Her reflection gazed back at her from the window. Judy approved of it. She was thirty-six, five foot seven, and a hundred and twenty-five carefully monitored pounds. Today she had chosen a particularly chic little outfit: a red dress with an A-line skirt, a cream cardigan and purse, and cream shoes with a red-piping trim. She wore simple earrings, pearl studs, and a small but very fine solitaire ruby set in rose gold on her right hand. Both Massot pieces. Even with an employee discount, Judy had saved three months to afford each of them. But she had never regretted it. That was something else she had learned in France. It is so much better to have a very few costly and classic pieces, in both clothes and jewels, than a crowded wardrobe full of junk. One was both better dressed, and better off, shopping that way.This cardigan had cost her almost three thousand francs, three hundred euros in the new and less romantic money. But she had been wearing it every spring for five years and thought she would be able to use it for another five, at least.

Yes, it was an elegant outfit. Judy had no doubt M. Lazard would approve. She buttered her croissant and ate it with relish. She was going to ask for—no, demand—a promotion today, and she had no doubt at all that she would be successful. It had been four years, and she was due.

She still thought of him often, and never without a wince of pain. It wasn’t just that she missed him so much it hurt. Ever since Pierre had left, disappeared, Judy’s career had been on hold. Naturally. He had helped his young lover rise rapidly through the ranks, making her a director of publicity just before he disappeared—walked out of her life, and everybody’s. Even now, when she thought of him, there was a wince of pain. Pierre. A playboy, a dazzler of a man. He had blinded her when she first knew him—the smooth good looks, the endless money, the status. Everything hungry young Judy had aspired to have and to be. And he had offered to take her along for the ride. How eagerly she had jumped on board.

But then, once he left, and didn’t come back, and all the police investigations and missing persons reports came to nothing, nobody had known what to do with her. In the end they didn’t do anything. And Judy, for want of better choices, had put her head down and worked.

Of course M. Lazard, the new CEO, knew. Everybody in the office knew. But he did not seem to object on principle. And at first, of course, everybody thought that Pierre might someday just turn up. Nobody would dare to sack his girl.

Or one of his girls, as she now knew she had been.