His face crumpled up, and it was ugly to watch. She thought about the studio, the photos and the videos she had seen there, that hidden, double life. Ugly, as well. It was all so ugly. She didn’t want any of it. She could no longer stand it.

  “Please give me another chance. Please forgive me.”

  He was weeping now, his nose runny, his eyes screwed up. Disgust rose over pity. How could she tell him, again, that there were so many things she had put up with, too much she had taken in her stride, so many times she had pardoned. He had been unfaithful since the start. It had been an unpleasant discovery, but not a surprise. She was no young bride. But this was different. This had nothing to do with the previous flings. This was a repugnant blow that had dug into the very core of their marriage, delving into the throbbing heart of it, and there was no going back from that debacle; there was no healing, no possibility of absolution.

  He didn’t seem to be getting it. He was still crying, his beard flecked with snot. He kept on mumbling that he had been such an idiot; he was so angry with himself.

  “I imagine you’re still seeing her?” she asked. She felt invincible in her black jacket, perched on her high-heeled rock-star boots. But the pain always found a way to express itself, perfidiously snaking its way through her shield. Why ask such a dumb question? Of course he was still seeing her! He had installed her in a studio; he had a life with her. For a year now, he’d been sharing part of his existence with this creature.

  François looked sheepish. He stared at his feet. Words weren’t coming to him.

  “You know what?” said Clarissa bitterly. “Forget that question. Don’t answer. I don’t want to know.”

  “I thought perhaps you might understand,” murmured François at last, with the same hangdog expression. “I was mistaken.”

  She stamped her foot.

  “For God’s sake, François, what is there to understand?”

  He shook his head, raised his hand. Could she just listen? Was that possible? She remained silent. He took that as a cue. He said he had needs, like any man, and she knew that. The problem was, with age, his needs were still strong. He couldn’t ignore them. He had to face the facts. They had married late, in their fifties. Then he had been ill. Of course, there had been sex between them, but perhaps not as much as he would have wanted. Maybe he was wrong, but it seemed to him that as she grew older, she seemed to be less interested in sex. Perhaps it was menopause? Perhaps they hadn’t talked about it enough? He hadn’t dared. He hadn’t known where to begin.

  Clarissa took a deep breath. She tried to put her anger and disgust aside.

  “What are you trying to tell me?” she said.

  François seemed to stand a little straighter. He looked her in the eyes. He had been meaning to speak to her, but he just didn’t know how. Never could he have imagined she’d follow him and discover the studio. He should have told her right away, and the more he waited, the more difficult it became to say anything. His voice became clearer, less shrill.

  “I thought you’d understand because you’re so intelligent, Clarissa. You see into people’s souls. And I really and truly thought that you wouldn’t feel hurt, because you don’t give me anything sexual anymore. Nothing much goes on in our bed, except hugs and kisses. I can’t even remember the last time we made love. When I’m with her, it is only for that. It’s just for the sex. It’s only for the sex.”

  A violent fury took over, and she had to restrain herself from insulting him. She was shaking.

  “Oh, really? Only for the sex?” she hissed frostily. “What about the photo albums? The videos? The celebrations? The dinners for two? All in the past year? I saw it, as it’s so nicely on display, in your home. Enough of your nonsense. Cut the crap, please. Stop saying she’s just some lay. You love her. You know it. You’re in love. And it’s intolerable. Unbearable.”

  Like a little boy, he started to cry again.

  “I love both of you,” he whined; “it’s a nightmare. I’m so sorry, honey. Forgive me!”

  He blubbered loudly, with no holding back.

  Clarissa stepped back, raised her chin.

  “You’re going to get the hell out of here. Now. You’re never coming back. Is that clear? I’ll talk to a lawyer when I’m ready. That lawyer will get in touch with you. That’s all. Bye.”

  She rushed away, without looking at him. The scanning system at the entrance had trouble checking her retina because of her tears. She had to go through it several times, praying François wasn’t behind her. She climbed the stairs too quickly, and had to stop halfway, breathless, her throat dry.

  Mrs. Dalloway’s voice greeted her as soon as she walked in.

