Page 10 of The Last Library of Paris

There was no one around, other than a youngish man who looked vaguely familiar, studying the newspapers on the stand outside. I walked past the shop first, and when I turned round and walked back, he’d gone. I spotted him further down the hill and thought no more of it.

I found Lara in the shop, as I’d hoped, but she didn’t seem very pleased to see me.

‘I’ve not got long,’ she said. ‘I’m helping Bea with a thing.’

‘I just wanted to grumble about Digby,’ I said. ‘Let me whine at you and I’ll help you close up.’

‘Can you shelve these books?’ she asked, shoving a pile at me. ‘I need to add up the till.’

With Lara huffing and puffing over the numbers, I happily wandered the shelves, putting the books back in the correct places and filling her in on what Digby had said.

‘Maybe he is just a vice-consul,’ she suggested. ‘Sod, that’s supposed to be a four not a seven.’

‘We’ve never had a vice-consul before.’

‘You’ll find out once he’s here,’ she said, not unreasonably. ‘Why worry about it before then?’

I peered at her round the end of a bookshelf. ‘Who are you and what have you done with my friend Lara?’

She laughed. ‘I’m just saying, you’re getting yourself all het up about it and it might be for no reason.’

I pushed my final book into the gap on the shelf where it belonged, and sighed. ‘It’s because I’m so very, very bored,’ I said.

‘Forty-two …’ Lara muttered. ‘Forty-three.’

I watched her for a second. ‘What about you?’ I said, going over to the counter where she was hunched over her sums. ‘Why are you so busy?’

She looked up at me. ‘No reason. I’m not busy. No more than usual.’ But she looked a little uncomfortable as I gazed at her, and dropped her eyes back to the scribbled numbers on her notepad. ‘But I do really have to go and meet Bea, if I can just get this to add up …’

Sensing she was keeping something from me, I took the notepad. ‘Let me,’ I said. I studied the numbers, and said, quite casually: ‘What is it you and Bea are doing?’

‘Nothing,’ said Lara.

‘But you have to be there now? To do nothing?’

‘It’s just a thing.’

‘Here.’ I pushed the notepad back to her. ‘Done. Tell me what thing.’

‘Thank you,’ said Lara. ‘I should go, sorry.’

‘Where to?’ I almost wailed. ‘Why is no one telling me anything? And why are you looking like that?’

‘Like what?’

‘Shifty.’

Tossing her hair back, Lara gazed at me, her eyes innocent. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘You bloody well do.’

She sighed. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you.’

I was delighted. ‘Lord, you’d be awful under interrogation.’

‘No one who is likely to interrogate me is as frightening as you are,’ she said.

I prodded her arm. ‘Tell me.’