faintly bemused, after me. In truth I didn’t know what I was doing. The bottle of sweet wine was long empty. ‘You must be hungry.’

‘I’m always hungry.’

He is a man of great appetites.

‘I … left my bag at the market.’

‘Hah! ’Tis of little importance. I, too, was barely conscious for most of the morning. It was a fine night, last night, wasn’t it?’ He chuckled, lost in reminiscence.

I didn’t answer. I fetched two plates and two knives, and the remnants of that morning’s bread. Then I stared at the jar of foie gras. I had nothing much else to give him.

‘I had the most excellent meeting with Gagnaire. He says the Galerie Berthoud in the sixteenth wishes to exhibit those early landscapes. The work I did in Cazouls? He says he has a buyer for the two larger ones already.’ I heard him uncork a bottle of wine, the clink of two glasses as he placed them on the table.

‘I also told him of our new system for collecting my money. He was most impressed when I told him of last night’s efforts. Now I have both him and you working alongside me, chérie, I’m sure we will live in the grand style.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’ I said, and placed the bread basket in front of him.

I don’t know what had happened to me. I couldn’t look at him. I sat down opposite and proffered the foie gras and some butter. I cut an orange into quarters and put two pieces on his plate.

‘Foie gras!’ he unscrewed the lid. ‘How you do spoil me, my love.’ He broke off a piece of bread and smeared it with a slice of the pale pink pâté. I watched him eat it, his eyes on mine, and just for a moment I wished desperately that he had never liked foie gras, that he hated it. But he blew me a kiss and smacked his lips with delighted relish. ‘What a life we lead, you and I, eh?’

‘I did not choose the foie gras, Édouard. Mimi Einsbacher selected it for you.’

‘Mimi, eh?’ His eyes rested on mine for a moment. ‘Well … she’s a good judge of food.’

‘And other things?’

‘Mmm?’

‘What else is Mimi good at?’

My food lay untouched on my plate. I could not eat. I had never liked foie gras, anyway, the bitter knowledge of that forced feeding, those geese gorged until their very organs were swollen. The pain that could be caused by too much of what you loved.

Édouard put his knife on his plate. He looked at me. ‘What is the matter, Sophie?’

I could not answer him.

‘You seem out of sorts.’

‘Out of sorts.’

‘Is this because of what I told you before? I told you, my darling, it was before I met you. I have never lied to you.’

‘And will you lie with her again?’

‘What?’

‘When you are bored with the novelty of your marriage? Will you revert to your old ways?’

‘What is this?’

‘Oh, eat your food, Édouard. Devour your beloved foie gras.’

He stared at me for the longest time. When he spoke, his voice was soft. ‘What have I done to deserve this? Have I ever given you the slightest reason to doubt me? Have I ever shown you anything but utter devotion?’

‘That is not the point.’

‘Well, what is the point?’

‘How did you get them to look at you like that?’ My voice lifted.

‘Who?’

‘Those women. The Mimis and the Laures. The bar girls and the street girls and every wretched girl who seems to pass by our door. How did you get them to pose for you like that? ‘

Édouard was dumbstruck. When he spoke, his mouth set in an unfamiliar line. ‘The same way I got you to pose for me. I asked them.’

‘And afterwards? Did you do to them what you did to me?’

Édouard looked down at his plate before he answered. ‘If I remember correctly, Sophie, it was you who seduced me that first time. Or does that not suit your newly remembered version of events?’

‘This is meant to make me feel better? That I was the only one of your models you didn’t try to make love to?’

His voice exploded into the quiet studio. ‘What is wrong, Sophie? Why do you wish to torture yourself like this? We are happy, you and I. You know I have not so much as looked at another woman since we met!’

I began to applaud, each sharp clap breaking into the silent studio. ‘Well done, Édouard! You have remained faithful all the way to our honeymoon! Oh, how admirable!’

‘For God’s sake!’ He threw down his napkin. ‘Where is my wife? My happy, glowing, loving wife? And who is this woman I get in her place? This suspicious misery? This pinch-faced accuser?’

‘Oh, so that is how you truly see me?’

‘Well, is this whom you have become, now we are actually married?’

We stared at each other. The silence expanded, filled the room. Outside a child burst into noisy tears and a mother’s voice could be heard, scolding and comforting.

Édouard ran a hand over his face. He took a deep breath and stared out of the window, then turned back to me. ‘You know that is not how I see you. You know I – Oh, Sophie, I don’t understand the genesis of this fury. I don’t understand what I’ve done to deserve such …’

‘Well, why don’t you ask them?’ I thrust my hand out towards his canvases. My voice emerged as a sob. ‘For what can a provincial shop girl like me hope to understand about your life, after all?’

‘Oh, you’re impossible,’ he said, and threw down his napkin.

‘It’s being married to you that is the impossibility. And I’m starting to wonder why you ever bothered.’

‘Well, Sophie, you are not alone in that at least.’ My husband fixed me with a look, whipped his coat off our bed, then turned and walked out of the door.

Chapter Five

2012

When he calls, she is on the bridge. She cannot say how long she has sat there. Its wire sides are almost obscured with padlocks on which people have inscribed their initials, and all along it tourists stoop, reading the initials on the little pieces of metal, scrawled in permanent pen or engraved by those with forethought. Some take pictures of each other, pointing to the padlocks they think are particularly beautiful, or have just placed there themselves.

She remembers David telling her about this place before they came here, about how lovers would secure the padlocks and throw the keys into the Seine as a mark of their enduring love, and of how when the padlocks were painstakingly removed by the city authorities they simply reappeared within days, engraved with everlasting love, the initials of lovers who, two years on, might still be together or might by now have moved to different continents rather than breathe the same air. He had told her how the riverbed under the bridge had to be dredged regularly, harvesting the rusting mass of keys.

Now she sits on the bench, trying not to look at them too closely, beyond the simple spectacle of them, their shimmering surfaces. She does not want to think about what they mean.

‘Meet me at the Pont des Arts,’ she had said to him. Nothing more.

Perhaps there was something in her voice.

‘I’ll be twenty minutes,’ he’d said.