  “Clarissa, tonight on channel Cinéma New Star, there’s a special Timothée Chalamet show. Otherwise, there’s a Chopin concert on—”

  “Just shut up, Mrs. Dalloway. And don’t speak to me before tomorrow.”

  Silence.

  A prodigious feeling of freedom raced through her.

  In the living room, the cat was curled up on the sofa, asleep. She sat down next to him and stroked his back. He purred. She put François out of her mind. She thought of all the things she had to do. The trick was to keep busy. It was the only way. In her mind, she made little notes. Check on her father to see how he was. Call Jordan to find out if the brooch was worth anything. Start thinking about the summer holiday, the first she’d spend without François. They usually spent them in Provence or Italy. Where would she go? And while she went through all these things, the idea of the book she was trying to write loomed up bigger than the rest. Luckily, the editor she worked with was not breathing down her neck. Laure-Marie knew Clarissa needed time. And Clarissa was well aware that although her books were valued, she was not a bestselling author whose new works were eagerly expected. There was no hype around her, and never had been. No one from the publishing company put pressure on her. It was always a pleasure to have lunch with Laure-Marie, who took her to nice restaurants and seemed genuinely happy to see her. But Laure-Marie had bigger and more important authors to look after.

  Perhaps it was time to call Laure-Marie and tell her that she had just started working on something new. She wondered what Laure-Marie would make of the fact that Clarissa was writing in English and French simultaneously. Would she be interested? Perhaps not. Since the attacks, the world of publishing had changed. The dreadful power of the images searing around the world on social media, showing the devastation of the Piazza San Marco, bombed-out Big Ben, and the obliteration of the Sistine Chapel, seemed to have stopped time. After the Eiffel Tower had been filmed crashing down, it had not seemed possible that anything worse could ever happen. And yet it had.

  But that was only the beginning. A swift and fiendish sequence of events had occurred. Pictures took precedence over words. No one read newspapers. People watched videos, over and over again, ensnared by an enthralled stupor.

  Clarissa recalled that several years after the attacks, during the oddness of an unhoped-for and disquieting lull, while Europe as Clarissa had always known it started to fall apart, and as the bees endured a slow agony worsening by the day, other new and horrifying images had spread like an epidemic: Ordinary citizens, unable to stand the cruel reality of modern life, were committing suicide on social media for all to see. Individuals of all ages, all classes, all nationalities posted live videos of themselves taking their own lives, one after the other. It was beyond belief: an atrocious and despotic larger-than-life reality show caught in the frenzy of media display. Literature no longer held its own, faced now with the onslaught of immediacy, where the obscene power of video reigned supreme, never satiated. And when stunned writers had attempted to describe the attacks, those books had barely been read. People preferred to come and listen to the writer, to applaud the writer as he or she read from his or her book, and no longer purchased signed copies. Reading was no longer comforting. Reading no longer helped to heal.

  So why should she go on writing? Who would read her? She would stick to writing because she didn’t have a choice, because written words were her stronghold, her defense. She would write to make her voice heard; she would continue in order to leave a trail, although she had no idea who’d ever find it. She would write.

  * * *

  Clarissa felt tired, more than ever. It was an effort to get out of bed, to walk up those eight flights of stairs. Why was her mouth so parched all the time? Perhaps she was overdoing things. Perhaps she needed to slow down, write less and with less passion, though that was going to be hard.

  One night, as she lay asleep, the voice murmured a word, over and over again, lapping into the breeding ground of her sensitive brain like a recurring wave, never letting go. Like a time machine, the dream was taking her back over the years to a place that filled her with dread. She heard the squeak of wheels on worn linoleum, saw the long stretch of a dark corridor opening up in front of her. She saw Toby, his hair still black, bending down to weep, his face in his hands. The voice whispered the same word that burrowed deep into her, down where she could still feel the soreness, down where she kept the pain at bay. But the voice acted like a key, unlocking all the doors of protection she had so carefully erected, and the suffering came gushing back, stronger than ever, like boiling water scalding her skin. In her dream, she surrendered to the pain, opening herself completely, letting it invade her. The voice was there to calm her, to reassure her. When she opened her eyes, she felt moisture on her cheeks. She had been crying. She felt calm, but desolate, as if something had been torn from her. And the word murmured by the voice, what was it? She couldn’t remember.

