The figure halts in front of her. ‘Laure.’

The smoke clears. Oh my God.

Her insides are dissolving, her knees weakening. In a second or two, she is going to collapse onto the grey platform.

Petr holds out his hand.

Hers remain at her side. ‘Where is Tomas? Tell me where he is.’

‘I can’t tell you that.’

‘Is he alive?’

‘I can’t tell you that.’

He looks at her with a mix of pity and contempt. In a moment of clarity, she understands that Petr’s feelings for her do not extend to ensuring her happiness. He has his life. He has his family. He has his politics.

She steps back, one foot feeling unsteadily behind the other. ‘My God … you’ve betrayed him.’

He grabs her by her injured arm and she bites back a scream. ‘I betrayed him?’ he says.

CHAPTER 1

Paris, today

HER LIFE WAS NOT QUITE IN ORDER. WOULD POSSIBLY never be – but it wasn’t bad. Accommodations had been made. She had the museum.

At 9 a.m., Laure folded back the shutters in Room 2 and looked out at a Paris revealed by the morning light. A bunch of pigeons strutted over the roof next-door uttering their pigeon racket.

In summer, the sun lightened the colours of the roof tiles. In autumn, they were slicked with rain and, in winter, frost sometimes ran a rim around their edges so that they resembled a Fabergé fantasy.

Little else changed over a year, which was precisely what Laure craved. She wanted to look out at the same vista, open the same shutters and turn to inspect the glass cabinets in which were enshrined the disquiet of those who sought resolution.

Those objects could be disturbing. Or poignant. Or funny. Almost always marked in their effect. It was not uncommon for a visitor to say they had experienced a sense of déjà vu when studying the display cabinets. Some confessed they had a feeling that there was someone else in the room other than the visitors. Some said that the objects appeared to exude a soul, with all its imprecision and mystery. Stopping to polish a small smudge on the glass of the cabinet nearest to the door, she walked into the next room. The day had begun.

Just before the lunch hour, a muffled cry sounded in the building.

Upstairs in the office, Laure, and her assistant, Nic Arnold, looked up from their desks. One of those. A touchstone moment when a dam broke in a visitor, releasing… well… many things.

She gestured to the door. ‘You or me?’ The cry was repeated and Laure made a decision. ‘Both, I think.’