Lulu was talking about Camby again. “It’s strange. I can’t trust him as far as I can throw him, but he is the whole world to me. You know that? I don’t know what I’d do without him.”

“Sometimes I envy you.” Genevieve fixed her gaze on the bar—on a young barman with slicked-back hair shaking cocktails, pouring out pink liquid into a row of glasses. “Your feelings for him run so deep. I’ve never felt that way about a man. At least…”

The barman dropped cherries into all of the glasses but one. He placed them on a round tray for the waitress, then pushed the remaining glass across the bar to a woman perched up on a high stool with her back to the girls. The woman had fair hair. She was wearing a simple blue dress, unadorned.

“Well…not until now, that is.”

“Now? Chérie?” Lulu clapped her hands in excitement. “I knew it! Who is it? Guy Monteray? I knew you slept with him!”

“Lulu, shush!” Genevieve glanced about. “I did not sleep with Monteray. I have no interest in that dreadful man.”

“Then who?” Lulu looked a touch put out. “Oh, I know who it is.”

The woman on the stool was talking to the barman. He was listening to her but was trying to look as though he wasn’t.

“It’s that Zachari, isn’t it?” said Lulu.

Genevieve swallowed. “It started out as an itch. I scratched it to make it go away. But the more I scratched, the itchier it became. Now I want to rip my skin to shreds and I know it’ll only make it worse.”

“So you’ve slept with him, then?”

“Just once. The night of my party. The night I heard about my mother. It was amazing. And now I don’t know what to do.”

A triumphant smile. “Well, isn’t it obvious? You must sleep with him again. Just as soon as it can be arranged.”

“No, Lulu. I absolutely must not. I can’t let it go any further. It’s practically turned me into a wreck as it is. And what about Robert? What about my marriage?”

“Zachari has touched you.” She put a hand on Genevieve’s. “He’s touched you in a way that Robert never has—and never will.”

“That’s just what I’m afraid of.”

The woman with the fair hair reached into her handbag, presumably for some money to pay her bill. But the barman, after checking to see if anyone was watching, indicated with a curt shake of the head that she should put her money away. The woman made to touch his shoulder, but he pretended not to notice. Busied himself with polishing a glass.

“Do you love him?” Lulu’s face was unusually serious.

“I don’t know…Maybe.” Genevieve had one eye on the fair-haired woman, who was getting down from her stool.