And not from the pills.

Sabine can’t upload it!

Because I’m in France, the land of cheese, wine and next-level privacy laws. If she uploaded a video like this without consent she’d be fined, or go to jail or something…

But what if she sees that as a good thing? As free publicity to get more attention for her work? She didn’t strike me as a people-pleaser.

What a fucking nightmare.

I head back to the sofa and plonk myself down, but as I sit there listening to the rain hit the glass in perfect sync with the throbbing of my head, I’m filled with a dark curiosity.

Who is this woman whose husband I had sex with last night?

Where was she last night? What does she do for a living? How does she wear her hair? What will she do if she sees that footage? Will she leave him? Will she try to fix it?

We never know exactly how we’ll respond to these things until we’re the one in the crosshairs.

My laptop is charging on the Louis Vuitton chest in front of me; I reach for it and fire it up. Pulling up a browser window, I type in Noah X, Paris, wife, husband. I didn’t see anything about a wife last time I googled him, but I wasn’t looking for things like that back then.

I imagine her young, naïve, adoring; maybe with some sort of tattoo to make her feel edgier. Perhaps a belly button ring.

My screen flashes white then up comes a list of links. Most of them are to various art blogs; all of them have the search terms ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ crossed out.

I move through to ‘Images’ and scan down through the thumbnails, looking for something, anything, I might have missed the last time I googled him. But most of the images are of Noah’s old grey geometric work or links to articles I’ve seen before. There’s only one that has him in it, and it’s towards the bottom of the third page. It’s of him and that woman, the one who discovered him. The one I spoke to at his exhibition… wait.

My heart bangs in my chest as I squint down at that little image.

Are they fucking holding hands?

I click on it and wait for it to load. And then there it is, the image in full.

They’re standing at some sort of black-tie event, him in a tuxedo, her in a long crimson dress with a string of diamonds glittering from her neck. It was taken two years ago. And yes, they’re holding hands.

She’s not his agent, she’s his wife.

But wait, there’s more. The caption reads ‘International gallerist Agnès Bisset with husband, Noah X, at the opening of her Paris gallery, Le Voltage’.

The walls move in towards me. This is bad on so many levels.

Because Noah said Sabine used to work at Le Voltage; that’s where they met. So if his wife owns that gallery, it’ll be très easy for Sabine to send her that video of us… they’re probably friends. Is that why she filmed us? Loyalty? But if Sabine and his wife were friends, Noah wouldn’t have been dancing with me like that in front of her. And his wife would have been there too…