The Paris Affair

by Pip Drysdale

  Something twinges inside me and I scroll through my pictures, smiling down at the ones Camilla and I took on Saturday at Disneyland: our faces squished up together before the haunted house. Me looking fake terrified in the line outside Big Thunder. A selfie of us in sequined Mickey Mouse ears in front of Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

  The brakes screech and I look up at the board. A little white light flashes beside Hôtel de Ville.

  The doors open. The foghorn sounds. People get off. Others get on. I watch them fumble around and take their seats. Glancing at their shoes – sneakers, ballet flats, brogues – and then their faces. We start to move again. The baby has stopped crying now and the schoolgirls are sitting silently scrolling through their phones. Behind them stands a man who’s—

  My heart stalls.

  And my breath gets très fast.

  Because it’s him.

  At least, I think it’s him. He’s wearing an unbranded navy cap but he looks exactly like what Camilla described: tall, dark, beaky and somehow familiar. It’s like I’ve seen him before but I don’t know where.

  I pull my earbuds from my ears and stare at him as he looks down at his phone. The options run through my mind: was he at Noah’s party? Or has he been following me for a while now and I clocked him subliminally?

  I swallow hard and watch the windows, waiting, waiting, waiting for the black of the tunnel to turn to light. I glance up at the little lights on the wall – we’re arriving at Châtelet. A soothing voice over the loudspeaker reminds us in French, English and then Spanish to take our belongings with us when we leave. I look over to the man, he sits still, staring down at his screen. People are lining up at the door, holding on for stability as we draw to a stop. I glance back at the man: still no movement.

  It’s now or never.

  The doors beep and open. I wait for a moment to see if he moves. He doesn’t. And so I stand up and rush over to the door and out onto the platform the moment before the doors close again.

  I look around me. There’s the woman with the stroller and a guy with grey hair, a couple of other people from other carriages all heading for the exit. And then… shit.

  He’s there too.

  Standing between me and the staircase.

  He must have seen me and used the other door.

  The train starts to move again and the air swirls with dust. Everyone is moving towards the stairs except me and him. He’s just standing still, doing nothing, staring down at his phone, frowning. The little hairs on the back of my neck are standing up on end now.

  I’m going to have to move past him.

  And so I look down at my phone like I’m texting someone and rush to join the crowd.

  The air is filled with chattering, a text message beeping on someone’s phone and the thud of footsteps as we move up the cement stairs, and I don’t know if he’s behind me or not and I don’t want to turn around because then he’ll know I’ve clocked him.

  And what then?

  But my phone is still there in my hands and, fuck this, I have an idea. I move through to the camera, rush to the top of the stairs and, when I get there, I turn around and start snapping photographs.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Four.

  The lens isn’t specifically aimed at him, but he’ll know he’s in the frame. So the question is, what will he do about it? Here, in the midst of witnesses with CCTV watching?

  But he does nothing at all. Just dips his head and moves past me. I swivel to watch him go. He doesn’t look back but heads up the stairs and I’m left leaning against the cool tiles of the station, flicking through photos of a bunch of strangers wandering up the stairs. And as I swipe through the photographs I see him for what he is. Just some guy walking up the stairs in the metro station, wondering why some random girl is taking pictures.

  And I realise: I’m losing it.

  Chapitre vingt-quatre

  Two days later, I’m staring up at a window. The light – right in the middle of the third floor – is glowing a soft amber. I can see movement behind the thin gauzy curtains; he’s home. And so I press the buzzer for his apartment: number twelve.

  Bzzzz.

  A woman with a vape walks past me, she blows out a big cloud of smoke and now the air smells of maple syrup as I look in through the green metal and glass security door: mustard floor tiles, gentle lighting, brass letterboxes and a wide wooden staircase. I press the buzzer again.

  Bzzzzz.

  And I know I shouldn’t be here. It’s selfish and unfair. But I wouldn’t be if there was anybody else who could help me. But there’s not. And so here I am.

