And as I say it, the world warps around me. Because I know why Thomas helped me with my story, with finding out information about that bond. It was never about me or the story. It was about the picture I showed him. Sabine’s hand was in frame. That red string was right there. No wonder he was so keen to know where I got it.

He knew Sabine had videoed him. He was worried that if that hand was hers and I’d seen that video, I’d see the others too; that I’d see the one of him and Matilde on the bridge.

‘So nothing of yours?’ Luneau asks, bringing me back into the moment.

I shake my head and think of my earrings. How easily they could have ended up in that forensic photograph too.

It’s all a blur after that. Luneau says something about Agnès Bisset but I’m not really listening anymore.

And then I stand up and he leads me to the door, walks me back down those corridors, and rides with me in the elevator until it’s time to shake hands and go outside.

It’s as I stand there, waiting for my Uber, that the notification pops up on my screen: Killer dead. Abducted woman escapes.

And that’s when I know it’s time to go home.

Because, as it turns out, Paris is not always a good fucking idea.

Chapitre Quarante-deux

Chapitre quarante-deux

I’m at Gare du Nord at 10.55 am the next morning, my suitcase beside me as I sip coffee and scan the crowd. I tell myself I’m looking for Mr Tall and Creepy, that it’s a matter of safety, and in part that’s true. But the full truth is never that simple. So here’s the other part, the part I’d never admit out loud, not even to myself: I can’t help but search for Noah’s face in the crowd too.

Of course, it’s entirely illogical. Yes, he has been released, but he doesn’t know I’m leaving, so why the hell would he be here? And I could call him. Tell him. Make some big rom-com out of the whole thing. But what then? What, we’d run off into the sunset, get the dum-dum-da-dum-dum and the place in the suburbs and live happily ever after? If only it were that simple. If only that would make me happy, make him happy. But even if we started with the best of intentions, a team of two that would defy convention, stay wild and all that, suburbia and low-level resentment is where we’d end up. That’s where it always ends up eventually.

So instead I finish my coffee, take my suitcase and head upstairs to the Eurostar, London and Camilla.