Chapter 9

Pascal and Amanda went back to work, measuring the space, lighting each painting, and switching them around to achieve a better result when something didn't work.

But the memory of her ransacked apartment was disturbing and kept distracting her.

It was hard to concentrate.

She and Pascal talked about it when they took a break, and the police showed up at lunchtime to interview her.

They asked if she had had any romantic liaisons recently which had ended badly, any men she had met recently and rejected sexually, or any strange phone calls.

She mentioned the breathing calls she had had for a while now late at night.

She hadn't been aware of anyone following her and had had no dates for some time before Olivier.

She didn't volunteer his name, since he was married.

The stolen underwear and missing laundry were a clear sign to the police that the crime was sexual in nature and that the stalker had fantasies about her.

"You probably don't know him,"

the police assured her, "and wouldn't remember if you'd seen him.

We get crimes like this with movie stars and models, and ordinary women too, always attractive young women who have very rarely had direct contact with their stalkers.

The perpetrators have fantasies about them and can be very persistent, and clever in how they gain access.

Keep your windows locked and your alarm on at night,"

they suggested.

"You live alone?"

That was usually the case in these minor crimes.

They could be very unnerving, but seldom dangerous, although a few led to more violent crimes.

The police said that the perpetrators were delusional and often believed that the object of their desires belonged to them, or wanted them, and would welcome their advances, however twisted and unrealistic that was.

They often succeeded in breaking into their victims' homes, they told her, so she had to be careful, particularly if she was sleeping alone, and in older buildings where the detailing on the fa?ades made climbing easier.

And even in modern buildings, in apartments on the lower floors, or small private homes, they succeeded in entering, and sometimes surprised their victims in their sleep.

A few rapes had occurred as a result, and one kidnapping, the senior detective said.

The nature of these crimes was not to be taken lightly, but with some good precautions she would be safe, and with no reality to his fantasies and with foiled attempts to connect with her, he would eventually lose interest and move on to another object of his desires.

"Some of the men who do this are even married.

They have mental problems and can be incredibly persistent.

On average it takes about a year to discourage them, sometimes longer.

If he tries to make contact with you, don't talk to him, don't tell him to stop, or insist that you're not interested.

Any contact you have with him will encourage him and feed his delusions.

You can tell him no a hundred times, and he'll be convinced you mean yes."

"I have a friend who spends the night with me sometimes,"

she said, referring to Olivier and again not naming him, not wanting to involve him officially, which could prove awkward for him.

"If he sees a man with you, if he's watching you, it may discourage or slow him down, but it may anger him, because he believes that he belongs with you, not the man you have with you."

"It sounds very sick,"

Amanda said, looking dismayed.

And the underwear he had taken was new and expensive, and she had bought it to wear with Olivier.

The police left after half an hour, and Pascal was worried about her.

"Will Olivier stay with you for a while now?"

he asked her.

He didn't like the idea of some nutcase stalking her, nor did Olivier, and she wasn't enjoying it either.

It wasn't flattering.

It was sick.

The police had said that he might have been watching her for a long time before moving into action and breaking into her apartment, but she had been completely unaware of anyone following her.

And they hadn't had any suspicious characters lurking around the gallery, except for Johnny Vegas, but he was there for other reasons, not to claim his "rightful"

place with Amanda.

He had been furious at having been dismissed as one of their artists, but he had never shown any sexual interest in her.

And despite drugs and alcohol, she didn't consider him a pervert.

And he was sober and still in rehab now, and sane again.

This was obviously a stranger, which made it even more unnerving.

She knew no one who would do something like it.

She remembered then the one time she'd thought someone was watching her and Olivier when he kissed her good night, but afterward she had decided she'd been paranoid and there was no one.

The police had no current cases similar to hers at the moment, so he wasn't pursuing a number of women, although they said they were going to check the records closely in other arrondissements, and they gave her their standard advice.

She'd have to keep her apartment buttoned up tight so he had no access.

No doors left open for neighbors, or so the dog could get out, which didn't apply.

No open windows on the fa?ade, no unlocked doors on the perimeter of the apartment.

And they warned her to be careful with deliveries.

He could be artful about wearing a uniform, claiming to be from a delivery service or a store.

Since she probably didn't know him, she wouldn't recognize him disguised as a delivery person.