  * * *

  I awoke this morning, like any morning, to the sound of church bells – clang-ding-dong – pulled my sleeping mask from my eyes and reached for my phone. There were two messages. One from Camilla: I have an interview on Monday! And one from my mother: a picture of her and Neville on a jetty somewhere, grinning out at the camera, his arm wrapped tightly around her. This means she’s right on schedule – they’ll have another big row in about two weeks. Maybe three. It’ll be over for good then. She sends me pictures like this when she needs to prove how happy she is, like if she can prove it to me, it might become true. And she only does that shit when the wheels are about to fall off. I’ve come to recognise the signs. I’ve also learned there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

  I trudged through to the kitchen, flicked on the kettle and scrolled aimlessly through Instagram as it hissed to life. Quotes. Selfies. And adverts for magnetic eyelashes, teeth whitening treatments, fillers, and dodgy-looking hair extensions – my morning reminder from the powers that be that I’m not quite good enough just as I am.

  And then I did the thing I’m not supposed to do anymore.

  Maybe it was out of habit, or maybe I just secretly hate myself, but something had me typing H-a-r-r-i– into the search bar and then clicking on his profile.

  The room shook just a little as I took in the most recent post.

  A bedroom. A view of the Hollywood Hills. Floor to ceiling windows and light wood floorboards. There was a big bookshelf filled with vinyl records and the brightly coloured spines of novels, a king-sized bed with white linen, a free-standing bathtub with big clawed feet and, in the corner, a piano.

  The hashtag said: #wemoved

  It was the exact room we’d dreamed of when we were together, down to the clawed feet of the bathtub. When we first broke up I had this theory that until I could paint him out of the imaginary future I’d created in my head for the two of us I wouldn’t get over him. And so I got to work. But now I see: he’d erased me first. He’d taken my dreams and given them to her.

  The kettle boiled and sang out, it switched off, and as I made my coffee, I dropped in a swig of whiskey. And then I waited for my blood to slow, tapped on the window to say hello to Mr Oiseau and told myself the day could only get better.

  Judy was on the phone when I arrived at work.

  ‘Morning,’ I said as I passed her, still mellow from my boozy coffee.

  She smiled at me in reply.

  I sat down at my desk and powered on my computer as I looked around. The office was quiet, almost everyone was out except me, Judy and a freelancer wearing earbuds, working at a hot desk. I scanned through my inbox and a sense of calm came over me. Because it was okay. It didn’t matter what Harrison did or did not do. This was me now: Harper Brown, Journalist. I had done it. And I needed to hang onto that. I was no longer that woman he cheated on, the woman who made excuses for him, who sacrificed everything for him. I was different now. I was stronger. And I’m not even sure this version of me wants that place in the Hollywood Hills anymore.

  I pulled up the article I was working on – the Saul Leiter inspired German artist whose exhibition I went to see after that interlude on the metro – and read over what I’d penned thus far.

  It wasn’t half bad.

  It wasn’t going to put me on the landing page but that w
ould come. I had to believe, one day, that would come. It’s just one day felt so far away because I’d been so close.

  My gaze moved to Satan’s (whoops, I mean Stan’s) empty desk then landed on my handbag. Sabine’s hard drive was still in there and I needed to send it back to her mother. It wasn’t fair to keep it. My stomach clenched as I imagined Mme Roux opening the envelope and reading the note, the expression on her face when she called the gallery to follow up on what had happened, and realised I’d lied to her.

  Still, it needed to be done.

  I went over to the stationery cupboard, pulled out a mid-sized envelope and went back to my desk, pulling out the drive – a flash of her mother’s eyes as she pressed it into my hands. I copied the address down on the front of the envelope in my best version of round schoolgirl cursive, so she couldn’t recognise my handwriting, even though there is no way in hell she’d be able to do that anyway. And I was just about to put the drive and the cord inside.

  But something wouldn’t let me.

  Maybe it was Harrison and the clawed feet of his new bath.

