‘We’re journalists, Stefan. Isn’t that what we do? Dig?’
But as Lara spoke, a thought shifted; something Alex had said the morning on her houseboat. ‘What did you see?’
It wasn?
?t what Lara had seen in Sandrine’s flat, it was what she didn’t see. Her computer. Looking back, that was what was strange about that apartment, what felt missing. She looked up at Eduardo, debating whether to mention it. No. The truth was she didn’t still trust him.
‘So does this mean you’re joining Le Caché?’ said Eduardo.
‘Maybe,’ she replied. Perhaps it was a way to deal with the pain; it was certainly a way to honour her friend’s life. ‘I can’t let Sandrine’s work die with her.’
Eduardo raised a hand towards the waitress.
‘Maybe is excellent news. How about we toast it with a glass of champagne?’
Lara nodded and smiled. Sure, she thought. For now.
Chapter 7
Stella Harris wiped the counter, the latest battle in her endless war against coffee cup rings. It was, she estimated, the fiftieth time she had run a sponge over the faux-marble counter and still the stains wouldn’t shift. She looked wearily back at the coffee machine, burping and hissing as if it was about to die: she shouldn’t be surprised, everything in this café was peeling around the edges or falling apart.
Present company included, she thought, rinsing out her cloth.
Stella had signed up for as many hours as she could get at Starclucks coffee shop when she’d been ‘let go’ from the Chronicle the previous week. She hadn’t exactly been the best paid member of the investigations team, but now even those modest cheques were gone, Stella’s tiny place in Seven Sisters, a run-down flat she shared with other two girls and a lot creeping mould, was a luxury she could barely afford.
She reached for a sack of coffee beans and began filling the hopper on top of the machine. The board outside the café boasted of artisan single-origin free trade beans, but Stella knew for a fact that the owner Jimmy got them in bulk from a bloke on the market, no questions asked.
Starclucks was an ironic pastiche of the more famous Seattle institution, although in reality, it was a standard greasy spoon café with stripped-pine chairs and a new logo painted on the front, the familiar green mermaid replaced by a chicken with a crown and a forked tail. It was owned by Jimmy Reeves, Stella’s uncle. Not a real uncle, just an old friend of the family, a semi-criminal ducker-and-diver who owned a string of dodgy businesses in the North London corridor, but Stella couldn’t really afford to be too picky about work right now and had been grateful for the offer of a position of barista-cum-cleaner. She looked down at her wrinkled hands, coffee grains under the nails. Surely there had to be something better than this.
At least the lunch rush was over; only one customer left sitting hunched over his long-gone cold cappuccino, a handsome forty-something sitting alone in a booth by the door. Stella pretended to clean the foam nozzle on the coffee machine while she used the mirror behind the bar to look at the lone patron. Now she thought about it, he’d been here quite a while. He was wearing a dark suit and reading the paper – the FT, which in Jimmy’s café was like seeing a unicorn. A high-powered company director, perhaps? But this was the Holloway Road, not Mayfair. If you wanted a phone charger or a cheap haircut, London’s main artery northwest was the place to be, but it wasn’t exactly a hotbed of high finance. Stella’s instincts for a story began to jangle. So why was he here? If he was just watching the world go by, he’d have been sitting in the window, not in a booth.
Curious, Stella walked across, picking up stray cups as she went.
‘Can I get you anything else?’ she asked.
‘No, still got this,’ said the man, lifting his cup.
‘No problem, take your time,’ said Stella.
‘Oi, have you cleaned the machine?’
Glenda, Uncle Jimmy’s eldest, walked out from the back. Jimmy had handed the café over to her to ‘manage’, which Glenda had interpreted as ‘sitting in the back selling stuff on Ebay’ and doing her best to push the staff around.
‘I am doing it right now,’ said Stella sweetly.
‘Well, see that you do.’
Stella looked up as the door opened. An attractive forty-something woman. She didn’t look up at the counter or the board behind listing the drinks, she looked around – then flashed a smile at the lone diner. Ah. He had been waiting for her. Stella watched in the mirror as the woman slid in opposite the FT-reader. A happy-to-see-you smile, but no kiss noted Stella. A first date? But then the woman glanced around and touched his hand. He had a wedding ring, she didn’t.
An affair. Stella’s instincts about a story were always right.
But look where it got me, thought Stella, wiping the nozzle again with increased vigour. Stella had not been given many breaks growing up in the Easterhouse district of Glasgow. Her father, a bitter, angry and abusive man, walked out when she was ten, her mother’s alcohol problems ramping up from that standing start. Stella was told that she would never amount to anything – by her father, by the bullies at school, even by her mother, who lost herself in short-lived affairs. But Stella had ignored them all, worked hard at school, won a place at the city’s University, where she’d found her passion – the student newspaper. At a time when her contemporaries were discovering social media and dreaming of becoming influencers, Stella had sold stories to the Record and The Scotsman, finally landing a job on the Chronicle investigations team. For a few short years, she’d found her groove, proved her detractors wrong, but even that had finally gone tits-up thanks to Darius Allen, Felix Tait and whole load of terrible luck. Or maybe cranking out caramel lattés and wiping the counter was her level after all.
The door opened; the cheating couple were on their way out, off to some hotel perhaps. Stella ducked under the counter, rummaging around for the floor cleaner. Might as well get on with it now while the café was a ghost town.
‘Are you still serving?’ said a voice.
‘Just a minute madam, I’ll be with you…’ she said, bobbing up. ‘Lara!’