It might even have been an artist they didn't know who had come to their openings.

She had forgotten to tell them about the dead fish in the florist box, but that appeared to be unrelated, and was right up Johnny Vegas's alley before he went to rehab.

What had just happened was much more specific to a sexually related crime, and frightened her because of it.

What if he got in again when she was alone and raped her?

Amanda forced the whole incident out of her mind as she and Pascal continued hanging the show, and by the late afternoon it was looking great.

She stepped back to look at it with a broad smile, pleased with their work, and Pascal congratulated her.

The way they had organized it showed the work to its best advantage, and she was proud of how it looked.

The opening on Monday was going to be gorgeous.

Olivier showed up in the late afternoon, and thought it looked terrific too.

It amazed him how different the gallery looked with the way they set up each show.

Amanda had ordered flowers to coordinate with the artwork to put in two enormous vases at the front of the gallery, near the reception desk, so they would be the first thing people saw when they walked in.

She had enormous talent with anything visual.

Olivier quietly asked Pascal if he had noticed anyone lurking outside the gallery who might be their erotomaniac.

Pascal had thought of it too and glanced outside a few times, but hadn't seen anyone.

Olivier hadn't liked the police telling Amanda that sexual stalkers were very sly about remaining unobserved, and incredibly persistent.

They said it wouldn't be unusual for him to pursue Amanda for six months to a year, or even two.

Olivier didn't like the idea of that at all.

They were putting the finishing touches on the lighting when Olivier left.

Amanda thought she would go home around eight or nine o'clock.

Pascal was going to take her home, and she told Olivier she would be fine until he got there.

He couldn't come until after Stephanie's birthday dinner, but he was planning to spend the night with Amanda.

He didn't want her alone all night.

"I don't want you to miss out on time with your sons.

I'll be safe on my own if you decide to stay at your place tonight.

I'll just keep everything locked up."

"And if he climbs up the fa?ade again, you'll be alone."

She hadn't had time to have the window fixed yet.

"I'll have the alarm on.

Seriously, don't worry about me."

She was more frightened than she wanted to admit, but she didn't want to deprive him of the last hours with his boys.

She was a small woman and a man could easily overpower her.

But in any case, Olivier had no intention of allowing her to sleep in her apartment alone, until the erotomaniac had disappeared again, or the police caught him.

Olivier hurried off to change for dinner.

He was taking Stephanie and the boys to Alain Ducasse for her birthday, and Elizabeth Bonnard always came with them, as part of Stephanie's birthday tradition.

Stephanie wasn't quite as close to Veronique and Valerie, but Lizzie was like a younger sister to her.

As part of their constant traveling to be in horse shows around the world, the four equestrian women actually spent more time with each other than with their families.

It was true for Stephanie and Lizzie, and the birthday celebration wouldn't seem complete without her.

Stephanie loved fine food, and Ducasse was one of her favorite chefs.

At dinner, the two young men talked about their plans.

Edouard was going back to Geneva in the morning, having finished his internship at J.P.

Morgan and been offered a permanent job.

He loved working there and had learned a lot in the short time he'd been an intern.

And Guillaume was flying back to Buenos Aires.

He had a polo match in Uruguay in the coming week, in Punta del Este.

He loved living in South America, and his Spanish was fluent now.

Polo was a favored sport in Argentina, and he took it very seriously, just as his mother did her horses.

He was good enough to be a professional but played on one of the best amateur teams.

"When are you leaving?"

Olivier asked Stephanie casually, as they finished an excellent dinner.

"Why? Do you have plans?"

she asked him with a pointed look, as Lizzie chatted easily with Edouard.

They had grown up knowing her, she was almost like a young aunt to them, and they considered her a member of the family.

She came from a good family of some stature in the Dordogne area in France, which was horse country.

Her parents had excellent stables, and like Stephanie, she had grown up around horses.

When Olivier asked her when she was leaving, Stephanie wondered if he would ever have the bad taste to bring a woman home with him when she was away.

It was hard to imagine, but possible.

Some of her friends' husbands had done similarly tasteless things while their wives were away.

She thought Olivier was better than that, and more respectful, in spite of their long history of separate bedrooms and no sexual involvement.

"I just wondered if you're going to be in town.

We are married, after all,"

he answered.

