The Yacht Party (Lara Stone)

‘Okay, I’ll think about it,’ smiled Lara, deciding that it might be worth it if only to meet this Eduardo. Sandrine grinned and grasped Lara’s hand.

‘I do miss you, you know,’ she said.

Lara nodded, the feeling mutual. Lara had plenty of friends in London, and in her twenties she had considered them to be like a surrogate family. But lately, many of them had got married or had children. They had real families of their own, and were forging new lives with them in the suburbs. This year, Lara could count the number of nights out on one hand, and even then, you couldn’t get into deep conversations about love and life without friends glancing at their watches, saying they had to get back for bedtime stories or the last train from Waterloo.

‘Maybe I’ll just give up on all this and move out to Paris,’ said Lara, sitting back.

‘I’d love you to come,’ sighed Sandrine. ‘I’m just not sure you’d ever leave London.’

‘Why wouldn’t I?’

‘Alex,’ said Sandrine simply.

‘Alex?’ She laughed out loud at that one. Her first proper laugh since the whole Tait trial. Sandrine gave her a mischievous grin. Her friend had known Alex for almost at long as she had, and had always teased Lara about her relationship with Alex.

‘How is the gorgeous man?’

‘He’s been a good friend throughout the trial.’

‘Just good friends?’

‘Come on, Drine. I thought you’d have finally given that a rest after fifteen years.’

‘I’ll give up when you finally admit you are in love with him.’

‘I am not in love with Alex Ford and he’s not in love with me. In fact he has a girlfriend now. A serious one.’

Sandrine shrugged as if that was a tiny detail. She was French, after all.

‘So come to Paris then.’

Lara gave a soft sigh, imagined herself sipping a vin ordinaire at a pavement café, walking along the Seine or going to the cinema with some hot guy she’d met in the Shakespeare and Co book shop. Perhaps the Tait verdict had happened for a reason. Maybe Uncle Nicholas was right that she needed to recharge, regroup.

‘Perhaps it’s time I made a move,’ she said. ‘We spend so much time looking for leads and chasing stories that we don’t live a normal life like most people.’

Sandrine pointed at her.

‘I’m not sure you want a normal life, Lara Stone.’

‘Don’t I?’

‘No. You and I, we’re writers. We don’t live in the real world, we live in our stories

.’

Sandrine lifted her glass and tapped it against Lara’s with a ‘ting’.

‘And that is the only place we feel alive.’

Chapter 3

Lara stood in the street, watching the brake lights of the cab flash then disappear around the corner. She looked down at the receipt in her hand and sighed. Getting home from the bar had been automatic: flag down a black cab, give the driver her Chelsea address, then say ‘keep the change – and can you give me a receipt?’

But that was then, this was now. There were no expenses for the foreseeable future. Yesterday Lara had been a hot newspaper journalist who took cabs because she didn’t have time for anything else – she needed to get across town or to the office or to the airport right away. Today she was… what? An ex-award-winning writer, an ex-mover and shaker. She was a civilian.

At least she’d had a great night out, she smiled to herself, shoving the receipt into her pocket. She’d loved seeing Sandrine, enjoyed their easy conversation, so much so that her idea to move Paris for a few months had been growing in her head ever since Sandrine had mentioned it.

After all, if not now – when? She was single, solvent, and since the demise of the investigation department at the Chronicle, without responsibilities or commitments. Lara had always envied Alex’s early career in journalism, bouncing from Berlin to Washington to Peshawar; in fact, in all the years she had known him, Alex had been happiest as a foreign correspondent. He too had asked Lara on a number of occasions, why she didn’t come and work abroad, and the answer she had given was that she enjoyed living in London. Which had been true. The upheaval of her childhood – losing her parents, going to live with her uncle, shuttling between boarding school, the Averys’ country house and their West London home, meant that deep down, Lara needed a steady base. But sometimes it was tempting to live a different life. A time like now.