I can hear Claudia screeching with laughter from the other side of the room. What if he won’t talk to me? What then? If I can’t write this story I’m going to need to go to the police. But every time I consider that my brain starts up a PowerPoint presentation of all the photographs I found of a young Agnès Bisset, her arms interlinked with the influential and well connected. She has friends in high places. People who can press mute on the truth. And even if the police decided I was onto something and followed it up, there would be a long lead time between an investigation and trial. Lots of time to destroy evidence. And what am I, if not evidence?

I have to get him to answer.

I scan my memory banks… tracker… spyware… common ground.

And so I scroll through to Sabine’s Vimeo page and press play on that video of Agnès Bisset and the fake PI. I wait until his face is exposed, press pause and take a screenshot. And then I forward it to Noah with the text message: Your wife is having me followed by this man.

Seen.

Silence.

Answer.

And then typing bubbles.

They start. They stop. They start again.

And then: Fuck. I knew she’d do something like this.

Chapitre Vingt-neuf

Chapitre vingt-neuf

Two hours later the sky is the colour of denim and the leaves set against it are mustard and rust red. The bannister is cool beneath my hand as I head down the stairs, my eyes on the pale wood door of number twenty-three. An echo of the last time I was here moves through me – the vibration of drum and bass pushing through the walls, goosebumps on my arms, the piña coladas running through my veins – as I make my way down the stairs. And then I’m there, standing right where I stood when Noah found me last time and said, ‘Are you just going to stand there all night?’ As if by reflex, I glance up to the rooftop.

There’s a rustle behind me and I swivel to look. I thought I made sure I wasn’t followed. I snuck out the back of work and got an Uber from a parallel street to be safe.

But it’s nothing.

There’s nobody there aside from an elderly woman watching me from her open window, pretending to water plants.

I reach for my phone and text Noah: I’m here.

And then my glance is drawn, as if magnetised, to that bottom segment of Rue Chappe. I remember standing there, looking for Khalid, seeing that white car speed away instead. A shiver runs through me: double A, that was the last part of the number plate.

Was it Agnès’s guy in that car?

Bzzzz.