  The need to make something of myself. Something that would mean he was wrong to have left me. That I was worth something too.

  Maybe it was the fact that it was Wednesday and Noah had still not been arrested. I’d told the police about the video, told them about the white car, told them about how he ran after Sabine and why. How could they have not found anything at all? What the hell were they doing with their time? Maybe Stan was right and the police were lazy.

  Or, maybe it was guilt. Because every time I glanced across at that hard drive, I’d think of Mme Roux, of the way her hand trembled as she lifted her coffee cup, the way grief clung to the air around her. It wasn’t fair.

  I picked up the drive, glanced at the envelope and bit down on my lower lip. Maybe I could help move things along.

  Because I knew what Noah had told me about the nature of his relationship with Sabine, but it wasn’t like he’d never lied to me before. What if there was something else on that drive to prove they were having an affair? Something else she might have eventually threatened to show Noah’s wife? Something to explain why she took that video of us in the first place.

  Anything to show the police.

  And the office was almost empty. I had the perfect opportunity.

  So I reached for the cord and plugged it into my computer, attached my earbuds and started watching where I’d left off.

  * * *

  Fast forward half an hour and ten aimless Parisian street scenes, to the moment I clicked on a folder. It was named ‘Untitled Folder’ so my expectations were not particularly high going in.

  It contained two video clips. Nothing new there.

  I took a sip of lukewarm coffee, slouched into my seat a little deeper and pressed play on the first, bracing myself for another walk around Saint-Germain-des-Prés or Montmartre.

  But up came a computer with some sort of document on the screen. The camera moved in towards it and Sabine’s hand came into frame, pointing at a line of text. The camera lingered for a few more seconds and then it turned and Sabine’s face filled the screen. This was new. She hadn’t featured in any of her other videos, so why this one? Her mouth opened in a shock-horror gesture, her hand by her cheek like she was mimicking The Scream. There she was – still breathing, still hoping, looking exactly like she did in Noah’s paintings down to her nose ring and the red string around her wrist – but now she was gone. Forever. Something twisted inside me and I closed down the window, quickly clicking on the second video because I didn’t want to feel those feelings.

  This one opened near the front desk of Le Voltage. The camera tracked towards the back room, the door opened and we moved inside. A small room with wooden crates the shape of canvases leaning up against the wall to the right and a sturdy metal set of shelves nestled into the left-hand corner. It was full of printing paper, boxes of pens, files and—

  Of course that was the precise moment glum Wesley decided to return to the office. I felt him stomping across the floor before I saw him. I would have closed the video window if he posed any threat but his eyes were glued to his phone. Still, I kept my glance trained on him as he sat down at his desk and turned on his computer.

  He saw me watching him and his mouth moved with what I am guessing was a begrudging: ‘Hi.’

  So I said, ‘Hey,’ back, and it was right after that that I heard it.

  ‘Je sais ce que tu fais, Agnès.’

  It was coming through the earbuds. It was Sabine’s voice.

  My eyes snapped back to the screen just in time to see Sabine blow a kiss at the lens and then the screen go black.

  Shit.

  I’d missed something.

  I reached for the mouse and rewound the clip.

  We were back in the small room. There were wooden canvas crates leaning up against the right-hand wall, and metal shelves to the left containing files, paper and stationery… but I kept watching this time. One of the canvas crates was open and the painting inside was fully visible. It was of a man at a piano with two women around him, and the whole thing was bathed in candlelight. As we moved in closer towards it, my breath caught in my throat. I stared at the image, tracing the outline, the colours, the form and holding it up to the light of my memory thinking, What the actual fuck?

  Because, it couldn’t be.

  All I could do was stare at that painting and try to steady my breath, watching as the camera swivelled and Sabine looked straight into the lens and said, ‘Je sais ce que tu fais, Agnès,’ before blowing a kiss.

  That means: I know what you’re doing, Agnès.

  What was this?

  Wesley was fucking around with the printer by then, his lips moving every now and then and I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me, so I pulled my earbuds out to check.

