‘When do you think it will be?’ she asks as we stand.

I look at her. My mind taking a split second to comprehend what she’s asking.

‘The showing?’ she prompts.

‘Oh, I need to look at the schedule and go through the work,’ I say, ‘but I’d like to get it in for late next month.’

She smiles and nods, and then she walks me to her perfectly suburban door, and lets me out onto her perfectly suburban street, and I leave. But as I watch her face disappear behind the closing door, I know deep within my marrow that some scars never heal. And so, as I head down towards the metro station, I focus on anything I can to shake the memory of Mme Roux loose.

My phone pings from my bag.

It’s an email ping.

I reach for it and check the time: 9.38. Shit. My article is due in just under an hour and a half. And so I’m hurrying down the road as I move through to my inbox.

And there it is, right at the top.

Sender: Stan Dixon.

Subject: Better luck next time, princess.

My pulse slams against my wrists as I click on the attached link.

It takes me through to an article in a rival publication. The title translates as ‘The Night Sabine Roux Went Missing: A first person account’.

A mix of shock and disappointment pulses through me as I read all about how Sabine and Noah X left arguing. How could this have happened? Nobody else saw them leave, did they? A flash of that empty hallway…

It’s around two hundred words in that my suspicion first ignites. But by the end, by the time I’ve read ‘creative differences’, we have a small, semi-contained fire on our hands. Yes, these eight hundred words I am reading are my words, simply reinterpreted, re-penned, embellished. But how?

Images flicker on the cinema screen of my mind: the blue-white glow of my laptop screen late last night as I emailed myself my work in progress; the office; my work computer; and then: ParisObserver123.

The generic password.

Someone broke into my email.

Someone leaked my first-person account.

And I think we all know who that someone is.

I hate him. I hate him. I hate him.

Ping.

Another email flies into my inbox.

This one is from Hyacinth. I can hear her voice in my head as I read it.

Harper. I need you back in the office. Now.

Chapitre Vingt

Chapitre vingt

By the time I get up the ninety-six stairs that lead to my front door I feel as though I’m one hundred and seven, everything hurts and I want to cry.

The feeling scares me because I’m not what one might call ‘a crier’.