We walk a little way from the center of town and I’m almost hoping Lila might be planning some kind of heist—something dangerous and fierce. I’m brimming with misplaced destructive energy. The sun is less kind here, the breeze not quite reaching us, my body pressed into the tarmac. We walk down streets of residential buildings and, every so often, like an island, a café-bar whose tables have spilt onto the pavement, people smoking cigarettes and reading newspapers, tiny coffee cups in front of them. I’m carrying my bag too, the two dresses competing with each other. Lila and I don’t talk much, keep glancing at each other sideways. What is our relationship now, and how much longer will we have to walk like this, in this painful state of in-between?
Then, eventually, she stops in front of an old patisserie, a plain shopfront in white with faded gold lettering.
“Here?” I can’t hide the disbelief from my voice.
“Yes. You need some sugar.”
“Not what I was expecting.” But a grin spreads on my face.
“What were you expecting?” Lila asks, as we step in, and are shown past a counter of perfectly aligned religieuses, lemon tartlets, gleaming bavarois and glazed chocolates, piles of macarons arranged by color like a sugar-frenzied painter’s palette, into a tearoom at the back. The decor is simple, but the atmosphere is hushed, as if people instinctively understand the respect owed to the culinary miracle of choux pastry. I nod at a family of tourists as we walk to our table, excitedly whispering in English, each of them sitting in front of a different mirror-glazed square of happiness.
“I don’t know what I was expecting. Something like those aquariums you dip your toes in and the fish come and eat your dead skin—”
Lila laughs, disgusted. “Oh please, it takes a lot to put me off my food, but—”
“Sorry, a spa day, or a personal shopper experience?”
“Is this how you see me, then?”
I tear my gaze from the icing and fresh raspberries to meet hers. Her face is calm, not exactly amused, but thoughtful.
“A car chase?” I ask, to break the tension. She laughs.
“That’s more like it,” she says. “I’d be up for that.”
We place our order—when I hear Lila choose two pastries, I do the same. She goes for lemon and pistachio, I for chocolate and strawberry.
Her phone beeps as we wait. She seems to hesitate before typing something. I can see she’s trying to hide the screen from me.
“Everything going according to plan?” I can’t help but ask, bitterness on my tongue.
“What plan?”
“Come on, Lila.” I can’t believe I keep almost falling for her being my friend, for some kind of connection. “I bet that was you reporting to Maxime. Dress acquired. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure she won’t embarrass us.”
She holds out her hand, but doesn’t touch me. It hangs there across the table, against the backdrop of waiters carrying single macarons displayed on porcelain plates like jewels. “All right. Yes, Maxime asked me to keep an eye on you.”
I don’t know why, but it hurts. I thought she had come with me willingly at the museum, that we had shared something that was just ours. “So you were a spy.”
She shrugs. “The worst one, apparently.”
“You told him all about the museum?”
I can’t read her eyes. “Yes,” she says. “Eventually, he got it out of me.”
Our pastries arrive. Lila waits for the waiter to leave; then she says: “I think you and he are playing a dangerous game.”
“I’m the one playing a game? This is no game to me. This is my life. I didn’t ask either of you to—barge in.”
“Your gift…”
“What about it?”
“It’s beautiful, Camille. I think you should use it much better.”
“Not you as well! You said you don’t care for art.”
“I just find it tricky to relate to,” she says. “To you, and Maxime’s, version of what ‘art’ is. What it is for, I guess.”
“What do you mean?”
“You work in an auction house, selling things for millions. He hides in his gallery with top security systems and petits fours. Why should people who are poor not be allowed beautiful things? Why keep them behind bars, like a private joke for rich people? And now you’re organizing some kind of private, exclusive entertainment party, where the wealthy get to tap into an artist’s soul? Sounds rather exploitative to me.”
“I think everyone should be allowed beautiful things,” I say.
“I’m sure you do. Yet people like you and Maxime ensure art stays in the private hands of wealthy wankers.”
“I’m sorry, but aren’t you dating such a wanker?” It feels easier for both of us to say these things away from the castle. Maxime was wrong—it isn’t Absinthe that loosens up tongues, but cake. I like this with Lila, knowing where I stand. Having, for the first time, access to her unfiltered opinions.