  When she got up to have breakfast, her joints always ached. She couldn’t understand why she felt so run-down. She had talked about it to Jordan, who had reminded her mother, very sweetly, that she was getting on. She was at last feeling her age. But Clarissa wouldn’t have it. It had all started since she had moved here. And while the medical checkups she went through in her bathroom showed nothing abnormal, she was convinced her fatigue had something to do with the residence. She began to feel suspicious about the tap water; she stopped drinking it and ordered bottled mineral water through the weekly shopping drone. She also decided to stop taking the vitamin treatment Dr. Dewinter had prescribed. Facing the cameras, she pretended to swallow the pills, and ended up stuffing them into her pocket, then tossing them into the toilet bowl.

  One morning, as she sat at her kitchen table rubbing her eyes, sleepy, her head still filled with haunting dreams, her ears still echoing from the murmur of the voice that whispered to her in the night, she heard the bizarre clicking noise that had startled Andy. She looked up. She thought she saw a trickle of powder sifting through the ceiling right into the mug of tea placed in front of her. At first, she believed she had been mistaken and it was just a trick of the light. But as she looked closely at her mug, a tiny coating of dust was quickly seeping into the liquid. She sat there, stunned. Had she imagined it? She got up, taking her time, and stared up at the light fixture above her head. It seemed perfectly normal. She spilled her tea into the sink, trying to act as naturally as possible. She was being watched. She rinsed the cup several times.

  Thinking about the powder shadowed her all day long. What was that powder? Had it been poured into her tea every day? Was that why she felt tired, almost drugged? Why were “they” doing this? Whom could she talk to? She hadn’t been able to work, to get on with her book. She acted like the cat, ill at ease, wary. She went to bed feeling uneasy. It seemed to her the cat looked even more nervous than usual.

  Jordan had called her after dinner to organize Andy’s next visit. She told her Aunt Serena’s brooch was with a jewelry appraiser. She was convinced it wasn’t worth much. She’d know in a week or so.

  “You okay, Mums? Your voice sounds strange.”

  “’I’m fine. A little tired. Nothing serious.”

  But her daughter wasn’t giving up that easily.

  “Hmmm, you’ve been saying that an awful lot lately. But I can tell there’s something else. What’s up?”

  Clarissa ended up telling her about François. She admitted he had come there, had insisted upon speaking to her, and that she had gone down to meet him, to say it was all over. All this had stirred her up.

  When she hung up, she noticed once again how her daughter had not asked her what François had done. But she knew Jordan’s silence would not last. She knew Jordan would eventually harp on about this, and it wouldn’t be because of an unhealthy curiosity, but, above all, impelled by the love she felt for her mother. Clarissa, aware of this, cherished her daughter’s love, even if she felt at times that Jordan worried too much about her.

  Sleep tumbled upon her like a leaden weight, for once. There had been no need to ask Mrs. Dalloway to display any videos, or for her to spy on her neighbors with her binoculars.

  In the dead of the night, a strident blare drilled into her eardrums as the panic-stricken cat landed on her. A monstrously powerful alarm rang out, making the walls shudder. With distraught fingers, she tried to turn on the bedside lamp, but nothing happened. A blinking night-light feebly lit up the corridor with an unpleasant orange glow. Clarissa yelled out for Mrs. Dalloway to intervene, but the din was too loud.

  A mechanical voice began to speak, repeating the same words over and over.

  “STAY CALM. GET OUT NOW. FIRE ALARM. LEAVE PREMISES NOW. FIRE ALARM. GET OUT. WARNING. LEAVE NOW. LEAVE PREMISES NOW. WARNING.”

