“So generous, isn’t it? They no doubt exhumed something prehistoric and decided it was for me. Who wears brooches nowadays?”

  “At least you’ll have something from Aunt Serena, darling.”

  Andy walked in, wrapped up in Clarissa’s bathrobe, her hair dripping.

  “Hi, Mom!” she chanted, blowing a kiss.

  “Have a nice evening, you two,” said Jordan. “I’ll call tomorrow.”

  “Are you going to watch the hologram event?” asked Clarissa, tasting the soup.

  “That looks rather good, Mums! Not sure if I’ll watch the telly. I’ll see what Ivan wants to do. Bye, my darlings.”

  Jordan had lost many friends in the attack. Clarissa said good-bye to her daughter, and then asked Andy to go dry her hair. The president’s face appeared on the screen.

  “Ugh,” said Andy. “Let’s mute her. I’ll ask Mrs. Dalloway to do it. Mrs. Dalloway! Mute the awful president!”

  Nothing happened. Andy stamped her foot.

  “Mrs. Dalloway, why are you ignoring me?”

  “Adriana, don’t be silly. She can’t hear you. She can only hear me.”

  Clarissa pressed on the remote control. The president’s voice died out.

  “That’s better,” said Clarissa. “Now, go dry your hair, missy. Dinner will be ready in five minutes.”

  Later, as she was savoring a glass of wine, she observed Andy tuck into her dinner. She wondered what kind of woman Andy would turn out to be. There was such promise in her—her sense of humor, vitality, inquisitiveness. How lucky she was to have given birth to an affectionate daughter, whom she loved, and who loved her in return; and then, the joy of watching this lively and talkative adolescent grow up, just as demonstrative as Jordan was toward her. Clarissa’s own mother had been aloof and unemotional. She had not been close to her. Yet she had never harbored animosity toward her mother. When she thought about her, it was with tenderness. At the end of her life, Solange was lost in amnesia. Her illness turned her into a bland, pleasant person. Clarissa went to see her at the hospital, and talked to a nice lady who had no inkling who she was. She died in her early seventies. Her passing seemed so long ago. And to think her father was still around, in the pink of health. In two years, he would turn one hundred. He had told his family that he wanted to throw a costume party where everyone would dance all night long. He was quite a dancer, her dad. He’d taught her how to do the bossa nova, the cha-cha, the tango. But he loved to waltz above all. When she felt glum, he’d play the “Blue Danube,” and a grin would come creeping back to her face. She could see him in her mind’s eye, at those family gatherings where he’d whirl her around and around, faster and faster, telling her to keep her chin up, her shoulders down, and to smile. Yes, to smile.

  “What are you thinking about, Mums?”

  “About Grandpa dancing the waltz.”

  “Are you going to see him soon? He told me how much he misses you.”

  “Yes, I must go. I promised.”

  Andy paused.

  “You were with him, in London, the day of the attack, right?”

  “Yes, I had gone to spend a couple of days with him. I used to get on with Arthur, at that point, and I was staying over with them.”

  Adriana was watching old photos of the Tower on TV. The mayor of Paris had given a short, poignant speech.

  “I do hope they are not going to show the attack again,” muttered Clarissa. “We’ve had an overdose of that.”

  She knew her granddaughter would have only foggy recollections of the events, if that. She was only a small child at the time. But still, she asked her, “And what about you, miss? What do you remember?”

  “I remember being scared like never before. I remember it was nighttime, and my parents were panic-stricken. The expression on their faces made me cry.”

  As if to summon up courage, Clarissa had a sip of wine. She told Andy that Arthur had come to wake her up in the middle of the night. She had been sleeping at his place, on the top floor of his home in London Fields. She couldn’t make out what her brother was saying. He had difficulty speaking and seemed dumbfounded. His face had gone ashen. She followed him downstairs, stood in front of the television. His wife, Jane, was standing there, too, rooted to the spot. Their two daughters had gone on holiday, somewhere in Spain. It was the middle of July, hot, clammy weather. The journalists’ voices seemed high-pitched and hysterical. From a wobbly image filmed with a mobile, Clarissa made out a gaping black crater encircled by a crest of orange flames, beneath billows of thick gray smoke; she heard shrieking sirens, clamors, yells. Paris was written in a large, lurid font at the bottom of the screen. Paris, where? It was so confusing, hard to understand. She couldn’t breathe properly; she could only think of Jordan, Ivan, the child. She thought of François.

