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Names leapt out as I slowed.

Clemence et Alexis

Simo e Paola

Jens heart Agathe

Helen 4 Tom

Another Helen and another Tom. Not hard, there were millions of us. Was she happy with her Tom? I wondered. Was he happy with her? Did he even know who she really was? If she said that was it, she was done, after some stupid row about being late, would he be equally stupid, turn his back and walk away?

On and on they went, the declarations of love indelibly inked in red, green, black on to the kind of padlocks you bought from a local hardware store. Or from one of the North Africans who saved you the trouble of visiting a hardware store by selling you locks from their holdalls for twice the price.

As a symbol of love, a padlock left a lot to be desired. And yet, it seemed strangely apt.

I don’t know how long I’d been staring at the locks when I saw it.

Cold & Heart

Someone had a sick sense of humour. Then I found another:
S & M
. And another:
Heart &
Broken
. Barbs of cynicism among the hope.

Their bleakness sapped what little remained of my equilibrium. I’d stood on the bridge too long. It was cold and I felt sick. I hadn’t eaten since yesterday lunchtime and I hadn’t slept. I’d done a good job of not thinking too much as I ran. But as Paris woke around me, life rushed in. In the last hour, runners and dog walkers had given way to commuters and traffic jams. A woman tutted disapprovingly as I pulled out in front of her. It took all my will power not to give her a very un-French gesture.

Silence enveloped me as I slipped back into the courtyard. There was nothing unusual in that. It wasn’t until I pushed open the lift door on the top floor that I knew something was wrong. The dog in the flat opposite was yapping more than usual, and the smell … The vaguely stagnant air that hovered in all the public areas, that told of damp towels and two-day-old rubbish, had been replaced by something else. Something acrid. Burnt and black. Like toast, scraped into my grandma’s sink, but not. More chemical. A dry, metallic burning like an old light bulb dusty with neglect and grown too hot.

As I turned into our corridor, the odour grew. And there was a sort of haze – like the veil that slowly lifts after a migraine. Only this wasn’t in my head, it was hovering, gauze-like beneath the skylights, wafting up from our floor.

My heart pounding I scrabbled the key fob out of my pocket and ran towards the stench. As our apartment drew closer, so did my fear. I fumbled the key, cursing the idiot – me – who insisted on installing Chubbs and window locks on an apartment three floors up.

As the door flew in, smoke burst out.

Only then did it hit me. Our flat was burning. My cameras, my laptop, all my equipment, all my work. My life was on fire. Without thinking what I was doing, I covered my mouth with my sweatshirt and ran in. I couldn’t see flames for the smoke that forced me out into the corridor again.

‘Madame Martin!’ Frantic, I ran to the stairwell, screaming the concierge’s name, ‘Madame Martin! Fire!
Feu! Le feu!’

It was futile. With three floors and countless walls of stone three hundred years old and twice as thick below there was no way she could hear me. I’d have to go back down. But I couldn’t leave the flat. Behind me I heard a door open, footsteps.

‘Merde!’ said our neighbour, still in her dressing gown. ‘Stay here. I call the pompiers. And Madame Martin. She must know.’

‘I can’t just stand here.’

‘Stay, Hélène,’ she said firmly. ‘Or come with me. Do not go in.’

‘What the fuck, Helen? Helen? Oh my God! Are you all right?’

I spun round.

‘Art! Thank God!’

I took a step towards him, ready to throw myself into his arms.

Then stopped.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Is that all you can say?’ His face frozen, he dropped his arms to his sides, threw his holdall down by my feet and ran back the way he’d come. ‘Call the fire brigade, for fuck’s sake.’ He yelled over his shoulder. ‘Call the fire brigade!’

‘I did,’ I yelled. ‘Eta did.’ Tears were streaming down my face, the smoke billowing from our door stinging my eyes.

Within seconds Art was back, a fire extinguisher in his arms.

Where had he got that? I didn’t even remember seeing one.