She sees him coming from the Musée du Louvre, his blue shirt becoming more vivid as he gets closer. He is wearing khaki-coloured trousers and she thinks, with a pang, how much she loves the sight of him. How familiar his shape is to her, even after such a short time. She looks at his soft, ruffled hair, and the planes of his face, and the way his walk always has a touch of impatience, as if he’s keen to get to the next thing. And then she sees that over his shoulder he has the leather bag in which he carries his plans.

What have I done?

He doesn’t smile as he approaches, even though it’s clear he has seen her. He walks up to her, slowing his pace, then drops his bag and sits down beside her.

They are silent for some minutes, watching the tourist boats glide past.

And finally Liv says, ‘I can’t do this.’

She looks down the route of the Seine, squinting at the people who, even now, are stooping to examine the padlocks.

‘I think we’ve made the most awful mistake. I’ve made a mistake.’

‘A mistake?’

‘I know I’m impulsive. I see now we should have slowed things down. We should have … got to know each other a little better. So I’ve been thinking. It’s not like we had a big wedding, or anything. It’s not like all our friends even know. We can just … . We can just pretend like it didn’t happen. We’re both young.’

‘What are you talking about, Liv?’

She looks at him. ‘David – it all became clear as you walked towards me. You brought your plans with you.’

The smallest flinch. But she sees it.

‘You knew you were going to meet the Goldsteins. You packed your bag of plans and you brought it on your honeymoon.’

He looks down at his feet. ‘I didn’t know. I hoped.’

‘And that’s supposed to make it better?’

They are silent again. David leans forward, clasping his hands together above his knees. Then he looks sideways at her, his face troubled. ‘I love you, Liv. Don’t you love me any more?’

‘Yes. So much. But I can’t … I can’t do this. I can’t be the woman this makes me.’

He shakes his head. ‘I don’t understand. This is crazy. I was only gone for a couple of hours.’

‘It’s not about the couple of hours. This was our honeymoon. It’s a template for how we’re going to be.’

‘How is a honeymoon ever a template for a marriage? Most people go and lie on a beach for two weeks, for Christ’s sake. You think that’s how the rest of their lives is going to run?’

‘Don’t twist my words! You know what I mean. This is meant to be the one time you –’

‘It’s just this building –’

‘Oh, this building. This building. This fucking building. There’s always going to be a building, isn’t there?’

‘No. This is special. They –’

‘They want you to meet them again.’

He lets out a breath, and his jaw tightens. ‘It’s not a meeting as such,’ he says. ‘It’s lunch. Tomorrow. At one of Paris’s best restaurants. And you’re invited too.’

She would laugh if she wasn’t so close to tears. When she finally speaks, her voice is oddly calm. ‘I’m sorry, David. I’m not even blaming you for this. It’s my own fault. I was so besotted with you that I couldn’t see beyond it. I couldn’t see that being married to someone who was so consumed by his work would make me …’ Her voice thickens.

‘Make you what? I still love you, Liv. I don’t understand.’

She rubs her eyes. ‘I’m not explaining myself very well. Look … come with me. I want to show you something.’

It’s a short walk back to the Musée d’Orsay. The queue has died down and they move forward in silence for the ten minutes it takes to gain entry. She is acutely conscious of him beside her, of the new awkwardness between them. A little part of her still cannot believe that this is how her honeymoon is ending.

She summons the lift, confident of where she is headed this time, and David follows. They walk through the rooms of Impressionists on the top floor, dodging the clumps of people who stand and stare. Another school party sits in front of Déjeuner sur l’herbe and the same enthusiastic attendant talks them through the scandal of the naked woman. She thinks how ironic it is that she now has her husband here, where she had wanted him this morning, and it is too late. It is all too late.

And eventually there they are, in front of the little picture.

She looks at it, and he steps forward.

‘“Wife, out of sorts”,’ he reads. ‘“By Édouard Lefèvre”.’ He studies it for a moment, then turns to her, waiting for an explanation.

‘So … I saw it this morning … this miserable, neglected wife. And it just hit me. That’s not how I want to be. I felt suddenly as if the whole of our marriage was going to be like this – me wanting your attention, and you not being able to give it. And it scared me.’

‘Our marriage isn’t going to be like that.’

‘I don’t want to be a wife who feels ignored, even on her honeymoon.’

‘I wasn’t ignoring you, Liv –’

‘But you made me feel unimportant, and on the one occasion I might have reasonably expected you to just enjoy us being together, to just want to be with me.’ Her voice lifts, becomes impassioned. ‘I wanted to stroll around the little bars of Paris and sit down and drink glasses of wine for no reason, my hand in yours. I wanted to hear about who you were before we met, and what you wanted. I wanted to tell you all the things I’d planned for our life together. I wanted to have lots of sex. Lots of sex. I didn’t want to walk around galleries alone and have coffee with men I don’t even know – just to kill time.’

She can’t help but be a tiny bit gratified by his sharp sideways look.

‘And when I saw this painting it all made sense to me. This is me, David. This is how I will be. This is what’s going to happen. Because, even now, you can’t see that there’s anything wrong in spending two days – three days – of a five-day honeymoon pitching for business to a couple of rich businessmen.’

She swallows. And her voice breaks. ‘I’m sorry. I … I can’t be this woman. I just – can’t. It’s who my mother was and it terrifies me.’ She wipes her eyes, ducking her head to avoid the curious glances of people passing.

David stares at the painting. He doesn’t speak for several minutes. And then he turns to her, his face drawn. ‘Okay, I get it.’ He runs a hand through his hair. ‘And you’re right. About all of it. I’ve – I’ve been unbelievably stupid. And selfish. I’m sorry.’

They fall silent as a German couple pauses in front of the painting, exchanging a few words before moving on.

‘But … but you’re wrong about this painting.’

She looks up at him.

‘She’s not ignored. She’s not symptomatic of a failing relationship.’ He moves a step closer, gently takes her by the arm as he gestures. ‘Look at how he’s painted her, Liv. He doesn’t want her to be angry. He’s still looking at her. Look at the tenderness of his brushstrokes, the way he’s coloured her skin there. He adores her. He can’t bear that she’s angry. He can’t stop looking at her even when she’s furious with him.’ He takes a breath. ‘He’s there, and he’s not going away, no matter how much he’s enraged her.’

Her eyes have filled with tears. ‘What are you saying?’