  Tripping, she rushed upstairs to get her phone. No one had called her. She pressed on Jordan’s icon. The call went straight to voice mail. The same for François and Ivan. When she got back to the living room, she could not believe what she was seeing on the TV. Her legs collapsed; she had to sit down. Her sister-in-law was whimpering, while Arthur screamed, aghast. She would never forget what she now saw being played over and over again, the slow collapse of the Eiffel Tower, subsiding into the night like a mortally wounded beast, a colossal sentry still shimmering with thousands of lights, crashing down amid the excruciating screech of twisted steel. She had asked Arthur and Jane what had happened. How was this possible? Dazed, they hadn’t answered. Arthur clicked from channel to channel, hypnotized by the same footage shown yet again, the Tower bending over in that almost grotesque fashion, barely believable, like in a video game or a movie. Clarissa had gone to the kitchen; she’d had a long drink of water, and then she’d turned the radio on. She’d had enough of the uninterrupted contest of pictures displayed on each network; she needed to understand. Again, she tried calling Jordan, Ivan, François. Voice mail. She was terrified. She felt weak. She focused all her attention on the calm voice on the BBC.

  She told Andy that she knew then she’d remember that moment for the rest of her life: the vision of her naked feet on the tiles, the brutal heat of that summer night, her hands trembling. The calm voice had gone on to list the facts. Clarissa wondered how could it remain so serene as it proceeded to utter horror after horror. The events in Paris were cataclysmic, said the newscaster very clearly. Clarissa remembered that word: cataclysmic. She felt fear pervade her, shoot through her veins like a toxic drug. There was only one name on her mind, her daughter’s. She kept repeating it: Jordan. Jordan. Jordan. Nothing could happen to Jordan. Nothing could happen to her daughter.

  The calm voice persisted, stirring her. At eleven o’clock French time, in Paris, while the Tower was still shimmering, as it always did upon the hour for five minutes, a large blast occurred at the top of the south pillar, on the level of the Tower’s first floor. The origin of the detonation was still not clear, but according to terrorism specialists, it was possibly drones, rigged with explosive devices, driven into the south pillar at a precise spot. No one had noticed the drones making their way through the darkness.

  It had taken less than seven minutes for the Tower to fall, time enough for thousands of cameras and smartphones to capture the unbelievable pictures. The Tower toppled over toward the south, flat onto the recent Olympic site built especially for the games, jam-packed with pedestrians on a warm summer evening. But that wasn’t all. Within the forty-five minutes of pandemonium that ensued, the voice went on, while firefighters and police had barely gotten under way to rescue the people trapped within the Tower and underneath it, and while many casualties were already feared, a second deadly attack was perpetrated on the same area by more drones. Making the most of the darkness, the small aircrafts dropped three powerful bombs on the sector.

  As she stood listening, shaking, horrified, Clarissa hadn’t at first noticed her phone was vibrating in her hand. It was Toby. He was calling from his home in the Basque country. He had just seen the ghastly news. He was overjoyed to hear she wasn’t in Paris. But he hadn’t heard from either Jordan or Ivan. Had she? With dread, Clarissa said she hadn’t heard. She hadn’t been able to get through. She hadn’t been able to get hold of François, either. Toby did his best to reassure her. He kept reminding her that Jordan and Ivan lived near the Bastille, on the east side of Paris. And as for François, he was no doubt safe as well, in their flat near the Luxembourg Gardens. Clarissa listened, nodded, but dread gnawed at her. Ivan had wanted to stay in Paris for the Olympics. Perhaps they had gone to one of the events this past evening, like many Parisians. She couldn’t bear to think about it. She felt physically ill. After saying good-bye to Toby, she feverishly perused Jordan’s social media posts, trying to check the last time her daughter had been online. She couldn’t face going back into the living room, watching the television until morning. It was already getting on to two o’clock. Three o’clock in Paris. She paced up and down the kitchen, cradling the phone to her. She tried calling, again. Again. She kept thinking, I’ve lost one child in my life. I cannot, I will not, lose another. I will not lose Jordan.