“I’m well aware of that fact. But I’m tired of the argument that the less you have, the more your preoccupations should narrow. Art isn’t proof of status. It’s universal, a reminder of all the iterations of our collective human souls. Take this pastry, for example.” She taps at her lemon tart with her fork. “Could you read it? Someone made this. Someone who cared. Isn’t it art in the same way a Boisseau might be?”
Defiantly, I slide my fork through my bavarois, and time stops as the silky mousse parts. This is not the kind of pastry you gobble up in a few strikes; rather you must explore the different textures, then let them merge on your tongue. The strawberry is the best possible version of itself: zinging with sun and summer and lime. I take my time, then move on to the dark chocolate, coating my palate with velvet and smoke.
Lowen used to make the most intricate cakes for me when he lived in London. He was never one for talking about feelings, and those cakes were the gateway for me to understand how he felt. If I’m honest with myself, I knew he was in love with me long before the opera cake he made for my birthday, but I refused to acknowledge it or do anything about it. I simply continued to eat the cakes, tapping into the leftovers long after he left, to visit the memory of him standing in his tiny shared kitchen, a piping bag in hand, singing “Best of You.”
This stopped when he joined his dad’s bakery and had to stick to fifty-year-old recipes—they were good, but I know his life became safe, predictable, uncreative. Just the way mine did. I think I’ve been too harsh on Lowen, too dismissive of him. I’m so pleased he’s doing something about his passion now, yet I’ve never felt more at risk of losing him completely.
“There,” Lila’s voice brings me back to reality. She’s watching me, as she scrapes off remnants of lemon curd. “You do know exactly what I mean.”
I do. But this world of cakes and children’s drawings is so small. With Maxime I know I can be so much more. I have a taste for greater things now, and I want to know how far I can go. I could make important people take me seriously, listen to me. I could finally make them see that what I know matters. It’s tantalizing.
“Speaking of a dangerous game,” I say, to change the subject. “You spooked me when you came out of that pond last night.”
“Yeah, I enjoyed that.” That smile again. Mischievous. Then she becomes more serious. “I struggle with insomnia. I often go swimming at night. Sometimes cold water is the best cure.”
“Isn’t it a bit…scary? The murkiness. Not seeing the bottom. Not knowing.”
“You can’t see the bottom of the sea.”
“I know it’s irrational. Fears are, most of the time.”
“I think mine are pretty rational.”
She tips the last drops of her coffee into her mouth, throwing her head back far.
“Surely there’s not much to fear at D’Arvor?” I ask her.
She doesn’t smile. “When Maxime brought me here, I was blown away. I couldn’t believe he had this life. And he was ready to make a space for me in it. For a week, all we did was drive around. Brocéliande, Saint Malo, the Val Sans Retour. the Miroir aux Fées. I don’t think I’d ever been happier. But I think I might have lost myself a bit.” As she speaks I see something familiar in her eyes, the smoke of romance, of heartache, curling up in her dark irises.
You are my better half; you are the key to unlocking it all.
A sprig of heather, the flash of green eyes. The delights of a prison of air, something dangerous lurking under the surface of the pond.
Of course: Maxime poured their love story into his sculptures and Lila saw herself in them. It was all in Guinevere and Lancelot—their infatuation, the giddiness of early days. Even the places they visited together. And I invaded it. No wonder she was angry with me. Or with him, most likely. Was this a kind of exploitation? Is this where the unease I felt came from?
I shake my head. I need to ask her. “But you are happy with him?”
Her answer takes a while to come. “You’re the first person who’s asked me that. Everybody else assumes it goes without saying that I’m the lucky one. I know you think it too, Camille. You’ve been pining for him.”
I feel my cheeks ignite, but I try to hold her gaze. “What? That’s not—”
“Don’t protest. When you’re around him, you’re different. On a high, perhaps.”
This is so messed up, but I decide she deserves my honesty. “I’m sorry,” I say. “Young crushes run deep. It makes sense you’ve been uncomfortable with me being here.”
