Newspaper Headlines

Three weeks of tabloid headlines and speculation spill and flutter across Susie's awareness like newsprint butterflies.

She tries to find the line of chronological time, but she has been polluted by Matt's fragmentary disclosures, and the two sets of information intersect, collide and contradict. A suicide. Murder. A film screening. Missing wife. Illustrious academic. Accusations by two teenage girls. Caucasian man wanted in connection to the killing. A threesome. And a betrayal.

"How can you be so sure this is related to Matt's disappearance?"

He hands me a slip of paper. An email, dated four days ago. It mentions my name and email. And the city of Lyon. It is not the email address Matt normally uses, but there is some resonance of words that means that we both know who it is from.

"He wants me to travel to Lyon? With you?"

"Yes."

His eyes neither plead, nor dissuade.

Do I trust him?

He occupies himself with ordering another coffee, while I think.

My overseas trip gate-crashed by two strangers. One of whom I know absolutely nothing about. The other... And what if Matt is wanted by the police as Jeremy fears? Would I then be a willing accomplice to something as heinous as murder? But Matt is not guilty... yet.

Unwittingly I remember the sound of my whimpering falling like a raindrops into the silence of the room in Sevilla. My wrists and ankles tied to the bed.

I eclipse the memory by flicking through the newspapers again. Kinky Sex Murder. Professor Carl Neroni, tied to his bed and stabbed fourteen times in the chest with a sharp instrument. I remember that only love kills with such savagery.

Can I trust Matt? After what happened?

"He's innocent, Susie."

"Why me?"

"Because we are the only two people in Europe who are his friends."

"And when we get to Lyon, then what?"

"We wait."

"And what if..."

"Then we turn him in."