With just the edge of a design visible.

I reach for it, holding it out in front of me, so I can see the painting on the back clearly.

A tiger.

The walls move in towards me as I stare at the brushstrokes. Because I’ve seen this jacket before. This pattern.

And the world stands still, all clocks ticking half time, as I reach back into my bag for Sabine’s hard drive and move back to Thomas’s computer.

I power it on. I enter his new password, the one I just set.

My breath is peculiarly slow and steady, but my hand is shaking as I use the mouse to navigate through the files on the hard drive, looking for the one I want. The video on the bridge.

When I find it, I fast forward to around three quarters of the way through and then press pause. I’m at the part where two other couples are standing by the railing. To the left is the Instagram husband. And to the right stands the other couple looking out at the apricot sky. The man has just put his jacket around the woman’s shoulders.

And I’m staring at a tiger.

It’s the very same jacket as the one on the back of Thomas’s door.

Is that Thomas?

I take in his height, his hair, his shoulders. Maybe. It could be. But this guy has a beard.

But why would Thomas be in Sabine’s video?

My pulse is thudding as I press play again.

He turns his face to look at the blonde girl with him.

It’s Thomas. Beard or no beard, it’s definitely Thomas.

And I’m not sure what I’m looking at or why it’s there or what it really means, but something is very, very wrong.

It’s only as the blonde girl beside him turns around that I know what it is. She’s laughing, her mouth wide as she turns towards the camera. I only see her face for a split second.

But my breath catches and the world starts spinning a little faster.

Because I know that face.

The whole of Paris knows that face.

Matilde Beaumont.

Chapitre Trente-six

Chapitre trente-six

My pulse thumps in my throat as Matilde watches me from the screen.

Matilde, Sabine’s video, Agnès Bisset, Mr Tall and Creepy, Thomas, my neighbour. How is all of this connected?

I can hear the sound of traffic floating in from the street as conflicting thoughts compete for the microphone: Why didn’t Thomas mention he knew Matilde? I gave him the perfect opening when I came here that night, I spoke about knowing a girl who’d been murdered…

But Thomas is a good guy. He ran outside to confront the guy who’d been following me. He tried to protect me… didn’t he? I look back to the window, to the gauzy curtain I watched him through.