‘I don’t believe this painting should mean the end of our marriage.’ He reaches out, takes her hand and holds it until her fingers relax around his. ‘Because I look at it and I see the opposite from you. Yes, something’s gone wrong. Yes, she’s unhappy right then, in that moment. But when I look at her, at them, at this, Liv, I just see a picture full of love.’

Chapter Six

1912

A thin rain had started as I began walking the streets around the Latin Quarter shortly after midnight. Now, hours later, it had soaked my felt hat so that the drops seeped down the back of my collar, but I barely felt them, so steeped was I in my misery.

Some part of me had wanted to wait for Édouard to return, but I could not sit in our home, not with those women, with the prospect of my husband’s future infidelities hanging over me. I kept seeing the hurt in his eyes, hearing the rage in his voice. Who is this pinch-faced accuser? He no longer saw me as the best of myself, and who could blame him? He had seen me as I truly knew myself to be: plain, provincial, an invisible shop girl. He had been trapped into marriage by a fit of jealousy, his fleeting conviction that he needed to secure my love. Now he was regretting his haste. And I had made him conscious of it.

I wondered briefly if I should simply pack my case and leave. But every time that thought flickered through my feverish mind, the answer came back immediately: I loved him. The thought of life without him was unbearable. How could I return to St Peronne and live the life of a spinster, knowing what I knew of how love could feel? How could I bear the thought that he lived, somewhere, miles away from me? Even when he left the room I felt his absence like an aching limb. My physical need for him still overwhelmed me. And I could hardly return home a matter of weeks after our wedding.

But there was the problem: I would always be provincial. I could not share my husband, as the Parisiennes apparently did, turning a blind eye to their indiscretions. How could I live with Édouard and face the possibility of him returning home smelling of another woman’s scent? Even if I could not be sure of his faithlessness, how could I walk into our home and see Mimi Einsbacher, or any of these women, naked on our bed as she posed for him? What was I supposed to do? Simply disappear into a back room? Go for a walk? Sit and watch over them? He would hate me. He would see me as the gaoler that Mimi Einsbacher already considered me.

I understood now that I had not thought at all about what marriage would mean for us. I could not see further than his voice, his hands, his kisses. I could not see further than my own vanity – dazzled as I was by the reflection of me I had seen in his paintings, and in his eyes.

And now his magic dust had blown away, and I was left – a wife: this pinch-faced accuser. And I did not like this version of myself.

I walked the length of Paris, along the rue de Rivoli, up to avenue Foch and down the backstreets of Invalides, ignoring the curious glances of the men, the catcalls of the drunks, my feet growing sore on the cobbles, my face turned away from passers-by so they did not see the tears that brimmed in my eyes. I grieved for the marriage I had already lost. I grieved for the Édouard who had seen only the best in me. I missed our intense happiness together, the sense that we had been impenetrable, immune to the rest of the world. How could we have come to this so soon? I walked, so lost in my thoughts that I barely noticed it had begun to grow light.

‘Madame Lefèvre?’

I turned as a woman stepped out of the shadows. When she stood under the guttering streetlight, I saw it was the girl to whom Édouard had introduced me on the night of the fight in the Bar Tripoli – I struggled to recall her name: Lisette? Laure?

‘It is no hour for a lady to be out here, Madame,’ she said, glancing back up the street.

I had no answer for her. I wasn’t sure I could actually speak. I recalled one of the girls at La Femme Marché nudging me as he approached: He consorts with the street girls of Pigalle.

‘I had no idea of the hour.’ I glanced up at the clock. A quarter to five. I had been walking the whole night.

Her face was in shadow, but I felt her studying me. ‘Are you quite well?’

‘I’m fine. Thank you.’

She kept looking at me. Then she took a step forwards and touched my elbow lightly. ‘I’m not sure this is a good place for a married woman to walk alone. Would you like to join me for a drink? I know a warm bar not far from here.’

When I hesitated she released my arm, took the smallest of steps backwards. ‘Of course, if you have other plans I quite understand.’

‘No. It is kind of you to ask. I would relish an excuse to get out of the cold. I … I don’t think I’d noticed how chilled I am until just now.’

We walked in silence down two narrow streets, turning towards a window lit from within. A Chinese man stepped back from a heavy door to let us in, and she exchanged a quiet word with him. The bar was indeed warm and the windows fugged with steam, a handful of men still drinking. Carriage drivers, mostly, she told me, as she shepherded me towards the back. Laure Le Comte ordered something at the bar and I took a seat at a table at the rear. I peeled my damp cape from my shoulders. The little room was noisy and cheerful; the men had gathered around a card game that was going on in the corner. I could see my face in the mirror that ran along the wall, pale and damp, my hair plastered to my head. Why would he love only me? I wondered, then tried to push away the thought.

An elderly waiter arrived with a tray, and Laure handed me a small goblet of cognac. Now we were sitting there, I could think of nothing to say to her.

‘It’s good we came inside when we did,’ she said, glancing towards the doorway. The rain had started up properly now, running down the pavements in woven rivers, gurgling in the gutters.

‘I think so.’

‘Is Monsieur Lefèvre at home?’

She had used the formal version of his name, even though she had known him longer than I had.

‘I have no idea.’ I took a sip of my drink. It slid down my throat like fire. And then suddenly I began to talk. Perhaps it was desperation. Perhaps it was the knowledge that a woman such as Laure had seen so many kinds of bad behaviour that she could not be shocked by anything I had to tell her. Perhaps I simply wanted to see her reaction. I was unsure whether, after all, she, too, was among those women I now had to view as a threat.

‘I found myself in an ill temper. I thought it better … to walk.’

She nodded, and allowed a small smile. Her hair, I noted, was pulled into a neat twist at her collar, more like a schoolteacher than a woman of the night. ‘I have never been married. But I can imagine that it changes one’s life beyond all recognition.’

‘It is hard to adjust. I had thought myself well suited to it. Now … I’m not sure I have the right temperament for its challenges.’ Even as I spoke I was surprised at myself. I was not the kind of woman given to confidences. The only person I had ever confided in was my sister, and in her absence, I had only really wanted to talk to Édouard.

‘You are finding Édouard … challenging?’

I saw now that she was older than I had first thought: clever application of rouge and lipstick had given her a bloom of youth. But there was something about her that made you want to keep talking; a suggestion that what you told her would go no further. I wondered absently what she had done that evening, what other secrets she heard each day.