  She was only wearing her nightgown, and couldn’t find her slippers or her dressing gown in the dimness. She had to leave; there was no time to locate them. From the armchair, she grabbed the sweater she had been wearing last evening, slipped it on with haste. There was a fire in the residence and she was on the top floor. She didn’t have a minute to spare. Flustered, she seized the cat, and cried out in pain as he scratched her. She compressed him against her chest and flung herself into the dimly lit stairway. All the doors of the residence were opening up, and her neighbors emerged, disheveled and anxious. She followed the others down, while the cat twisted and turned, mewing frantically. The stairs seemed shadowy and endless. Suddenly, she heard Adelka’s voice, felt her comforting palm against her elbow. She felt relief, even though she knew they still had more flights to go, that it wasn’t over. In the huge hall, only the orange night-lights flickered. The alarm still howled and the voice went on giving orders.

  “LEAVE THE RESIDENCE RIGHT AWAY. GET OUT. DANGER.”

  Head down, stumbling, Clarissa followed Adelka, clutching the squirming cat against her. The ground felt cold and damp to her bare feet. Outside, streetlamps shed a bright yellow light onto the small crowd. The residence loomed above them, clad in darkness. No flames, no smoke. The sirens were still howling. No one from the C.A.S.A. team was to be seen.

  “Is there a fire, or what?” Adelka asked Clarissa. She noticed the cat and tickled him under his chin. “That’s a very frightened kitty there, isn’t it, now?” Chablis calmed down, but Clarissa could still feel his heart pumping under the soft fur.

  “It’s three in the morning!” mumbled a man in his thirties, standing next to them in a T-shirt and boxer shorts. “For fuck’s sake, what’s going on?”

  He noticed Clarissa and Adelka looking at him and grinned apologetically. He held out his hand, introduced himself as Jim Perrier. Third floor.

  “I’m wondering what C.A.S.A. has got up its sleeve,” he said in a low voice.

  “So there’s no fire, you think?” asked Adelka, plucking a purring Chablis from Clarissa’s arms. She obviously had a way with cats.

  “I’m pretty sure there’s no fire,” said Jim.

  “Unless it’s a drill and they forgot to tell us,” said Clarissa.

  “That’s what they’ll probably come up with,” said Jim.

  “Maybe they wanted us all to get together and this was a clever way to do it,” whispered Clarissa.

  Jim looked at her and winked.

  “You could very well be right,” he whispered back.

  Beyond the camaraderie of his wink, she felt perhaps she had found an ally, a person who had also become suspicious of what truly lay behind C.A.S.A. She wasn’t the only one.

  Clarissa looked around at her neighbors. She was familiar with just a few faces. She realized she didn’t know most of the people who lived in her building. In the yellow lighting, it was hard to make them out. She noticed a young woman wrapped up in a bathrobe, with a long braid down her back. She seemed vaguely familiar. She wished she had her glasses to be able to make her out better.

  “I wonder how long they’ll keep us here,” said Adelka. She was wearing a fuchsia shawl. She noticed Clarissa’s feet were bare. “Oh, aren’t you cold?”

  “In the rush, I couldn’t find my slippers,” Clarissa said.

  Adelka took off her own flip-flops and handed them to Clarissa, all the while expertly balancing the cat.

  “Please put mine on. Please.”

  “That’s very kind of you. You’re making me feel like a very old lady, you know.”

  “Nonsense. You’re probably my mum’s age, and there’s nothing old about my mum or you.”

  She was very sweet. Clarissa felt like hugging her. The cat seemed ecstatic in her arms.

  “I’m a cat person,” Adelka said, smiling.

  “My daughter is, too. I’m not!”

  “You’re still learning! It takes a while for a cat to like you and get to know you.”

  “Chablis isn’t happy here,” said Clarissa. She nearly added “Like me.”

  “Why not?” asked Jim Perrier.

  Clarissa shrugged.

  “He’s nervous, jumpy. It’s like he sees things I can’t. I did hear a strange clicking noise the other day. So did my granddaughter. Not sure what it was. The cat hates it.”

  “Ah, the clicking noise,” said Jim grimly.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Adelka. “I’ve never heard it.”

  “You will now,” said Jim. “You’ll see.”