D’Arcy stopped walking and held on to the banister. There was something linking D’Arcy to Jess, a link that began in that photograph of D’Arcy’s mother and continued on to Dan Hallworth. She knew it as surely as she knew that Jessica had somehow bewitched her—with discussions about being photographed, with permission to film documentaries—into not asking about Victorine. And she also knew that her mother had once had a black-and-white photograph on her dresser of a woman wearing a khaki uniform, arms heaped with flowers, the city of Paris just discernible in the background. The photograph had mysteriously vanished one day after D’Arcy had asked her mother about it but D’Arcy now knew that the woman sitting atop Victorine’s dresser had been Jessica May.

D’Arcy felt as if she were being lured little by little into a forest, as if a trail had been laid for her the moment she stepped foot into the chateau and she could do nothing but continue inexorably on into the gloaming. It was impossible for her to see the image of Dan Hallworth and Victorine Hallworth embracing as depicting anything other than the closeness of a father and daughter. And the photograph on Jess’s dresser showed that same Dan Hallworth with Jessica May, both clearly in love. Were they Victorine’s parents? And why would Victorine have kept it a secret, why would she have become so estranged from her own parents?

D’Arcy shivered and opened her eyes. She would work some more, and she would think. And then she would make a decision, one way or another, about what, if anything, she should ask her mother.

Seventeen

Working and thinking consisted of not doing any actual work or any thinking at all. Instead, she studied the Children series once more until Josh walked outside and caught her. It was the first time she’d seen him since her meeting with Jess and she didn’t know what to say. So she prevaricated. “I suppose I should apologize for slacking off,” she said, “but I could honestly sit and look at these all day and continue to find something new. Aren’t you ever tempted to do that?”

He came to stand beside her, eyes resting on the photographs. “I guess I’ve made the mistake of taking this all for granted,” he said. “Of getting the business done because the emails and the phone calls always seem to be the most urgent. I can’t honestly remember the last time I stopped to look at any of the pictures for more than a minute.”

“You know that’s sacrilege and therefore punishable by having to spend the whole of tomorrow in a T-shirt and shorts instead of a business shirt and trousers,” she teased, trying to lighten the load she felt pressing on her heart from her conversation with Jess. “Or do you not own anything else?”

“I’m pretty sure that sawing wood while wearing a dress like yours isn’t exactly normal,” he said, his tone a statement rather than a jest. “So I’m not sure that my wardrobe choices should be the only ones coming under scrutiny.”