‘Yes. No. Not Édouard exactly.’ I could not explain. ‘I don’t know. I’m – sorry. I should not have burdened you with my thoughts.’

She ordered a second cognac for me. And then she sat and sipped her own, as if considering how much to say. Finally, she leant forwards and spoke softly. ‘It will be no surprise to you, Madame, that I think myself something of an expert in the psyche of the married gentleman.’

I found myself blushing slightly.

‘I know nothing of what brought you here this evening, and I believe nobody outside can speak with any authority on what happens within the confines of a marriage. But I can tell you this: Édouard adores you. I can say so with some confidence, having seen many men, and a few, too, who were on honeymoon.’

I looked up now, and she raised a wry eyebrow. ‘Yes, on their honeymoons. Before he met you I might confidently have wagered Édouard Lefèvre would never marry. That he would have been perfectly comfortable continuing to lead the life he had. And then he met you. And with no coquettishness, or guile, you won his heart, his head, his very imagination. Do not underestimate what he feels for you, Madame.’

‘And the other women. I’m meant to ignore them?’

‘Other women?’

‘I have been told … Édouard is not the kind of man to give himself over happily to … exclusivity.’

Laure looked at me steadily. ‘And what poisonous creature told you this?’ My face must have given me away. ‘Whatever seed this counsellor has planted, Madame, it seems to have been expertly done.’

She took another sip of cognac. ‘I will tell you something, Madame, and I hope you will not take offence because it comes well meant.’ She leant forward, over the table. ‘Yes, I did not believe Édouard was the kind of man who would marry either. But when I saw you both that evening outside the Bar Tripoli, and I saw how he looked at you, his pride in you, the way he placed his hand so tenderly upon your back, the way he looks at you for approval with almost everything he says or does, I knew that you were most perfectly matched. And I saw he was happy. So happy.’

I sat very still, listening.

‘And I will admit that on our meeting I felt shame, a rare emotion for me. Because in the past months, several times when I modelled for Édouard, or even when I saw him, perhaps on his way home from some bar or restaurant, I offered myself to him for free. I have always been terribly fond of him, you see. And on every occasion since he first saw you, he declined with an unusual delicacy, but without hesitation.’

Outside, the rain had stopped abruptly. A man held his hand out of the doorway, and said something to his friend that made them both laugh.

Laure’s voice was a low murmur: ‘The greatest risk to your marriage, if I may be so frank, is not your husband. It is that the words of this so-called counsellor turn you into the very thing you – and your husband – dread.’

Laure finished her drink. She pulled her shawl around her shoulders and stood. She checked her appearance in the mirror, straightened a lock of hair, then glanced at the window. ‘Et voilà – the rain has stopped. I think today might be a fine one. Go home to your husband, Madame. Rejoice in your good fortune. Be the woman he adores.’

She gave me a brief smile. ‘And in future choose your counsellors most carefully.’

With a word to the proprietor, she made her way out of the bar into the damp blue light of the early dawn. I sat there, digesting what she had told me, feeling exhaustion finally seep into my bones, along with something else: a deep, deep relief.

I called the elderly waiter over to pay the bill. He informed me with a shrug that Madame Laure had already settled it, and went back to polishing his glasses.

The apartment was so quiet when I made my way up the stairs that I guessed Édouard must be asleep. He was a constant source of noise when at home, singing or whistling or playing his gramophone so loudly that the neighbours would thump on the walls in irritation. The sparrows chattered in the ivy that covered our walls, and the distant sound of horses’ hoofs on the cobbles spoke of a slowly waking city, but the little apartment at the top of 21a rue Soufflot was utterly silent.

I tried not to think about where he might have been, or in what frame of mind. I took off my shoes and hurried up the last of the stairs, my feet muffled on the wooden steps, wanting already to climb into bed beside him and wrap myself around him. I would tell him how sorry I was, how I adored him, how I had been a fool. I would be the woman he had married.

My mind hummed with my need for him. I opened the apartment door quietly, already imagining him lying in a tangle in our sheets and coverlet, his arm rising sleepily to lift them and allow me in. But when I looked, already peeling my coat from my shoulders, our bed was empty.

I hesitated, stepped past the sleeping area and into the main studio. I felt oddly nervous suddenly, unsure of my reception. ’Édouard?’ I called.

There was no answer.

I walked in. The studio was dimly lit, the candles burning low where I had left them in my hurry to quit the apartment, the long window glowing a cold blue with the early-morning light. The chill in the air suggested that the fire had gone out hours ago. At the end of the room, beside the canvases, Édouard stood in his chemise and loose trousers, his back to me, gazing at a canvas.

I stood in the doorway staring at my husband, at his broad back, his thick dark hair, before he realized I was there. He turned to me and I saw a fleeting wariness in his eyes – what’s coming now? – and the sight of it bruised me.

I walked towards him, my shoes in my hand. I had imagined hurling myself into his arms all the way back down rue de Babylone. I had thought I would not be able to stop myself. But now, in the still, silent room, something held me back. I stopped a few inches in front of him, my eyes not leaving his, and found myself turning towards the easel.

The woman in the canvas was hunched forwards, her face mute and furious, her dark red hair tied back loosely at her neck as mine had been the previous evening. Her body spoke of tension, a deeply held unhappiness, her refusal to look directly at the artist a silent rebuke. And a sob rose in my throat.

‘It’s … perfect,’ I said, when I could speak.

He turned to me and I saw he was exhausted, his eyes red with what might have been lack of sleep or something else altogether. And I wanted to wipe the sadness from his face, to take back my words, to make him happy again. ‘Oh, I have been so foolish –’ I began. But he beat me to it, gathering me to him.

‘Don’t leave me again, Sophie,’ he said softly into my ear, and his voice was thick with emotion.

We did not speak. We clutched each other so tightly, as if it were years that we had been separated, not hours.

His voice, against my skin, was ragged and broken. ‘I had to paint you because I couldn’t bear that you weren’t here and it was the only way I could bring you back.’

‘I’m here,’ I murmured. I wound my fingers into his hair, bringing my face to his, breathing the air that he breathed. ‘I won’t leave you again. Ever.’

‘I wanted to paint you as you are. But all that would come was this furious, unhappy Sophie. And all I could think was, I am the cause of her unhappiness.’

