“What’s happened to your face?” Chantai turned to look at Gini. “You walk into a door? Someone’s fist?” She gave an insolent smile and jerked a thumb at Rowland. “His?”

“What’s happened to your face, Chantal,” Gini replied, and felt Rowland tense.

Chantal gave Gini a considering look. “Go fuck yourself.” She drew on the cigarette. “That’s my business, all right?” She pursed her lips, then turned back to Rowland. She gave him a long, blatantly sexual stare. “Why don’t you tell her to fuck off,” she said to him. “And that tight-assed bitch at the door. If you and me were alone, who knows—I might open up then…” She passed her tongue across her lips as she said this, and leaned forward, so the threadbare sweater she was wearing was drawn tight across the outline of her small breasts.

She had perhaps hoped to embarrass Rowland, certainly to disconcert him. When her moves produced no effect whatsoever, she seemed disconcerted herself. She glanced away, looked down, seemed almost to shrink back into herself. She hunched her shoulders and folded her arms across her chest. She suddenly looked much less sure of herself, even vulnerable. That body language was telling: watching it—the attempt at sexual appeal, the insecurity when it was rejected—Gini saw a possible approach. She leaned forward.

“I know how you got that scar anyway,” she said. “A man named Star did that to you with a razor, in England last year. I feel I know Star quite well by now. He’s unstable. He has a cocaine habit, and he has mood swings—rapid ones. When that happens, he’s capable of using a razor on a woman, and disfiguring her—or worse. Why is that, Chantal? Does he hate women? Does he have some sexual problem with women, perhaps?” Chantai had tensed. She bent her head and began to pick at her nails. Gini glanced at Rowland, who nodded.

“You know what I think he told you, Chantal?” Gini kept her eyes on the girl’s bent head. “I think he told you that you had—the soothing gift. That’s what he says to women, isn’t it? He told Anneke that. I expect it’s what he’s telling Mina Landis right now. And I’m sure she’ll believe him. After all, she’s only fifteen years old. She’s a great deal more gullible than you are because, unlike you, she’s led a very sheltered life. Yet even you believed him, didn’t you, Chantal? You went right on believing you could control him—until the day he cut your face.”

Chantal’s head jerked up. She gave Gini a venomous look. “Look—I don’t know him, you stupid bitch. How many fucking times do I have to say it?”

“Oh, you know him, Chantal.” Gini sighed. “And you know how he lies too. He didn’t tell you the truth about the other girls, did he? Did you know he had Mina here with him in Paris? Because he does, they were seen together yesterday. Has he admitted that to you? Or does he spin you some different line—that Mina’s like Anneke, like all the other little girls—disposable? Whereas you—you are the constant in his life? Is that what he told you, Chantal?”