  All those years later, she did not repeat those words to Adriana. She had never mentioned her son to her granddaughter. She went on with her memories of that night, telling Andy how it had taken ages to get hold of Jordan and Ivan. The wait was agonizing. The sun came up on another scorching day. It had been impossible to get through to Paris. Telecommunications were down. A part of the city had been irremediably destroyed. She had taken a shower, gone out to buy some bread. People in the streets were stunned, riveted to their phones. London had gone strangely quiet, and it felt like a lull before a storm. François had managed to call from a landline. She felt relief when she heard his voice, but as she had not yet heard from her daughter, the distress was still there. She wanted to leave now, rush to take a train, a plane. She became frantic. A sort of panic came over her. Her brother told her to wait. There was nothing else she could do. She refused to watch TV. She stuck to the radio, sat in the kitchen with a glass of water. The voices described utter chaos. Thousands of people had been killed. Who had perpetrated this? How had it been done? No one knew for sure. At last, just as she had given up hope, Toby called, much later, with the good news. Jordan and Ivan were safe, with Andy, at home. She had broken down and wept.

  It had taken a few days for her to be able to get back to Paris. The capital had been on lockdown. She finally returned on a jam-packed train. The city was coated with powdery black dust. Intensified by broiling heat, the acrid, stuffy atmosphere was stifling. Clarissa told Andy that the Olympic Games had been canceled. All the athletes had been told to go home. In her neighborhood, near the Luxembourg Gardens, nothing had changed, on the surface. But the attack could be glimpsed in people’s gazes, expressions, and stances. Tourists had fled; they wouldn’t return for a long while. She hadn’t wished to see the crater left by the bombings; it was splashed over every screen. There was no way to escape it. But her past profession as a property surveyor caught up with her, and the yearning to apprehend the lay of the land, the configuration of places, egged her on. She wanted to see it; she wanted to understand. She waited for as long as possible. A few months went by. She was aware that such widespread damage couldn’t be dealt with speedily.

  She had gone there on a rainy day, at the end of autumn. High metallic fences hemmed in the entire area. She drew closer, near the ruins of the École Militaire, and had a look. It took her breath away. The damp stench of muck and plaster wafted up toward her. An enormous chasm gaped open below her, enfolded by demolished edifices. Crumbling walls still bore traces of wallpaper, unsteady doors absurdly hanging on hinges, flights of stairs spiraling into nothingness. The immensity of the urban wasteland overwhelmed her. The large boulevards dotted with linden and chestnut trees that she so clearly recalled were now reduced to mountains of rubble lining a bottomless pit. In the distance, the tortured vestiges of the Tower seem to twist with agony toward the drizzling sky.

  “Mums, look!” cried Andy. “The hologram! We mustn’t miss it!”

  The moment had arrived. They both dashed to the living room, opening the main window. They leaned out as far as they could over the railing, the evening air fresh on their faces. High up above, a brilliant light juddered, a lone star glowing in the dark blue sky. The star seemed to dance, flickering like a fairy or a butterfly, and as they watched, a contour slowly flourished below it, drawing a familiar, beloved silhouette all the way to the ground in bold iridescent strokes. The Tower’s outline materialized through the darkness, like a divine apparition, as nearby crowds applauded and cheered. Hundreds of people were watching from their windows, as well. It was as if the sparkling Tower had always been there, the powerful beacon shooting from its crown like that of a lighthouse, exactly like it used to. Andy let out a cry of surprise.

  “It looks so real!” she said, elated.

  Clarissa had to admit that, yes, it did. She reached out to hold her granddaughter tight. Andy was too young to remember the terror in the aftermath of the attack. Later, there was a message from Jordan to her mother. She had finally decided to watch the event; it had given her a sort of hope, the sense of a page being turned at last. Andy asked if she could sleep in the big bed with Clarissa. She didn’t want to be alone in the little office. Clarissa had teased her.

  “You look worried about something, missy.”

