I close my eyes and think of Papa. Of how the sun used to push through the window of our small kitchen and land on the skin of his hands and arms as I ate breakfast. I can smell his coffee, see the old metal spoon I used for my cereal, hear the gentle tick tock of the old clock that hung on the wall by the back door. “You’re a clever girl, Amelie,” my father says. I try to look up at his face, but there’s only shadow there.
The sound of the key turning in the lock drags me back to the present. The man is here. Will he mention the spoon, did he notice it was missing from the tray he collected last night? I let the blanket fall and sit up.
“What time is it?” I ask, trying to keep my voice low, friendly.
He doesn’t answer and instead I sense the air shift, then hear a clunk as a tray is put down; a scrape as the old one is collected.
“Why won’t you speak to me? Has Carl told you not to?”
There’s a pause and I hold my breath. Did he react to the name Carl? I get to my feet, swaying a little as my body adjusts to the darkness, and sense him step back. A moment later, the key turns in the lock. He’s gone.
I bend and reach along the floorboards for the tray. I find the bowl, and next to it, a spoon. He didn’t notice that the old one was missing. I smile; he doesn’t know yet that he’s playing my game. That finally, I have control over something.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
PAST
Justine tipped her head back and closed her eyes.
“Isn’t this weather glorious?” she murmured.
“It’s perfect,” I said. “Everything’s perfect. So perfect that I don’t want it to come to an end.”
Justine opened an eye and squinted at me. “Why should it?”
It was a Thursday evening in late August, and we had moved from the café where we usually met to speak French, to a bench in Hyde Park.
“Because I can’t stay at Carolyn’s forever. I’ve been there for over a year and a half now. And at some point, she and Daniel might want to move in together.”
“It’s lovely that she’s met someone,” Justine said. “But it’s still early days. And if they do move in together, and you need to find another job, you can come and work at Exclusives with me and Lina.”
I shook my head. “I’m going to be a lawyer, don’t forget.”
She turned curious eyes on me. “Was it your father who influenced you to study law?”
“Not as such.” I rarely spoke about Papa, maybe because the memory of his death was still too painful. “When my mother died in childbirth, he sued the hospital in France for negligence. But he was passed from lawyer to lawyer and never managed to get very far. I don’t think that living in England helped.” I paused. “Nor did the whisky. His illness made him rely on it to relieve the pain. He was never a horrible drunk,” I added hastily. “It just made him retreat into himself.”
She reached out and gave my hand a squeeze. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said, realizing that it was. “I just wish he’d managed to get justice for my mother and baby brother before he died. It was all he wanted, an acknowledgment from the hospital that they’d been negligent. It consumed him as much as the cancer did. It’s why I want to be a lawyer, to help people like him.”
Her phone beeped, a message coming in. She dug in her bag, took out her phone, glanced at the screen.
“Ned,” she said with a grimace. “You’d think he’d take no for an answer.”
“What do you mean?”
She put her phone away without answering it. “He is always asking me to have dinner with him and I tell him no, that I don’t date men I work with. And you know what he says?”
“What?”
“That I don’t work with him, I work for him. He thinks it’s funny.”
I frowned. “He shouldn’t be putting you in that position.”
She sat up. “You’re right, he shouldn’t,” she said indignantly. “Do you know what he said when he heard I was looking for somewhere to live, because I was moving out of Lina’s? He said I should go and live with him. He was joking, but it made me uncomfortable.”
“It must have been fun living with Lina.”
“Yes, it was, we had some great times. It was only meant to be temporary, while I looked for an apartment, because I’d just arrived from France. But we got along so well that she said I could stay as long as I liked.”