Private London

Chapter 92

‘Where to now, then, Mister Carter?’ said Suzy with decidedly ironic deference.

‘What?’ she said then, puzzled by the look on my face.

‘I’ve been ten kinds of idiot, Suzy.’

I hurried down the corridor and back to the apartment that Chloe shared with Hannah and Laura. In Laura’s bedroom I picked up from the floor the bathrobe that she had been wearing earlier. It pretty much confirmed what I had suddenly realised. I sniffed it.

‘You going to tell me what this is all about, or am I just putting you down as another typical male pervert, Dan?’ said Suzy.

I tossed her the bathrobe ‘Do you smell that?’

‘Perfume?’

‘Chanel No. 5.’

Suzy held the robe closer and smelled again. ‘I think you’re right,’ she said.

I knew I was. I’d spent enough on the stuff for my ex-wife over the years.

‘I wouldn’t have put Hannah down for that,’ said Suzy.

‘She wasn’t wearing it,’ I replied. ‘Look at the collar.’

She looked at a faint red smudge. ‘Lipstick.’

‘Right.’

I knew exactly who wore Chanel No. 5, the colour of lipstick that could leave such a mark and who also insisted on calling me ‘Mister Carter’. I remembered the hand that she had stroked Hannah Shapiro’s cheek with. It hadn’t been a maternal gesture as I had imagined.

It had been the caress of a lover.