“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate it.”

He scribbled a number on the back of the card and handed it to me. “Give me a call.”

46

We met up the day after the funeral in a large department store coffee shop. Xavier seemed reserved. Then we got lost in the kitchen section coming out, and the mood between us changed. He bought a red-and-white picnic basket on the spur of the moment. Leaving the till, he stared at the purchase as if it had magically appeared in his hand. “Your fault, this,” he said.

“My fault?” I said.

“So now, tomorrow, we have a picnic,” he said.

It was still very much winter, but the next day I sat on a tartan blanket in the middle of Hyde Park and listened to him until an icy cloudburst soaked us. To make up, the date after that, only four hours later, was in a swanky Knightsbridge restaurant. He talked and talked and wanted to talk more. Despite my ability to speak his language, English suited us both, played to our fantasies perhaps. After the meal, we went to a hotel bar. Then we went to his hotel bar. When it closed, we went up to his suite. And so our affair began.

From the start, all the time that we spent together was punctuated by conversations about Sabine. He needed to talk about her, and I allowed him to think I did too. In truth, his accounts of her bore almost no relation to the person I had known. His stories meandered contradictorily; some recollections seemed fantastical, others surprisingly dour. Once, he put me on the phone to the elderly Irish au pair who had looked after them as children; her descriptions of Sabine as “timid, sensitive, softhearted, and prone to fits of crying” were no more illuminating.

Everybody had their own version of Sabine. With this in mind, I let Xavier’s stories wash over me. They were compensated for by the instances when glimpses of Sabine slipped through. His presence could be almost as visceral as hers, as compelling. His gestures had her unpredictable quickness. When he was tired, his brown-black eyes developed a slight squint. I kept him up late deliberately; I plied him with espresso martinis strong on caffeine. And then there was his voice; from the beginning I thought I recognized beneath the boyish boldness something of her timbre. Soon I discovered that if I spoke softly to him, he spoke softly back. Her low, soft tones emerged behind his; soft, low words pulsed back and forth between us.

At night in bed his skin was hot, just as hers had been. Like her, he tossed around and threw the duvet off. Like her, when he slept he seemed sufficient unto himself: solemn, untouchable. Unlike her, when he awoke he drew me to him. He held me so tightly I could scarcely breathe, though I stayed in his embrace for as long as he would allow.