Paris: The Novel

myself. Sometimes, if I have too many things to accomplish, it helps me work through the night. That sort of thing.” He smiled. “So, mademoiselle, I have answered all your questions. May I ask now if you’d be interested in seeing where I live?”
    “I should be delighted, monsieur.” She meant it, and he could see that she did.
    As they left the restaurant, she linked her arm in his. It was only a short walk to his place near the Luxembourg Gardens. On entering, they took the small elevator up to the third floor and entered his apartment. It seemed to be empty.
    “I have only two servants that live in,” he explained. “And they are up in the attic quarters for the evening. So we have the place to ourselves. Would you like a drink? I’m having a little whisky.”
    “The same. Thank you.”
    The apartment was impressive. She’d never seen so many paintings in a house in her life. She saw Manet, Monet, van Gogh …
    “Turn on any lights you want,” he said, as he handed her a tumbler of whisky. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
    She sipped her whisky and looked around. The salon was large. There was a grand piano in one corner with some framed photographs on it. She went across to look at them, turning on a table lamp to see them better.
    They were not photographs designed to impress the visitor, but family photographs by the look of them. A number of them featured a tall, elegant woman. One was a wedding group. She saw her companion at once. He was a young man then, but quite unmistakable. She looked at the bride and groom.
    And froze.
    The groom was James Fox. The London lawyer. There was no mistaking him. Not a shadow of a doubt. She stood there staring at it.
    Behind her, she heard him come back into the room. He came and stood beside her.
    “That’s you, isn’t it?” She pointed to him in the group, trying to sound casual. “Family wedding?”
    “Yes. That’s my sister in the middle, the bride. And that’s her husband. An Englishman as it happens. But of Huguenot origins. They were called Renard, and anglicized it to Fox.”
    “Interesting. The wedding looks French.”
    “It was. At Fontainebleau. Her husband died, sadly. A very nice man. The flu, you know, after the war.” He pointed to the elegant woman in another picture. “My aunt Éloïse. She had this apartment before I did. A remarkable woman.”
    “She looks it,” said Louise, trying to sound interested.
    Her mind was working fast. Fox. His Paris law office. The adoption. Blanchard. She turned back to the wedding group.
    “So these would be your parents?”
    “Correct. And that’s my brother. He was the respectable one—in those days. I was the artist.”
    “In your twenties.”
    “Yes.”
    “Very handsome.” She considered a moment, and chose her words. “It looks the perfect bourgeois wedding. If you don’t mind my saying so.”
    He chuckled.
    “That describes the Blanchard family, all right.”
    “Would you excuse me a moment?”
    He indicated a passage. “Down there on the right.”
    It took her a minute or two to collect herself. James Fox had married a member of the Blanchard family. It was too great a coincidence. This must be the same Blanchard family who knew who her father was. Probably one of themselves. And if her father was a Blanchard, then the obvious candidate was just a few feet away from her.
    And then, suddenly, she wanted to cry. So it had come to this: she’d almost found her father after all. But either it was this man, who now knew, or someone else whom he would tell, that she was a whore, and that Luc the cocaine dealer was her pimp. This was her life. What sort of welcome was that likely to earn her?
    She sat very still. She did not allow herself to weep. But she saw her situation with icy clarity. If she didn’t do something, she was about to sleep with a man who was probably her father.
    She had to get out of there. Fast.

    It was the first conflict Claire had experienced with her mother. But the conflict was silent, unspoken, never acknowledged. How could it be?
    In the first minute, as she had walked down the lawn away from Frank and her mother, she had experienced only cold shock. By the time she’d entered the house, she was shaking. But as she wandered in the street, another sensation gradually began to take over.
    Anger. Rage. How dare her mother try to steal her young man? She wasn’t going to let her do it. She was young. She had good looks. She’d show her mother. She’d