The Remaining Voice by Angela Elliott

disgorged its occupants. A young couple, arm in arm, passed by, he trying to steal a kiss, she coyly pulling away. A man stopped to light a cigarette, cupping his hand against the wind. A car passed, and then another…
    …and there she was, standing in the shadow of the building opposite. She looked straight up at me and I pulled back inside the room, afraid for my sanity, but also because I did not understand what she wanted of me, and I was not in the right state of mind to figure it out. When I dared to look again, she was gone. I crawled into my bed and lay frozen beneath the sheets. Had she really been there? Or was it that I was so tired, I could not tell what was real and what was not?
    I must have slept because I woke, with a start, at seven-thirty, sweat dripping off me. I stripped and stood under the shower for a full five minutes, letting the water course down my body. I was not sure how I would face the world. I was not sure of anything. I dried myself and put on my most comfortable clothes: a cornflower blue shirt and capri pants. I pulled my hair back into a pony tail and dabbed the lightest amount of powder across my forehead, nose and cheeks. Laurent would have to take me as he found me.
    I took a taxi directly to the photographers. They had been as good as their word. The assistant handed me two packets of photographs, and I tore into the first, scattering most of the pictures across the shop floor. The assistant helped pick them up, but my attention was drawn to the three photographs left in the packet. They were of the big picture of Berthe.
    It was not just slashed from top to bottom – it was cut to ribbons.
    I turned each photograph over in my hands, held them up to the light, and finally, spread them on the countertop to compare them.
    “ Y at-il quelque chose de mal?” asked the assistant.
    I shook my head, confused.
    “We can alter the brightness, but the contrast… I can do nothing with,” he said, trying to be helpful.
    “No. No, it’s okay. Thank you.” I gathered the photographs and stuffed them in my bag. My God, he must have thought I was a mad woman. I wondered if I should go directly to Jacques’s and show him the photographs and try to explain, but something was nagging me to go back to the apartment. As reticent as I was to return, I had to see the painting.
    *
    By the time I reached the Rue Tronson Du Coudray the wind was howling at my back. I shut the street door and leant on it. Armand’s door opened and he and leered at me.
    “If it is not too much trouble, my father would have a word with you,” he said. He did not wait for my reply. He turned on his heels and disappeared. I did not follow him. Instead, I went upstairs.
    I threw my coat off in the hall, and tied the apron around my waist. Taking up my notepad and pen, I hurried into the drawing room. The painting was where I had left it on the previous day, leaning against a chair. There was nothing wrong with it. Nothing at all. I took the packet of photographs out of my bag and found those of the painting, breathing a sigh of relief when I saw that they still showed it to be completely destroyed. At last, I had some proof I was not crazy.
    “Okay,” I said to the room. “What do you want of me?”
    I listened to the wind singing in the wires outside and whistling through the gaps in the window frames. Other than that, I heard nothing unusual. I wanted to finish cataloguing the contents, and then get out. I would recommend to my grandfather that he have Jacques Le Brun handle the sale of the contents, so that I need not step foot inside the apartment ever again. I had promised Jacques I would show him the photographs, and I knew if there was something that took his fancy, I would be hard pushed to refuse him.
    I took my notepad and went through to the inner hallway; past the bedroom, past the bathroom, and on into the ‘music room’. I ran my fingers through the dust on the front of the glass-doored bookcase, and the