I shook my head. ‘It wasn’t you, Édouard. Let us forget this night. Please.’

He reached out a hand and turned the easel away from me. ‘Then I won’t finish this. I don’t even want you to look at it. Oh, Sophie. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry …’

I kissed him then. I kissed him and I made sure my kiss told him how I adored him from within my very bones, how my life before him had been a grey, colourless thing, and a future without him terrifying and black. I told him in the kiss that I loved him more than I had ever thought I was capable of loving anyone. My husband. My handsome, complicated, brilliant husband. I couldn’t say the words: my feelings were too vast for them.

‘Come,’ I said finally, and, my fingers entwined in his, I pulled him by the hand to our bed.

Some time later, when the street below was alive with the sounds of late morning, and the fruit-sellers had made their rounds, and the smell of coffee floating up through our open window had become unbearably delicious, I peeled myself away from Édouard and out of our bed, the sweat still cooling on my back, the taste of him still on my lips. I walked across the studio, lit the fire, and when I was done I stood and turned the canvas around. I looked at her properly, at the tenderness in his line, at the intimacy of it, the perfect representation of me, of a moment. And then I turned to face him. ‘You must finish it, you know.’

He propped himself up on one elbow, squinted at me. ‘But – you look so unhappy.’

‘Perhaps. But it’s the truth, Édouard. You always show the truth. It’s your great talent.’ I stretched, lifting my arms above my head and lowering them again, enjoying the knowledge that his eyes were on me. I shrugged. ‘And, in truth, I suppose there was always going to be a day when we were out of sorts with each other. A lune de miel cannot last for ever.’

‘Yes, it can,’ he said, waiting as I padded across the bare floor back to him. He pulled me into bed and looked at me steadily from across the pillow, a rueful smile upon his face. ‘It can last as long as we wish it. And, as the master of this house, I decree that every day of our marriage must be a honeymoon.’

‘I find myself utterly bent to my husband’s will.’ I sighed, nestling into him. ‘We have tried it, and found that being disagreeable and out of sorts didn’t suit us. I, too, must declare the rest of our marriage to be honeymoon only.’

We lay there in companionable silence, my leg thrown over his, the warm skin of his belly against mine, his arm heavy over my ribs where he held me to him. I wasn’t sure I had ever been so content. I breathed in the scent of my husband, felt the rise and fall of his chest, and finally tiredness began to overtake me. I began to doze off, drifting to somewhere warm and pleasurable, perhaps made more so for where I had been. And then he spoke.

‘Sophie,’ he murmured. ‘While we are being so frank – I feel I need to tell you something.’

I opened one eye.

‘And I hope your feelings will not be too injured by it.’

‘What is it?’ My voice was a whisper, my heart braced to stop.

He hesitated for a moment, and took my hand in his. ‘I know you bought it for me as a treat. But I really do not like to eat foie gras. I never have. I was just trying to be agreea–’

But he did not get to finish his sentence. Because I had already stopped his mouth with my own.

Chapter Seven

2002

‘I can’t believe you’re ringing me from your honeymoon.’

‘Yes, well, David’s downstairs sorting something out in the lobby. I just thought today would be even more perfect if I could squeeze in a two-minute chat.’

Jasmine puts her hand over the receiver. ‘I’m going to take this in the Ladies so Besley can’t see me. Hang on.’ The sound of a door closing, then hurried footsteps. I could almost see the cramped office above the stationer’s, the heavy traffic crawling its way up Finchley Road, and smell the lead tang of fuel hanging in the sticky summer air. ‘Go on. Tell me everything. In about twenty seconds. Are you walking like John Wayne yet? And are you having the best time ever?’

I gazed around my hotel room, at the rumpled bed David had just vacated, at the suitcase that I had begun packing half-heartedly on the floor. ‘It’s … been a bit weird. Getting used to actually being married. But I’m really happy.’

‘Ugh! I’m so envious. I went on a date with Shaun Jeffries last night. Remember him? Fi’s brother? With the awful nails? I honestly have no idea why I said yes. He droned on and on about himself. I was apparently meant to be impressed by the fact that he had a maisonette in Friern Barnet.’

‘It’s a very nice area. Up and coming.’

‘And the maisonette itself has a lot of potential.’

I started to giggle. ‘It’s important to get on the ladder.’

‘Especially at our age. You can’t go wrong with bricks and mortar.’

‘He’s got a pension. Go on. Tell me he’s got a pension.’

‘He has so totally got a pension. And it’s index-linked. And he wore grey shoes and he insisted on splitting the bill and he ordered the cheapest bottle of wine in the restaurant “because it all tastes the same after the first glass”. Oh, Worthing, I wish you were home already. I so badly need a drink. Dating is crap. You have totally done the right thing.’

I lay back on the bed and gazed up at the ceiling, which was white and as crisply ornate as a wedding cake. ‘What? Even though I’m ridiculously impulsive and my impulses are not to be trusted?’

‘Yes! I wish I was more impulsive. I would have married Andrew when he asked me and I’d probably be living in Spain now instead of stuck here in this office wondering whether I can sneak off at twenty to five to get my car tax sorted. Anyway – Oh, God, I’ve got to go. Besley’s just walked into the Ladies.’ Her voice lifts, changes tone. ‘Of course, Mrs Halston. Thank you so much for calling. I’m sure we’ll speak soon.’

Liv rings off, just as David returns. He is carrying a box of chocolates from Patrick Roger.

‘What’s this?’

‘Supper. They’re bringing up some champagne to go with it.’

She cackles with delight, pulls the wrapper off the beautiful pale turquoise box, pops one into her mouth and closes her eyes. ‘Oh, my God, these are amazing. What with these and tomorrow’s posh lunch I’m going to go home the size of a house.’

‘I cancelled the lunch.’

Liv looks up. ‘But I said I –’

David shrugs. ‘No. You were right. No more work. Some things should be sacred.’

She pops another chocolate into her mouth, holds the box towards him. ‘Oh, David … I’m starting to think I overreacted.’ The afternoon, with its feverish pitch of emotion, seems so long ago. She feels as if they have been married a lifetime since.

He pulls his shirt over his head. ‘You didn’t. You had every right to expect my full attention on our honeymoon. I’m sorry. I guess – I guess I’ve got to learn to remember there are two of us now, not just me.’

