About the Author

LOUISE MANGOS writes novels, short stories and flash fiction, which have won prizes, been placed on shortlists and read out on BBC radio. Her Husband's Secrets is her second novel. Her debut novel, Strangers on a Bridge, was a finalist in the Exeter Novel Prize and long-listed for the Bath Novel Award. You can connect with Louise on Facebook and Twitter @LouiseMangos, or visit her website, www.louisemangos.com, where there are links to some of her short fiction. She lives on a Swiss Alp with her Kiwi husband and two sons.

Also by Louise Mangos

Strangers on a Bridge

Her Husband's Secretss
LOUISE MANGOS

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019

Originally published as The Art of Deception

Copyright © Louise Mangos 2019

Louise Mangos asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © June 2019 ISBN: 9780008287955

Version: 2019-01-17

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Also by Louise Mangos

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Acknowledgements

Extract

Dear Reader …

Keep Reading

About the Publisher

For Max and Finn, the greatest of my creations

Prologue

The vice of his fingers tightened on my wrist, and tendons crunched as they slid over each other inside my forearm. As he twisted harder, I turned my body in the direction of his grip to try and relieve the pain. His other hand appeared from behind him and the heel of his palm hit the side of my head. As it made contact with my ear, a siren rang in my brain, blocking all other sound.

I kicked out, my foot slamming into his shins. His forward momentum increased as he was caught off balance, and his upper body folded. His shoulder glanced off the picture frame on the wall and it fell to the floor with a clatter. The rebound flung him away from me. As he let go of my arm, we fell apart like a tree struck down the middle by lightning. I staggered backwards, calves ramming against the coffee table, pushing it towards the sofa.

Terror now ruling my fear, I grabbed the ceramic vase toppling from the table. I swung it ineffectually at his head. I was briefly surprised it didn’t break, and the resistance of the vase meeting something solid tipped me further backwards. I let it go and it shattered at our feet. As I fell, my hips and back splintered the glass table top with a rifle-like explosion. Wedged into the frame of the table, head thrown back against the seat of the sofa, I stared at the ceiling in a moment of silence.

Chapter 1

‘Stop! Stop it!’ I yell, with my hands pressed over my ears.

My voice rasps in my throat and fills my head. The thudding on the wall ceases abruptly, and I take my palms slowly away. The ensuing roar of silence is tuned perfectly to the blood pumping through my veins.

My gaze is fixed on a pencil-drawn sketch taped to the mottled plaster, a child’s portrayal of a chalet. The house is perched on top of a mountain with stick people skiing down one side of the hill. As my concentration wavers, I blink away a tear of frustration, and rub my temple. I was expecting to see the picture tremble with the thumping. But these partitions are solid brick; raging fists will not move them.

The subsequent stillness is painful, and I try to imagine Fatima in her two-by-four-metre space on the other side of the wall. The expectation of what might replace her anger increases the tension like the static of an impending lightning strike.

They have taken away her son, and won’t let her see him even briefly for a feed. One of the female guards simply marched in and picked the little thing up from his crib, right in front of Fatima’s eyes. We all came out to the corridor to watch in horror as the head security officer gathered Fatima’s flailing arms and held her while the guard walked away with the baby. Then they locked her in. Who knows how long they’ll keep the baby this time. An hour. A morning. A day? I suck in the musty air of my cell. Annoyance has prevailed over my sympathy. I want to scream and shout too.

Someone has also taken away my son, but I have to keep a lid on my emotions or it may backfire. Losing control would do me no favours in this place, especially as my son is far away, and I don’t know when we will be together again.

I hope they don’t keep Fatima’s baby for long. She stole three packets of Zigis from the new Polish girl who came in last week. The one whose name no one can pronounce. Lots of z’s and c’s. Who the hell risks solitary for a handful of cigarettes? I guess the nicotine-deprived are desperate. They haven’t seen fresh Marlboros for weeks. I don’t even think Fatima intended to smoke them herself. She merely wanted something to trade. The theft led to a fight in the canteen, a messy affair resulting in tufts of hair on the floor and bite marks on various limbs.

I can’t believe Fatima was caught so easily, especially after all the other stuff she helped steal, the stuff she didn’t get nabbed for in her previous life. It turns out she was only the driver when she was arrested.

We all have previous lives. I still find it hard to talk about mine, so I choose to silently observe everyone else’s.

That fight clinched Fatima’s punishment. No solitary, simply take the little boy.

Her baby is called Adnan, and he’s a sweet little thing. The guards periodically use him as a bribe to try to control her anger, but I think it makes her worse. How can they take this woman’s child away? There’s an irony to it, with the tainted history of this place. All they’re doing is building a seething resentment that will eventually rise like the stopper on the top of a pressure cooker. Fatima is close to breaking point.

I know how she feels.

Adnan reminds me of Jean-Philippe, or JP as we called him within days of his birth. Maybe Adnan’s Balkan roots have a vague link to JP’s part-Russian ones. The same penetrating Slavic eyes, a strong squarish head, an almost simian brow. My baby is much older than Adnan, and no longer an infant. But I still think of him as a baby. The name JP stuck when he started l’école maternelle last year. His friends at school even adopted the soft ‘Shay-Pee’ in French.

I’ve noticed he tries to sign his full name, Jean-Philippe, on the bottom of his little notes and drawings to me now, a challenge for one so young. I hope he’s proud he can spell such a complicated name. More likely his grandmother, Natasha, or Mimi as JP calls her, has insisted he practises his full title. She has always hated the acronym we use for his nickname, and is undoubtedly dragging him back to a more conservative tradition. Her whole philosophy seems so formal, so remote. Since I’ve been here, she’s removed the strings connecting mother and child like a heavily glued sticking plaster, painfully tearing him from his Anglo roots.

He was 6 years old last week, and I haven’t seen him this month. I have had to be content with sending cards and my own drawings and talking to him on the phone. To think he had a birthday without me, his mother. The court has obliged his grandparents to let me see him once a month. It’s the most I could engineer for the moment. His father’s family is trying to keep him from me as much as possible. It’s a punishment far harsher than my imprisonment, and my heart aches for him constantly.

Fatima knows and respects this, but cannot contain her rage, despite being aware I can hear her, somewhat muffled, behind the wall. Motherhood for her is still fresh. The fear of separation has become a raw terror that something will happen to Adnan in her absence. I understand that, and can identify with it.

It’s a love like no other.

* * *

Seven years ago

Settling on a high stool, I nursed a glass of cheap draft beer, watching the bustle of the après-ski crowd reflected in the mirror behind the bar. A figure in a red ski-school jacket, a folded ten-franc note clasped between his fingers, pushed his way between me and the customer at my side. The young man rested his hand on the polished wood. I bit back a retort as his elbow pressed against my shoulder. He leaned in, and I drew back, expecting him to address the barman.

‘We are all vagabonds, you know.’ His silky deep voice spoke English, almost a whisper at my temple, his breath warm on the shell of my ear. The hint of a French lilt sent a tingle down my spine. I turned, and instead of delivering admonishment, smiled into a pair of mesmerising grey-blue eyes.

‘You are new in town, yes?’ he asked.

‘Just arrived,’ I confirmed. ‘Couldn’t hitch a lift, so I rode the cog railway up from the valley. Bit freaky, didn’t know if the rickety thing was going to make it, with all that clunking and straining.’

‘That rack is over a hundred years old. You took a journey on a classic piece of Chablais transport history. What brings you here?’

‘A bit of an unscheduled stop, really. I’m backpacking through Europe and read about this village in a student travel guide. Plus a college friend once told me about this bar.’

I hesitated. In reality I was looking for a few days’ work. I had heard this resort, easily accessible on my Eurorail pass, was a good place to try. Amsterdam and Paris had sucked the money out of my wallet faster than any pickpocket. This guy didn’t need to know I was flat broke.

‘I was originally on my way to Greece for the summer. I know that’s a long way from here, but I’m getting a bit short of cash.’

‘Mm. The Med. Sounds romantic. Unfortunately you have arrived at the end of the season. There won’t be many jobs available. People will be heading off soon, travelling south, perhaps to the same beach you are dreaming about. Some of us will stay here though; we have to work.’

The barman slid a bottle of Cardinal across the bar, a slight frown on his face. My new companion took a sip from the beer.

‘You’re lucky to live in such a beautiful place. What do you do outside the ski season?’ I asked as I glanced at the barman, now moving away to serve another customer.

‘I teach French at the international college. Pays the bills.’

He sidled in to sit on a recently vacated barstool in one smooth move, his body filling the space at my side, and he reached into his jacket pocket. He took a ready-rolled cigarette from a pouch of Drum, and lit the tatty end with a loud click of his Zippo. He noted my surprise.

‘One of the few bars that still allows smokers,’ he said, studying me intently through a swirl of blue smoke. No one else in the bar was smoking. He waved at a spark rising from a burning curl of tobacco, and studied me through creased eyes.

My face flushed hot and my belly flipped. A magnetism kept my eyes locked on his, despite the commotion around us.

And then he coughed, the harshness of the smoke catching in his throat, making his eyes smart. We both burst out laughing, his slick seduction technique exposed. I saw the barman roll his eyes as he served another client at the end of the bar, and as he returned, he leaned over.

‘Buddy, you know the rules. Quit being a dick.’

My companion put his hand on my arm, pulling my attention back to him.

‘Should give up the stuff,’ he said, curling his fist towards his chest, cigarette still clasped between two fingers.

‘Absolutely,’ I agreed. ‘Tobacco should be outlawed anyway.’

He raised his eyebrows. I blushed, and mentally kicked myself for sounding so prudish. He continued to smoke his roll-up, and I wondered which rules the barman was referring to.

‘So what’s your name, Pretty Travel Girl Heading for Greece?’

He picked a sliver of tobacco from the tip of his tongue, and I couldn’t help thinking the roll-up cigarette routine was going horribly wrong for him today.

‘Lucie, actually Lucille, but everyone calls me Lucie.’

‘And my name is Matt, actually Mathieu, but everyone calls me Matt. Enchanté,’ he said, holding out his hand to shake.

I would have commented on his patronising tone, but a physical static tick connected our palms, and we both smiled. My heartbeat spiked. He brushed a lock of brown hair, a little flattened from a day under a ski hat, away from his face. His broad shoulders hunched on one side as he leaned his elbow on the bar. He stretched his ski-honed legs either side of my barstool, and my vision of a golden beach and carefree days with suntanned beach bums slipped away.

‘Do you ski?’ he asked.

With my glass to my lips, I took a sip, and shook my head.

‘You can always engage my services. Ask for Matt at the ski school.’

Now that sounded like a more practised marketing tag line.

‘I can’t afford to ski right now, though I’d love to learn.’

