Free 0007464355 by Sam Baker Page B

damage that had been inflicted on a seventeenth-century building of historic significance than in the no longer famous English journalist who was thought to have rented the apartment but been away at the time.
    Some words, though, it would have been impossible not to make out:
    Témoin potentiel
    Incendie
    Cadavre.

9
    Cadavre .
    Somehow it sounded so much worse in French. Not that it sounded great in English.
    Closing her eyes against the nausea pressing in, Helen leaned back against the mangy sofa and felt years of dust cling to her sweater. The jam was still there, etched on the inside of her eyelids. The lights could not be far behind. She tried to think but her brain turned to white noise whenever she tried to remember the night itself. It wasn’t the migraine, although that wasn’t helping. Something about the fire had played havoc with her short-term memory. Nothing but an orange-hued smog and the outline of a body. The hours immediately before and after that? Nothing.
    Despite what the news reports said, what Fran said the police had told her mother, Art had been there, in the flat that night, Helen was sure of it. As sure of his presence in the flat that night as she was of her own. The question was, what the hell had she been doing there? And come to that, what the hell had he?
    Through the migraine squatting in her brain, Helen clutched at the memory of the fire … tried to hold it … dropped it. Her mind kept drifting. Slipping back in time, not just weeks but years. Why, when she could remember heads ripped off tulips as a small child and that time with Tom as clearly as if it was yesterday, couldn’t she remember a single hideous night less than a fortnight ago?
    She stopped, tried a different approach, forcing herself to search for a similar memory of her husband. Something more distant. Something … fonder.
    The man she’d studiously not thought about until she’d called her sister. Who not having to think about was a luxury she’d almost forgotten how to have. I remember the first time I saw him. That was what you were meant to say, wasn’t it? Such a significant moment in your life was meant to have a momentous beginning. A moment, after which there was no going back. If there was that moment in her relationship with Art, she didn’t remember it.
    She didn’t remember him.
    Her mind was wandering now, but there was no point trying to rein it in. She’d been here often enough to know resistance was futile.
    Like other clichés about firsts; first impressions counting, not judging a book by its cover … Well, they did count, didn’t they? People did judge, didn’t they? But there really weren’t any first impressions with Art. She hadn’t judged the book by its cover, because she hadn’t even noticed the book, let alone read the inside flaps.
    God knows she wished she had.
    Things might have been so different if she’d only paid a bit more attention.
    She’d been the only woman in Baghdad, that time, in a group of seven. They took three groups of two each out that day. Inevitably there was an odd one out; inevitably it had been her, the only woman. It was a coincidence, the colonel had explained, nothing to do with her being female. Yeah, right. She was the girl, she got left behind, on more than one occasion sent on a coffee run. So she’d got used to finding other ways. She always did. As usual she was too hell-bent on getting her picture, getting the picture, with or without permission, to notice anyone who might have been trying to make an impression. Art said later it was the fact she seemed not to notice him that caught his interest. He was put out when she said there was no seemed about it. She hadn’t noticed him.
    People always said there were two sides to every story. They had certainly said that about them. Art encouraged it, which struck her as odd, now she thought about it. Either way, his version always emerged on top. That was how it was. His version became fact. Love at