And there he is again. The man she had fallen in love with. My husband. She is suddenly almost incandescent with lust.

He sits down beside her, and she slides over to him while he keeps talking. ‘You want to hear the irony? I rang the Goldsteins from downstairs and I took a deep breath and I explained that I was very sorry but I couldn’t take any more time out this week, as this was actually my honeymoon.’

‘And?’

‘And they were absolutely furious with me.’

The next chocolate stops halfway to her lips. Her heart sinks. ‘Oh, God – I’m sorry.’

‘Yup, properly furious. They asked me what on earth I thought I was doing, leaving my new wife alone to discuss business matters. “This is no bloody way to start a marriage,” I quote.’ He gives her a sideways grin. ‘I always liked the sound of those Goldsteins,’ she says, popping the chocolate into his mouth.

‘They said it was a one-off, a time of our lives that I’d never get back.’

‘I think I might even love them.’

‘You’re going to love them even more in a minute.’ He stands and walks over to the french windows onto the balcony, throwing them open. The evening sun streams into the little room, while below them the sounds of the rue des Francs Bourgeois, teeming with tourists and lazy shoppers, fills the room. He pulls off his shoes and socks and his trousers and sits down on the bed, turning to her. ‘They said they felt partly responsible for dragging me away. So, they’ve offered us the use of their suite in the Royal Monceaux from tomorrow, to make it up to you. Room service, bath the size of an ocean liner, champagne on tap, absolutely no reason to leave the room whatsoever. For two nights. The reason I was downstairs so long was that I’ve taken a husbandly liberty and changed our return tickets. What do you say?’

He looks at Liv, and even now there is a hint of uncertainty in his gaze. ‘Obviously it would involve spending a further forty-eight hours with a man who is, according to our friendly local billionaires, a bloody stupid idiot.’

She regards him steadily. ‘Bloody stupid idiots are my absolute favourite kind of husband.’

‘I was so hoping you’d say that.’

They fall backwards onto the pillows and lie there side by side, their fingers entwined.

She gazes through the window at the still-bright City of Lights, and finds she is smiling. She is married. She is in Paris. Tomorrow she is going to disappear into a queen-sized bed with the man she loves and probably not come out for two days. This is probably as good as life gets.

But she hopes not.

‘I’ll get it right, Mrs Halston,’ he murmurs, turning towards her and lifting her fingers to his lips. ‘It might take me a while, the whole marriage thing, but I will get it right eventually.’ He has two freckles on his nose. She has never noticed them before. They are the most beautiful freckles she has ever seen.

‘That’s okay, Mr Halston,’ she says, and reaches back to place the chocolates carefully on the bedside table, out of harm’s way. ‘We’ve got all the time in the world.’

1

St Péronne

October 1916

I was dreaming of food. Crisp baguettes, the flesh of the bread a virginal white, still steaming from the oven, and ripe cheese, its borders creeping towards the edge of the plate. Grapes and plums, stacked high in bowls, dusky and fragrant, their scent filling the air. I was about to reach out and take one, when my sister stopped me. ‘Get off,’ I murmured. ‘I’m hungry.’

‘Sophie. Wake up.’

I could taste that cheese. I was going to have a mouthful of Reblochon, smear it on a hunk of that warm bread, then pop a grape into my mouth. I could already taste the intense sweetness, smell the rich aroma.

But there it was, my sister’s hand on my wrist, stopping me. The plates were disappearing, the scents fading. I reached out to them but they began to pop, like soap bubbles.

‘Sophie.’

‘What?’

‘They have Aurélien!’

I turned on to my side and blinked. My sister was wearing a cotton bonnet, as I was, to keep warm. Her face, even in the feeble light of her candle, was leached of colour, her eyes wide with shock. ‘They have Aurélien. Downstairs.’

My mind began to clear. From below us came the sound of men shouting, their voices bouncing off the stone courtyard, the hens squawking in their coop. In the thick dark, the air vibrated with some terrible purpose. I sat upright in bed, dragging my gown around me, struggling to light the candle on my bedside table.

I stumbled past her to the window and stared down into the courtyard at the soldiers, illuminated by the headlights of their vehicle, and my younger brother, his arms around his head, trying to avoid the rifle butts that landed blows on him.

‘What’s happening?’

‘They know about the pig.’

‘What?’

‘Monsieur Suel must have informed on us. I heard them shouting from my room. They say they’ll take Aurélien if he doesn’t tell them where it is.’

‘He will say nothing,’ I said.

We flinched as we heard our brother cry out. I hardly recognized my sister then: she looked twenty years older than her twenty-four years. I knew her fear was mirrored in my own face. This was what we had dreaded.

‘They have a Kommandant with them. If they find it,’ Hélène whispered, her voice cracking with panic, ‘they’ll arrest us all. You know what took place in Arras. They’ll make an example of us. What will happen to the children?’

My mind raced, fear that my brother might speak out making me stupid. I wrapped a shawl around my shoulders and tiptoed to the window, peering out at the courtyard. The presence of a Kommandant suggested these were not just drunken soldiers looking to take out their frustrations with a few threats and knocks: we were in trouble. His presence meant we had committed a crime that should be taken seriously.

‘They will find it, Sophie. It will take them minutes. And then …’ Hélène’s voice rose, lifted by panic.

My thoughts turned black. I closed my eyes. And then I opened them. ‘Go downstairs,’ I said. ‘Plead ignorance. Ask him what Aurélien has done wrong. Talk to him, distract him. Just give me some time before they come into the house.’

‘What are you going to do?’

I gripped my sister’s arm. ‘Go. But tell them nothing, you understand? Deny everything.’

My sister hesitated, then ran towards the corridor, her nightgown billowing behind her. I’m not sure I had ever felt as alone as I did in those few seconds, fear gripping my throat and the weight of my family’s fate upon me. I ran into Father’s study and scrabbled in the drawers of the great desk, hurling its contents – old pens, scraps of paper, pieces from broken clocks and ancient bills – on to the floor, thanking God when I finally found what I was searching for. Then I ran downstairs, opened the cellar door and skipped down the cold stone stairs, so sure-footed now in the dark that I barely needed the fluttering glow of the candle. I lifted the heavy latch to the back cellar, which had once been stacked to the roof with beer kegs and good wine, slid one of the empty barrels aside and opened the door of the old cast-iron bread oven.