‘Of course you don’t ski! You are from the land of sailors. Do you sail, Lucie? Is that why you are heading to the waters of the Mediterranée? Perhaps you would like to sail with me, on my boat, on Lac Léman. Mon premier lieutenant.’

I shook my head, but not with disagreement. Did he really just say he had a boat? The concept seemed so contrary, up here on the mountain.

‘I used to sail very small boats – Optimists – on a man-made lake near our home as a child. And although my dad was in the navy, we never sailed on the Med.’

I was still not entirely sure he was telling the truth about owning a boat. I might believe him more if he said he drove a Ferrari.

‘Actually, my little sloop is also not much bigger than a bathtub. It was bought with a small inheritance from a childless aunt. Sounds good as a chat-up line though, doesn’t it? Can I get you another?’

I buried my smile in my glass as I emptied the warm dregs and placed it on the bar near him. My cheeks flushed in acknowledgement of the heat in the pit of my stomach.

As we talked, other customers chatted around us, but I blocked them out, not allowing their gossip to interfere. I didn’t want this to end. I felt myself sucked into the vortex of a schoolgirl crush. Finishing his second beer, Matt reached hastily for his jacket, stood up and leaned in to me, as though he’d lost his balance.

‘Perhaps I will see you around, ma Lucille. It’s time to change out of my office gear,’ he said, indicating his ski uniform.

I’d always hated my full name, thought it made me sound like a faded Sixties’ TV star, but the way he spoke made it sound like honey slipping off his tongue.

Mathieu cast me a last curious smile as he shrugged into his jacket and wove his way through the clientele towards the exit. I frowned as I watched him leave. A wedge of disappointment remained, the warm feeling he had invoked in me already a heady memory. An air of mystery floated in his wake. Our conversation remained half-finished, as though he intended to return to it later. I wondered if he felt the same physical and emotional pull. Or was this just another day at the office?

‘He’s a Casanova, that one. Watch out,’ said the barman, absently drying a glass with a tea towel. I wasn’t sure whether his tone was one of wistful jealousy or a warning.

‘Does he really have a boat on Lake Geneva?’ I asked, ignoring the alarm bells.

‘Apparently.’ He shrugged. ‘Though I don’t know anyone who has ever seen it. Could be a bullshit line. Watch yourself there, young lady.’

He moved away to stack glasses.

The bar emptied at the end of Happy Hour, and the barman, much friendlier in Mathieu’s absence, introduced me to the manageress of the hostel.

‘We close next week for a month or so, but we will need extra staff for the few days it takes to spring-clean,’ she said. ‘I can hire you for the week. It will be tough work, moving furniture, lots of cleaning.’

‘I’m fine with that – I’d be delighted to help,’ I said, relieved to the point of making it sound like we were doing each other a favour. If I had any hope of reaching my Greek beach, I needed more than a few days of work, but this would be a start.

‘You can move into the staff accommodation and take your meals with the others. I know that look. I can tell you’re desperate for cash. We’ll deduct the rent from your earnings and you can set up a tab at the bar. You can take Sandra’s bed. She had to leave early. Some family emergency back in Australia. Normally we wouldn’t hire extra staff at the end of the season. You’re lucky.’

* * *

As I entered the bar the following evening, after a day that had magically transformed the landscape with a spring snow, my gaze was drawn to a raucous group at the bar. They were playing the inanely stupid but enticingly addictive game of spoof. It was a game I had often played in the student lounge at college. Clutched fists thrust repeatedly into a circle at each other, hands then turned to reveal the number of coins in their palms. No prizes for the eliminated victors, but shots of the Swiss schnapps Pomme for the losers, the grimaces on their faces at the harshness and raw strength of the alcohol a prize in itself for the onlookers.

‘Ah, here is our pretty Greek seaside girl. A little diversion on her way to the summer sun.’

Matt threw his arm casually across my shoulder, the weight of it implying possessiveness. Despite acknowledging the possible effects of alcohol, a flush crept up my throat at his familiarity.

‘Bonsoir, Mathieu,’ I said.

‘What have you been doing with yourself today?’ he asked. ‘How did you like nature’s last gift of winter to us? There were a few happy powder hounds on the mountain today.’

‘It would have been great to be able to ski. Perhaps next season,’ I said cautiously, not wishing to imply that I might rashly have made my mind up to stay a little longer. ‘I had a pleasant walk around town. I’m not really prepared for wintry conditions. Today was a test for the soaking capacity of my socks.’

I pointed down to my sodden sneakers.

‘Inappropriate footwear, huh?’ Matt patted me on my shoulder. ‘The slush will probably be gone by tomorrow. This little cold front was unexpected.’

The barman greeted me warmly with a tip of his head. His eyes moved away and cast Matt a steely look as he ordered us beers. Clutching our bottles in one hand, Matt returned the barman’s stare and then turned away, putting his body between me and the bar. He placed his other hand firmly on my elbow, and guided me with a little more force than necessary towards the corner.

He pointed to a bench where we could sit and talk. I glanced back to the barman before allowing myself to be led away. I could only think that his reaction was due to jealousy. I had to stop myself grinning broadly. Matt had forsaken his colleagues and their entertainment for me. As far as I was concerned, it was game on.

* * *

When I moved into the hostel’s staff accommodation, I enjoyed the camaraderie of my room-mates. But while they were all winding up for the end of the season, for me it felt like a beginning.

On the first evening after work, I was lying on my bed reading a novel borrowed from the hostel library. Anne, the receptionist, burst through the door with a bag of items she had purchased from the local épicerie.

‘I see you have thrilling plans for this evening,’ she said not unkindly, pointing her chin at my book. ‘Well I’m going to change them. I don’t feel like going to the bar tonight before dinner, but I need some wine and I don’t want to drink alone.’

She pulled a bottle from the bag with a packet of pretzels and a tub of olives.

‘My boyfriend and his mother are disagreeing over one of my pieces, and I’ve left them to it.’

I fetched two glasses from the shelf in the bathroom and brought them back to the dorm. As Anne emptied the rest of her bag, I studied the posters tacked to the wall above her bed. A Hodler print hung next to a photo of a Giacometti sculpture; one of his classic tall thin bronze men. Beyond them she had pinned up her own photos of the surrounding mountains, glowing with sunsets or sunrises, and one spectacular shot of a sea of cloud filling the valley against a striking purple sky.

‘You’re an artist?’ I asked over the noise of the pretzel packet being opened and the lid screeching off the plastic olive container.

‘If you consider photography an art.’

She handed me the bottle of wine and a corkscrew.

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘I love contemporary Swiss artists, as you can see. A salute to my fellow countrymen. Photography is more my own passion, a hobby inspired by our environment. My boyfriend François’ father owns the Grand Hotel in the village where he works, and they recently agreed to hang some of my photos in one of their conference rooms. But they don’t seem to want my advice as to which ones. It was as though I wasn’t even there,’ she said crossly. ‘Are you also interested in art?’

She nodded towards the posters on the wall, curiosity quashing her irritation.

‘I was halfway through a fine arts degree when I dropped out of university and decided to travel. It’s backfired really. My parents obviously weren’t happy, and I wouldn’t have dreamed of asking them to fund a trip, but I can’t believe how quickly the money I earned from Saturday and holiday jobs seems to have slipped like water through my fingers.’

I opened the bottle, poured some wine into our two glasses, and took a handful of pretzels Anne offered me as we sat on our beds facing the windows. The setting sun cast a pinkish glow on the toothy ridge of the Dents du Midi. She reached for her camera on the shelf by the bed and tucked it beside her, waiting for the perfect alpenglow.

‘Then it’s good they hired you at the hostel. But it’s poor pay for cleaning work. Your funds won’t last long in this country. I’m a bit better off on a receptionist’s salary, especially after the peanuts I earned when I travelled in the States. Bon appétit,’ she said as she offered me the pot of olives and popped one in her mouth.

‘You speak excellent English.’

‘The multilingual skills of the Swiss, I guess. What made you give up studying art?’

‘I don’t know really. I love my art, but I had the feeling I’d never be able to find a job I would enjoy. Plus I’ve always had this secret dream to travel abroad, and wanted to do it before getting bogged down with a career.’

‘I can’t wait to get out of this room,’ said Anne, looking around at the three rumpled beds and a jumble of mismatched furniture. ‘They want me to stay on for the next couple of seasons. But there’s only so long you can spend living in a dorm. I’ve saved up enough money to rent my own flat. It’ll be so much easier for François and me. Will you look for another job in the village, or move on from here?’

‘I’m not sure. It depends.’ I turned to a poster. ‘Your photos are beautiful.’

It depends on Matt, I had wanted to say, but now found it hard to admit that an impulsive decision might be based on the outcome of meeting one person. Anne’s mention of her boyfriend made the heat rise to my face.

When we had finished the bottle of wine, she showed me some more of her photographs. I swirled the last of the Valaisan gamay in the glass tumbler.

‘Do you know Mathieu, the ski instructor? The local guy?’ The wine had loosened my tongue, and I blushed as I said his name.

Anne’s smile didn’t touch her eyes. ‘Has he been flirting with you? He’s a looker. I don’t know him very well. Only that he often comes to the bar. He had … He and François don’t get on, something to do with a group of students François’ dad had to ban from the hotel after a rowdy night out in their college years. They don’t mix in the same social circles.’ Anne hesitated. ‘And I find his attitude a little arrogant for my liking. Plus, I’ve heard he’s … I would be careful.’ Anne bit her lip.

I wasn’t sure whether my heart beat a little faster at the mention of his name or hearing the edge to Anne’s comments. Before I could dig further, she took her camera and opened the dorm window to click a few shots of the view, and I felt too awkward to ask her to elaborate.

‘Come on, I’m starving,’ she said, snapping the cover onto her lens. ‘Let’s see what chef has for the workers tonight.’

* * *

My life revolved around the hostel and the bar for the remainder of the week until I received my pay packet. The whole time I was stripping beds, scrubbing floors and cleaning windows, I couldn’t stop thinking about Matt. The drudge work I was doing was worth every cobweb and dust ball if it meant I could see him at the end of each day. The anticipation of our budding romance was delicious. I relished the apprehensive thrill of not knowing whether he would be there when I walked into the bar. Or the expectation every time the door opened to admit new customers, and the powerful heated rush when he finally appeared on the threshold. I was behaving like a besotted teenager.

But he always came. Each night he captivated me with stories of his adventures, and at the point where his descriptions verged on bragging, he would reel me in with promises to show me his world. The lure of sailing in his sloop, the desire to mirror his tracks down the ski slope, all whispered in my ear, sending shivers down my spine, with the security of his arms around me. Fuelled with a blind hormonal passion, I knew I wanted this man beyond anything else I had ever desired.

