I SLEPT FOR A FEW HOURS. At half past ten I heard André’s cheerful shout hello, and then his footsteps going up to his study; and then nothing, just a long silence and the breeze in the trees.
At half past one I got up and went to her salon. She was sitting upright on the sofa, straight-backed, reading.
Her face softened.
Thomas’s footsteps, up and down the corridor.
She bent back over her novel; a high red spot on either cheekbone.
For distraction, I crossed to sit at the desk, arranged myself, picked up a letter. I have never met you but I love you, wrote a man from Normandy.
At four o’clock I went to my room. There was nothing to do but wait. I looked out of the window, at the high, white, unreal sky, and wondered how she would dissuade him. What she could be planning, and if it could work. We’d fallen out, André and I, but I was still living in his house: there for the taking.
I went down for dinner at eight. He was there, lounging in his seat, tanned from his trip, but otherwise the same. Looking at him, I wondered how I had ever mistaken his silken waistcoats for sincerity.
He looked up at me, a quick glance under his eyelids. ‘You look well.’
‘Do I?’
‘Very.’ He reached casually for bread. I folded my hands in my lap and stared at them. She hadn’t said anything yet, or the plan hadn’t worked.
Luce said: ‘So your trip—’
André tipped his chair back and laced his fingers behind his head, all his teeth on show. ‘You should have seen his workshop. He has an automaton so realistic it could be sitting where Adèle is right now. She could be the automaton.’
‘I think we’d recognise the real one.’
André lifted his wine glass and swirled it. Then he asked: ‘Anything exciting happen while I was gone?’
Luce took a sip of wine – the muscles of her throat moved as she swallowed – and shook her head.
At the end of the meal, André sat swilling the dregs in his glass, staring at the wall; she was perfectly composed, opposite him. Eventually she turned her gaze on me.
‘Goodnight,’ I said, getting to my feet.
As I left the room, she rose too. For a delirious moment I thought she was coming after me. But she followed me to the door and put her hand on the handle.
I stood in the hall, staring back at her.
‘Goodnight,’ she said. On her face was a fierce look I had not seen before. She pulled the door closed.
I went upstairs to my room and sat in my nightgown, propped up against the pillows, to wait.
I thought about the last time with André. I could hardly remember it: I just had the impression of conserved energies, and no noise, as if noise were an expense he didn’t want with me.
After a while I heard the dining-room door open and close.
Her softer steps and his quicker ones going up the stairs: no voices.
I heard him walk up the second flight, clearing his throat. A pause, and his footsteps kept on coming, up the last flight of stairs to my floor.
I pulled my knees up to my chin and shut my eyes; then I reached for the stem of the lamp beside my bed. I lifted it an inch, to test its weight.
The footsteps had stopped; I breathed, and listened harder.
There was a creak of floorboards just outside my door. He was shifting his weight onto his other leg.
We waited, on either side of the door, in silence, for more than a minute.
Abruptly, there was a squeak as he spun on his heel – and then his footsteps jogging back down the stairs.
I waited half an hour, letting the sweat on my body cool, then slipped out of my room and stole down the stairs.
At his floor I paused, but of course there was nobody there.
I continued to Luce’s floor. Stood for a moment outside her room; brushed the door with my knuckles.
There was no answer. I pushed it open.
The shutters were faint silvery outlines. I couldn’t hear breathing, so she was not asleep; and sure enough, after a few seconds, her shape came clear. She was sitting up in bed.
I walked to the bed. Still no sound.
I climbed onto the bed, knelt over her and kissed her.
Her lips were cold under mine; barely moving.
She let me push back the covers. Her nakedness: a white slender body. The nipples dark circles. I reached out for one—
She held my head in place, and put her hands in my hair.
She pulled my nightgown over my head. The air in the room was summery warm, a gentle draught from somewhere.
As I was bending to kiss her again, she put a hand up to stop me; ran a finger down my jaw. The fingernail dug in.
She pushed me gently onto the bed and rolled towards me; put her hands on my thighs and spread them wide apart.
Looking at her expression, I understood that there was a price, after all.
‘He wasn’t even—’ I tried to tell her. ‘He never even—’
She covered my mouth with her hand; then, without checking whether I was ready, she pushed four fingers into me.
‘Am I anything like him?’
It hurt: a good pain, but shocking.
‘Did he do this? Or this?’
Each movement a separate sound from my mouth. Her eyes, half-shut, watching me.
I took her hand away from my mouth, rolled over and straddled her; took her wrist and pushed her further into me. Bent down and kissed her; told her that if this was how the account would be settled, I’d pay.
Much later, I woke to find her still asleep. Pale light was just beginning to show in the cracks of the shutters.
She slept with one arm curved above her head, protective. I watched her for a long time, then put my hand on her stomach.
Her eyes flew open. She stared at the ceiling; then at me.
‘What did you say to him?’ I asked. ‘To stop him?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said.
I went on watching her. Her nostrils flared.
She said: ‘He won’t come to your room any more. Isn’t that enough?’
She closed her eyes again. Her hand came crabbing over the coverlet and seized mine convulsively: gripping my fingers so tightly they turned red, then white, changing position every thirty seconds or so, finding a new hold.