The Chrysalis Read online

  I don’t even look at him. I prefer to say nothing than to argue.

  “I’ll put them on here,” he says, placing them on the small table beside me, “and perhaps when I come back in a little while…”

  “Some things aren’t fixed by tablets,” I say.

  “No,” he says, shortly.

  His hand trembles as he tries to screw the top back on the bottle.

  “How is Abbie?

  Zac turns from the trolley

  “You remember her name!”

  I almost want to laugh.

  “You disappoint me, Zac.”

  “Why?”

  “You believe them.”

  “Believe who?”

  “Them.” I wave my hand dismissively over my shoulder.

  He looks at me intently for a moment, as if deciding whether to speak. Then does.

  “Shona said that you could not remember what you had for breakfast on Thursday, a couple of hours after you’d had it.”

  “Oh Shona! What does Shona know?”

  Zac looks uncomfortable at my disdain.

  “It was an indifferent breakfast,” I continue.

  “I see.”

  “Why would I want to remember a watery poached egg on soggy toast?”

  “So you did remember!”

  “Well…” I turn my chair from him and move it closer to the window. “Perhaps that was Wednesday.”

  I have my back to him but I can tell Zac is staring at the back of my head, wondering. Then I hear the trolley trundle onwards. Outside, the pink blooms have begun to brown at the edges.

  Six months later, the French police paid us a visit. I couldn’t believe it but it was almost a relief when we heard they were coming and the long awaited dread became a reality rather than a nebulous fear. The case of Patrice Moreau did not hit the headlines in Britain so nobody was any the wiser about our involvement. Naturally, Raymond did not want to go into long-winded explanations with his Headmaster, a dull geographer in an earth-brown suit who was hardly his greatest fan in any case, and so he simply took a day off sick. I, who had more control over my hours, made sure to come straight from the office and deliberately arrived at the house a few minutes after they did. Subtle messages are important. They could wait for me.

  I was dressed in a dark suit with a long line jacket that hid the disproportionate width of my hips quite successfully, a creamy blouse with a tie neck, and high heeled court shoes. A marcasite brooch that Raymond had given me, a peacock with open feathers, was pinned to the lapel of my jacket. I was every inch the professional woman.

  Raymond was sitting in an uneasy silence in the sitting room with two French officers perched on my sofa when I arrived. I sailed into the room and put a pile of legal folders down casually on the table. I saw their eyes flick to the embossed name on the front of the folders. ANDERSON, BROWN, AND BATES, LAWYERS.

  “Sorry to keep you,” I said briskly. “How can we help?”

  They had made sure, this time, to send English speakers, at least. There was one who did more of the talking than the other, a middle-aged, square-jawed man with a tight, military haircut and cold eyes. Jacques Charpentier, he said his name was. He introduced his partner, Emile Pascal, a young man who looked to be in his twenties.

  More information, Charpentier said, had come to light about Bar Patrice. They understood that Patrice Moreau had some “unusual clientele” who visited the back room of the bar. They were trying to get as much information about these people and that back room as possible and it had been suggested that perhaps we were part of Patrice’s “special circle.” A private club, almost.

  Damn Henri Duval, I thought.

  “We were holidaymakers in the town,” I said. “Hardly part of his special circle.”

  Raymond kept quiet during this exchange and Charpentier glanced at him.

  “Monsieur?”

  Raymond shrugged.

  “We knew Patrice,” he said. “We visited once or twice.”

  “How close were you?” asked Charpentier bluntly.

  “To Patrice?” I answered for him.

  Charpentier stared at me.

  “Were you lovers?”

  “Certainly not!”

  I have no idea why he did not ask Raymond the same question directly. And I have no idea how Raymond would have answered if he had. I simply embraced the jewel of luck that life threw in my direction.

  “Patrice had so many lovers…” I said. “I would not have lowered myself to be one of the long line.” I could see Raymond was not pleased by my reply. He gives too much away, I thought.