How could I let myself fall so quickly? I knew I was throwing caution to the wind. I had only met Matt days ago; I knew nothing about him, and Anne wasn’t able to provide much information, although the things she said, or didn’t say, made me think she might be hiding something. But my yearning for him eclipsed the warning bells of losing control in my head. Despite being a relatively inexperienced 19-year-old, I knew the danger of succumbing to these emotions, but could do nothing to control the fire.

* * *

I am shaken from my reverie by a gentle fluttering at the window. It sounds like a moth batting the pane, and thinking I should let it out, I look up to see the first splats of today’s rain blowing against the glass through the bars. The forested ridge to the east has disappeared in a smudge of weather released from the grey belly of the sky.

Fatima starts a keening wail. This is the one she usually saves for the middle of the night. It doesn’t seem so unsettling during the day, lends itself to comical lunacy rather than ghostly guilt without the cover of darkness. But before I can feel sorry for her, I hear a loud ‘Fertig, jetzt!’ from Müller in the corridor. Enough now!

Müller is one of the guards, or carers, as they like to call them here. Makes us sound like we’re in an old people’s home, or a mental institution, which is probably closer to the truth. She is assigned to our block and spends most of her duty time on our floor.

Fatima’s tone reduces to a series of self-pitying sobs. I barely tolerate her ranting. But when I hear Adnan crying I go to pieces. By some administrative quirk, I ended up next to Fatima when I came in. She was already pregnant, and gave birth not long afterwards. She won’t be on our floor for long though. There are only six units on the mother–child level, and one of them will become free in a couple of days when another inmate’s toddler goes to a foster home. However sad it is for the mother, at least she had some time with her baby. Fatima might face the same fate if she is still here in three years’ time. I’ve never asked how long she’s in for.

It’s a cruel coincidence that they are next to me, given that I would love to have my son at my side. There is already some confusion as to why I am here and not at La Tuilière prison in Vaud, the canton where the crime took place and where I was sentenced. My incarceration here is unprecedented in a country where the legal process is decentralised. It must be the ambiguity of my origin. Although I have lived in Vaud for several years, in the French-speaking part of the country, I never went through the procedures to become a naturalised Swiss citizen. But I have begun to suspect that’s not the only reason I am so far away from JP.

My sketchpad is open on the desk. I pick up a pencil and try to draw, but can’t concentrate with Fatima going on, so I take two paces to my window. I have to lean past the narrow shelf of the desk bolted to the wall to peer outside through drops of water on the glass. Blue curtains frame the window, a lame attempt at helping us to forget where we are, absurdly contrasting the lattice of the bars.

The sky lies like a wet blanket over the flat landscape. The prison sits on a slight mound above the village of Hindelbank. A forested ridge blocks our view of the sunrise, which isn’t visible anyway behind today’s miserable weather. Beyond the community to the north stretches the vast unexciting plateau where the River Emme meanders out of a broad valley. We are a long way from the romantic alpine meadows at the source of its waters in the Bernese Oberland, home to the cows producing the milk synonymous with the famous Emmental cheese. In the distance to the west lie the ancient mountains of the Jura, marching their sheer cliffs along the boundary of France. An almost static curtain of cloud spills slowly like Niagara down their gullies.

If only I could see the mountains on the other side, to the east. If only I could touch in my mind the familiarity of altitude, forever inciting a melancholic longing for home.

Or a place I used to call home.

Chapter 2

Yasmine is sitting on my bed. Today is Sunday, our day off. I was enjoying my solitude until she walked in. I’m a little irked by her attitude, thinking she can barge into my cell whenever she wants. I don’t say anything, as it’s better to avoid provocation in this place. Everyone is unpredictable, and I just want to get by without attracting attention. I’m not completely comfortable in her company. I busy myself watering my plants – a dragon palm, a small ficus and a fern. They will soon suffer from the brittleness of the dry winter air. I can pick and choose my houseplants. That privilege comes from having access to the greenhouse.

Yasmine sifts through a few photos of JP lying on my pillow, and stares at one of him as a baby. I want to tell her to take her hands off my child.

‘You know they used to lock up young girls in this place who became enceinte when they were not being married. And they hadn’t done anything wrong. No stealing. No kill—’

‘It was called the “re-education” of unmarried mothers then,’ I interrupt. ‘The system was tailored for the likes of Fatima. Usually put here by their own parents who didn’t know how to deal with their daughter’s pregnancies.’

‘The worst is they were still doing this thing until the 1980s,’ she says. ‘Imagine, in our lifetime! They will not take Adnan away from Fatima permanently. They cannot do this. To provoke such publicity again would be, how do you say, une atrocité.’

‘Fatima must have the ghost of one of those girls in her room,’ I say. ‘She often screams as though she might never see Adnan again. Maybe tomorrow she won’t. It’s hard to imagine the destinies of the babies. Who knows where Adnan will end up if he is farmed out to a foster family? I don’t know if it’s any less barbaric than back then.’

Yasmine looks at me and raises one eyebrow. I’m not sure she understands everything I say, but she doesn’t ask for clarification.

She has shuffled the photos out of order and my breath quickens to see the images carelessly handled. They are so valuable to me, and I’m worried she’s smearing them with hand cream or grease from the kitchens. I doubt I’ll be able to get fresh copies. The family didn’t give these to me. That would never happen. These are photos Anne has sent me, copies from her collection. Her son Valentin is JP’s best friend. I wonder what JP will look like the next time I see him. Kids change quickly in six months. I’m surprised every time.

‘Don’t …’ I start to say, and am silenced by a look that either tells me I’m being too precious, or that I shouldn’t mess with her.

Yasmine often talks about Hindelbank’s history, repeating its horrors as if trying to make the events of the recent past more believable. To make her own imprisonment more of a fantasy. Or perhaps to kid herself that she is here even though she has done nothing wrong. She came to Hindelbank after me in May, from Basel. She was part of a gang crossing the French border in a transit van, periodically relieving pre-alpine villages of their bicycles. They indiscriminately loaded up bikes, using bolt cutters on even the strongest of locks. It was on their fourth or fifth foray into the country that they were finally caught.

Yasmine is Algerian, but chooses to converse with me in English, despite knowing I can speak French fairly fluently. She pronounces all her th’s as a soft zz.

I am quite the novelty. There was another English woman here until just before I arrived. She was rumoured to have murdered a man who had been stalking her family. But she was released before I arrived, and no one wants to talk about those who get out. So I am the only one here right now. Everyone wants to practise my mother tongue, except the guards who bark their orders in Swiss German. They are aware that most of the Swiss citizens, who don’t even constitute half of the inmates here, can barely understand their guttural Bern dialect. Most of the guards speak only one of the four languages of Switzerland: the most discordant of them all.

Yasmine reaches for a pack of cigarettes in her pocket and taps it on her thigh, a pointless resettling of tobacco in those poisonous cylinders. I make a tutting sound and shake my head. First the photos, now she wants to smoke.

‘No, Yasmine,’ I say firmly.

She sighs and rolls her eyes, but silently places the soft packet of Gauloises on the table, and continues to look at the images of JP. I think back to when she first arrived, how she boasted about the bikes they used to steal.

‘You would not believe how many people leave their VTT on the street without locking them, expensive ones too,’ she’d said, using the French Vélo Tout-Terrain acronym for mountain bikes. ‘I’ve heard that all the serious road-racing bikers prefer to sleep with their bikes rather than girlfriends or wives. In any case, there is not much business in France for second-hand road bikes. People are too suspicious. Road bikers are puristes, want to know the origins of such things.’

I’d marvelled at her expertise on the bicycle black market back then.

That was in spring this year, exactly seven years since I came to Switzerland. The season of beginnings and arrivals. I can’t believe I have been in this country for that long. And I have been in prison for six months. That’s the hardest thing to understand, given my innocence. I’m 26 now. My life should be entering the next exciting phase. I once hoped I could raise my family within Switzerland’s safe society, as long as I kept my bike locked up. Its clockwork systems, true democracy and magical geography offered a dramatic but somehow tamed beauty. But in contrast, it is the rigid rules, chauvinistic values and xenophobic attitudes that have me trapped in a nightmare from which I fear I might never awake.

‘Does he look like his father? Those piercing grey eyes are not from you,’ queries Yasmine, squinting at my hazel eyes, which are now a little hot with the strain of my memories. Her eyes flick back to another photo of JP as a toddler.

‘Yes, he looks a lot like his father,’ I say, inexplicably choking up, not because of JP, but because I remember how he made me feel. JP’s father. In the resurfacing of old hatred, old blame, I’m horrified that my body still betrays me. After all that he did, after all that I have endured, he remains in control of my feelings. I recall that pooling hot sensation in my belly when Matt looked at me with his smoky eyes. He made me believe I was the only woman in his life.

I glance at Yasmine, worried she has a window to my thoughts. I swallow the tears that threaten.

I’m ashamed of my vulnerability.

* * *

Seven years ago

On the last Friday evening of the season, with the pub full of workers spending their weekly wage, the barman turned up the volume on the stereo and played a series of Latin American numbers. A few people began to move to the music.

It was then I discovered that along with his other seductive traits, Matt was a talented dancer. He gathered me into his arms, moulding me to his body with one strong hand splayed over the base of my back, applying enough pressure to claim complete control without force. With my hand on his shoulder, he pressed my other hand close to his chest, gently sweeping the backs of his fingers across my breast. His warm dry breath raised the fine hairs on my neck, and he turned his hips slightly, his leg pushing between my thighs.

Not a flutter of air passed between our bodies as we danced a grinding merengue in the crowded darkness of the bar. Our movement together was hypnotic, arousing a fervour of unreleased passion as I involuntary pressed myself to him and felt his desire against my thigh. My cheeks burned as he swung me around to the desperate fiery strumming of ‘Bomboléo’ and I could hardly breathe with the anticipation of what might follow.

We drew apart when the song had finished. He took my hand to lead me out of the door of the bar. The night air chilled my cheeks, but my body was on fire. At the side of the woodshed, he leaned in to me, the pungent smell of creosote eclipsed by the sweet, beery scent of his breath. He kissed me deeply with his hot mouth, pulling my shirt and bra up to expose my breasts to the night. The tightening of my nipples in the sudden cold craved his touch and his lips.

Clothes crumpled, zips sawed, underwear pushed to the side and I welcomed the exquisite, almost violent force of him thrusting into me. Throwing my head back, my hair caught in the splinters on the woodshed wall. We wedged our feet into a drift of packed snow under the roof overhang, jeans pooled at our feet in a tangle. I gasped from the long-awaited satisfaction and release, oblivious to the discomfort of shoving against the rough wall.

Afterwards, the sounds of the night filtered back in. The bar door screeched open; a waft of voices strained over the music. As the closing door clapped the raucous voices suddenly mute, I became aware of our stark surroundings. A weak moonlight reflected off patches of snow on the slope between a few chalets clustered in this area of the upper village. I was grateful for a copse of pines shielding a clear vision of the woodshed from the nearest house.

