‘To her or him?’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said.

She finished the call. Placing her phone down on the table, her eye was caught by the orange roses and the coils of expensive ribbon.

My God. A memory struggled to the surface.

She was then tearing at the cellophane surrounding the roses to find the gift card.

May cut off her next question. ‘Are you all right?’

Laure was rigid with shock. May reached over and prised the card gently from her. ‘Is it bad news? Can I help? Do you need something?’ She cast her eye around the room. ‘Water?’

‘No.’

‘Is it anything to do with that photo that came? Nic said it had an effect on you.’

‘No.’

Not quite true.

‘Is it to do with the museum?’

Laure clasped both hands together. In her inner ear, voices from another world competed. Some of them ghosts? Despairing. Defiant. Funny. Scabrous.

But not the one she had longed over the years to hear.

‘Laure?’ May sounded anxious. ‘Should I get someone?’

Laure leant over and placed the card on the table. ‘Do you know what it says?’ May shook her head and Laure translated from the French. “‘I have paid my dues.’”

‘Sounds Old Testament,’ said May.

She made herself draw in long, slow breaths to steady her stomach. May sat down beside her and put her arms around her shoulders. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘You can lean on me.’

And Laure did so, finding a surprising comfort in May’s thin, whippy arm.

‘What’s happened?’ asked May. ‘Something has.’

Laure struggled to answer. ‘Nothing.’

‘For God’s sake, it isn’t nothing. It can’t be. You’re the colour of the sheets in my grotty hotel and you’re about to throw up. It’s something.’

‘I can’t tell you,’ said Laure.

‘Yes, you can,’ said May. She placed her hands on Laure’s shoulders. ‘You can.’

Laure looked into the blue-grey eyes and the complications that lay behind them. ‘I can’t trust you.’

May sent her a crooked grin. ‘You can for a couple of hours.’

*

It was very late in the evening when May let herself out of the Laure’s apartment.

Laure remained motionless in her chair. Drained. Purged?

She had told her story to the least likely person she could ever have imagined telling it to.

At the end May commented: ‘It’s not surprising you feel like you feel.’

How would you know? Laure almost asked but something in May’s expression stopped up the words.

May read Laure’s thoughts. ‘Because I’m damaged, too.’

She had insisted on unearthing the half-bottle of brandy stowed in the cupboard and pouring out a healthy dollop for each of them.