‘And it’s not like I’m going anywhere.’
That was the problem. He wouldn’t leave. She couldn’t stay. She had to go, if only for a while.
So she’d taken a lecturing job at St John’s in Oxford, as close as she could get to the prestigious Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology, and she could visit their parents back in Dublin easily enough, much to their delight, since Jason was off gallivanting around the world in search of whatever shiny thing had captured his fancy at that moment.
And she’d loved it. Loved the students, the atmosphere, the work, the city. And she was good at it; so good that a short-term posting had become a longer one. OCMA were talking about a research fellowship. It was a dream, or would have been if Simon was with her.
Simon never complained. Her visits to Sainte Sirène became brief holiday breaks. His visits to her had been a job. She’d got him to be a guest lecturer on a number of occasions, an assistant on any number of digs, and he was such a hit with the undergraduates – smart, sexy, charming, her handsome Frenchman. What a team they had been.
But their holidays always had to come to an end. He came back here, she went back there. And they always promised that next time…next time…
He’d written her letters. Beautiful, romantic letters, page after page of his elegant handwriting, like something from an earlier age. Simon always said letter writing was important, a lost and dying art. One of her colleagues had called it contrived and pompous, but Ari didn’t care. Simon’s letters weren’t like that. They were a glimpse into his soul. She loved them like she loved him.
But the last letter had been something else. She’d never told anyone about it, never shared it with anyone. She had stood there, in shock, holding the pendant which had slipped out with it in her numb fingers, reading the words, unable to believe they came from the same man.
My dearest Ari,
There is no easy way to say this. I should be brave and say it face to face, but I do not possess that kind of bravery…
And then, still reeling from the letter, she got the call from Jason.
‘There’s been an accident.’ He’d said it so simply that she thought he meant a fender bender, or a broken arm. But the weight behind the words, the heaviness in his voice, set every instinct ringing with alarm. She knew her brother, knew him inside and out.
‘He was in the water…’
She’d fallen apart.
By the time she picked up enough of the pieces, that dream life, the job at the pinnacle of her field was gone. She’d found another job in a private school, teaching classics, history and any other gaps she could fill in their curriculum. She’d found a crummy flat, which she only used as a place to sleep and store her belongings. She’d turned her back on archaeology, putting it, with Simon, firmly in the grave. She had run away. From her life, from her job, from her brother, from everything.
Now she was back here, the ghosts of Simon Poullain, his search for Ys and that lost life were everywhere.
Ari hadn’t meant to sleep. She’d cried again, harder than she had cried in years, and eventually there were no more tears. She woke up suddenly, from a dream which faded as soon as she opened her eyes, flowing out of her mind like a wave retreating down the beach. Her throat was tight and uncomfortable and the sense of the sea all around her – the smell of it, the chill touch, the currents turning her this way and that, manipulating her helpless body – took another moment to fade away.
There was a knock at the door. ‘Ari? We have a visitor who’s dying to meet you,’ said Jason. And then he was gone.
There were voices, hushed tones. Like whispers on the edge of her hearing, calling her.
Ari dragged herself up off the bed, pulled on her clothes and splashed cold water on her face until she made a fairly believable impression of a functioning human being. She dragged her hands through her pixie-cut hair, just to even things out. Then she made her way downstairs to find out what her brother had gotten himself into this time.
An older woman sat in the armchair beside the wood burner in the living room, facing the door. As Ari descended the stairs, she looked up and her piercing eyes examined the new arrival. Her long dark hair was shot with silver, and piled up at the back of her head in a carelessly elaborate bun. Her clothes looked sleek and elegant. It was difficult to tell her age. She could have been sixty or eighty, ageless in that way the super-rich often were. Ari knew the type instantly. Benefactresses – that was what Jason called them, and he could spot them in an instant. He charmed them, collected them, nurtured them. He didn’t go beyond flirtation. He didn’t have to. And he flirted with everyone anyway. The Irish blood in him, he said. He couldn’t help himself. They loved him.
The woman’s smile was gentle, her expression knowing.
‘Oh good, there you are,’ said Jason. She hadn’t seen him standing just inside the doorway. Now she did, she was surprised to see how nervous he was. No one else would notice, but she knew those tell-tale signs he worked so hard to hide. ‘Madame du Lac, my sister, Dr Ariadne Walker.’
Aha, Ari thought, it was prize pony time. Her title was the giveaway
She schooled her face to politeness and made a mental note to tear Jason a new one as soon as they were alone again.
‘Yes,’ Madame du Lac interrupted him. She held out her hand to Ari like a queen receiving a supplicant. ‘I know who Dr Walker is. Your reputation precedes you. I heard you had arrived and came to meet you.’
Who had she heard that from? And what reputation was she talking about?
Ari glanced at her brother, who was desperately trying to communicate something with his eyes, some furtive glances and the twist of his mouth. She didn’t know what.
It didn’t matter. No doubt Madame du Lac saw this as a great honour for them, for Ari in particular. Ari was used to it from the school, meeting people who could be sources of funding was an occupational hazard and a constant trial. It wasn’t just Jason who played this game. He wasn’t even the best player she had met.
The du Lacs…she remembered Simon talking about them. They owned everything around here. Even the roof over their heads right now. The family were ridiculously rich, running a multinational foundation, endless businesses and owning a whole portfolio of property all around the world. And Ari saw at once that Madame du Lac was the most formidable of them all.