Two thoughts briefly crossed my mind: the sordidness of this quick bang outside the pub, and the fact that neither of us had used protection. Those thoughts were soon replaced by a blindly misguided feeling of smug possessiveness. Seduction complete, my bruised lips stretched into a satisfied smile. As the passion subsided, distinctly quicker than it had risen, the seeping cold and the worry that someone might have seen us made me hastily pull my clothes back into place. Matt gently stroked the hair off my face, drawing my worried gaze back to him.

‘You surprise me, my beautiful beach-seeker. Such passion. You have been wanting me since we met, no? I love how you give yourself, this spontaneity. I think I need to explore you more.’

He kissed me again, holding my chin. His comments, initially making me feel slightly sluttish, warmed me with the thought that he wanted me again.

This was the one.

A handful of flings through the few months I’d spent at art school, and a disappointing initiation into physical love had never aroused such savage passion as this in me. I’d given myself to him so readily, and couldn’t control myself. Thinking I had succeeded in making him mine, in reality it was Matt who had made me his. What would he be thinking? I was so easy, a conquest complete.

I hoped we would leave the bar together. Perhaps I would wake in his arms at his apartment, follow through with a sweet aftermath of that initial passion. But he led the way back inside. Music rang in my ears. Beer and sweat soured the air. Matt looked distractedly at his watch, a frown on his face, his focus no longer on me. And then suddenly: ‘I have to go.’

Abandoned, pleasure still stinging between my legs. Just like that, with a fleeting brush of his lips on mine, he was gone.

* * *

I was the first girl back to the dorm room that night, and glad for a moment alone. Anne was on a date with François. It was possible she wouldn’t even come back. She often stayed at his studio in the attic of his father’s hotel.

I lay on my bed staring at the ceiling, forcing myself to stay awake and remember every rushed sensation of the lovemaking. I focused only on our time together, ignoring the abruptness of our parting, and hoped desperately it had not been a one-night stand.

The door opened and my other room-mate, Terri, one of the cleaning staff, came in. She threw her jacket on her bed.

‘Hit it lucky with Mathieu, did we?’ she said jovially.

My blush gave me away, and I was embarrassed to think anybody knew what we’d done. Terri couldn’t taint my brief moment of euphoria, and if she hadn’t seen me, I was strangely elated that Matt might have been boasting about his conquest.

‘It was pretty obvious when you came back into the bar what you’d been up to. You were like the cat who got the cream. No hiding that look.’

I narrowed my eyes. Wary of Terri’s perpetual chatter, I wondered whether she saw right through me.

‘Look, I know Matt is a catch,’ she continued. ‘He’s a good-looking, charismatic guy. But the truth is, he’s getting his rocks off with you, Lucie. He just wants sex.’

Despite the crudeness, I detected a grain of sympathy. And a small part of me ignored the possibility that she was telling the truth. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to quell the uneasy feeling in my gut. I was still riding high. Let me have this moment.

Since taking the place of the girl who returned to Australia, I felt comfortable in the company of my room-mates, despite the restrictions of sharing the small sleeping space. We all worked for the hostel in various capacities, and the others had reached the end of a busy season. Although I had taken a cherished colleague’s place, I was never made to feel the imposter. I refused to let my feelings be hurt, despite the fact that I was currently back in the dorm and not going home with Matt.

The door opened and Anne came in.

‘Not staying at lover boy’s place tonight then?’ Terri asked Anne.

I wondered if Terri was like this with everyone.

‘No, not tonight. It’s going to be a busy week. I have to help with closing the accounts and I cannot be late to work tomorrow. Was it a good night at the bar, les filles?’

‘Ha!’ said Terri, and looked at me, grinning. Anne raised her eyebrows, and I blushed furiously.

‘Mathieu?’ Anne asked. I nodded with a sheepish smile, which dropped as soon as Terri continued.

‘What happened to that girlfriend of his? You know, that Somali girl he used to hang out with at the bar. Leila, wasn’t it?’ Terri asked.

I was sure she hadn’t meant to wreck my mood, but her words were like a blow to the gut.

‘She disappeared halfway through the season,’ she continued. ‘I heard things might have been a bit rough for her. Matt has a wild streak. I know he punched some guy’s lights out in the Grand. Don’t know what happened to Leila though. Do you?’ Terri turned to Anne.

Anne cleared her throat. She knew how I felt about Matt. I needed to know more about this Leila she mentioned. My stomach churned.

‘What do you mean? He hasn’t said anything about a girlfriend,’ I said, feeling witless that I hadn’t actually asked him.

This was information I naively assumed would be shared long before things went too far. And tonight, things had definitely gone too far.

‘I did know Leila. We were friends for a while.’ Anne looked awkward, put on the spot. I knew she wouldn’t want to hurt me, but she also wouldn’t want to lie. Even in the short time I’d known her, I already felt we had too much in common to ruin a good friendship.

‘She was a student at the international college for a few semesters, studying liberal arts.’

Now I really was beginning to feel like a slut. Or at least an intruder. I recalled the barman warning me that Matt was a Casanova. Jealousy instantly rose like the bow of a sinking ship, but Anne felt compelled to continue.

‘She and Matt were together for a while. It was a highly forbidden relationship, not only because of the faculty-student rule, but also in the eyes of her family. When her younger brother Kafia enrolled at the college the following year and saw what was going on, he reported Leila to their parents, and they took her away immediately. She had to return to Mogadishu and plans are underway to get her married off as soon as possible to avoid scandal. She wasn’t even allowed to write to me when she left. Kafia is still at the college, though I think he will graduate this spring, and he sometimes tells me about his sister.

‘I think he feels guilty having ratted on her, but the family doesn’t care, and to make things even worse, he has a beautiful blonde American girlfriend. The inequality of that makes me sick. Lucie, I don’t think there is anything … but Matt, he’s …’

‘Did Matt and Leila have, you know, an intimate relationship?’ I asked, knowing that prejudices around prearranged marriages meant people wouldn’t look favourably on one of their princesses minus her virtue.

‘Of course they were, Lucie; what century are you living in?’ Terri said as she changed into her pyjamas. ‘I heard she was hoping to find a way to stay, or at least to come back later, but I don’t know what’s going on now that she’s gone. I guess the link to her family was too strong. Too bad for her. Good for you, though, eh Lucie? He’s quite a catch, despite his reputation. Guys like that usually get what they want and hightail it outta there. Know what I mean?’

Terri howled with laughter as she made her way to the bathroom across the hallway, and I smiled uneasily. I wanted to ask about Matt’s rough streak, but I couldn’t believe that someone who had laid his fingers on my cheek so gently could be violent. Her flippant comments validated the barman’s assessment of Matt, but I was sure her judgement was false. People surely couldn’t believe that Matt would remain faithful to a girl he might never see again.

I turned back to Anne, and saw the apology written on her face.

‘Anne, thanks for telling me. You know, I’ve really fallen for him.’ I leaned back on my pillow and closed my eyes.

‘It’s not too late to shut it down, Lucie,’ said Anne quietly. ‘That way no one gets hurt. And I mean you. You could be getting yourself into more hot water than you imagine. There’s some weird stuff going on with his family. Anyway, it’s not for me to judge. I knew Leila, but I don’t know Mathieu very well, only rumours from François. I’m sorry to have ruined your magical night.’

‘Oh, let the girl enjoy the thrill of the chase,’ said Terri as she came back into the room. ‘As long as she knows the consequences. They all think with their dicks around here.’

I pretended to laugh it off, but felt a fragment of sorrow as I turned on my side and tried in vain to sleep, thinking how naive I might have been to believe in a fairy tale.

* * *

‘Dis-donc, Lucie, are you okay?’ Yasmine asks.

I realise my eyes are hot with unshed tears. I rarely show my emotions. To protect myself in this place, and to protect my own sanity, I try to remain aloof. My supposed crime alone elicits a bizarre respect from the others, a morbid fascination. If the authorities thought I posed a danger to the other inmates or the guards, I would have been placed in the high-security block. But they know I am not an evil person. I didn’t commit first-degree murder. I am even housed in the same block as the mothers.

‘I’m getting a cold. I have a headache,’ I say pathetically, blowing my nose loudly.

I screw up the paper and throw it into the toilet, flush it angrily to try to banish the memories. I’m still cross with myself for revealing vulnerability. I sit back on my stool and sigh, steadying the ragged breath in my throat.

‘Do you have a partner, Yasmine? Someone in France? In Algeria? I’ve never asked you.’

Good to change the subject, but I regret sounding so chummy.

‘Not really,’ she says. ‘There was a man I was seeing in Lyon. Jean-Claude. He was a sous-chef in a high-class restaurant. But it is not easy, dating a chef. His hours were so irregular. We could never see each other on the weekends.’

Yasmine’s eyes glaze for a moment, then she laughs and shakes her head.

‘I can’t go back to Algiers. There is nothing there for me. My parents are … they no longer exist. They are dead,’ she says with a hesitation that makes me think they haven’t actually gone from this world.

She’s a pretty girl, unusual yellow-green eyes and long dark hair. I think about her chef boyfriend. If he knew about Yasmine’s activities, he might have thought it wasn’t easy dating a bike thief. Irregular hours, erratic wages. In truth I think her timetable would have suited Jean-Claude, her work typically carried out during the hours of darkness, when the odd cyclist might be enjoying a meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant.

The irony is that Yasmine works in the bakery now. I don’t think I could stand the job, too much of a challenge to resist all that warm, yeasty bread. I’d balloon up within days, constantly cramming in irresistible comfort food. I’ve seen others let their bodies go all too easily. But Yasmine has resisted. She’s proud of her achievements in the kitchen. I wonder if she thinks of Jean-Claude from time to time when she’s working.

I haven’t asked her before about a partner. I often see her in the cafeteria holding another inmate’s arm, Dolores. Yasmine hangs off her like a lover. I wonder whether she is merely a tactile Mediterranean type, someone who thrives equally on non-verbal communication, or if it’s something more.

I keep my distance, especially in the confines of my cell. Perched on my stool, I watch her sitting on my bed. I’m itching to take my photos away from her.

I’ve become scrupulously neat, colour-coding my clothes, grey and grey and grey. We don’t wear a prison uniform, and it’s ironic that with the freedom of the dress code I have chosen to wear monochrome. As if my need for colour has been wiped from my palette. I keep my T-shirts and trousers neatly on my shelves like the new season’s fashion in a department store, each folded to centimetre precision. I resist the urge to put the photos back in order. I’ll wait until she’s left the cell.

‘You should hang more of your pictures on the wall,’ says Yasmine. ‘I hate all this white everywhere, so impersonal. If we cannot paint, then wallpaper is necessary, and yours will be … picturesque.’

‘It’s a prison, Yasmine; what do you expect, Ritz drapes and shag-pile carpets?’ I laugh. At least I have a few plants to bring a little green into the room.

