Free The Paris Secret by Karen Swan

then.’
    ‘Yeah.’
    They fell into an easy silence, both thinking about the same thing.
    She was the first to break it. ‘And how are things otherwise? Are you sleeping OK?’
    He made a non-committal sound that she took to mean ‘no’.
    ‘But you’re eating, yes?’
    ‘Yes.’ Which also meant ‘no’.
    ‘Any word back from the CPS?’
    ‘Not yet.’
    ‘I promise you, they won’t press charges,’ she said fiercely. ‘It’s too tenuous. They’d never be able to prove beyond reasonable doubt.’
    ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’
    They fell quiet again.
    ‘. . . You still in Paris?’
    ‘Yep.’
    ‘Coming back soon?’
    ‘I can come back any time you need me to,’ she said quickly. ‘You just say the word and I’ll be there, Freds. I’m three hours away.’
    ‘I know, that’s not what I . . . It’s not what I meant. I was only calling to check in with you. Just give me a bell when you’re next back in London town, OK?’
    ‘Sure.’
    ‘Thanks, Batty. Love you.’
    ‘Backatcha, Ratfink.’
    He hung up and she pushed open the front door, trudging up the stairs and letting herself into the apartment again. Everything was exactly as she’d left it twenty minutes earlier –
the dust still spinning through the air from all her rearrangements, the artworks now organized in tidy groupings in every room. She checked in on Gertie but then made her way straight to the
bedroom where she opened the French doors which looked onto the street – present-day Paris pushed its way into the preserved apartment once again and released the past’s hold on it. She
sat on the small balcony, her back against the wall, her legs propped up on the railings, and began to eat her lunch, twiddling the chopsticks between her fingers as she thought about her
beleaguered brother.
    The apartment wasn’t high enough for her to see over the neighbouring rooftops to the horizon and she was forced to look down for a view – the street was seemingly a quiet one as
hardly anyone was about, just a young couple walking at an idle pace, holding brown grocery bags in their arms as they chatted.
    Flora watched as they drew closer and then stopped outside the building opposite, the woman leaning back to balance the bags against her torso as she reached into her boyfriend’s shorts
for the keys. They disappeared from sight a moment later, the wooden door closing behind them with a slam.
    Flora deliberated between a salmon
nigiri
and a tuna
maki
, finally choosing the salmon on account of its prettier colour. When she looked up again, the couple had reappeared in the
apartment directly opposite, one level down, and she realized that although she couldn’t see their faces because of the lowered blind, this woman was the same one she’d seen lying on
the bed, listening to music, the previous afternoon. It was odd to have this dual-aspect perspective on her life: the public and private sides.
    Flora watched intermittently – more interested in her lunch – as the woman shrugged off her T-shirt and stepped out of her jean shorts, laying the clothes on the bed and padding out
of sight in her underwear.
    The man was in the room too – only his feet visible at first, although he slowly came into view, walking around the bed whilst reading something on his phone. Only when he sank onto the
side of the bed, texting a message on his phone, a loop of orange rope peeping out from the divan by his feet, could she see his face.
    What did he use the rope for? she wondered, starting on the tuna
maki
roll and watching dispassionately. Was he a climber perhaps? He had an athletic build, she supposed, her mind
distracted, her eyes drawn to every car that rolled down the street, looking for Angus. He’d be back any minute now, surely? The man in the apartment opposite tossed the phone on the bed and
walked over to the French doors. He was stocky but very muscular, his calf muscles well defined below his khaki shorts. He stepped into the sun,