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SABINE
TWO WEEKS EARLIER – PARIS, 1987
Each of us is told a story about how we begin. One that starts with the people who come before us, providing the foundation on which we build ourselves. Yet when that story shifts, unexpectedly, so do we. Our lives becoming feet made of clay.
For Sabine Dupris that moment arrived with a phone call.
She was standing barefoot in her tiny kitchen with its pale-blue wooden cabinet doors filled with tiny floral swirls that she had lovingly painted herself. Madonna was singing about ‘La Isla Bonita’ on her small radio, and she was transported not to a Spanish island but outside to where a pair of robins were finally making use of her home-made bird feeder. They didn’t seem to mind that her carpentry skills were a bit of a work in progress.
She clasped her hands beneath her chin, and bounced on the balls of her feet in glee, then the phone rang and everything changed.
A young voice introduced itself as George Constable, a lawyer she didn’t recognise, someone who claimed to have news regarding her mother’s estate. Sabine frowned. Considering that her mother, Marguerite, had died two years before and had spent her last years living with Sabine and her husband, Antoine, this came as something of a surprise.
‘Are you sure that you have the right person?’ she’d asked, all thoughts of the birds wiped from her mind.
‘Quite sure. You are Sabine Dupris, née Allard, daughter of Marguerite Allard, née Marchant, yes?’
She nodded, her throat turning dry, then realised he couldn’t hear her and said softly, ‘Yes?’
‘I think it would be best if you came to see us so that we could explain properly – it is a bit complicated to discuss over the phone.’
The following afternoon, Sabine made her way to an office in Montmartre. Outside, well-heeled customers were making the most of the early spring sunshine.
In the fancy office upstairs, she was shown to a waiting area which consisted of three orange chairs beneath a giant framed poster of Monet’s water lilies that ran along the entire wall. She caught a hint of her reflection in the mirrored glass, and saw with a pang that her dark, curly blonde hair was listing to the side from where she’d shoved it up into a bun and there was kohl smudged beneath her eyes. She was just twisting her hair back into its knot, when a young man in a new suit came out to greet her. He looked fresh out of law school. Tall and gangly with large brown eyes and hair that seemed intent to flop over his forehead, despite the amount of hair gel he’d enthusiastically applied to the rest of his mane.
‘George Constable,’ he said, extending his hand, then adding, ‘Junior,’ as her eyes drifted up curiously towards the sign above their heads where the name of the firm was etched in black on silver metal, Lefauge et Constable.
She smiled. ‘Sabine Dupris.’
He nodded. ‘If you’d like to follow me,’ he invited, gesturing to a meeting room around the corner, surrounded by glass. It felt to Sabine an odd space for a private meeting, like she was on display, a curiosity in a jar.
‘Coffee? Water?’ he offered.
‘I’m fine, thanks,’ she said, taking a seat. It was orange. She sensed a theme. Then she thought darkly that no amount of cheery colour was likely to make much of a difference to their clients. It wasn’t like people chose a lawyer for the good times. Well, perhaps the rich did, she mused.
He took a seat opposite her, and lit a cigarette, offering her the pack.
She shook her head.
He shrugged, ‘Bon.’ Then opened a file, and shuffled some papers. Eventually, he started to explain why he’d invited her to come, while long streams of smoke billowed from the cigarette in his fingers.
He began a complicated monologue about inheritance laws which sounded exactly as if it had been recited from a textbook. Perhaps it was still fresh in his mind, she thought, then reprimanded herself for the thought; she was probably not that much older than him, at twenty-nine.
As he spoke, the cigarette turned into a long spool of ash. She wondered when he would ever tap it off, distracted.
When she didn’t respond, he grew increasingly nervous. He played with his blue-and-grey-striped tie for a moment and some of the ash landed in his lap. He swore softly, and she hid a grin while he patted his trousers, at last putting the cigarette out in the ashtray.
He had a different accent, she thought, not Parisian. Normandy perhaps? He carried on describing inheritance laws and her attention drifted again for a moment, but was brought sharply back when he started to speak about the winding path it had taken them to find her mother, Marguerite.
‘I must say, though, because she was adopted, I was worried that would make tracking her down nearly impossible.’
Sabine drew a sharp breath.
‘What?’
He mistook it for enthusiasm for his skills at research, perhaps, and nodded. ‘I thoughtyour mother’s adoption records might be sealed, but, thankfully, that wasn’t the case. Which means that we were able, at last, to find her after nearly forty years, and now, after her passing, well, you…’
Sabine stared at him with a frown, noting the serious brown eyes, the whites within, tending slightly to yellow, perhaps from the smoking. His suit, which now had a mark of ash on the trousers, was expensive, as was this office – it couldn’t be cheap having one in this part of the city, she thought. It didn’t seem like the kind of place that would be involved in some elaborate inheritance scam or joke on some poor, unsuspecting soul.