‘Oh, you know what I am meaning, all that stuff,’ she says pointing to the sketchbook on my shelf. She gets up from my bed, the pile of photos slipping back onto my blanket.

‘Lock-up time soon, I’ll see you later,’ she says, raising a hand as she leaves the cell, the door still ajar.

‘Yeah, let’s do dinner sometime,’ I shout sarcastically after her.

She laughs as she sashays down the corridor back to her cell. Could it be that she actually enjoys being in this place? Her air of purpose is unsettling.

Chapter 3

‘What the …?’ I raise my voice, but as I see Müller jump guiltily back from my desk, I clamp my mouth closed. She’s a guard after all. But I still wonder what the hell she’s doing in my cell.

I’m clean. I have nothing to hide, have been the model prisoner. There’s always a worry someone might plant something to get another inmate in trouble, usually to remove suspicion from themselves. We all have single cells, and they’re locked when we’re not there, so Müller has let herself in with her key. But this is one of those tiny borderline infringements, unless she’s been instructed to search for something specific.

I’ve come back early from work because of the bad weather. I take my rain cape off and fling it over the radiator. Running water into the sink, I pick up the nailbrush to clean the loamy soil of the garden from under my fingernails, and wait for her to tell me why she’s here.

‘Be careful, it might melt,’ she says, pointing at the cape, and I shrug.

I don’t care. The head gardener can give me another one. The smell of the steadily warming synthetic material evokes an unidentifiable comfort memory from childhood.

I dry my hands on my towel, walk towards the desk, and see she’s been studying a coloured pencil sketch of an alpine scene I drew from memory.

‘They told me you are an artist. You have talent.’ She nods towards the picture.

Müller is one of the more amenable guards, one of the few who speaks passable English. She even takes part in a Wednesday conversation group, the only time I openly speak to the others. She’s a tough-looking middle-aged woman with broad shoulders, but she has a gentle demeanour. She wears her greying hair in a messy bun, a schoolmarm-gone-wrong look.

‘You like working there?’ she asks, looking through the window.

The rain against the pane has eased. I take a step towards her, still drying my hands, but keep my distance as much as one can in this confined space. We both look down at the garden. It has been flattened by the chill dampness. Half the beds contain overgrown vegetable tops, extended seed-heads and the random mess of items ignored during harvest. They have faded from green to dark grey under this heavy humidity, collapsed with the putridness of gradually rotting foliage.

The other flowerbeds have now been cleared and freshly turned. The evidence of our hard work is strewn across the field on the far side of the courtyard like a freshly knitted quilt. Straight dark rows of rich earth shaped into corduroy furrows are ready for planting. A corrugated canvas prepared for some colour, after the slumbering weight of the winter has passed.

‘Your days of labour outdoors are not so many now. When the clearing is finished, we find you new work,’ she says.

I don’t need to be reminded I will soon be without the distraction of cultivation. Most of us who work in the garden will be assigned alternative jobs for the winter months. Only a few will be kept on to work in the greenhouses. It saddens me to think I will have to work indoors.

‘Do you know yet what your job will be? Or do you let them put you in the laundry?’ she asks as I shrug again. ‘You can choose, you know. You do not need to keep silent. You cannot close yourself off, cannot forever be so angry with everyone. It is not our fault that you are here. You can make your life easier.’

‘You sound like the shrink,’ I say not unkindly, and she’s surprised to hear me speak, always expects silence, unless I have a teacher’s book in front of me. ‘Are you looking for something?’

‘I want to find out whether you will think about working in one of the more creative work stations.’

‘Jobs? I’m not bothered. We all get the same wage. I guess I’ll let you lot decide.’

Müller turns back to my drawings. ‘But you could use your skills, perhaps even enjoy what you do,’ she says, and I snort.

‘May I?’ she asks, and waits for a tilt of my head before sifting through my sketches, devoting time to a few that interest her, while I think about what she has said about the job assignment.

Most of the women here used to fight for work that paid the best rates. Now everyone gets paid the same. It’s not much, but at least there’s less of a dispute.

Fatima and Dolores work in the pottery studio in the west wing. They have turned some beautiful pots. It’s hard to believe that these angry, volatile women create pieces decorated with such delicately fashioned and carefully glazed porcelain petals and leaves. When I first came here, I visited the studio, admiring the rows of pots waiting to be fired in the kiln. But I snapped up the job I was offered in the garden to be outside in the fresh air. The regimental attention to detail of planting seeds, row upon row, helped to settle my mind. Nurturing a new generation of plant life, watching things grow. I forgot that by autumn everything would be dead.

We grow things for the community. Our goods are either used in the prison kitchen, or taken to local markets. And there’s a shop inside the prison gates where locals come from the surrounding villages to buy our organically grown produce.

By Müller’s reckoning I may automatically be assigned a job in the laundry for the winter, but I can see something ticking away in her mind, and I begin to think this is not the first time she has looked at my art. The more creative jobs of weaving and mandala design nevertheless incite a feeling of monotony in my mind. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that everyone has a job, but I’ll let them decide where to put me.

I look at JP’s picture on the wall. My personal little icon. Something to worship. God, I miss him so much. I wonder if JP has inherited some of my artistic leanings. At this stage in his stick-man art, it’s hard to tell. By his age I was drawing ponies at the kitchen table from morning until night.

Müller puts her hand on top of the pile of sketches.

‘These are really good, Frau Smithers. It is pleasing to see you use your creativity.’

There she is again, going on about my creativity. But I nevertheless lap up her compliment, knowing it’s a rarity between guards and inmates, and I award her the slip of a smile. She turns to leave.

‘Take raincoat off heater. Es schmilzt,’ she says gruffly, and I listen to her footsteps retreat down the corridor.

I glance at the pile of drawings and consider that they are hardly my best work. When I run out of reading material, it’s the drawing that keeps me occupied. I have to fill my free time with something. To stop the chimera of bitter revenge raising its ugly head. The demons of injustice are still present, and it will be a while before I manage to exorcise them all. Probably not until the day I leave this place.

I sit at the desk and tear another sheet of A4 from my pad. It’s not great quality paper, but at least I have something to draw on. I put in an order for some paper a while ago from an art shop in Lausanne, but it hasn’t arrived yet. Pencil poised, I breathe deeply, relishing the smell of melting plastic on the radiator behind me, and prepare to create another illusion.

* * *

Seven years ago

My beach in Greece could wait. The wistfulness of saying farewell to those leaving for the summer, and the uncomfortable feeling that I was getting myself into something I couldn’t handle, lessened each day. Anne’s wise advice ignored, I was a bona fide love-struck teenager.

I didn’t confront Matt with the story Anne and Terri had told me about Leila, not then, but kept it to myself. Instead I turned his unspoken confession into my own goal of healing his supposedly broken heart, without pressuring him into any kind of a relationship. I had no intention of tainting our courtship with questions about past girlfriends, painting myself as the jealous successor. If he considered his association with Leila unfinished, then I would wait for him to divulge it to me in his own time, would expect him to offer his honourable confession. But if he remained silent about her, then in my mind his liaison with her was over, finished. I was his new horizon. Ignore a smug cat for long enough and it will eventually crawl into your lap.

And the other rumour? I put it down to jealousy. Others will often find fault with someone they wish they could be like.

One day when the snow had melted, Matt and I hiked through the forest to a viewpoint known as the Eagles’ Nest, high above the Rhône Valley. Perched on a boulder, we admired the view across to the French ski resorts. The cliff dropped a thousand metres vertically, a stone’s throw from where we sat. Through the haze, Matt pointed out a village below us in the distance on the grey smudge of Lac Léman, and told me it would soon be time to put his boat back in the water.

‘You fascinate me, Lucille. Most girls I meet want something more. They’re always working a game to get a part of me, but you’re so free and easy. You weren’t looking for anything when you turned up on my mountain, and you haven’t expected anything of me. I appreciate that.’

‘I’ve enjoyed our time together so far,’ I offered timidly.

I knew by not defining our relationship, he was under no pressure to categorise it himself. ‘And maybe I’m happy to stick around. I have no plans, no obligations.’

‘That’s it, I think. The no obligation bit. It makes me want you to stick around.’

Matt put his arm tightly around my waist. I was impressed with his honesty. He surely wasn’t hiding anything.

‘Anne is letting me stay on her sofa while I look for work. She’s now renting a place of her own.’

I winced inside with the memory of my conversation with Terri and Anne.

Matt and I leaned in to each other, enjoying the view. He took off his shirt in the unexpected warmth, the sun shining on the niche where we sat on the rocks, our bodies protected from the wind by the granite at our backs.

‘You must let me draw you one day. You have perfect muscle form for the artist’s eye. I could do you in pastel, charcoal, even acrylic.’

I ran my hands lightly over his broad shoulders. He leaned forward slightly, a small shrug away from my fingers.

‘No, you will not draw me, Lucille. No drawings of me.’

I frowned. His sudden mood change confused me.

‘Okay,’ I said slowly. ‘No sketching. But it’s what I love to do, to express my appreciation of perfect form.’

I laughed playfully and trailed a finger down his bicep, but he didn’t smile. Face still turned away, a muscle ticked at his jaw.

‘Stick to drawing that,’ he said, pointing at the view. ‘Landscapes, mountain scenes. Let’s not talk about painting any more,’ he said abruptly.

Anger flared briefly, eclipsing the hurt at his initial shunning of my touch. I realised he’d never really asked me about my art.

‘But it’s what I love to do. You think cleaning toilets in a shitty hostel is enough to satisfy me?’

He turned to me, and in a flash, his dark demeanour changed to playfulness, with that hungry look in his eyes I recognised. My irritation softened, and I moulded my hands around the shoulders I had, moments before, imagined drawing. As he began removing articles of my clothing, I panicked. Ignoring any negative signals, I put my niggling angst down to worrying whether our situation on the footpath was too exposed.

* * *

A few days later a flyer appeared in Anne’s mailbox announcing a local art exhibition organised by a group of students at the international college. A series of personal interpretations of the modern masters would be on display. Intrigued, the two of us went along.

‘I’m not really a fan of modern art,’ she said as we walked past colourful renditions of Picasso, Kandinsky, Braque and Matisse. ‘But these are pretty good.’

‘Who’s in charge? Who’s their teacher?’ I asked, studying a bold still life, in acrylic greens and blues. ‘This is the kind of stuff I was doing at university. Hard to believe a little college in the Alps has students turning out this kind of work.’

‘That’s the professor over there.’

Anne pointed to a portly-looking gentleman at one end of the hall, his sparse white hair in disarray. He seemed a little awkward, seeking solace in a glass of wine the students were offering for their vernissage. He reminded me of an Oxford don, a tweedy mussed look. But nevertheless approachable. On the spur of the moment I introduced myself.