  “But the back room of the bar, it was…” Charpentier broke off and had a short, sharp exchange in French with his partner. “It was a club for sex? A meeting for swingers?”

  I smiled at the stilted English but Raymond was angry. Patrice’s was never just about sex for Raymond.

  “No,” Raymond said shortly. “It was not a sex club.”

  “So why did you go there?”

  I answered before Raymond could.

  “As I said, we were on holiday. It was a different world. We were invited.” I shrugged. “We were curious.”

  Charpentier’s partner, who had said little up to now, looked up from taking notes. His English was much more accented than Charpentier’s, more difficult to understand.

  “But you were not there one holiday only,” he said. “You have apartment there?”

  “That is correct.”

  “How long ago did you buy the apartment?” Charpentier cut in.

  “Four years.”

  “And you knew Patrice Moreau how long?”

  “Three years.”

  “Can you tell us any names?” he asked. “Of people you met, of Moreau’s lovers?”

  “Not really,” I replied. “We were there – but not often enough. We did not know anybody well enough to remember names.”

  It was my intention to give a little information: to give none would look suspicious. But not enough to cast suspicion on ourselves. We had to look like bit-part actors in this drama.

  “No, wait a minute,” I said turning to Raymond. “There was one - what was the name again Raymond - long dark hair, pale skin….”

  Raymond looked at me neutrally.

  “Jasmine,” I said, as if it had only just occurred to me. “Jasmine Labelle.”

  Charpentier muttered something in French that I did not catch. His partner grunted.

  The blonde woman, Charpentier said, the one that I had spotted at Patrice’s window. Had I seen her before? I shook my head.

  We circled for another half hour. They had obviously decided Moreau’s death was a crime of passion – in that they were not wrong – and were intent on finding out all the possible combinations of relationships that had gone on in the back bar in the hope of finding a motive and a suspect. No, we did not have any French lovers who were part of the Bar Patrice scene. No, we did not know anyone who had a grudge against Patrice, or a reason to kill him. No, there was no other information that we had not given.

  Charpentier was getting frustrated but lawyers know how to deal with the police. I know how they work and I kept calm.

  “You left without telling us.”

  I looked him straight in the eye. I have watched the furtive behaviour of enough suspects to know you must maintain direct eye gaze.

  “Why would we tell you we were leaving? We stuck to our plans. Are you saying we were suspects, Monsieur Charpentier? Because certainly, nobody suggested such a thing at the time.”

  Charpentier said nothing but glanced down and began writing in his notebook.

  “When do you expect to be back in France?” he demanded finally.

  “I don’t,” I said. “Not surprisingly, Patrice’s death has shocked us. The area is quite spoiled for us. I think it will be quite some time before we venture back.”

  “We may need you to come back,” he said.

  “Are you talking extradition, Monsieur Charpentier?” I
asked coolly.

  It was a risk, I knew, but he looked taken aback.

  “Not at this stage, no,” he said, “but…”

  “In that case,” I interrupted, “I don’t think you will see us back for some time.”

  I smiled and stood up.

  “But forgive me. I am forgetting my manners. Can I fix you gentlemen some coffee?” I felt their eyes burning into my back as I walked to the door. “You have come such a long way to see us. Is this the first time you have been in England?”

  Whatever evidence they had, they did not have enough. We did not see them again. And Patrice was, after all, in the eyes of the conventional, a misfit, a pervert, a man few claimed or mourned for. Nobody – other than his family of course – was clamouring for his killer to be caught. He had put Saint Estelle on the map in a way its inhabitants did not want and they were happy to forget. Things were different back then. But perhaps Monsieur Charpentier and his companion would have taken some satisfaction if they had known how destructive their visit was to Raymond and me. How many heart-stopping times over the years that we jumped at a sharp knock at the door, an official envelope through the post, or the persistent ring of the telephone.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Zac

