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“Sorry, Gabriel, I’m not having a go at you.” Laure took a sip of wine. “It’s just that I’m wondering how well we really know Pierre. It’s not just that he had a one-night stand, or that he has a child. It’s that he doesn’t seem to regret any of it, even though it might destroy our marriage.”
“I’m sure he does regret it,” Gabriel said.
“Why would he, when it has given him something he didn’t know he wanted until now?”
Gabriel gave a sigh of frustration. “I wish he’d call me. I’ve left several voicemails, and all I’ve had in return is a WhatsApp message saying he doesn’t want to talk for the moment.”
“It’s because he’s too embarrassed to talk to you,” Laure said. “He knows what you will be thinking of him, after everything he used to say about people who have affairs.”
Iris allowed herself to drift out of the conversation. The last three days with Laure had been draining. As well as having to support her friend, she’d also had to put the finishing touches to her sketches and mood boards so that her latest clients—the owners of a surprisingly beautiful five-bed new-build outside Winchester—could approve the fabrics and color schemes. This morning, Laure had sat in the office with her, pulling out folder after folder of swatches, exclaiming over the patterns and materials, questioning Iris’s choices—Wouldn’t this one have been better for the sitting room?orI think this would be perfect for a child’s bedroom.She’d only been taking an interest, but it had had the unfortunate effect of making Iris question everything she’d already done.
“What will you be working on after this?” Laure had asked, unknowingly adding to Iris’s worry about the lack of work on the horizon.
“It’s not easy in the current economic climate,” she’d explained. “But I have a potential client in the pipeline. She’s in the process ofbuying a six-bed house in London and she wants an estimate, not just for the soft furnishings for each room, but also for furniture. It will be my biggest project to date and would look great on my CV. But I’m up against a couple of others. She was quite frank about that, which I appreciated. If I get the contract, I won’t have to look for anything else for a while, which would be great. If it goes to someone else, I don’t have anything on the horizon, so I’ll have to start looking, something I haven’t needed to do since I first started out.”
“Wow, a house in London! Can I see your ideas for it?”
Iris had hesitated, then brought up the file on her computer.
“This is amazing, Iris,” Laure had said, peering over her shoulder. “Those colors for that second reception room are stunning; who would have thought that blue and green would go together so well? You have a real talent, Iris.”
Iris had smiled, please with Laure’s reaction. She was hugely proud of the color schemes she’d chosen, glad that the potential client had given her carte blanche, saying she didn’t want anything bland.
“What would you do, Iris?” Laure’s voice broke into her thoughts and Iris swiftly zoned back into the conversation. “If Gabriel suddenly told you that he had a child by another woman, and that he wanted to have a relationship with that child, would you be able to accept it?”
“It’s a tough one,” Iris acknowledged. “It would depend on so many things—whether it was a one-night stand or an affair, if he’d only just discovered he had a child or had known about it for years, the age of the child—”
“But would you agree to meet the child yourself, welcome him or her into your home?” Laure interrupted.
Iris shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know.”
Laure sighed. “I’d love to think I’d be able to. But I know I couldn’t do it. Especially if Claire is the mother,” she added darkly. “It would be the ultimate betrayal.”
“We don’t know that she is,” Gabriel reminded her. “We don’t really know anything.”
“By the way, I’m going to London tomorrow,” Iris said. “To see Samantha Everett. My potential client with the town house in London.”
“Great,” Gabriel said. “Was that in your diary or did she suddenly ask to see you?”
“Neither. I was showing Laure my designs earlier and I thought it might be a good idea to hand deliver them rather than send them. So I phoned Samantha and said I’d be in London tomorrow and could I call in and see her. I thought it might give me an advantage if we met in person.”
“Good move,” Gabriel said approvingly. He pushed his chair back from the table. “Why don’t you two find a film for us to watch, while I try Pierre again?”
But Pierre didn’t pick up and Gabriel left another increasingly worried voicemail.Pierre, please, just call me and let me know you’re okay. We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.
9
Iris closed the door extra quietly, because to close it any louder might have shown her desperation to be out of the house.
She’d left Laure sunning herself in the garden, her face lathered in cream, and hyper-fine gloves on her hands to protect them from the sun. Her plan was to say, when Laure asked why she hadn’t mentioned going for a run, that she’d thought she was asleep. Iris was heartbroken for her, for what Laure was going through, and had spent countless hours consoling her. But she had been with them for ten days now and it seemed to Iris that she never had any respite from Laure and Pierre’s crisis, because even when she was asleep, their situation haunted her.
Already feeling guilty for snatching these precious minutes for herself, Iris paused on the doorstop, giving Laure time to come looking for her, as she always did when Iris was out of sight for more than a few minutes. When there was no sound of Laure calling her name, or her footsteps running down the hallway, Iris slipped the black elastic from her wrist and gathered her hair into a ponytail. Laure always insisted on accompanying her on her daily runs, but it was a new sport for herand she hadn’t built up her stamina yet, which meant that Iris had had to adapt to a slower pace.
Their house was situated at the end of the village; if you went out of the gate and turned right, there were no more houses, just a stile and then two paths, one leading across the fields and up a slight incline toward East Markham, the other through woods that eventually led to the quarry where Charlie had been found.
Iris was in a mood to run fast and far, but instead of heading for her usual route across the fields, she turned left and ran through the village, intending to go as far as their local pub, then head straight back. The round-trip would only take twenty-five minutes but it wouldn’t be kind to leave Laure for longer.
Yesterday, after a day working in the walled garden—Iris was beyond grateful that Gabriel’s decision to restore the garden had become his raison d’être—he’d offered to go running with Laure, but she had declined, saying she preferred to stay with Iris. Gabriel had given her a helpless shrug—sorry, I tried—and she had loved him for trying to give her some space. She’d wished that Laure had accepted, not just for her sake but also for Gabriel’s, as it was the first time he had shown any desire to go for a run since finding Charlie in the quarry. He never went out on his bike either, something he had previously loved to do.
