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Lara blinked in the darkness. But was it? She thought of the engagement ring, how she had felt when she had seen in fall from Alex’s pocket. Scared, was the truth. For fifteen years, Sandrine and Alex had been constants in her life. It didn’t matter that she saw them less, Lara had always known that her two best friends would be there for her no matter what. With Sandrine gone and Alex set to pair off, Lara could no longer pretend she had anything, or anyone to rely on.
‘What have you always told me about the job, boss?’ Stella’s voice was soft, but insistent.
Lara smiled. She immediately knew what Stella meant.
‘Listen to your gut,’ she said, ‘because your gut always knows.’
‘My gut is telling me it’s time to get some sleep,’ said Lara, rolling over, determined to forget that they had even had the conversation.
Lara woke with a start, hands twisted in her thin quilt, her whole body sweating. In her dream, she had been locked in the back of a truck. The oven-hot metal walls were closing in on her and she was scrabbling at the lock, trying to call out, but no words were forming, no one could hear her. Trapped, hammering at the door with her fists.
And then, in the way of dreams, Lara was no longer Lara: she had somehow become Sandrine, her knuckles scraping against bare wood, the unfinished lid of a coffin. It was a moment before Lara realised there was no van, no door. She was on the sleeper train and the knocking was coming from the corridor.
‘London Euston ten minutes,’ said a voice.
She inhaled deeply, the fear still hanging over her like fog. Only the train, she thought. Lara sat up slowly, swinging her legs out to the side of the bunk and put her feet on the floor. Breathing deeply, she took a minute to place which city she was in. London? It was hard to tell she had been to so many in the past week. Lara flinched as the door swung inwards. Stella’s beaming face peeked in, holding up a takeaway coffee like a trophy.
‘Shake a leg, boss. This will perk you up,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Didn’t want to disturb you until the last moment, thought you needed your beauty sleep.’
‘Thanks,’ said Lara sarcastically. ‘I’m not that decrepit.’
She peered at her reflection in the mirror above the sink. Or then again…
Her face was creased with pillow marks, dark circles hung beneath pink-shot eyes. She splashed cold water on her cheeks and did her best to make herself look human, then bundled all her stuff into her tote as the train pulled into the station. With one last fond look towards their cabin, Lara followed Stella onto the platform and up the ramp into Euston, already humming with the buzz of hundreds of commuters.
‘So what are we doing
now?’ asked Stella with unflagging enthusiasm. ‘Have you heard from Stef and Eddie?’
Lara laughed, despite herself.
‘You make them sound like an 80s comedy duo.’
‘Comedians they ain’t,’ smiled Stella.
‘Look, you go home and I’ll call you later,’ said Lara. ‘I’m going to see my cousin.’
‘Charlie? Why?’
Lara took a breath.
‘I think we need to start working with the paper.’
Stella looked at her incredulously.
‘With the Chronicle? No! This is our scoop, Lara – they got rid us of us, remember? We can’t just do all the donkey work and hand it to them on a plate.’
Lara could understand her reaction. She knew she would have felt the same way if their positions had been reversed, and she didn’t like it either, but Stella had said it herself: they needed more firepower. And she had to admit she was feeling vulnerable, out here on their own.
‘We do have to place the story somewhere,’ said Lara. ‘Not even Le Caché publishes their own scoops.’
‘I thought this was for Sandrine, not a headline.’
‘I know, and it is. But if we can get Charlie onside and get him excited about a huge scoop we might have a chance of getting the investigations team reinstated.’
Stella frowned.
‘But isn’t Charlie an idiot?’