Pushing past me, he yanked the lid from the fuse box just inside the door, flipped off the mains power, ripped the pin from the fire extinguisher and aimed it through the living-room door. ‘I’ve told you,’ he yelled, face white – with fear or fury, I wasn’t sure. ‘I’ve told you the electrics aren’t safe. You’ve seen the wiring. Turn your fucking computer and stuff off before you go out. How many times do I have to say that?’

‘I did!’ I shouted, trying not to look at the yellow-and-green wires curling from a hole in the wall above our flat door. ‘It was the last thing I did before I went out. I swear it!’

He yelled something in response. Something I couldn’t hear over the roar of the extinguisher. Then there were footsteps pounding along the corridor behind me and our tiny flat was full of uniforms and my brain went blank. I no longer understood a word they were saying. All I could see were mouths moving and arms waving, pushing me away.

But I knew it had to be my fault. What had happened to me?

Fifteen minutes later I stood in the dripping mess that was our living room. The fire had been surprisingly contained, the pompiers told us as Madame Martin bustled off to call the landlord so the landlord could call the insurers. Once they’d realised the fabric of the building wasn’t damaged, everyone lost interest. It was a small, very straightforward fire. Confined to one room and focused on the one corner of it, by the desk and the electric fire. The rest of it was just interior smoke damage.

And burnt wiring, of course. And my photographs for the exhibition.

Whatever fury had gripped Art earlier had passed. The old Art was back. Calm, efficient, in control. He’d dealt with the French firemen and placated Madame Martin, charmed Eta into shrugging it off and smiling as she returned to her own flat. Now there was just him, me and the mess.

‘Are you all right?’ he said, wrapping his arms round me. My face pressed against the fabric of his shirt. ‘God, Helen,’ his left hand stroked my hair, while his right hand clamped me to him. My muscles tensed. I felt him feel them tense.

‘I was so scared,’ he said. ‘Don’t frighten me like that again.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Promise me, Helen. Promise you’ll listen to me about the electrics.’

‘I did,’ I said, my voice muffled by his smoky shirt. A row was the last thing I wanted, but I knew, I was one hundred per cent certain, I’d turned everything off. Art’s hand stroked. My mind raced. I’d played the sequence over and over. I’d turned off the fire, the two electric radiators, unplugged my laptop, the TV, the kettle, checked the window locks, and went out double-locking the door. Short of unplugging the fridge …

‘I …’

‘It’s OK, Helen.’

‘No, Art,’ I forced my head from his chest and his hand stopped, poised where I couldn’t see it. I could still feel its presence.

If I could just explain, make him see what I could see, we could work out what had happened.

‘No, Art, what?’

I forced myself to look up at him. Still clamped against him, I couldn’t see the expression in his eyes.

‘I did check. I swear. It must have been an accident.’

‘An accident?’

‘Yes. An accident.’

‘There are no such things as accidents, Helen.’ The stroking resumed. ‘You know that.’

‘Sometimes there are. It just happened. Things do.’

‘It just happened?’

Stroke, stroke, stroke.

‘It just fucking happened?’ Calm voice belying the aggression of his words.

Shut up, Helen, I thought, shut up. Shut up now.

‘Why won’t you believe me?’

‘What won’t I believe you about?’

‘The fire. The electrics … It’s my stuff, Art. It’s my stuff that’s gone. OK, the desk’s a lost cause and the rug’s had it. But it’s my photographs. My exhibition.’

His hand paused, lying heavy near the top of my head. Somehow the weight of it was worse than the stroking. Taking a deep breath, I ploughed on. ‘It’s my first exhibition in years. My first ever in Paris. It won’t matter to them why I don’t deliver. I’ll simply be the English woman who can’t be relied on. You know they won’t ask me again.’

Yes they will, of course they will –
that’s what he was meant to say.
Don’t worry. We’ll work something out.

Instead, his silence hung like a weight between us. His warm breath heavy on my ear. I could taste bile and chemical fumes from the extinguisher in my throat. I forced myself on. ‘Art?’

‘What?’

‘What are you doing here?’