She shrugs. “I’m best placed to understand this. He is really very charming.”
“Lila, I’m not here to steal anyone’s boyfriend.”
“Well, time will tell. Who knows what choices we might make further along the line.” She looks sad. I want to interject, but she doesn’t let me, skimming over the topic like it was nothing. “Being here in Brittany wasn’t my choice. D’Arvor wasn’t my home. It came with Maxime as a package.”
“Why not leave?” I ask. “I say this with no ulterior motive, Lila. Why not?”
Her eyes tell me her barriers have come down again. “Could Viviane leave? Could Constance?”
“No. Viviane’s deal was that, should she venture out of Brocéliande, she would lose her powers. But Constance?”
“Constance lost her powers too when she left. You said she stopped creating.” It strikes me as a peculiar comparison, another one of her riddles.
“Lila…what exactly do you know about Constance? About what happened to her after D’Arvor? Where did she go?”
Instead of answering, she leans forward again, looking left and right, rummaging in the internal pocket of her coat. “I did mean it, Camille. Your gift. It’s meant to be a transcendental experience. Something authentic, real. When I was in there with you, I…I think I really understood what Constance Sorel’s art was about for the first time. I know you’re obsessed. I know you’re looking for what happened to her. I don’t think you’ll find it in the sculptures Maxime gave you. You should take a look at this.”
I stare at the delicate old piece of paper she’s handed over. Constance’s handwriting is on it. I should be wearing gloves is my immediate thought, fighting with the drumming of my heart.
“Did Maxime give you this?” I whisper, as if the police are going to barge on us any minute.
She scoffs. “I found it when they asked me to sort old family papers. They must have thought it was all rubbish if they trusted me with them.”
I’m not sure she’s telling the truth, but I run my eyes over the note as quickly as possible. It is Constance’s handwriting; there is no doubt about it. Her energy jumps off the page, crackling with her spirit. Adrenaline runs through me—a kick much more powerful than chocolate.
Perhaps you too think I’m mad—everybody seems to think I’m mad, but I know they’re going to take him from me. That’s what fairies do, don’t they? They snatch, preferably what a poor woman like me holds dearest. Then they’ll take me away so I can’t have him back.
I don’t want to go to Sainte-Vilaine.
There is no more. She clearly didn’t finish, either got interrupted or thought better of it. Her fingers held the pen that wrote this. I stare, mesmerized, at the letters she formed, trying to connect them with her soul.
“Take him from me. What did she mean?” I ask Lila.
“Max said he thought she was talking about Boisseau. That she was jealous of the other women in his life.”
“No, that doesn’t feel right.” I try to let the note take me. Not the words so much as the hand that wrote them, shaking so much she blotched her ink. But ink is lighter than plaster, and Constance’s words were always less confident than her modeling. I can’t tap into it like I would art, but I’m hit with dread at a man’s empty face, a lady with long red hair, sobbing, holding a toddler’s hand. Flashes, impossible to hold in my mind.
Constance and Anne. The same toddler? Anne’s son?
“Lila, why did you give me this?”
I think she wasn’t supposed to. This isn’t a trap.
“I’ve met them now. I suppose I’m committed. I want to know what happened to them too. And you’re the only one who can find out.”
We look at each other, the note splayed out on the table between us.
“You know what Saint-Vilaine was at the time don’t you?” I ask.
She nods. I know, because I looked for Constance everywhere. I checked every place. But I want to hear Lila say it.
“A mental hospital.”
We both keep quiet for a while, until I throw my napkin on the table with some force. It makes Lila flinch. “Sorry,” I say. “But I’ve done all the research. I looked everywhere. Constance’s death was recorded by a private doctor. And there are no records of her being at Sainte-Vilaine.”
“I give up; please give me the solution,” Lila muses.
“Pardon?” I’m dying to keep the note, but she puts it back in her pocket. She pats her lips with her napkin, puts it down carefully. Then she leans back into her chair, places her hands on her belly as if to say, At least we have cake.
“Je donne ma langue au chat. What was on the T-shirt. It also implies that somebody knows the solution of the riddle and can share it with you. Put you out of your misery.”