After You Left

Chapter 5

The school term was winding down.

Ada could feel it in the corridors of École Publique — the particular restlessness that descends on a school in its final week, students arriving late, teachers letting conversations run longer than usual, the whole place loosening its grip on itself before the holiday.

Priya was in the middle of telling Ada something about a boy from the year above when Ada looked out the bus window and stopped listening.

The Institut Lumière sat back from the Route de l’Est behind its ornate iron gates. Ada had passed it every morning and afternoon for weeks without paying it particular attention. Just a building on a road. But this afternoon the front courtyard was full — school had just ended, students spilling out through the gates in their dark blazers, cars pulling up at the kerb.

Ada’s eyes moved across the courtyard without meaning to.

She found him immediately.

Oli was near the gates, still inside the courtyard, his school bag over one shoulder. He was laughing — his head going back with it, unguarded, easy, the kind of laugh that had nothing performed about it. The girl beside him was tall with light hair falling around her shoulders. She said something. He laughed again. She was standing close to him in the way of someone entirely comfortable with that proximity.

Ada looked at this.

The bus moved forward as the traffic cleared. The Institut Lumière began sliding past the window. Ada did not move her head to keep it in view. She sat completely still and let it go and looked at the road ahead.

Her hands were in her lap. She pressed them flat against her thighs and looked at the road ahead through the front windscreen and said nothing.

“Ada,” Priya said beside her. “Are you listening?”

“Oui,” Ada said. “The boy from the year above.”

Priya looked at her for a moment. Then she looked out the window at the road they were leaving behind. Then she looked back at Ada.

She did not say anything. She simply picked up where she had left off and Ada listened and the bus carried them away from the Route de l’Est toward Rue des Cèdres and Ada did not think about what she had seen.

She told herself she did not think about it.

That same afternoon Ada came back through the staff entrance to find the mansion quieter than usual.

She changed out of her uniform, went next door to use her mother’s bathroom. Coming back down the corridor she heard voices from the kitchen — Sophie’s low measured tone and Margaret’s more authoritative one, discussing arrangements for the coming weeks.

She went to her room. Sat at her desk. Opened her sketchbook.

She drew the road. The wide Route de l’Est with its bare plane trees on either side. The view from a bus window, the glass slightly smudged, the world outside it clear. She drew it carefully, taking her time, her pencil moving in slow deliberate lines.

She did not put anyone in the courtyard.

She looked at the finished drawing. The empty road. The bare trees. The smudged glass.

Then she closed the sketchbook, put it in her bag ready for tomorrow and went to find her mother.

Sophie was in the kitchen finishing the preparations for the family’s dinner. Ada sat at the staff end of the counter and watched her work — the efficient unhurried movements, the hands that knew this kitchen without needing to think about it.

“Last week of term,” Ada said.

“Mm,” Sophie said.

“What happens in the house during the holiday?”

Sophie stirred something on the stove. “The family is home. Monsieur Laurent works from his study most days. Madame Laurent has her routines.” A pause. “Olivier will be home.”

Ada said nothing.

Sophie turned from the stove briefly and looked at her daughter at the end of the counter. Ada was looking at her hands on the counter surface. Sophie turned back.

“His coach comes on weekends,” Sophie said. “For the golf. Sometimes Olivier practices in the back garden on his own as well.” She said it the way she said most things — evenly, without emphasis. Simply information. “You will mind your business and he will mind his.”

“Of course,” Ada said.

Sophie looked at her once more. Said nothing. Turned back to the stove.

Friday was the last day of term.

Ada boarded the number seven bus in the grey early morning with her bag on her shoulder and sat in her usual seat on the left side. The city moved past her window — the boulevards, the river Selène flat and dark under the winter sky, the market on Place Colette just opening its stalls.

At École Publique the day had the loose distracted quality of a last day. Madame Fournier read to them for the full literature period — not from the syllabus but from a novel she loved, her glasses on her nose, her voice animated. Ada sat by the window and listened and let the words wash over her.

At lunch Priya put her tray down across from Ada and looked at her directly.

“You have been quiet all week,” Priya said.

“I am always quiet,” Ada said.

“Not this quiet.” Priya picked up her fork. “Is it the house?”

“The house is fine.”

“Is it the woman? The mother?”

“Isabelle.” Ada said the name carefully, like something with edges. “She looks at me like I am a problem she has not yet decided how to solve.”

“And the son?” Priya said. Casually. Eyes on her plate.

Ada looked at her. “What about him?”

“I am just asking,” Priya said. Still casual. Still looking at her plate.

“There is nothing to ask,” Ada said.

Priya looked up. She looked at Ada for a long moment with those warm patient eyes that never rushed anything. “Okay,” she said simply. Picked up her fork again.

Ada picked up hers.

They ate. The cafeteria was loud around them with the particular noise of a last day and neither of them said anything else about it.

Coming home on the afternoon bus Ada looked out the window as they turned onto the Route de l’Est.

The Institut Lumière gates were open. The courtyard was full again — last day energy, students gathered in groups, taking photographs, the particular noise of young people finishing something together. Ada watched it pass.

She did not look for him specifically.

But she saw him anyway — near the gate, Camille beside him this time, both of them in their school blazers. He was listening to something Camille was saying with the patient half attention of an older sibling performing a duty.

The bus moved on.

Olivier stood near the Institut Lumière gates with Camille talking beside him.

He was listening. Mostly.

Traffic moved steadily along the Route de l’Est.

Then the number seven bus passed.

His eyes lifted automatically.

For one brief second he saw her by the window.

Still. Quiet. Looking out.

Then the bus was gone.

Camille was still talking.

Olivier frowned slightly.

He was not sure why he had looked.

Ada faced forward.

The holiday began on Monday. He would be home. The garden would be where she crossed to the laundry room and he would be there sometimes with his golf club and the weekend coach would come on Saturdays and none of that was anything she needed to think about.

She looked at the road ahead.

Mind your business, she told herself. Her mother’s words, given back to herself.

Mind your business and you will be fine.