  It has been nine months, Zac thinks, fingering Abbie’s lace shirt. Almost a year. He has come close a few times but never succumbed. For the first couple of months, he was so relieved at the prospect of being normal, that he barely thought about it. Back then, he thought the euphoria that came from finally conforming would last forever. Abbie was a defence against a life he did not want. A life where he would always be on the outside, ridiculed and despised and shunned. He’d had a taste of that at school. The whispered comments when he’d walked by, the suppressed sniggers. Gay boy. Poof. Shirt lifter. Inaccurate but the closest schoolboys could get to what was “wrong” with Zac. Then Abbie, pretty as a poppet, had come along and he had grabbed hold and clung to her as if she were a life buoy.

  She was due in from work soon. But there was still time, he thought. No, there wasn’t, another voice in his head shot back immediately. Yes, yes, yes, there was. He pulled his shirt over his head and slipped his arms into the shirt. He wondered what it would look like with proper underwear underneath and he opened the drawer on the side of the dressing table. It felt like lancing a boil when he slipped his arms through the bra straps, and then fastened up the shirt buttons. The inexplicable thing was that from that very first time that he had slipped Elicia’s dress on, there had always been an incredible feeling of peace underneath the more urgent emotion, which was a fear of discovery.

  Until he stood up and looked in the mirror. It wasn’t right. He didn’t look right. He looked in aguish at his own reflection, his tall, flat-chested masculine body that so distressed him, with its lumps and bumps in all the wrong places. He looked ungainly in the lace shirt and there was chest hair visible in the v of the neckline.

  “You are ridiculous,” he said aloud to his reflection. He sat down at the dressing table and felt a surge of anger and sadness. He picked up a lipstick and plastered it over his mouth furiously. Clown, he thought. You are a clown.

  The lipstick spread over the edges of his mouth and he threw it down before grabbing an eye pencil and drawing a grotesque thick outline round his eyes. There were tears spilling even as he attempted to apply the mascara, and the salty rivers ran black and bitter on his cheeks. His nose filled with mucous and he didn’t stop to wipe it as a drop formed at the end of his nose. He deserved to look ugly.

  “You are disgusting!” he whispered.

  When the door banged, he did not move. Why wasn’t he moving? He was pushing the self-destruct button, he realised. He wanted to be found. It would be a relief. There was time, still, to run, to hide. God knows he had done it before. He stayed where he was but reached for a tissue from the box on the dressing table and scrubbed the angrily applied lipstick from his mouth.

  “Zac?”

  Abbie’s voice floated upstairs, just as Elicia’s had done years ago. Still he did not move. He took another tissue and wiped the worst of the liner from his eyes but it smudged into grey blotches underneath. He pulled another tissue from the box and wet it with his tongue. His heart hammered as he waited. A thought crossed his mind. If Abbie accepted him, loved him even now, would it be enough to make him love her back? Properly love her? Acceptance was such an enormous thing.

  “Zac?” The door pushed open. “There you -”

  Abbie stopped dead. There was a part of him that noted, with surprisingly impassive interest, that the first emotion on her face was not anger or outrage, but fear. Terror even. It matched his own.

  She gave a little nervous laugh, as if to reassure herself that this was not as it seemed; it was some joke.

  “What are you… Zac?”

  Her voice spiralled upwards.

  Tears were cascading now, washing down Zac’s face.

  “I’m sorry, Abbie,” he whispered.

  “What is it Zac?” she moved forward to him, put her hand tentatively on his back. Her first instinct was to protect him, he thinks. He waits for the disgust to kick in. “Zac…?” Her voice was shrill, desperate for reassurance. “What are you doing?”

  “I can’t help it.”

  She knelt down beside him.

  “Can’t help what?”

  “This.” He looked down at himself. “This.”