‘Patterson, Iain. How do you do?’

His boisterous handshake rattled the bones in my arm. I introduced myself, likened the work his students had exhibited to a project my class had participated in during my first year at university. It turned out we had a connection. One of my mentors at Leeds was an old colleague of his.

‘Haven’t heard from old Hibbert for a while. Multi-talented chap. Great artist, but also wrote some excellent plays in his time.’

The professor waffled on, his tone wavering somewhere between didactic and aristocratic. The plum in his mouth, rather than marking him as pompous, suited his eccentric demeanour. I didn’t want him to think I was another college dropout, but the association with my old professor made me wonder if I hadn’t done something unwise by giving up my studies in a subject where my skills truly lay.

‘So it must be half-term. You’ll be going back for the end of the semester soon, won’t you? Spring ball next month. Always a hoot.’

‘Actually, no … I’m not going back.’ Then thinking this sounded like I was a failure: ‘I’ve taken a break from my studies. I’m on a cultural tour of Europe.’

Patterson cocked an eyebrow, and changed the subject. He’d heard that one before.

‘What do your people do?’

It amused me to hear him refer to my parents in such an old-fashioned way, especially as my relationship with them was somewhat strained with my unexpected voyage to the continent.

‘My father is an ex-naval officer. My mother’s a nurse. She used to be an expat locum, Middle East mainly. I suspect I have a genetic predisposition for travel. Which is why I’ve … delayed my studies for a year,’ I said, twisting the truth.

‘Nothing wrong with a journey of self-discovery, throwing a few wild oats.’

I smiled, the misquoted idiom making him appear suddenly naive.

‘You should come and visit the studio sometime. Pop by next week – we won’t be too busy when this exhibition is out of the way.’

* * *

I wasted no time taking the professor up on his invitation. By the following week I hardly had two centimes to rub together. The few francs I had earned were long spent. I’d sold my Eurorail ticket to a departing backpacker when the hostel closed. But that money was rapidly running out, and Anne, although a generous hostess, must have been getting tired of my presence in her home. Her relationship with François was getting serious, and I could tell she wanted her space to herself.

‘I was Professor Hibbert’s assistant for a term in my first year,’ I told Iain Patterson when I visited his studio.

I was trying my best to both charm and maybe impress the old fellow.

‘A Hibbert protégé! I could do with an assistant in the studio. Are you looking for work?’

Yes, yes! I wanted to shout. Everything was falling conveniently into place.

Iain Patterson, self-professed artist and wine connoisseur, flaunted an ample belly upon which he would amusingly rest his brushes as he painted, tucked between the buttons of his brown smock. I had never seen anyone paint with so many brushes at once. He balanced the smaller ones over his ears. They even protruded from his mouth, a substitute for the tortoiseshell pipe his long-suffering wife insisted he smoke outside the studio, to avoid bringing home the cloying scent of Latakia smoke on his hair and clothes.

Patterson, as he preferred to be called, had enough seniority to secure me a job as his assistant, and although he was past retirement age, it was evident his teaching was highly valued.

I was unable to obtain official working papers, but the college secured me a study permit, to fool the authorities into thinking I was a full-time student. I was even able to earn one credit a term in Patterson’s classes, which marginally satisfied my parents’ concerns about taking up the reins of an education I had left behind in England. Although it was unlikely I would ever fulfil enough credit requirements for an undergraduate degree.

I soon blended into the village and local life, and after a slow start, learned to speak French. Not that it mattered in a resort where so many foreign tourists passed through, and given that non-language courses at the college were all taught in English.

Being seen at Matt’s side, a local boy, should have made me feel secure, knowing the authorities were always on the search for illegal workers without permits. The news about my semi-legal permit status quashed his hesitancy about me finding a job at the same college where he worked. And my love for him eclipsed the feeling of unease everyone else seemed to have when I was in his company.

* * *

We are sitting at a table in the cafeteria when Fatima comes in with Adnan bound to her in a perplexingly fashioned wrap, resembling a haphazardly knotted sari. She moves along the canteen counter, collects random items of food for her tray. As she comes to sit near us I wonder how she can place so many opposing food groups together on one plate. Perhaps she still has the disturbing gastronomic leanings of an expectant mother in her third trimester, and yearns for unidentified chemicals her body is missing. I vaguely remember a craving for horseradish and caramel fudge.

She starts plucking morsels off her tray and pops them into her mouth before she has even reached the table. She looks slightly manic. Adnan whimpers and squawks quietly in his sleep at her chest.

The cafeteria, or eating area, is bare and orthodox. It’s relatively quiet, compared to the school dining rooms of my youth, but it fills fast and voices crowd the fuggy air, thick with the smell of institutional food. Meals are brought in large warmers from the main kitchen in the castle and distributed to each living block. Occasionally I take my plate of food to my cell and eat alone. But most of the time I eat in the dining area so the food doesn’t stink up my living space.

Sporadic snippets of conversation in a multitude of tongues stab the atmosphere. Depending on who is sitting together, the room sometimes feels like a clinic for the deaf, communication reduced to sign language accompanied by ‘mm’s and ‘aah’s when an idea becomes too challenging to convey. Today it sounds like a telephone exchange where all the operators have been designated different languages. The Tower of Babel prior to the scattering of the people.

Dolores is sitting with me, and now that Fatima and Yasmine have joined us, I know she will want to use her limited skills to talk English. Dolores has been teaching me a few words of Spanish in return; it’s useful to know the basics in any language here – Russian and Greek would be the next priorities on my list. I am fascinated by the anthropological implication of European linguistics, how languages developed from prehistoric tribes have blossomed like ink blots to fill the borders of the countries we see on a map. Pockets of humanity have been allocated their spaces, coloured within the designated lines like shapes in a painting book. Hindelbank has an extensive selection, jumbled within its cramped borders.

‘Why you don’t sit with your people?’ Dolores asks as Fatima sits awkwardly at the table, almost tipping her tray. No one leans over to help. It’s every woman for herself in this place, even if she’s carrying a baby.

‘They not my people,’ Fatima says darkly, glancing briefly at a group of Balkans sitting by the door.

Fatima shoves her tray back onto the table. One side rises and bangs back down, rattling the cutlery. Adnan’s fluffy head twitches at the noise.

‘Why you not sit with yours?’ She nods towards a small group of Latinas sitting in silence not far from us. Colombian, Ecuadorian, Venezuelan.

I think I know why Dolores doesn’t sit with them. For some reason she is considered an outsider. It might be because she helps teach a Zumba class in the activities room on Tuesdays. Perhaps like me with the English classes, she’s seen as someone who sucks up to the establishment. But a more likely reason is her comrades and neighbours avoid her because she screeches down the phone in Spanish at her kids every time she gets permission to call home. She upsets everyone with her animated mourning of the distance between them. The Latinas must be sick of listening. At least the rest of us don’t understand her emotional diatribe.

‘Not today. Today I a citizen of the world.’ She pronounces the w of world like the Spanish j in Juan. ‘And I with my new friends.’

Dolores pats Yasmine on her thigh, and Yasmine passes her a handful of cigarettes. Nothing changes hands in return.

We sit back and chew on our food in silence. Yasmine looks thoughtfully at Dolores, but glances away when Dolores catches her.

The conversation among the group of Balkans in the corner rises in volume, taking the attention away from us. Whether from Serbia or Macedonia, the group is able to communicate in their various Slavic dialects. They are forever in conflict, even though the Balkan wars finished over a decade ago. Fatima bristles. She is Albanian, a non-practising Muslim, but she stares at them as though a terrible battle is still raging in her mind, ever aware of the nations who destroyed each other to the north and the east of her country in the name of ethnic cleansing.

‘They are most definitely not my people,’ Fatima says, a little louder than before.

The Slavic argument abates briefly, and they all lean in, one of them gesticulating in our direction. A Serbian woman stands and scrapes her chair back noisily from the table with the backs of her legs.

The guard in charge of distributing the food raises her spatula like a fly swatter. She is pre-empting intervention from a distance, and I can tell she’s silently willing them to calm down.

The woman who has risen from the table stomps to the trolley and shoves her tray into a spare slot. The plate and cutlery crash against the edge of the tray, and a fork clatters over the side to the floor. Instead of walking out of the room, the Serbian girl marches over to our table. I can see her over Fatima’s head. I gulp. Fatima hasn’t seen her yet.

‘You think you so high and mighty, sitting here with the bourgeoisie,’ she says to Fatima. ‘You think baby gonna protect you?’

She pokes Fatima’s shoulder with a finger, and Fatima suddenly rises with a nimbleness I didn’t think possible with Adnan strapped to her chest.

‘No, no, no … the baby!’ I try to shout after swallowing a hunk of unchewed bread.

Fatima doesn’t hear me, and a stream of incomprehensible words fly like ammunition from her mouth. A bubble of spit lands on Adnan’s head, and I reach up to grab her arm. Before I get there, her hand lashes out and she pushes the Serbian girl with her palm in the middle of her chest. The Serbian staggers backwards, but doesn’t fall.

‘Fucking bitches,’ the Serbian says as she regains her balance.

Adnan begins to cry, and the Serbian turns abruptly, making a sucking sound through her teeth, and leaves. The exchange has ended with a phrase everybody understands. I don’t take it personally. It causes me to smile involuntarily, feeling vaguely fortunate the universal language in this place is my mother tongue.

‘What you smile about, husband killer?’

Fatima’s question wipes the smile off my face.

She’s gone from ally to adversary in a matter of seconds. I don’t even try to explain. It’s true that Fatima is wearing Adnan like a shield. Thinks she can say anything. Things would have been a lot messier if she didn’t have the baby at her chest.

The low pressure of the autumn weather is getting to all of us. In the mugginess of the canteen, I am beginning to yearn for snow.

Chapter 4

Müller walks right up to my desk without checking my tidy cell, and I expect her to click her heels together like a sergeant major as she stops beside me. I look up from the letter I am writing to JP, annoyed that my train of thought has been interrupted. I clack the pen on the desk, and press my lips together.

‘Come. We have not much time,’ she says, turning to walk straight back out of the cell, and a retort of refusal sits unspoken on my tongue. I know I’m in prison and at the mercy of my captors, but I don’t want to appear so easily compliant.

I follow her nonetheless, curiosity getting the better of my belligerence.

‘Where are we going?’

‘You will see,’ she says, without breaking her stride.

We head down two flights of stairs to the door by the garden and she uses her key card to open it. A stiff breeze lifts the wisps of grey hair like wings at her temple and I shiver in the sudden freshness. It feels like a clandestine trip to a forbidden world. The cold blue-grey dimness of the autumn dusk plunges the bare plots into shadow.

