“Then what will it be?” a male executive asked her. Judy would never have given her the satisfaction.

Sophie smiled. “We’re going to throw a party,” she said. She smiled at the old couple. “And Herr and Frau Brandt, I will need your help.”

Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Judy locked the front door of her apartment and stepped out into rue des Cloches. It was another glorious day; two small white clouds were all that marked the serene blue of the sky. It was cool enough at present, but that was only because it was seven in the morning. Later it would get hot, maybe too hot.

Judy always dressed carefully, but today she had taken particular pains. It was not enough to be chic and businesslike. Today she also wanted to be pretty.

Today, she was going to see Hugh Montfort.

It was an odd thing, she thought, as she walked carefully down the street, smiling at the young man on his bike who whistled at her, the baker, opening up, who shot her a wolfish grin. Once she had decided to fight, she had actually relaxed. The tension and stress of the last few months, the proximity of Pierre’s widow, it all melted away. Judy understood, this morning, the terrible cost of being out of control. She had felt trapped, like a bird that flies into a building and can see no way out again.

Perhaps, too, it was more than the arrival of Sophie. That dreadful fact had brought things to a head. But as she looked back this morning, her heels clicking down the cobbles, Judy thought the claustrophobia had lasted much longer than that.

Ever since her lover disappeared, in fact.

She had stayed at Massot, where they paid her salary, and endured the stares and whispers for so long that they had become white noise, something in the background. But all that meant was she had been living under constant, never-ending strain.

It was not enough for the vultures that Judy’s heart was broken.

She had lost Pierre, first, and most dreadfully. But just when the keen pain had settled into a dull ache, then the rumours started—gossip, right in front of her, in pretended ignorance of her love affair. The tales of Pierre’s other women. How there were, while he had been seeing her, at least eight others, and hookers and one night stands on top. Pierre, they told her, was a goat. He would stick it in any girl willing to take it, Françoise had told her, with muted triumph.

That had shattered her, those weeks.

Only gradually was Judy able to talk herself out of the black fog. She would never know the full truth. But Pierre had been tender, he had been sweet; he had helped her career; he had bought her the apartment, given it to her, free and clear.