  He felt her hand stiffen on his back. He realised she was looking for an explanation. She wanted him to laugh and say he was just fooling around, going to a fancy dress party, anything rational. His seriousness was frightening her. She wanted him to smile. She wanted him to say anything as long as it wasn’t the truth.

  “Why are you wearing this, Zac? Why are you dressed like…?”

  “Like a drag queen?”

  She looked at him in a way he didn’t recognise, and he knew in that moment that some element of her sexual attraction to him had just died. You couldn’t control that. Zac knew that better than most. She was still kneeling beside him and he looked at the plump cushions of her lips and thought, without any hint of desire, how perfect they were. There was something intensely feminine about Abbie, not just in the way she looked but in her sexual preferences. There was little doubt in Zac’s mind that while she liked his carefully styled appearance, it was the masculine beneath that she was physically attracted to. Take that away and she might still care emotionally, but the sexual chemistry would be gone. There was no element of androgyny with Abbie.

  “Why have…”

  “I don’t know.”

  He couldn’t look at her.

  “Zac…”

  “I don’t know!”

  She looked at him with such vulnerability that she seemed to him like a child and he grabbed hold of her wrist.

  “Abbie, I’m sorry. This is just something I feel compelled to do sometimes. It’s just… it’s not anything to be frightened of. It’s part of me. Honestly it just makes me feel…”

  “You’ve done this before?”

  “I…”

  “This isn’t… you’ve been doing this all the time we’ve…” she said, her finely plucked eyebrows rising into an inverted ‘V’ of indignation. She wrenched her wrist free of him. The terror had gone suddenly, changing as rapidly as drifting clouds into an emotion of a quite different shape.

  “No! No, I haven’t!”

  Abbie looked at him coldly.

  “You look ridiculous.”

  Zac flinched inside. She wanted to lash out, to hurt him as she was hurting, but wasn’t she just confirming what he had had told himself?

  She stood up but Zac didn’t move. He wanted her to hold him more than he’d ever wanted her to hold him before, but he knew she wouldn’t. He was sore with the need to be touched. Abbie walked to the door.

  “Abbie, I swear I haven’t done this while we have been together.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Abbie…”


  “What?”

  He could hardly hear her voice it was so quiet. He almost wished she would shout or scream or even cry. This was so much more silent, and so much worse, than he had imagined. At the door, she turned and looked at him as if she was simply looking straight through him.

  He shook his head. Nothing. There was nothing.

  She closed the door quietly.

  Zac stood outside the kitchen, listening to the sudden rush of the kettle. His face was scrubbed clean now and he was dressed in his own clothes. He reached out for the door handle but his hand hovered for a minute before retreating back to his side. He couldn’t go in. A familiar, cramping pain twisted in his abdomen. Just caused by stress, his doctor had said dismissively over the years. Try not to get stressed. Zac’s hand snaked out again. He couldn’t stay out here forever. He had to face her. Tentatively, he opened the door.

  Abbie didn’t even look at him.

  “Do you want tea?” she asked. Her voice was flat and small.

  He had diminished her, he thought, and the realisation seared him. Abby knew where her power lay: it was in the way she looked. Zac was responsible for making her feel less desirable, less confident in her femininity. Sometimes, his own life had felt like a process of getting smaller and smaller until he feared there would be nothing left. He didn’t want to do that to anybody else.

  “Do you want tea?” she repeated.

  “No. Thanks.”

  He pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sat down. A half emptied bag of shopping was spread over the top. A carton of milk. A jar of Thai curry paste. A small bunch of cheap supermarket daffodils, still in their cellophane; a bar of chocolate. Friday night treats.

  Abbie reached for the milk and opened the fridge.

  “Are you… are you gay, Zac?”

  She was rooting in the fridge, pretending to rearrange it but he could sense that she was holding her breath.

  He shook his head.

  Labels, he thought. What good were labels? Gay boy. Poof.

  “No,” he said. Even as he said the word, he knew it was misleading and felt a kind of despair. But what was he supposed to say?