Bridge didn’t know what her sister was up to, but playing along was the surest way to earn some brownie points. She smiled sympathetically at her niece. “We’ll talk about more grown-up things with you when we get back,” she said, “but Maman and I have to talk about things for sisters. When you and Hugo are older, you’ll talk about brother and sister things.”
“But! But!”
“Auntie Bridge is right, Stéphanie,” said Izzy, packing the last of the cakes into their paper bags. “We’ll bring you back some pastries, OK? Then we can all have brunch together. You like brunch, don’t you?”
The look on Steph’s face suggested at that moment she didn’t like anything at all, not even breathing or existing. She slid off the stool without a word, head hung and shoulders slumped, every step out of the kitchen a leaden thump on the floor. Bridge pulled a face and turned to Izzy, but her sister shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Ten minutes with Fred and she’ll have forgotten this entire conversation. Come on, let’s go.”
They drove for several minutes in a silence that Bridge didn’t want to break, not knowing exactly why Izzy wanted to get her alone, and her sister didn’t appear to be in a hurry either. Then Izzy finally spoke, and Bridge realised it wasn’t nonchalance. Her sister was anxious, steeling herself to ask a difficult question.
“Why are you really here, Bridge? What the hell is going on with you?”
“I —”
“And please don’t give me that rubbish about office politics. Credit me with some intelligence.”
Bridge was torn. She’d always hated lying to Izzy about her work, but the rules were clear. She spoke slowly. “I’m not sure what I can say that’ll satisfy you.”
Izzy yanked the steering wheel and pulled the car to the side of the road, stepping on the brakes to bring them to a halt. “Satisfy? To hell with satisfy, tell me the bloody truth. First you just happen to be working two hours up the road from where I’m on holiday…”
“I swear, that is pure coincidence.”
“Shut up. And then you turn up again less than a week later, dressed like a bloody burglar, with no luggage or even a toothbrush — and don’t think I hadn’t noticed the bruises on your arms, by the way — and you want to, what, lie low for a few days? So either you’re some kind of international art thief, or some bastard work boyfriend is knocking you around, or maybe both, or whatever. Tell me, for heaven’s sake!” Izzy was shaking, breathing hard, and Bridge realised her sister was more anxious about this conversation than she was. A memory slid into the front of her mind. They were teenagers, and Izzy had begun stepping out with grown men, guys in their twenties who seemed impossibly mature to young Bridge. She remembered Izzy in tears, pulling down the hem of her sleeve, thinking Bridge hadn’t seen the bruises. Perhaps hoping more than thinking.
As tears welled up in Izzy’s eyes, another memory leapt unbidden into Bridge’s mind: the night their mother shouted herself hoarse, swearing at the same young man when he rolled up drunk after Izzy broke up with him. Izzy had sat at the top of the stairs, quietly crying, while Bridge peered out from behind her bedroom door.
Neither of them had ever spoken about it. And now, Bridge realised, Izzy was worried she’d got herself into the same situation, but like her sister before her she couldn’t face talking about it. She leaned over to stroke Izzy’s hair, and smiled in sympathy. “It’s not that, Izz, honestly it’s not. You know me, if some bloke tried that I’d kickbox his arse until he only wished Mum was throwing plates at him.”
Izzy snorted with laughter through her tears, remembering that same night. “You promise me, OK? You promise you’d tell me?”
“I promise. It’s not that.”
“Then what, Bridge? What’s going on?”
She’d backed herself into a corner by not lying. But she couldn’t bring herself to lie about that, especially not to Izzy. She was so tired of lying. “I work for —” She choked on the words, cleared her throat, tried again. “I work for the government.”
“I know you do,” said Izzy.
“No, you don’t. I’m not at the DTI. I’m not a junior civil servant. I work at…” She struggled to say it. It felt absurd, now more than ever, to say out loud: I’m a spy. How could anyone say it with a straight face? It was impossible. She tried to imagine how Giles might phrase it, using political language to disclose the minimum amount of necessary truth, but not a shred more. “I’m a technical analyst,” she said slowly. “You know I’ve always been the big nerd, right? And now I monitor computer hackers all over the world.”
“You monitor hackers all over the world. For the British Government.”
“Really, I just sit at a desk in front of a computer all day. It’s dead boring.”
“But you’re supposed to keep it a secret, and tell everyone you’re a secretary.”
“Well, not really a secretary…?”
“And now you’re working here in France.”
“It’s just a one-off, honestly.”
“Bridge, are you a spy?”
She tried to reply, hesitated, tried again, got as far as “Um,” tried another tack but only made it to “Well,” and then gave up.
Izzy rescued her. “That’s why you had a different name on your laptop, wasn’t it? IT department joke, my arse. Oh my God, are you on the run? We should call the police.”
“No,” Bridge shouted, and regretted it immediately. She lowered her voice. “I just need somewhere to crash for a couple of days while I figure out my next move. I can’t trust the police.”
“What the hell do you mean, you can’t trust the police? They’re the police. That’s who you call.”
Bridge shrugged. “Not me. Officially, they don’t know I’m here. And they might be involved.”
“Involved in what?” Izzy was leaning forward, now, wide-eyed and excited, and Bridge knew she’d said too much.
“I