It had been playing on my mind since the fire brigade left. Before that. What
was
he doing here? Outside, the school bell rang across the rooftops. The playground echoed with children’s shouts. Runacross, or whatever French infants played. A ball hit something it shouldn’t have hit.

The sharp reprimand of a teacher.

‘It’s ten thirty in the morning, Art,’ I said, forcing my hand further into the flames with each word. ‘You’ve never come back at this time. Not once.’ The last words came out as a whisper, fell heavily to the floor.

‘I came back.’ His voice was flat in my ear, cold. ‘To get some peace. Thought you’d have gone to the gallery and I’d get more work done. God knows what would have happened if I hadn’t.’

His arm tightened around me.

‘I turned everything off before I went out,’ I repeated. How many times I’d already said it, I had no idea. But this time I was more certain than ever. ‘I know I did.’

He sighed. ‘You need to start taking some responsibility for yourself and stop making excuses.’

‘So you’re saying this wasn’t the first fire?’ Gil asked, leaning forward. ‘That the fire in Paris this time was connected?’

‘No,’ Helen shook her head, swallowed the rest of her vodka in one mouthful.

Gil waited patiently while she stopped coughing.

‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’ She could hear her voice rising. ‘I don’t know what happened in the fire last month. Don’t you understand? I can’t remember.’

24

Syria 2012

After the fire, I found the courage to leave. I’d given up my flat when we married so I ended up at my sister’s. She moved Sophie into Jake’s room, much to their mutual disgust, and I got two months of every relative I’d ever known telling me what a great guy Art was and what a terrible mistake I was making. My mother, my sister, my sister’s husband, Art’s parents, Art’s friend Mark …

Everybody loved Art. What was wrong with me? He was such a great bloke, such a catch, how could I be so heartless? What had he done that was so bad …?

How could I possibly answer those questions?

The poor broken-hearted lamb.

It was one long process of attrition. He waged a war to get me back, emails to my friends, emails to friends in common, letters to my mother, my sister, everyone he could think of. I fought to stay away, but his forces were stronger, and in the end his side won.

Eventually, they wore me down.

His timing was immaculate. By the time he came over on the Eurostar and persuaded me to go up to London to meet him, just to hear him out, I’d have believed black was white if he’d told me it was. Despite everything I’d done, everything I’d achieved, he had everyone believing my success was down to him. Was it any surprise if I started to believe it too?

We met at Antonio’s, the Italian place we used to eat in at the start. The manager was different, the waiters had changed and so had the décor, the food was twice the price and half as good. But Art was making an effort. He told me how much he’d missed me, how taking a break had been good for him, it had made him realise what he’d done, how bad things had got …

He almost blew it by saying it didn’t matter whose fault the fire was.

And I used my brief flare of anger to lay down some conditions. The minute we’d moved to Paris, Art had started to object to me being away so much. Ironic, given my travelling was meant to be one of the reasons we’d moved there. That had to stop. I was taking the next job I was offered. Wherever in the world it was. However long I was away. Without a camera in my hands I wasn’t me. He could take it or leave it. That was non-negotiable.

He grinned, took my hand across the table and told me this was the me he recognised, the me he’d fallen in love with, the furious one. Afterwards, he delivered me to the station. He didn’t try to persuade me to book into a cheap hotel. Didn’t even try to kiss me. Instead he stood on the platform and asked me to give his love to my parents and sister and asked me, rather than told me, to think about it and promised he’d really changed.

It had been a wake-up call.

We were a team. A good team. We’d always been a team.

And like a fool I believed him. I moved back and for a while everything was almost the way it had been at the beginning. We went out for dinner, talked, made love. He’d had the flat redecorated and bought me a new computer, much flashier and more expensive than I needed. I did a couple of small European assignments, some photojournalism in Iceland. He admired it. Seemed genuinely proud of me. Then, I was asked to go to Syria. Art didn’t bat an eyelid. But the next day he told me head office had pulled some strings and got him a visa. Wouldn’t it be great to see our names together on the front page again …