‘They’re sending me to Brussels. I’ll probably stay the weekend, meet a few people.’
She waited while the tannoy repeated its announcement.
‘They’re calling my flight.’ Another lie. ‘I’ll call when I get there.
‘You too.’
Somewhere in the depths of the night, Ellie had woken and crept to the bathroom. She splashed water on her face and stared at her body in the mirror. Moonlight flooded the room, so that her naked skin became like the marble on the walls. She felt devastated, her limbs like wax. Blanchard’s love-making had been an all-out assault — not physically, but on her very being. Tenderly, delicately, he had stripped her defences until she was reduced to pure sensation, utterly in his power. It had been terrifying, but also ecstatic, a sense of utter abandonment. Even the memory made her shiver.
The light was on when she went back into the bedroom. Blanchard was sitting up in bed, his head tipped back against the pillows. His eyes slid onto her as she crossed the room, admiring her nakedness. She was surprised to find she enjoyed it, the sense of power it gave. She curled up under the duvet beside him and rested her head on his shoulder, running her fingers through the wool of white hair on his chest.
A small gold key hung on a chain around his neck. He’d stripped off everything, but not that. Ellie lifted it up and examined it. The teeth were so intricate they looked as if they’d snap off if they touched a lock; the handle was in the shape of a cross, set with a red stone.
‘What does that open?’
‘My heart.’ Gentle but firm, Blanchard prised the key out of her grip and relocated her hand onto his stomach. He stroked her hair and said, ‘You have to go away tomorrow.’
Ellie pulled back and stared at him. She tugged the duvet up to her shoulders.
‘This is not because of what happened between us tonight. That changes nothing. Nothing at work,’ he corrected himself. ‘Between us, everything. If you want.’
Ellie no longer knew what she wanted. But Blanchard was waiting, and it seemed to matter to him. She nodded.
‘I need you, Ellie. You are an extraordinary person. Together …’ He blew air out of his mouth, as if smoking an imaginary cigar. ‘We are right together. We can accomplish so many things.’
He gripped her arm and pulled her around so that she was inches from his face.
‘Perhaps you think I do this every night, bring back a beautiful young woman to my bedroom. Perhaps you think it is nothing to me — or that it is too much, that I am embarrassed or ashamed. This is not the case. I am in love with you, Ellie. If others talk at the bank, it means nothing to me. But you are young and new: if your colleagues are jealous, it will hurt you.’
He leaned forward and kissed her, pressing her against the mattress, pinning her down with his body. Ellie put her palms against his chest and pushed him back. The key dangled on its chain, tickling the skin between her breasts.
‘What about …?’ She pulled a face, mock sensible. Blanchard understood.
‘I’m clean.’
‘I didn’t mean — you see — I’m not on the pill.’ Two weeks earlier she’d been so busy she’d forgotten to take it three days running. After that, she just hadn’t bothered. She hadn’t needed it with Doug.
‘You do not need any protection with me.’
He spread her hands and buried her beneath him.
It was Joseph Conrad who described Brussels as a whited sepulchre of a city, Ellie remembered. After two days there, digging through the accounts of a minor industrial concern, she felt she’d stepped into a grave herself. The narrow streets and imposing houses with their blinded windows; the silence; the low cloud and constant smell of rain; the Belgians themselves, every face a locked door. She would have given anything to go home for the weekend. But home meant Doug, confrontation and farewell, and she couldn’t deal with that yet. She had to do it face to face, she told herself. He hadn’t said anything when she stopped signing off their conversations with ‘I love you’; she wondered if he’d noticed.
On Saturday morning she ordered breakfast from room service and decided to spend the day in bed with a book. If she couldn’t escape Belgium, at least she could pretend it didn’t exist.
She’d just got out of the shower when she heard a knock from outside. She pulled on a dressing gown and opened the door, realising how hungry she was. But there was no breakfast, and the corridor was empty. All she found was a complimentary newspaper she hadn’t ordered. She picked it up; she was about to throw it straight in the bin when she felt something surprisingly solid inside.
She tipped the newspaper over. A book slid out from the central fold, a guidebook to Brussels. She wondered if it might be a free gift. But the spine was already broken, and she could see the irregular edge of a pink Post-it note poking out of the pages.
With rising anxiety, she opened the book to the marked page. A piece of paper, a folded sheet of yellowing newsprint, sat tucked into the crease. Feeling as if she was delving into some strange kind of Chinese box, Ellie opened it.
It was a single page from the Evening Standard dated 19 February 1988. Among the antiquated news, a small column at the bottom of the page had been asterisked.
BIZARRE DEATH IN TUBE TUNNEL
Central Line Underground services suffered severe disruptions this morning after a man was struck by a train in the deep tunnel between Bank and Liverpool Street stations.
London Underground officials expressed surprise that the man could have wandered so far, given overnight cleaning works and regular services passing through the tunnel earlier in the morning. CCTV images from the stations gave no indication of how he had managed to evade platform security and enter the tunnel.
A spokesman for London Underground said: ‘Thankfully, incidents like this remain astonishingly rare. The tunnels on the Underground network are dangerous places. No member of the public should ever attempt to enter them on foot. This tragic accident only serves to illustrate the perils.’
The deceased has been identified as John Herrin, 38, of Reading, Berkshire.
Ellie sat down on the bed, trembling. There was nothing shocking in the article, beyond the faded tragedy. She had never heard the name John Herrin. It was simply the date. A date she had seen so often, gold lettering in black granite on a damp hillside near Newport.
In loving memory
ANEURIN STANTON
12th May 1949 — 19th February 1988
She flipped through the rest of the guidebook, looking for any clue to who had sent it. Various sights had been highlighted in fluorescent marker, or tagged with asterisks in the margin. The marks looked fresh.
All thoughts of reading in bed were forgotten. She pulled back the curtains, letting in the dirty autumn light, and dressed quickly. Then she went sightseeing.
‘Any tour of Brussels should start with the Grand Place.’ That line of the guidebook was highlighted and starred, so Ellie began there. She dutifully admired the fifteenth-century Hôtel de Ville with its needle spire; the baroque guildhouses with their allegorical carvings of Prudence, Faith, Justice and other virtues that the burghers had arrogated to themselves. She saw the House of the Swan, where Karl Marx had written The Communist Manifesto, and which was now a restaurant where you could pay thirty euros for a starter.
She spent an hour wandering through the Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts, lingering particularly in the Bosch and Breugel rooms which had drawn marks in the guidebook. Several times she spotted a man in a fawn trenchcoat behind her, always just turning away, as if a painting had suddenly interested him. By the time she reached Magritte she had almost persuaded herself to approach him, ask if he was the source of the book. But by then he’d evidently grown bored of the art and she couldn’t find him.