He was going to Amanda's opening on Monday, and had no intention of telling Stephanie about it, or inviting her to go with him.

They hadn't gone out socially together in about ten years.

"I have some things to take care of this week, and an appointment at the dentist.

We need to be in England by next weekend, so I think we'll leave Thursday or Friday,"

she told him, and he nodded.

"There's actually a small horse show sponsored by Hermès at the Grand Palais this week.

They've been begging me to go as one of the judges.

I haven't committed to it yet,"

she said vaguely.

The dinner ended on a warm note.

They all went home in good spirits, dropping Lizzie off at her apartment on the way.

The boys sat in the kitchen with their mother when they got home, and Olivier went to change into jeans and a sweater and joined them a few minutes later.

"You're going out?"

his wife questioned him, surprised because of the late hour.

He nodded and offered no explanation or information.

He didn't want Amanda sleeping alone after the break-in.

"I'll say goodbye to the boys tonight, since they're both leaving so early in the morning."

They were taking the earliest flights out of Charles de Gaulle Airport.

Neither of their sons seemed to mind their father being absent for their departure at dawn.

They thanked him for an excellent dinner and a good time.

They had all been relaxed and in a good mood all evening.

The birthday dinner had been a success, and Stephanie had enjoyed it.

The boys went upstairs together to finish packing, chatting on the stairs to their rooms, and Stephanie looked at her husband with a quizzical expression.

"I take it you won't be home tonight,"

she said, and he was surprised by the question.

"Am I supposed to check in with you now?"

he said, sounding testy.

She hadn't asked him that in years, and he didn't feel he owed her an answer now.

In any case, he wouldn't give it to her.

"Why are you asking me that?"

"Just curious.

You seem to be moving at high speed these days."

More than ever before, as though he had an important destination to get to, which in his mind he did.

He didn't want Amanda to be alone in her apartment overnight.

"You're not here nine months of the year, if not ten,"

he pointed out to her.

"I don't think questions like that are in order."

He liked the way it had been between them for the past twenty years, without explanations or the pretense that they should answer to each other.

They had developed a philosophy of total freedom between them that he found easy to live with and that worked with his lifestyle.

"We moved past that years ago."

She nodded agreement.

What he said was true.

"Sometimes I wonder if that was the right thing to do, for the children's sake.

Maybe they needed parents as a unit, not just two separate individuals who love them.

Do you ever think that?"

She was curious aboutit.

"Never.

We created a style that worked for us then, and still does, and the children adjusted to it, not the reverse.

It's irrelevant now.

They're grown up and gone,"

he reminded her.

She had very old-fashioned ideas about childrearing that he didn't agree with.

He and she were not of her parents' generation.

Olivier always thought they should be more modern.

And the boys hadn't seemed to suffer from having parents who weren't close and an absentee mother most of the time.

And he'd been there, even if she wasn't.

"I just wondered what you thought.

I feel guilty sometimes for how much I traveled when they were younger.

They were still so little when I started going to all the big shows.

You were a good sport to take care of them so I could do it.

Thank you,"

she said kindly.

It was the friendliest she'd been to him for a long time, and he wondered why.

It seemed very late in the day to be warming up to him now, especially for him, with Amanda in the picture.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to ask you to stay home and run the house while I'm away."

There was nothing much to run now anyway.

The kids were gone and so were they.

"That's good news, because I won't do it,"

he said easily.

"You seem very busy these days,"

she said, and sounded as though she was fishing.

"And so are you,"

Olivier reminded her.

He didn't want a rapprochement, a "coming closer"

with her now that he had met Amanda and was enjoying the freedom he'd had from Stephanie for years.

He wondered if she sensed that he had someone important to him in his life and was shaken by it.

If so, it would surprise him, but he knew that women had odd instincts about things like that.

He and Stephanie had been strangers to each other for years, almost since the beginning.

He had never understood her, and how incapable she had been of having a relationship with him.

Their marriage had been a terrible mistake and he saw that Amanda was right about it.

It had been an even bigger mistake to stay together.

They should have moved on years ago.

He was sure of that now.

With the children as their excuse, they had been lazy about starting new lives on their own, and making whatever financial sacrifices they would have had to.

Having less money would have been better than twenty-six years of a loveless marriage.

And it couldn't have been good for their kids either, although they had survived it.