The piglet, still only half grown, blinked sleepily. It lifted itself to its feet, peered out at me from its bed of straw and grunted. Surely I’ve told you about the pig? We liberated it during the requisition of Monsieur Girard’s farm. Like a gift from God, it had strayed in the chaos, meandering away from the piglets being loaded into the back of a German truck and was swiftly swallowed by the thick skirts of Grandma Poilâne. We’ve been fattening it on acorns and scraps for weeks, in the hope of raising it to a size great enough for us all to have some meat. The thought of that crisp skin, that moist pork, has kept the inhabitants of Le Coq Rouge going for the past month.

Outside I heard my brother yelp again, then my sister’s voice, rapid and urgent, cut short by the harsh tones of a German officer. The pig looked at me with intelligent, understanding eyes, as if it already knew its fate.

‘I’m so sorry, mon petit,’ I whispered, ‘but this really is the only way.’ And I brought down my hand.

I was outside in a matter of moments. I had woken Mimi, telling her only that she must come but to stay silent – the child has seen so much these last months that she obeys without question. She glanced up at me holding her baby brother, slid out of bed and placed a hand in mine.

The air was sharp with the approach of winter, the smell of woodsmoke lingering in the air from our brief fire earlier in the evening. I saw the Kommandant through the stone archway of the back door and hesitated. It was not Herr Becker, whom we knew and despised. This was a slimmer man, clean-shaven, impassive. Even in the dark I could see intelligence, not brutish ignorance, in his face, which made me afraid.

This new Kommandant was gazing speculatively up at our windows, perhaps considering whether this building might provide a more suitable billet than the Fourrier farm, where senior German officers slept. I suspect he knew that our elevated aspect would give him a vantage-point across the town. There were stables for horses and ten bedrooms, from the days when our home was the town’s thriving hotel.

Hélène was on the cobbles, shielding Aurélien with her arms.

One of his men had raised his rifle, but the Kommandant lifted his hand. ‘Stand up,’ he ordered them. Hélène scrambled backwards, away from him. I glimpsed her face, taut with fear.

I felt Mimi’s hand tighten round mine as she saw her mother, and I gave hers a squeeze, even though my heart was in my mouth. And I strode out. ‘What, in God’s name, is going on?’ My voice rang out in the yard.

The Kommandant glanced towards me, surprised by my tone: a young woman walking through the arched entrance to the farmyard, a thumb-sucking child at her skirts, another swaddled and clutched to her chest. My night bonnet sat slightly askew, my white cotton nightgown so worn now that it barely registered as fabric against my skin. I prayed that he could not hear the almost audible thumping of my heart.

I addressed him directly: ‘And for what supposed misdemeanour have your men come to punish us now?’

I guessed he had not heard a woman speak to him in this way since his last leave home. The silence that fell upon the courtyard was steeped in shock. My brother and sister, on the ground, twisted round, the better to see me, only too aware of where such insubordination might leave us all.

‘You are?’

‘Madame Lefèvre.’

I could see he was checking for the presence of my wedding ring. He needn’t have bothered: like most women in our area, I had long since sold it for food.

‘Madame. We have information that you are harbouring illegal livestock.’ His French was passable, suggesting previous postings in the occupied territory, his voice calm. This was not a man who felt threatened by the unexpected.

‘Livestock?’

‘A reliable source tells us that you are keeping a pig on the premises. You will be aware that, under the directive, the penalty for withholding livestock from the administration is imprisonment.’

I held his gaze. ‘And I know exactly who would inform you of such a thing. It’s Monsieur Suel, non?’ My cheeks were flushed with colour; my hair, twisted into a long plait that hung over my shoulder, felt electrified. It prickled at the nape of my neck.

The Kommandant turned to one of his minions. The man’s glance sideways told him this was true.

‘Monsieur Suel, Herr Kommandant, comes here at least twice a month attempting to persuade us that in the absence of our husbands we are in need of his particular brand of comfort. Because we have chosen not to avail ourselves of his supposed kindness, he repays us with rumours and a threat to our lives.’

‘The authorities would not act unless the source were credible.’

‘I would argue, Herr Kommandant, that this visit suggests otherwise.’

The look he gave me was impenetrable. He turned on his heel and walked towards the house door. I followed him, half tripping over my skirts in my attempt to keep up. I knew the mere act of speaking so boldly to him might be considered a crime. And yet, at that moment, I was no longer afraid.

‘Look at us, Kommandant. Do we look as though we are feasting on beef, on roast lamb, on fillet of pork?’ He turned, his eyes flicking towards my bony wrists, just visible at the sleeves of my gown. I had lost two inches from my waist in the last year alone. ‘Are we grotesquely plump with the bounty of our hotel? We have three hens left of two dozen. Three hens that we have the pleasure of keeping and feeding so that your men might take the eggs. We, meanwhile, live on what the German authorities deem to be a diet – decreasing rations of meat and flour, and bread made from grit and bran so poor we would not use it to feed livestock.’

He was in the back hallway, his heels echoing on the flagstones. He hesitated, then walked through to the bar and barked an order. A soldier appeared from nowhere and handed him a lamp.

‘We have no milk to feed our babies, our children weep with hunger, we become ill from lack of nutrition. And still you come here in the middle of the night to terrify two women and brutalize an innocent boy, to beat us and threaten us, because you heard a rumour from an immoral man that we were feasting?’

My hands were shaking. He saw the baby squirm, and I realized I was so tense that I was holding it too tightly. I stepped back, adjusted the shawl, crooned to it. Then I lifted my head. I could not hide the bitterness and anger in my voice.

‘Search our home, then, Kommandant. Turn it upside down and destroy what little has not already been destroyed. Search all the outbuildings too, those that your men have not already stripped for their own wants. When you find this mythical pig, I hope your men dine well on it.’

I held his gaze for just a moment longer than he might have expected. Through the window I could make out my sister wiping Aurélien’s wounds with her skirts, trying to stem the blood. Three German soldiers stood over them.

My eyes were used to the dark now, and I saw that the Kommandant was wrong-footed. His men, their eyes uncertain, were waiting for him to give the orders. He could instruct them to strip our house to the beams and arrest us all to pay for my extraordinary outburst. But I knew he was thinking of Suel, whether he might have been misled. He did not look the kind of man to relish the possibility of being seen to be wrong.