  ‘Is your system working? Mine’s super slow,’ he asked.

  ‘Mine’s fine,’ I replied as snippets of memory from a long-gone conversation came trickling back – Austria, ceiling panels, SS, fire. It had been with a gallerist in Vienna, not long before Harrison finally gave me the shove. I’d had a lot of time on my hands by then. That was where I learned about that painting. Or rather, that’s where I learned about the fire and everything it destroyed. I went back to the hotel room and while I waited for Harrison to finish ‘rehearsing’ I googled it, imagining a world where those paintings were still hanging on a wall somewhere.

  And that painting of the man at the piano was one of them.

  But I had to be wrong about this. It made no sense.

  I was still staring at my screen when the elevator doors slid open and the sound of Stan talking on the phone snapped me back into the present moment. I looked back over my shoulder and he was watching me as he headed across to his desk. I turned back to my computer, set my face to nonchalant, opened my email account and sent myself those two videos, ejected the drive and dropped it back into my bag for safekeeping. Then I dropped the empty envelope in the wastepaper bin beneath my desk.

  I put my phone in my bag, stood up and took it to the bathroom.

  As soon as I closed the cubicle door, I pulled up a search engine and typed in everything I remembered about that conversation in Vienna: fire, World War II, paintings, destroyed, ceiling panels, SS.

  Up came a Wikipedia page for Schloss Immendorf.

  I scanned the details.

  8th of May, 1945… last day of WWII in the region… Schloss Immendorf set on fire by retreating German troops… Destroying….

  See also: Lost artworks.

  Click, scroll and then there it was: Schubert at the Piano.

  By Klimt.

  Destroyed in 1945.

  I was right.

  But what did this mean? Was that painting in Le Voltage a fake? Was Agnès dealing in fakes? It made no sense. And what was that document about? Why had Sabine sectioned it off in the same folder as that Klimt?

  I put my phone on mute, pulled up the first v
ideo again and watched it play. As soon as the camera was close enough to the screen to read the text, I paused, took a screenshot and zoomed in.

  Sabine’s finger was pointing to a line that read: Entered into by and between Hintos Holdings LTD (the seller) and LeKOR Corp (the purchaser, and together with the seller, the parties). Right below that was a section called Recitals where the details of the transaction were listed. It was for a bond issued by a company named Genovexa. And it was worth 100 million euro.

  Yes, 100 million euro. That’s 100 million wheels of brie.

  I focused on the name right above Sabine’s finger: Hintos Holdings.

  Why was she pointing at that?

  So I did what anybody would do. I googled it.

  And I found it immediately: Hintos Holdings belongs to a man named Philip Crawford-White. A philanthropist based in the Isle of Man. It was listed on his webpage along with a tonne of charitable activities. Nothing strange there.

  But Sabine’s words echoed in my mind: I know what you’re doing, Agnès.

  And I needed to know: what the fuck had Agnès been doing?

  It felt like the contents of that folder were a cryptic message from the grave.

  I wanted to find out what it all meant. And I tried to do it for myself. But by 7.30 pm, everyone else had gone home and I was no closer to an answer. I needed someone to decode that document for me. Someone who knew about finance. And there was only one person I could think of.

  Which brings us back to me standing here, right now, outside Thomas’s building, pressing his buzzer. And here I will stay, for as long as it takes for him to answer.

  Bzzzz.

  Chapitre vingt-cinq

  I press the buzzer again and wait. Why isn’t he answering? My fingers twitch as I stare at the numeric keypad by the door.

  Because I know the code.

  I saw Thomas punch it in the night we came back here and I gave him the flick. It wasn’t on purpose. I was texting Camilla when it happened. I’d just pressed ‘send’ and looked up at the exact moment his fingers traced the corners of a square. And so I’m being polite right now. I could easily type it in, go upstairs, lie and say a neighbour let me in and knock on his door. And I absolutely will if he doesn’t answer soon.