LITMIR.BIZ

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different context, of course.’

      It was now six thirty, and dusk was hovering like a blue note in the air. Yet another shiny car glided past, this one a Jaguar. At that moment my cell rang in my shoulder bag. The doorman glanced in my direction. I looked at the display. Unknown caller.

      ‘Ally,’ I said.

      ‘You called?’ said a woman with a French accent. ‘You’re looking for Patrick Cornwall?’

      Adrenaline coursed through my body. My knees felt weak.

      ‘Do you know where he is?’ I said. ‘I need to get hold of him.’

      A brief pause on the line. No background noise.

      ‘We can’t talk on the phone,’ said the woman. ‘Where are you right now?’

      ‘On a street called rue Lamennais,’ I said. ‘Outside a restaurant.’ I quickly moved closer so I could read the gold script on the visor of the doorman’s cap.

      ‘Taillevent,’ I said.

      ‘In the eighth?’ said the woman.

      ‘Excuse me?’ I asked, thinking instantly of the baby. The eighth sounded like a month at the end of the pregnancy. ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘The eighth arrondissement,’ she said. ‘In half an hour. How will I recognize you?’

      ‘I’m wearing a red jacket,’ I said, and then she clicked off. I lowered my hand holding the cell and smiled at the doorman.

      He smiled back.

      ‘Good news?’ he asked.

      ‘I think so,’ I said, and put my phone away in my bag, going over the conversation in my mind. Thinking about the tone of the woman’s voice. Formal but not hostile. I strained to remember the fruitless phone calls I’d made earlier in the afternoon, but they all merged into one. It didn’t matter. I’d soon find out.

      I smiled at the doorman again.

      ‘Is it possible to get a table for dinner?’ I asked.

      The doorman surveyed my clothes: jeans and the red anorak I’d found in the Salvation Army shop on 8th Avenue.

      ‘I’m sorry but we’re fully booked this evening.’

      He moved away to open the door of the next car that had pulled in, and I took the opportunity to slip into the restaurant behind him.

      Thick carpets muffled all sound inside. The entire foyer was done in beige and brown. It looked like the decor hadn’t undergone any changes in the past fifty years. A staircase with an elaborate, gilded wrought-iron banister led up to the next floor. The maître d’ blocked my way.

      ‘Excuse me, I don’t speak French,’ I said, ‘but I’d like to ask you about a customer. I think he was here a little over a week ago, and—’

      ‘We do not give out information about our customers,’ said the man. ‘They rely on our discretion.’

      ‘Of course. I understand that,’ I said, smiling at him as I swiftly searched for a suitable lie, a role to play. I knew that Patrick would never go to a place like this merely to have dinner. He must have been meeting someone here, someone he was going to interview.

      ‘This is so embarrassing,’ I said, making my voice sultry and feminine. ‘I represent a big American company in Paris, and one of our business partners has booked a table here, and I’ve had so much going on, my mother died recently, and now I’m afraid that I’ve mixed up the days and the weeks.’

      The maître d’ frowned and glanced around nervously. Two men in grey suits stood near the cloakroom, leaning close as they talked. A petite, energetic woman with a pageboy hairstyle briskly took their overcoats and hung them up.

      ‘So if you wouldn’t mind just checking to see which day he booked a table …’ I put my hand on the maître d’s arm. ‘I’ll be fired, you see, if I lose this contract.’

      He wavered, casting a glance at a lectern made of polished hardwood on which a book lay open. The reservations calendar.

      ‘What did you say your name was?’ The maître d’ again glanced off to the side and then hesitantly went over to the lectern.

      ‘Cornwall,’ I said. ‘It’s booked under the name of Cornwall. Patrick Cornwall. He’s my business partner.’

      ‘No, I’m afraid not. I don’t see …’ The man ran his index finger over past lunches and dinners.

      ‘Oh, good Lord,’ I said. ‘I guess it couldn’t have been last week.’ I clapped my hand over my mouth. ‘In that case, I really need to come up with a good excuse and contact him …’

      The maître d’ kept paging through the book, and then his finger stopped abruptly.

      ‘A Mr Cornwall made a lunch reservation on the previous Thursday, September 11, but it was for only one person.’ He glanced up hastily and then closed the book.

      What the hell was Patrick doing all alone in a luxury restaurant? I thought. Squandering our money? My hand moved involuntarily to my stomach.

      ‘One moment please,’ said the maître d’, and he went into the next room. I took a few steps in that direction. He stopped to speak to an older man wearing a red jacket.

      ‘This lady is asking about Monsieur Cornwall. Patrick Cornwall,’ he said in a low voice. ‘But then I noticed …’ The maître d’ glanced over at me. I fixed my gaze on the wall.

      ‘Cornwall? You mean that journalist? The American?’

      The older man lowered his voice. ‘He is no longer welcome here.’

      ‘I know. But what do I tell the lady?’

      And then they both headed towards me, with the older man in the lead.

      In the few seconds before they reached me, I thought to myself that it couldn’t be possible. The men had spoken in French. I shouldn’t have been able to understand them, but the language from my childhood had resurfaced like a repressed memory. ‘I’m afraid we’re closed now, madame,’ said the older man in English.

      ‘What happened when Patrick Cornwall was here?’ I asked.

      ‘Under no circumstances do we give out any information about our customers.’

      The maître d’ put his hand on my back and discreetly ushered me to the door.

      ‘It’s best if you leave now.’

      And the doorman closed the door behind me without saying a word. The street was almost completely dark.

      What on earth could Patrick have done to be refused admittance to such a place? Did he talk too loud?

      I moved a short distance away from the restaurant, pulled up the hood of my jacket, and leaned against the stone wall.

      Well, I’ll soon find out something, I thought. If only she shows up. That woman on the phone.

      I glanced at my watch. Ten more minutes.

      While I waited, I tried to conjure up some words in French. Shoe, foot, stone, street. I couldn’t do it, even though the language clearly existed somewhere in my subconscious. Those years spent in a French village were not anything I wanted to remember. I was six when we arrived there. My mother became a different person. I had faint memories of a house that echoed with silence. A man who demanded I call him Monsieur. Doors that were locked at night. Loneliness. And fear when I woke up at night and didn’t know where my mother was.

      The car pulled over before I saw it. If I hadn’t been so lost in my own thoughts I might have noticed there was something wrong, that it wasn’t a Bentley or a Rolls, but a worn-out Peugeot with rust on the wheel rims. Suddenly a man was standing in front of me. He wore a hoodie and that’s all I saw. Adrenaline shot through my

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