“Perhaps you’d better sleep with him again just to be sure.”

“Oh, Lulu!”

“Chérie, you can’t walk away from something so good. It’s just not natural.”

“But I have to.”

Lulu rolled her eyes.

“This is precisely why I didn’t tell you. And now I’ve told you, you have to help me.”

“Help you do what?”

The woman was heading out of the bar.

“Help me forget about him. It’s not so easy when I dream about him practically every night. And then I ran into him at that fashion show and I couldn’t even bring myself to speak to him. I can’t shop on the Rue de la Paix without having to walk right past his door. I can’t come here for a drink without that woman turning up.”

“What woman?”

“Her.” Genevieve pointed at the fair-haired woman, who was almost at the door now. “That’s Olga, his assistant.”

“That woman?”

“The barman was giving her free drinks. I wonder what she’s up to.”

“Let’s find out.” Lulu seized Genevieve’s hand. “Come on, chérie!”

Olga walked fast across the Place Vendôme, past the column (which, this evening, put Genevieve in mind of pictures she’d seen of totem poles) and out the south side on to the Rue de Castiglione. The sun had just set. The sky was an odd, heavy mauve, and the great piazza was shrouded in shadows.

“Hurry.” Lulu hitched up her dress and half-walked, half-ran after Olga. “We’re losing her.”

“Lulu!” Genevieve could barely manage to walk from car to bar in these heels. And yet here she was, wobbling along behind Lulu in her royal blue D’Orsays. She’d be lucky if she didn’t twist both her ankles.

“Quick!” shouted Lulu.

“Lulu, stop!”

She did stop, but only for a moment. “Don’t you want to know where she’s going?”

“Well—”

“Vivi, I’m doing this with or without you.” And she was off again.

The rain came suddenly, a great swirling torrent, as they headed down the Rue de Rivoli. Waiters ushered grumbling customers in from the terraces. Squeals multiplied and echoed from every direction. The street flashed and flickered with lightning, and thunder rolled overhead. Dogs howled and yapped. People scurried, covering their heads with their newspapers, their bags, their hands. Diving into doorways and under awnings.

“Where did she go?” In a matter of seconds, Genevieve was soaked to the skin.

Lulu was turning this way and that, the dress clinging to her body. “She’s vanished. We’ve lost her.”

Robert was dining with Harry Mortimer at Michaud’s, on the corner of the Rue Jacob and the Rue des Saints-Pères.