Every afternoon, she would spend time with Jess. And every night, D’Arcy would come to her room and she would edit the truth into being. What she would do with the film once it was finished she had no idea; it was preposterous to imagine that anyone might want to watch something made by her, a mere trifler. But she would make it anyway. Even if it only sat on her computer for eternity, unwatched by anyone except D’Arcy, it was worth doing.

Her phone rang then. Victorine. D’Arcy declined the call.

Twenty-four

Two days passed. Days in which D’Arcy continued to ignore Victorine’s calls. Days in which she picked up her phone and had pretend conversations whenever Josh was nearby, or drilled or sawed at top volume to discourage conversation. Days in which she spoke to Jess most afternoons, filming her, then working every night on the documentary in the sanctuary of her room. Sometimes she was confident that her work was good, but mostly she felt certain she was wasting her time on a film that would show only her lack of expertise. She made herself so tired that her eyes burned but she couldn’t sleep.

She pretended to Jess and to herself that she was simply waiting until Jess had finished telling her story about Dan Hallworth and Victorine’s childhood and the war before she called Victorine back. It was such a nice deception, compared to the arid truth, that she sometimes almost forgot the real reason she was sad and would then be jolted into hideous consciousness by an anecdote Jess might share about Victorine.

One evening, when she realized she was far too intimately acquainted with every small crack and crevice on the ceiling of her room from the long hours of staring up at it, she threw on the black dress she’d worn at the picnic and went downstairs to make herself some chamomile tea. Earlier, she’d seen that Célie had dried and placed some fresh buds in a tin in the library, a room adjacent to the salon de grisailles, but cozier, its walls covered in old fabric and leather-bound books. In the library she would be safe; there, she wouldn’t be able to see the boiserie paintings of the salon, wouldn’t feel compelled to try to discover whether the child was running toward or running from the ancient and gnarled trees of the chateau.

She sank onto the sofa, grateful for the way that, here, everything you wanted appeared just as you needed it. Tonight was no exception; a teapot of hot water sat next to the chamomile leaves and two china cups. She sipped, then closed her eyes.

“Mind if I join you?”

Her eyes flew open. Josh. She shrugged. “Sure.”

He poured himself a tea and sat next to her, doing just as she had done, sipping and closing his eyes and resting his head back.

“We look like poster children for noughties’ over-scheduled lives,” she said ruefully.

His eyes flicked open and he smiled. “Except I think your exhaustion might be to do with something more than busyness. I’m happy to listen if you decide it’s better not to bottle it up.”