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Sabine worked at a library; it wasn’t like she had much money to be scammed out of, surely they would need a likelier mark? She’d heard of these things happening to people, those who discovered that they had inherited some piece of land or property, only to discover it was all some nefarious plot to swindle them out of their money. It didn’t seem like the kind of place to play that kind of joke. Even so, it felt like one.
‘I think you must be mistaken,’ she said, pulling a face.
He shook his head and repeated a summary of what he’d told her five minutes before.
He stiffened. ‘I assure you, all the checks have been made. Your mother was the legal owner of a commercial property in the Batignolles, Paris, which she inherited from her mother, your biological grandmother, Marianne Blanchet. A former restaurant, it seems. I daresay you may even know of it… it has a bit of a regrettable reputation, unfortunately.’
Sabine frowned, trying to reconcile all of this in her mind and failing. He was clearly confusing her with someone else.
‘No,’ she frowned, ‘what I mean is you must be mistaken because my mother was notadopted.’
He stared at her in some consternation, eyes widening in realisation. His voice grew oddly slight, like a balloon with a puncture. ‘Oh, I see.’
Sabine continued. ‘I knew my grandparents, when they were alive. My mother looked a lot like my grandmother, Aimee Marchant,’ she said, with emphasis.
His hand shook slightly as he took a fortifying sip of water, his eyes glancing for a second around the glass walls as if beseeching someone, anyone, to come in and help before returning, reluctantly to look at her. ‘It must have simply been a coincidence, madame, as I – I’m afraid to say that she truly was adopted. We have all the paperwork, including your mother’s birth and adoption certificates. There is no mistaking it, I’m sorry.’
Sabine just stared, forgetting to blink.
‘You mean to say, well, that she didn’t know either?’ he asked, filling the silence.
A swarm of insects were buzzing in her ears. Sabine could only shake her head. Finally, she managed. ‘Can you show me… these… certificates?’
He nodded, then looked down at his file, and began to shuffle through the paperwork again until he came across two certificates, one for her mother’s birth, the other her adoption.
The colour drained from Sabine’s face as she located them. Even upside down, the names jumped out at her. Marguerite Blanchet. The same name on both, followed by the names of her grandparents, Aimee and Édouard Marchant, now deceased, on the adoption paperwork. It was all there in black and white.
‘Can I have a copy of this?’
He nodded. ‘You can take the originals. I’ll make a quick copy for our records.’
Then he got up to go do that, rather quickly, as if desperate for an escape. He returned a few minutes later and handed her the documents. Then he offered her a coffee again. This time she accepted. Though, really, she wanted something stronger.
She stared down at the paperwork he handed her, she couldn’t seem to make sense of it.
‘Is it possible she knew but didn’t tell you?’ he asked, after he placed a cup of coffee next to her left elbow.
Sabine’s eyes shot up and she stared at the lawyer, her blue eyes turning dark.
‘Why wouldn’t she tell me? My mother told me everything, she was my best friend.’ Tears smarted in her eyes, and she dashed them away in a mix of embarrassment and anger.
He remained silent for some time, his skin mottling to a rising red-and-white tide. He swallowed, looking like he wanted to run back to the print room. ‘Well, perhaps she didn’t want you to know, or perhaps she herself was not told? Either way, under the circumstances, it is possibly due to the same reason.’
Sabine blinked. ‘What circumstances – what reason? Why wouldn’t she want me to know?’
He frowned, hesitating for a moment, unconsciously leaning slightly away from her. ‘I can only make a guess. You see, your grandmother – your biological grandmother, that is – was the owner of a restaurant that was once called Luberon.’
He took out a small envelope from the paperwork in front of him, shook it open, and something old, made of brass, landed on the gleaming desk. It was an old-fashioned key.
‘Luberon,’ she repeated, in confusion, staring at the key, but thinking of holidays in Provence with her grandparents – of charming hilltop villages, sun-drenched stone villas, vineyards, lavender, rolling countryside, the sea…
She thought about that moment often in the months that followed. The moment before she knew. Before he corrected her and everything changed.
‘It was a restaurant,’ he said, indicating the key, ‘based in the Batignolles village, Paris, on the corner of Rue Cardinet and Lumercier. It’s abandoned now.’
‘It’s still there?’
He nodded.
