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Gabriel moved past her, stepped into the hall and pushed open the door to the sitting room.
“Well, somebody’s been here,” he said, nodding toward a pile of magazines strewn on the low table.
Iris peered around him, then pointed to the indents in the sofa. “And is maybe still here.” She looked at Gabriel in alarm. “Squatters?”
Instinctively, he moved in front of her, then bellowed down the hallway.
“Is anyone there?”
From somewhere upstairs, there was an exclamation of surprise, followed by the sound of footsteps running along the corridor.
“Gabriel?” A woman’s voice, breathy, hesitant. “Is that you?”
Iris stared at the figure standing at the top of the stairs, her dark hair tumbling around her shoulders, the legs of her pale blue pajamas pooling around her feet. “Laure?”
Laure placed a hand on her heart. “Iris! You gave me a fright! What are you doing here?”
“Apart from the fact that we live here, you mean?” Gabriel said, sounding amused rather than offended.
Embarrassed, Laure laughed. “Yes, yes, of course, it’s just that I wasn’t expecting you.” Hitching up her pajama bottoms, she ran down the stairs, hugged Iris fiercely, then moved back, reproach in her liquid-brown eyes. “You said in your email that you wouldn’t be back until tomorrow.”
“We decided not to stop off in York,” Iris found herself explaining, aware that she was practically apologizing for coming back earlier than expected to her own house.
While Gabriel swept Laure into a hug, Iris looked up the stairs, waiting for Pierre to appear. It would do Gabriel a world of good to see his best friend. Pierre must have had a meeting in London, and he and Laure had come to surprise them. “Where’s Pierre?” she asked. “Don’t tell me he’s already asleep?”
Laure shook her head, then sank onto the stairs, her pretty face etched with misery. A chill crept down Iris’s spine.
“Laure, what’s happened?”
“It’s Pierre.”
“Is he all right?” Gabriel’s voice was rough with urgency and, turning toward him, Iris saw that his face had drained of color. She reached for his hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.Please don’t let anything have happened to Pierre, not on top of Charlie Ingram and Gabriel’s dad.
Laure nodded quickly. “Yes, he is fine, he is very fine,” she said, her normally impeccable English deserting her, a sign of her distress. “He has a child, why wouldn’t he be fine?”
There was a stunned silence.
“Pierre has a child?” Gabriel stuttered.
Laure nodded. “It is what he says.”
“But—When? How? I mean, it’s not possible.”
“It seems he had an affair.”
“He couldn’t have,” Iris protested. “He loves you.”
And Laure burst into noisy sobs.
2
Leaving Laure and Gabriel talking in the kitchen, Iris headed upstairs for a shower.
Yawning with tiredness, she pushed open the door to their bedroom, then stopped. The bed was a tangle of rumpled bed sheets. There was a mug on her bedside table, a magazine on Gabriel’s pillow, and a mound of used tissues strewn over the floor. While one part of Iris’s brain was telling her that Laure wouldn’t have moved into their room when there were two perfectly good guest rooms, another part was reminding her that she’d stripped the bed before leaving for Scotland.
“Laure!” she called.
Laure came running up the stairs and burst into the bedroom.
