Part 8 (1/2)

After a long silence, his heart thumping, he replied, 'We don't have that one, I'm afraid. In fact I don't think it's been written yet.'

The thing he had not dared expect but had hoped for all the same had happened: Laure Valadier had turned up in his bookshop. How on earth had she tracked him down? It didn't matter, she was here and a lot of other things, like closing time or the leaky pipe, didn't matter either. Over her arm was the object that had kept him up at night for the last month. The object he knew by heart and which had in a sense become his. Laurent took a step down, then another and another until he was level with her. Those pale eyes were fixed on him, her hair was short now, and there was a knowing, enigmatic smile playing on her lips.

'I don't know what to say,' Laurent said quietly.

'Me neither,' said Laure, 'so I'll start at the beginning, with what everyone says when they meet for the first time.'

She lowered her eyes and then looked up at him.

'h.e.l.lo, Laurent.'

The first sentence Laure Valadier wrote in her new red Moleskine notebook was: I like kissing Laurent.

This kiss took place forty-eight hours after their meeting, at the foot of Laure's building, in the exact same spot where the man had grabbed her bag five weeks earlier.

While she was closing her eyes and wrapping her arms around Laurent's back, five floors up Belphegor was clawing an armchair in the living room, just as Putin was doing four arrondiss.e.m.e.nts away it gave them both the same pleasurable feeling in their front paws.

At the moment Laurent was pulling Laure towards him, Pascal Ma.s.selou was adding three new female names to his 'Prospective' folder and noting a worrying 25.3 per cent decline in additions to the folder marked 'Stock'.

While Laure flicked the light switch in the entrance hall, Chloe was on MSN chatting online to a boy with gla.s.ses in the year above whose name was Alexandre and who, she had discovered one break time, shared her appreciation of the poems of Stephane Mallarme.