When Édouard and I used to play poker, he had laughed and said I was an impossible opponent as my face never revealed my true feelings. I told myself to remember those words now: this was the most important game I would ever play. We stared at each other, the Kommandant and I. I felt, briefly, the whole world still around us: I could hear the distant rumble of the guns at the Front, my sister’s coughing, the scrabbling of our poor, scrawny hens disturbed in their coop. It faded until just he and I faced one another, each gambling on the truth. I swear I could hear my very heart beating.

‘What is this?’

‘What?’

He held up the lamp, and it was dimly illuminated in pale gold light: the portrait Édouard had painted of me when we were first married. There I was, in that first year, my hair thick and lustrous around my shoulders, my skin clear and blooming, gazing out with the self-possession of the adored. I had brought it down from its hiding place several weeks before, telling my sister I was damned if the Germans would decide what I should look at in my own home.

He lifted the lamp a little higher so that he could see it more clearly. Do not put it there, Sophie, Hélène had warned. It will invite trouble.

When he finally turned to me, it was as if he had had to tear his eyes from it. He looked at my face, then back at the painting. ‘My husband painted it.’ I don’t know why I felt the need to tell him that.

Perhaps it was the certainty of my righteous indignation. Perhaps it was the obvious difference between the girl in the picture and the girl who stood before him. Perhaps it was the weeping blonde child who stood at my feet. It is possible that even Kommandants, two years into this occupation, have become weary of harassing us for petty misdemeanours.

He looked at the painting a moment longer, then at his feet.

‘I think we have made ourselves clear, Madame. Our conversation is not finished. But I will not disturb you further tonight.’

He caught the flash of surprise on my face, barely suppressed, and I saw that it satisfied something in him. It was perhaps enough for him to know I had believed myself doomed. He was smart, this man, and subtle. I would have to be wary.

‘Men.’

His soldiers turned, blindly obedient as ever, and walked out towards their vehicle, their uniforms silhouetted against the headlights. I followed him and stood just outside the door. The last I heard of his voice was the order to the driver to make for the town.

We waited as the military vehicle travelled back down the road, its headlights feeling their way along the pitted surface. Hélène had begun to shake. She scrambled to her feet, her hand white-knuckled at her brow, her eyes tightly shut. Aurélien stood awkwardly beside me, holding Mimi’s hand, embarrassed by his childish tears. I waited for the last sounds of the engine to die away. It whined over the hill, as if it, too, were acting under protest.

‘Are you hurt, Aurélien?’ I touched his head. Flesh wounds. And bruises. What kind of men attacked an unarmed boy?

He flinched. ‘It didn’t hurt,’ he said. ‘They didn’t frighten me.’

‘I thought he would arrest you,’ my sister said. ‘I thought he would arrest us all.’ I was afraid when she looked like that: as if she were teetering on the edge of some vast abyss. She wiped her eyes and forced a smile as she crouched to hug her daughter. ‘Silly Germans. They gave us all a fright, didn’t they? Silly Maman for being frightened.’

The child watched her mother, silent and solemn. Sometimes I wondered if I would ever see Mimi laugh again.

‘I’m sorry. I’m all right now,’ she went on. ‘Let’s all go inside. Mimi, we have a little milk I will warm for you.’ She wiped her hands on her bloodied gown, and held her hands towards me for the baby. ‘You want me to take Jean?’

I had started to tremble convulsively, as if I had only just realized how afraid I should have been. My legs felt watery, their strength seeping into the cobblestones. I felt a desperate urge to sit down. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I suppose you should.’

My sister reached out, then gave a small cry. Nestling in the blankets, swaddled neatly so that it was barely exposed to the night air, was the pink, hairy snout of the piglet.

‘Jean is asleep upstairs,’ I said. I thrust a hand at the wall to keep myself upright.

Aurélien looked over her shoulder. They all stared at it.

‘Mon Dieu.’

‘Is it dead?’

‘Chloroformed. I remembered Papa had a bottle in his study, from his butterfly-collecting days. I think it will wake up. But we’re going to have to find somewhere else to keep it for when they return. And you know they will return.’

Aurélien smiled then, a rare, slow smile of delight. Hélène stooped to show Mimi the comatose little pig, and they grinned. Hélène kept touching its snout, clamping a hand over her face, as if she couldn’t believe what she was holding.

‘You held the pig before them? They came here and you held it out in front of their noses? And then you told them off for coming here?’ Her voice was incredulous.

‘In front of their snouts,’ said Aurélien, who seemed suddenly to have recovered some of his swagger. ‘Hah! You held it in front of their snouts!’

I sat down on the cobbles and began to laugh. I laughed until my skin grew chilled and I didn’t know whether I was laughing or weeping. My brother, perhaps afraid I was becoming hysterical, took my hand and rested against me. He was fourteen, sometimes bristling like a man, sometimes childlike in his need for reassurance.

Hélène was still deep in thought. ‘If I had known …’ she said. ‘How did you become so brave, Sophie? My little sister! Who made you like this? You were a mouse when we were children. A mouse!’

I wasn’t sure I knew the answer.

And then, as we finally walked back into the house, as Hélène busied herself with the milk pan and Aurélien began to wash his poor, battered face, I stood before the portrait.

That girl, the girl Édouard had married, looked back with an expression I no longer recognized. He had seen it in me long before anyone else did: it speaks of knowledge, that smile, of satisfaction gained and given. It speaks of pride. When his Parisian friends had found his love of me – a shop girl – inexplicable, he had just smiled because he could already see this in me.

I never knew if he understood that it was only there because of him.

I stood and gazed at her and, for a few seconds, I remembered how it had felt to be that girl, free of hunger, of fear, consumed only by idle thoughts of what private moments I might spend with Édouard. She reminded me that the world is capable of beauty, and that there were once things – art, joy, love – that filled my world, instead of fear and nettle soup and curfews. I saw him in my expression. And then I realized what I had just done. He had reminded me of my own strength, of how much I had left in me with which to fight.

When you return, Édouard, I swear I will once again be the girl you painted.

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First published 2012

Copyright © Jojo Moyes, 2012

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-1-405-91084-2