AllFreeNovel
Share Us
They sat in silence for a while, listening to a distant siren. Lara felt as if she were intruding on the Legards’ grief, but still wanted to do something to help.
‘Would you like me to go to Paris?’ she asked. Lara was a doer and she knew right now she had to do something, not just for Jean and Marion Legard, but for her own sanity. ‘The apartment, I have a key. I could…’ she shook her head. What could she do? Collect the mail? Water the plants? Sandrine was gone. Her old life was a shell, just ashes ready to blow away on the wind.
‘That would be kind of you, Lara,’ said Jean simply.
The room’s phone rang, sudden and shrill, shattering the quiet intensity of the room. Lara quickly picked it up.
‘Ms. Legard? This is Felicity in reception. I have a Mr. Eduardo Ortega in the lobby?’
Lara recognised the name immediately: Eduardo from Le Caché.
‘Eduardo Ortega?’ she said to Jean, covering the receiver.
Jean nodded. ‘Yes, send him up.’
Lara relayed the message and put down the phone.
‘Sandrine’s…friend?’ said Lara. She wasn’t sure if her parents knew but Marion nodded.
‘Have you met him?’ asked Lara.
‘In Paris,’ said Jean. ‘He’s very impressive.’
‘That’s what Sandrine told me.’
There was a knock at the door and Jean answered it. A tall, fortyish man embraced him, then crossed to take both of Marion’s hands in a gesture that spoke of respect and familiarity. Eduardo Ortega was even more handsome that the profile picture she had seen on the Le Caché website. His pale blue shirt, expensive Italian shoes and swept-back dark hair gave him the look of European royalty – someone more at home in the lobby of the Paris Ritz than reporting from the field in Somalia or the Yemen.
He introduced himself, extended his condolences and some pleasantries. She’d met plenty of his type before, wealthy Europeans, who’d had their accents rubbed away in British boarding schools and Ivy League colleges. He gently took Lara to one side and lowered his voice.
‘I hate to ask, but would you mind giving us a few minutes? I want to say a few words to Sandrine’s parents, but I would appreciate speaking to you too, Lara. Could you wait?’
Eduardo delivered the request as if Lara were doing him a favour, a trick many successful people managed to pull off. She would have said yes in any case – she was keen to talk to him too.
‘There’s a bar next to the lobby,’ she said. ‘I’ll wait for you there.’
Giving Jean and Marion a final embrace, Lara left them talking quietly in French and took the lift down to the ground floor. The bar was more glamorous than the slightly faded hotel had suggested. Dark panelling with tall mirrors and a zinc-topped bar, it aped the Parisian haunts of the 1920s frequented by Toulouse Lautrec, almost getting there. Lara ordered coffee for both of them and was just sitting in a discreet corner when Eduardo arrived, already apologising.
Lara watched him as he took off his jacket and put it over the back of the chair. She knew that they were united in grief, that there should be a bond of solidarity between them. But still, it was hard not to view him with suspicion – to view everything with suspicion. The suicide, the hint about Jonathon Meyer, her new alliance with Le Caché, Eduardo’s appearance on the scene. None of it seemed coincidental.
‘So you’re here for the conference,’ she said, sipping her coffee.
‘That’s right.’
‘I was going to come. Sandrine invited me along.’
‘I know. I asked her to.’
Lara hid her surprise, filing that detail away for a later date.
‘Are you still going ahead with it?’
‘Yes. Sandrine, more than anyone, would want it to happen.’
Lara agreed with him on that.
‘How did you know Jean and Marion were here?’ asked Lara as casually as she could. Eduardo shrugged, as if it were obvious. ‘When they heard the news, they called me.’
Lara waited for more explanation, but none was forthcoming.