  “No, I’m just tired.”

  They had gone to bed before midnight, after a cup of hot chocolate for Andy. It was strangely reassuring to hear someone breathe and move next to her. Clarissa, as always, found it difficult to drop off. She remembered what Jordan had said when her application to the C.A.S.A. residence had been accepted. Had it been a good idea to live in a place where so much suffering had occurred? She suddenly realized she had moved into a dwelling she had never seen beforehand. She had been shown a couple of photos, and that was it. How could she have taken that risk? The irony was that, for so long, her job had been to assess and evaluate apartments for future occupants. She wasn’t going to have any regrets. Ever.

  “Are you awake, Mums?”

  Andy’s voice whispered through the dark.

  “Yes, my angel. Why aren’t you asleep?”

  “Too much stuff on my mind. Sometimes thinking stops me from sleeping.”

  “Story of my life.”

  “What do you think about?”

  “I try not to. I empty my head; I visualize an immense lake, a thick forest.”

  “I would have loved to have known the world the way it was before. The way it was when you were young. A world with bees, birds, flowers. A world we hardly see nowadays.”

  “I understand.”

  “Today’s world is so ugly.”

  “Andy, you sound like a glum old lady.”

  “I don’t care, Mums. Check it out! I don’t need to spell it out for you. Look at our situation! Look at where we’re heading! Do you think it makes anyone happy? Look at what’s happening to the planet. Look what we did to it. Look what’s left of the forests. Can you believe I only saw snow once in my life? Heat waves, floods, hurricanes, pollution. And that awful president! People like her have power, all over the world. Look what happened to the Tower, to Venice, to London, to Rome. What are we going to do? Do you see a way out? I don’t! I see sod all.”

  “You need to resist, Andy. Every day.”

  “Oh yeah? And how?”

  “Not thinking like them. Fighting back. Never giving up.”

  “You say that because you’re mature. You know all the stuff I don’t. And when you were my age, did you have any idea of what you wanted to do? I have no inkling. And that scares me. Mummy knew.”

  “Well, I didn’t, either. Not a clue.”

  “You didn’t know you wanted to be a writer?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “What were you like at fourteen, Mums?”

  In the dimness, Clarissa couldn’t help smiling. She felt her granddaughter’s silky hair against her cheek. Reminiscing … It was like skimming through a photo album, pausing over a page. Slowly letting emotions flow back. There she was, freckled, lanky, and awkward, the braces on her teeth making her miserable. She told Andy she used to be quite a merry youngster, making her friends whoop. She was a prankster on the phone, mimicking people behind their backs, pulling awful faces.

  “Hey, it sounds like you were hilarious! And did you fall in love a lot?”

  “I had crushes on guys who never looked at me. And those who made passes at me did not interest me in the least.”

  “Did you hear that, Mums?”

  “Hear what?”

  “A weird sound. Like something clicking.”

  Silence.

  “I can’t hear a thing. Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  Clarissa turned on the bedside lamp.

  “I’ll go check the kitchen and living room. Maybe it’s the cat.”

  “Look, the cat is fast asleep.”

  Andy slunk under the sheets.

  “I’m scared, Mums.”

  She looked like a small child, snug against the pillows.

  Clarissa padded to the kitchen. Everything was peaceful. She walked around the living room. Nothing seemed out of place.

  “Mrs. Dalloway?”

  “Yes, Clarissa?”

  “Have you detected a break-in or anything unusual?”

  “No, Clarissa, I’ve detected nothing of the sort. All is well. Do you wish to report anything else?”

  “No, Mrs. Dalloway.”

  “Fine, Clarissa.”

  Back in the bedroom, Clarissa comforted her granddaughter.

  “I’m not making all this up, Mums, I promise.”

  “I believe you, missy. But I saw nothing odd.”

  Andy nestled close.

  “You know, it’s weird. I like your place. It’s pretty and modern, with an amazing view. But…”

  “But what, Andy?”

  “I know you’re going to think I’m crazy, Mums. Oh well. I’ll tell you anyway. And maybe this is why the cat is scared, too. Ever since I got here, I’ve felt like we’re being watched. All the time.”