Across from the allotment sits the main Hindelbank castle, its faux-Versailles annexes enveloping a courtyard at its centre, surrounded by a high brick and plaster wall. As we walk down the track to the main entrance, I peer through a gate to the courtyard, gravel raked to Zen precision. Red and white striped shutters flank the thick beige limestone frames of the arched windows, normally jolly in the daytime, but appearing menacingly violet in the fading light. Cupolas and round dormer windows adorn the shingle roof, sweeping down in an almost Dutch-style gable, darkened after the recent rain. The roof ridges are decorated with large urn-like finials, topping off an architecture that speaks of once opulent aristocracy. I told JP at the beginning that I was imprisoned in a castle. He drew me as Rapunzel for several weeks afterwards.

‘The Schloss, is it not magnificent?’ asks Müller proudly, as if it’s part of her own ancestry.

‘I guess, under different circumstances …’

‘It was being built in 1720, by a man named Friedrich von Erlach. When he died, the building was made a poor house for women. It is how this place developed into a prison. But there is something I want to show you. We go into the Schloss. Come.’

We walk along the wall into a cobbled courtyard and Müller leads the way up the steps into the castle. The door is unlocked. I wonder whether she always has access, or whether she arranged this for us.

Along the hallways and up the stairway of the castle, there are numerous portraits on the walls, but the paintings on the ceilings in the reception rooms are the ones that catch my eye. Müller throws the light switch and I stare up at the scenes painted between the plaster mouldings of what must once have been a great dining hall. There are exquisite scenes of angels and kings. I crane my neck, reminding me of a bygone class excursion to the Sistine chapel.

‘Yes, yes, beautiful, but this …’ Müller opens the doors of what looks like a formal salon, free of furniture. The antique parquet floor creaks under our feet. It is a space designated for parties and gatherings. By trickery of the brush, the room has been made to look larger with rococo trompe l’oeil scenes of Tuscan pillars encircled with vines and Romanesque garden archways, through which there is a hint of dreamy Italian summer skies. The effect is striking, and a complete juxtaposition to the renaissance paintings in the other rooms.

But the final pièce de résistance, and different again, is a relatively small panelled room crammed from floor to ceiling with mountain and country landscapes reminiscent of the Swiss painter Calame or the German artist Bierstadt. The dozens of painted panels take my breath away. It is so hard to believe that this is located in the middle of a prison compound.

‘There was a time …’ Müller leaves her sentence unfinished and bites her lip.

‘You paint too?’ I ask. She shakes her head once.

‘You think you can do?’ asks Müller, my question unanswered.

I stare at her, blowing air through my lips. ‘You are kidding.’

‘I think you can do. Copies. You can copy these. I have been having the idea. You know that every year we have a market here. The Schlossmärit. Everybody makes something to sell. I think you can do painting. You can make your own paintings, but copies of some of these works would get good money.’

I narrow my eyes. Her enthusiasm makes me think she’s not merely considering the lucrativeness of the prison market.

‘I can’t paint like this. I could never match this skill.’

‘I think you should try. Come, let me show you where.’

Curious, I follow Müller out of the castle and back across to the prison outbuildings. We approach the block where many of the handcraft departments are housed and Müller uses her key to enter. The place is empty now at the end of the workday. We walk the length of the building, past the cardboard packing room, a room with computers, and a library where some classes take place for those wanting to study specially offered apprenticeship courses. A stairway leads to the weaving and sewing rooms on the first floor. Beyond the stairs is the pottery where Dolores and Fatima work. On the other side of the corridor there’s a room called the Werkatelier.

‘I’m not working in here!’ I protest.

This is the place where those who can’t concentrate or sit still for long periods of time are employed. Mostly because they’re zoned out on drugs. Müller shakes her head and keeps walking. We pass tables of half-finished pre-printed mandalas. Simple, mind-numbing work.

It’s quiet, except for the humming white noise of the kiln on the other side of the wall. A faint smell of porcelain dust permeates through from the pottery. We go through a door at the end of the block. A little light seeps in through the windows on the north end of the room, through which I can see part of the main greenhouse. The dark blue luminosity reveals easels folded against the back wall, jars filled with brushes and charcoal, trays of half-used tubes of oil and acrylic paints. Different-sized canvases, some blank, some half painted, lean against a cupboard next to rolls of butcher paper. The floor is splattered with the masterpiece of years of spilled and dripping paint.

The airless room smells faintly of turpentine. It feels like no one has been in here for a while, confirmed by a thick layer of dust that lies on the bench. It is almost the artist’s Zion, if it were not situated within the walls of a penitentiary.

‘I had no idea this was here,’ I exclaim.

If I had known of its existence, I would definitely have been more proactive in seeking work in here.

‘That’s what you get for your solitude and Indifferenz. I have suggested to the administration that you should work in the atelier over the winter. I don’t think you will do the asking, so I do it.’

‘Why would you do that for me?’

‘I have seen many criminals in this place over the years. Some have done terrible things without remorse. I would not normally speak like this. We are to be unattached, unemotional, and I don’t know if you killed your husband. Maybe, but I’m sure not on purpose.’ I narrow my eyes at Müller’s grammatical errors. ‘But it is our Ziel, our goal, to integrate all prisoners back into society and some have skills that can be used after you are free. You need to continue to build your skill. And more important, I am somebody who appreciates good art. These things mean that you have a little of my sympathie, Lucie.’

It is the first time any guard has used my first name. We are all referred to as ‘Frau’ and our last names, to avoid the very sociability in which we now find ourselves.

‘Well, I think I should like that. Thank you. To work in the atelier … What is your first name, Frau Müller?’ I think she realises the line she has crossed, and ignores my question.

‘I’m glad you have decided. It is time to eat. We must get back,’ Müller says gruffly as though she has read my mind, and she herds me out of the door and down the stairs.

* * *

Seven years ago

‘My father, Didier, is Swiss, and my mother, Natasha, who we all call Mimi, is Russian by birth,’ explained Matt.

We were tucked into the corner of a rustic restaurant eating fondue. Matt showed me how to stir the cheese vigorously, to avoid separation or burning on the bottom of the caquelon.

‘That makes my English roots sound so mundane in comparison,’ I said. ‘How come you speak such good English? You should be fluent in Russian.’

‘I don’t speak much Russian. The language at home while I was growing up was English. I think Mimi thought there was some sophistication in that – can’t think why.’ He smiled cheekily as I brandished a cheese-laden morsel of bread at him on the end of my fork.

‘If your mum’s Russian, how did she end up here?’

‘Via London actually, hence the association with English, ma belle Anglaise.’

He held up his shot-sized Vaudois wine glass and we clinked, kissed and sipped before stabbing and dipping our next pieces of bread.

‘Mimi’s parents, my grandparents, escaped Petrograd which is now St Petersburg, and fled to England before the February Revolution of 1917. They could see that the Duma was gradually becoming unstable over the years since its formation, and had prepared for a possible uprising.’

‘But the language of the aristocracy in Russia was French for many years, if I’m not mistaken,’ I said.

Matt nodded. ‘Even at the beginning of the twentieth century, French was the language of la noblesse. Mimi was bilingual until she was about 5, and then trilingual, as English became her third language. She and my aunt went to a private school in London for a few years until my grandfather was offered work as an interprète at the newly founded League of Nations, and they moved to Geneva. They lived in a big house on the shores of Lac Léman, near Versoix.’

‘Could an interpreter’s salary at the League of Nations support those costs – an expensive private school in London and a mansion on the lake?’

‘My grandparents managed to, how would you say, smuggle, some accumulated tsarist funds out of pre-Communist Russia, probably in the form of gold and precious stones.’

‘How did your parents meet?’

‘Mimi met my father at an art conference in Genève. He dabbled with art in his youth, worked in acquisitions at a gallery for a few years until he realised his dream of becoming a writer. After they married, he persuaded Mimi to move to this more rural pre-alpine region so he could concentrate on his writing. He published a few books, but none became bestsellers.’

For all the romanticism a carefree seasonal fling with a ski bum conjures, Matt had an equally impressive background born almost of the stuff of Ian Fleming tales. I was happy he was opening up his past to me, but I wondered how Matt’s parents could survive on the earnings of a writer of second-rate commercial fiction without the publication of a successful novel.

The fondue pot was now empty. Matt placed the cap over the burner to put out the flame. I folded my napkin and laid it on my plate.

‘Not finished yet, ma belle.’ Matt smiled, grabbing the caquelon.

He began scraping at the large coin of cheese burned onto the base of the pot with his fork, deftly lifting the golden disc and taking it between his fingers when it had cooled. Tearing it down the middle, he handed half to me. ‘The best part – la religieuse.’

I was doubtful – a piece of burned cheese – but the salty offering tasted like the best crusty bits round the welsh rarebit my mother used to serve me as a child. It silenced my thoughts about heritage and financial means.

* * *

The first time I properly encountered Natasha and Didier Favre, we chose to meet at a busy Italian restaurant in the lower village. I figured the distractions of the animated chefs in the open kitchen and the bustle of the waiters around the customers would reduce the scrutiny I might be subjected to by Matt’s rather exotic parents. I was flattered that for one who was keen to maintain our relationship on a casual level, he had wanted me to meet them.

Matt’s mother, Natasha, was a beautiful, poised woman. She raised her chin and looked down her nose at me as we shook hands. There was to be no traditional Swiss embrace one would expect for the girlfriend of a son, and I was sure she didn’t approve of me. Her supercilious attitude gave the impression that she didn’t appear to approve of anyone, including Matt and his sister Marie-Claire. His sister was barely out of her teens when she married and moved to California with the American husband she had met at the very same college where Matt also studied, and where we both now worked. Exchanging one surreal family situation for another.

‘You never speak of Marie-Claire,’ I said, and Matt shifted in his chair a little awkwardly.

‘MC rarely returns to her alpine roots,’ he said.

‘Mon Dieu, I wish you wouldn’t call her that,’ said Natasha. ‘Such a beautiful name, Marie-Claire, and she reduces it to some sobriquet of a delinquent musician.’

‘Do you have any grandchildren?’ I asked.

Natasha hesitated. ‘Unfortunately not. Marie-Claire is unable to conceive.’

‘But she’s still so young, surely there is time.’

‘No, she will not have children,’ she said firmly, as though it was a family decree.

I raised my napkin to my mouth so she wouldn’t see the shock on my face. Natasha cleared her throat before continuing.

‘They think the world is far too populated and she is concentrating on her career as a designer. She cannot have children, something wrong, down there.’ She waved vaguely at her lower body. ‘She and that American husband of hers have decided not to adopt. I am grateful that Mathieu stayed on the mountain when Marie-Claire left for California. He may eventually provide us with the future generation when he finds the right girl.’

She stopped abruptly. Heat rose to my face. Not because she must be aware our relationship had progressed beyond simple courtship, but with indignation that she thought Matt had not yet met the ‘right girl’. I looked down and sliced into a wild-mushroom raviolo on my plate. This was turning out to be harder than I had thought. The stereotype of a boyfriend’s acerbic mother. I already felt sorry for Marie-Claire’s husband, having to put up with all this family snobbery.

