Philip Kerr - Research

She stood up, abruptly, let out a deep breath and shook her head.

‘ Alors ,’ she said quietly.

‘You’re not leaving?’ I said.

‘Yes. I have to go. There’s someone I have to meet.’

‘Not John.’

‘No, not John.’

I stood up and offered her my hand. ‘It was nice to meet you.’

‘Yes,’ she said, distracted as she shook my hand. ‘Yes, it was. Goodbye, Mr Irvine.’

She turned to walk away.

‘Hey, don’t forget your handbag.’

She came back and fetched it, nodding her thanks.

I sat down and watched her go. The waiter came back.

‘That’s a very nice-looking girl,’ he observed with considerable understatement. ‘A friend of yours?’

‘No.’

‘I’ve seen her here before.’

‘She’s gone now.’

‘Better luck next time.’

‘What do you think? Is she a working girl?’

He smiled. ‘Monsieur, this is Monte Carlo. All of the girls who are here are working, one way or another. Even the ones who are married.’ He paused. ‘Perhaps the ones who are married, most of all.’

I picked up my so-called newspaper. I started reading an article about yet another lovely gala evening at the casino. It was for charity, of course, but as always the charity was a way of clearing the conscience, in order that the rich residents might be able to do what rich people like to do, which is to go somewhere smart and eye-wateringly expensive with lots of other rich people and still feel that by doing this they are also doing the world a favour. The celebrities attending the gala were the usual fashionable suspects, which is to say the here today, gone tomorrow crowd of pretty girls and even prettier boys. But after a moment I saw that Colette was back at my table. She was wearing a light pair of wire-framed glasses now and her eyes were red as if she’d been crying, but that didn’t diminish her beauty — at least not in my eyes; indeed, the glasses and the tears made her seem like less of the pneumatic fantasy figure I’d imagined earlier — more real and therefore sexier.

‘That was rude of me,’ she said. ‘Juvenile. You’d just ordered me a drink. And then I left.’

‘Not at all. You were upset. About John going back to England. I could see it came as quite a shock to you.’

She took out her handkerchief, removed her glasses for a moment and dabbed her eyes.

‘It wasn’t only that,’ she said, ‘but yes, it was a little.’ She sat down again. ‘And now I think I should like a real drink. In fact I’m certain of it.’

We waved the waiter back and she ordered a large cognac.

‘I’m sorry. I had no idea that you and he were such good friends.’ I lifted my head to have another look at her. I suppose she was about thirty. Good-looking but perhaps not so very bright either. Her hair was gathered in a ponytail and shone like a newly groomed horse. She was tall and athletic and I wondered not what she was like in bed — I knew the answer to that just looking at her — but what I would be like in bed with her: restored, rejuvenated? There is no Viagra quite as powerful as a woman half your age. ‘I spoke out of turn. Really, it’s none of my business.’

The waiter returned with her cognac. She took it straight off his tray and drank half immediately before placing the glass on the table. Had she not been so unworthy of a famous writer like John I might almost have felt sorry for her.

‘Oh, but it is, I think, Mr Irvine. Your business and mine. We’ve both been disappointed, haven’t we? You as a writer; and me as a GFE.’

‘A what?’

‘Girlfriend experience. That’s the abbreviation men use these days for someone like me who’s effectively a girlfriend for money. In my defence I must say that I did think I was something more than that, but evidently I’m not.’ She tried a smile but it came out ill-shapen and bitter-looking. ‘It seems that I’ve been deluding myself and that after all I’m just a talonneur , like all the rest.’

‘You shouldn’t talk about yourself like that.’

‘I’m just being honest. I’m not an escort. No, I’m not that. At the same time it would be dishonest of me to tell you that I loved John for himself. But I do love him. It’s true, the fact that he is so very rich didn’t discourage this feeling in me. Indeed, it helped convince me that I have feelings for him. Nevertheless I do have feelings for him. Even now that I find he was planning to abandon me. I love him, yes. And that is why this hurts so very, very much.’

‘We don’t know any of what I said for sure,’ I said. ‘For all I know, what he told me was not the whole truth. In fact I’m sure of it. The truth is never whole with John. In fact I think he only gives you half or three-quarters of the truth at any one time, depending who he’s slicing it for. But it’s still the truth. Only not all of it, you see? It’s because he’s a writer, I suppose. A lot of the time his mind is dwelling in some fantasy place — he’s thinking about a book he’s planning, not about anything real. Sometimes the two get blurred. John can tell more truth with a lie than a lot of people can do by telling the truth. So, just because he said that he wanted to move back to London doesn’t mean to say that he was actually going to do it — at least, do it right away. He might just have told me that in order to furnish me and the other guys with an excuse to close down the atelier . To get rid of us with a minimum of explanation. It might be several years before he moves back to London.’ I touched her knee and gave it what I hoped would feel like an encouraging squeeze. In truth I just wanted to feel what her skin was like: it was taut, and slightly moist and when I brushed my nose with the same hand a second later, I could smell the scented body-butter on my fingers. Body butter: just the words made me want to spread her on a thick slice of bread and stuff it in my mouth. ‘Honestly, you should ignore everything I said before. I have no idea what his plans in Monaco are.’

‘You’re very sweet.’ She smiled. ‘And I understand exactly what you say. John lives his life in compartments. You in one. His wife in another. Me in a third.’ She shrugged. ‘Although perhaps I flatter myself. I know there are others beside me, so perhaps I am in a lower number than three. Maybe six or seven, I don’t know. But I haven’t heard so much as a little slice of what you said before. Not even a sliver. The last conversation I had with him, on the subject of him and I, John told me that ...’ She stopped. ‘Or perhaps you don’t want to hear this. You are his friend, after all.’

I made a wry-looking face.

‘I used to think that was true. But the truth is he’s always regarded me not as a friend but as a long-term employee. As half of a professional relationship that has endured. Which isn’t friendship at all — at least not for me — but a kind of indentured servitude. So I do want to hear it. Like you said before, perhaps we have more in common than we know.’

She looked around. ‘Not here,’ she said. ‘I don’t like this place.’

‘No? I quite like it.’

‘That’s because you’re a man. Everywhere seems different when you’re a man. Monaco is a little like the Vatican in that it’s set up for men, not women. But women go along with that. For all the obvious reasons.’

‘All right.’ I stood up and waved the waiter over. ‘Where shall we go?’

‘Your hotel?’

‘The Capitole.’

She frowned. ‘I don’t know that one.’

I grinned. ‘It’s in Beausoleil.’

‘But, I don’t understand. You’re working for John. Why doesn’t he put you up somewhere nice? Somewhere in Monaco. Even this place would be better than Beausoleil.’