But what example had they had of a solid, loving relationship between a man and a woman? None at all.

Their parents' relationship had been cold and distant, with one absentee parent.

He went to say a last goodbye to the boys after that, hugged each of them one more time, and left the house quietly.

He drove to Amanda's apartment, thinking of her stalker and the break-in, and hoped there had been no further incident that night when she got home.

She would have called him if there had been, and she hadn't.

It was late now, nearly midnight after their dinner out at Ducasse for his wife.

He felt strangely liberated when he got to Amanda's house.

He had done his duty with his wife and sons, and provided a nice birthday for her, and now he was following his heart to Amanda's front door, where he wanted to be that night, and where he felt he belonged now, and was so warmly welcomed.

Stephanie had never been able to break through her own reserve to take him into her heart.

Something had stopped her, which he never understood.

She just didn't have it in her to be an affectionate person, even with their sons.

Even though he knew she loved them, she always acted more like an aunt than their mother.

They didn't seem to hold it against her.

They accepted her as she was.

He rang the intercom to let Amanda know he was coming up and said it was him, and he used the door code he knew now.

He bounded up the stairs, and found her standing in the doorway, with Lulu next to her.

Smiling, she put her arms around his neck as he kissed her and carried her into the apartment, with Lulu barking and doing her welcome dance.

Olivier smiled at Amanda after he set her down and closed the door.

"No problems tonight?" he asked.

"None.

All my underwear is accounted for."

It was an awful thought, and he followed her to her bedroom and sat down on the bed, where she'd been reading and waiting for him.

"How was dinner?"

"Very nice.

Delicious food, and everyone enjoyed it.

I did my part."

He stretched out on the foot of her bed, admiring her.

"I said goodbye to the boys before I left."

"Did she know you went out?"

Amanda asked, curious about the strange relationship he and Stephanie had.

"Yes.

I didn't make a secret of it.

She said I look very busy.

Maybe she senses something.

But after all this time, neither of us would have a right to question or fault the other for leading their own life.

I don't ask her questions either.

It would be total hypocrisy, given the decisions we made, to stick with it but lead separate lives.

She has an uncanny instinct, though, for sensing when there's someone in my life, and that hasn't happened in quite a while."

"Do you think it bothers her?"

Amanda asked softly, stretching her legs to where he was lying, as he gently massaged her foot.

Everything about her was sensual and aroused him.

"I actually don't,"

he said in answer to her question.

"She may be curious, but we never had the kind of relationship you and I do, and she wouldn't want it.

I think she'd be horrified if I expected or demanded a real marriage from her.

But she probably wonders if there's someone serious, and if it's a threat to the status quo that works so well for her.

Divorce was always out of the question, but so was a real marriage.

Maybe she's afraid that I would ask for a divorce if I found someone important to me, which would upset the apple cart for her.

Divorce means public failure to her, and humiliation.

Our marriage is a disaster and always has been, but no one knows that.

She'd rather have a secret failure than an honest admission of defeat, and I went along with it for my own reasons.

It was convenient for me too.

It's not entirely her fault."

—

They stayed up until two in the morning talking, and made love.

There were no late-night calls from her erotomaniac.

Everything was peaceful, which was a relief, and they slept late the next morning.

Olivier knew his boys were in the air by then, Edouard on his way to Geneva and Guillaume to Buenos Aires.

He had no idea what Stephanie's plans were and assumed she was with her horses at the stables, taking care of them, with her friends.

He and Amanda spent a lazy day, in her apartment, watching old movies.

It had been a busy, stressful week, and she had another busy week coming, with the opening of the show the next day.

He was planning to be there and was excited for her.

It was a beautiful show.

She said that she had some other plans that week.

And he had some important meetings at work.

He left her around ten o'clock that night, after they had a late dinner, and she promised to turn on the alarm and call him if she had any problems.

He had early meetings the next day, and it was easier to leave from his place, but he was slightly uneasy about leaving her.

He didn't see Stephanie when he got home, and her car wasn't in the garage.

She was probably out with her friends.

He called Amanda when he got into bed, and they chatted for half an hour.

She was asleep almost as soon as she set her phone down in the charger.

She had a busy day ahead.

And Olivier was smiling as he drifted off to sleep.

He was planning to be back in Amanda's bed the next night, and hopefully forever, if all went well in the coming months.