‘When did Matt first become interested in sailing?’ I asked to change the subject, continuing Mimi’s habit of talking about him as though he wasn’t there.

Having used the yacht as his trump card when trying to impress the girls, I wanted to find out whether Matt had been telling the truth in the bar on the night we met.

‘Natasha’s sister, Matt’s Aunt Alesha, moved to London when she finished her schooling in Geneva to study economics at LSE,’ said Didier. ‘Unfortunately she died of cancer a few years ago, but she left Mathieu a handsome sum of money in her will on the one condition that he buy himself a sailing boat, to continue her legacy.’

‘Alexandra …’ Natasha glared pointedly at Didier. She definitely had a thing against the use of diminutives. Ironic that everyone called her Mimi and she didn’t seem to mind. ‘… was one of the first female students of her generation at the school. She married a London financier who was a great yachtsman, and they used to take Mathieu sailing with them on the Solent during the summer months. They had no children of their own, and became very fond of young Mathieu.’

I guessed we were skirting back to the subject of succession.

No matter the tack of our discussions, every conversation returned to Matt during the evening. It was as if he wasn’t actually there, although he appeared to be basking in their passive attention. It was a relief to keep my own history to a minimum. After the initial questions about where I came from, what my parents did, and the awkward quandary about my forsaken studies – taking a gap year out seemed to be the most comfortable explanation, giving Natasha the satisfaction of thinking I might one day leave and return to my academics – they remained entirely incurious as to my feelings or ambitions.

‘You’ve never mentioned your sister before,’ I said as Matt took me home that evening.

‘You never asked.’

‘I thought it would be natural …’

‘I’m sorry, Lucie, I don’t want to talk about her, okay?’

It was hard to believe he had been so open and forthcoming about his family a couple of weeks before in the fondue restaurant. The encounter with his parents left us both feeling uncomfortable.

We kissed briefly outside the door to Anne’s apartment before Matt turned to leave, and I watched his back for a few seconds before letting myself in.

* * *

Matt’s mother Natasha never warmed to me, even after I had been initiated into one of her traditional Russian evenings several weeks later.

It was Didier’s birthday, and the first time I had been invited to the chalet. A heavy tablecloth adorned with richly embroidered silk tassels was flung onto the massive round table in the middle of the dining room. There were eight of us in total, including two other couples, friends of Didier and Natasha. A variety of Russian delicacies covered the table – blinis, rollmops, pirozhki with different vegetable and meat fillings, salty fish and caviar dishes.

‘A stunning spread, Natasha.’

Matt’s mother tipped her head to one side, acknowledging my compliment. I expected ‘Please, call me Mrs Favre’ to slide from her tongue, such was her supercilious look. I could see it was going to take some diplomacy to worm my way into this woman’s icy heart. Although at that stage I already wondered if I’d ever want to. It was possible she thought only a superwoman would be the perfect match for her son.

‘Thank you, my dear. There are some bourgeois Russian traditions we don’t want to see disappear. I usually prepare food like this to celebrate Maslenitsa before Lent, but any special occasion deserves some flair, and Didier’s birthday is a good excuse.’ She smiled at her husband as he appeared from the kitchen, a bottle of Moskovskaya in his hand, vapour flowing off the frosting glass.

‘Prepare your plates, help yourselves to food,’ Natasha urged as Didier carefully poured the viscous vodka into eight pewter shot glasses sitting on a wooden tray. Conversation lulled as everyone watched Didier’s steady hand.

‘I couldn’t help noticing those icons on your wall,’ I said, as Natasha ceremoniously passed the tray around the table to the guests. Her hand shook slightly as I spoke, vodka shivering in the tiny frosted goblets. I looked at her.

‘Those old things. They are merely copies. A sentimental reminder of my parents’ plight. Like the Russian dolls.’ Her eyes indicated a set of cheap yellow painted dolls regimented over the wide lintel of the kitchen door.

My gaze was drawn back to the icons hanging in the corridor leading to the entrance hall, directly in my line of vision.

‘They’re very handsome copies. A great example of Orthodox art. Wonderful to have a few of your cultural roots displayed in the home,’ I said to Matt.

Natasha cleared her throat, taking the last glass of vodka from the tray.

‘Quick, before it warms! Here’s to my wonderful husband, Didier, many happy returns. Vashe zdorovie!’

She threw her head back, emptied her glass. Warm lips seared the cold pewter as the oily vodka slipped down our throats.

‘Eat, eat!’ urged Natasha, and we followed the drink with a mouthful of food to soak up the wickedness of the alcohol.

She claimed we could drink all night like this and never wake up with a hangover, but even in my youthful resilience, I never quite believed her. Once the first bottle of vodka had gone, a second appeared from the freezer, and Natasha brought out a heavy tureen of borscht, tender beef strips in a well-seasoned beetroot and cabbage broth.

Towards the end of the evening, Didier told the story of the first time he set eyes on Natasha at an art exhibition in Geneva. The vodka caused his tongue to sweeten and eyes to moisten. He turned to me and began to talk about the latest book he was writing. Natasha’s eyes flashed at him as he was halfway through describing an adventure in her youth, and his sentence petered out. He changed the subject, passing the tray to collect our glasses for another round, leaving me to ponder what secrets Natasha had in her steely past.

On the way home afterwards, I asked Matt about his mother’s Russian background.

‘Mimi’s got a bit of a thing about the old country. I don’t know why really. She’s more Swiss than most Swiss people. But there’s a pride in her that doesn’t come from the Alps. Something deeper. She has a fiery character. Since the dissolution of communist Russia, they’ve wanted to travel back … But anyway, why the interest in her background?’ Matt asked, a little irritated.

I thought of the icons on the wall, the traditional fare at the table. I shrugged. ‘Curious, I guess. Have you ever been there?’

Matt shook his head. ‘Papa’s only started researching for his latest book recently, but they’re planning to travel there soon.’

‘Sounds like a great plot location for a historic romance.’

‘He says he wants to write about the experiences of Mimi’s family before the revolution. Mimi’s not keen, keeps telling him to let sleeping dogs lie.’ I looked at him curiously. ‘I don’t really know what she means, the revolution happened more than a generation ago. She’s proud, but I think she’s scared of something. She continues to look for links to her roots though. Maybe she feels like she never quite belonged in this Western society.’ Matt stopped, as though he thought he was maligning his mother.

‘I thought she fitted in well here, considering the cosmopolitan nature of Switzerland’s population,’ I said when he didn’t continue.

‘Mm. Maybe. You should hear my sister talk about her.’

I was surprised to hear him offer the opinions of the sister I hadn’t known he had until recently.

‘She calls Mimi such a hypocrite,’ he continued. ‘All this faff and ceremony about maintaining Russian tradition. MC always hated these Russian parties. Thought they were so fake, when Mimi never actually lived there, and my grandparents escaped when they were barely adults. They became more devoted Londoners than most Cockneys. I don’t know where she’d be more happy – she can’t seem to sink her roots deep enough here. But it’s important the family try and stay together. Not that MC would ever come back here. It was a bit of a blow to Mimi when she left, despite our … despite their differences. But Mimi’s happy I stayed around after college. I think she likes having me close.’

‘Marie-Claire doesn’t get on with the family?’ I asked cautiously, remembering his reluctance to speak about her the last time.

‘No … I … no not really. She’s a bit of a nonconformist. She’s … unusual. Pissed off with the world. Isn’t willing to believe that fate can sometimes deliver some tough times with the good.’

‘Do you miss her?’

‘Not really,’ Matt said hesitantly. ‘We didn’t get on. Anyway, she’s made a life for herself in California now. Ron’s a good bloke. Bit too American for my liking, but I think he looks after her.’

‘Do you really think they’ll never have kids?’

‘No, of course not! I mean, no. MC’s not really the family type. How come you’re so fascinated with my sister? Let’s drop her, okay?’

‘Don’t get short with me, Matt. I’m just curious. If I had a sister or a brother, I’d probably want to hang out with them all the time. I guess it’s because I don’t have one that the whole dynamic of having a sibling fascinates me. Surely it’s natural to want to know about you and your family.’

I had obviously hit a chord with Marie-Claire. We weren’t in a sober state for in-depth family discussions. I was trying to find reasons to like Matt’s mother, but despite her fascinating background, it wasn’t happening. I wondered how MC felt about her.

We arrived at Anne’s place. I fiddled with my key in the dark, swaying a little from too much vodka. Tonight I actually looked forward to Anne’s pull-out sofa bed, I was that tired, and was unable to analyse Matt’s irritability. I figured he’d come right in the morning. We kissed and he held me tight, as though delivering a silent apology for his reaction.

* * *

‘Why do you not draw your son?’ asks Yasmine between mouthfuls of her food. ‘She made a lot of great pictures,’ she says to the others at the table, pointing a fork speared with a morsel of grey meat in my direction.

My eyes flash. I don’t like talking about my art, but mostly I don’t like being the centre of attention.

‘I don’t know. I sometimes think I’ve forgotten what he really looks like,’ I reply. ‘I need to see him to be able to draw the essence of him. It’s harder than you think to draw my own son.’

I keep my voice neutral. Though I think it would break me to try and draw him, unable to wrest the detailed memories from my mind. The curve of his rosy cheek or the sweep of his fine hair. Those grey eyes that only started to turn green when I had to say goodbye, their colour enhanced by his tears.

‘She has drawn me, you know. She’s a real artist,’ Yasmine says to Fatima who nods with eyebrows raised and mouth turned down at the corners.

She’s vaguely impressed, or disinterested in my skills, I’m not sure which. A minuscule piece of bread crust sticks to Fatima’s lip, then falls onto Adnan’s head. She blows the crumbs from his crown as he sleeps. His fine fluffy hair puffs like gossamer. My throat tightens.

‘Perhaps you could start a business. Lulu’s Portraits,’ Yasmine continues, thinking out loud. ‘Yes, we could make a bit of money. Earn a few sous.’

‘We?’ I ask, amused. Lulu?

‘Yes, I will be your agent,’ she replies, presenting herself, flamenco fashion with a wave of her arm from head to chest, fingers splayed. ‘Of course you will give me a cut if I am to do your marketing and publicité.’

‘Caramba, Yasmine! You are to be my agent, remember? We have a business in cigarillos to organise,’ says Dolores huskily, eyes flashing.

I have no desire to fight over Yasmine’s attention, though I can see where this is going. Yasmine, with that look on her face that says she is the centre of our universe, demanding deference.

‘I am not going to sell my paintings, okay?’ I say, not wanting to darken any moods, but knowing that things like this can escalate alarmingly quickly into dissension in this place. Tiny issues can turn rapidly into thermo-nuclear reactions.

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