After You Left

Chapter 3

Monday morning came with a cold that had settled in overnight and decided to stay.

Ada was up before her alarm. She dressed in her school uniform, pulled her hair back and went next door to her mother’s room. Sophie was already at her desk with her morning tea, the small plant on the windowsill turning toward whatever light the grey morning was offering.

“Sit,” Sophie said, nodding at the edge of the bed.

Ada sat. Sophie handed her a cup without being asked and Ada wrapped both hands around it and looked around the room — at the photograph on the desk, the small rug on the linoleum floor, the plant, the thin curtain over the window.

“Maman,” Ada said. “How many people are in the family?”

Sophie set her cup down. “Four. Monsieur Laurent, Madame Laurent, their son Olivier and their daughter Camille. Olivier is seventeen, Camille is eleven.” She paused. “Monsieur Laurent is a busy man. You will rarely see him. Madame Laurent runs this house — everything in it, including the staff. You will see her. You will stay out of her way. Camille is young but she is sharp — do not be fooled by her age. And Olivier—” Sophie stopped briefly. “He is a young man of the house. You will treat him with respect and nothing more. Are we clear?”

“We are clear,” Ada said.

“Good.” Sophie stood and straightened her uniform. “Finish your tea.”

Ada finished her tea. Then — “Who is he?”

Sophie turned. “Who is who?”

“I saw someone yesterday. In the corridor outside our rooms. Tall. Dark jacket. School tie loose around his collar.”

Sophie looked at her daughter for a moment. “That is Olivier,” she said simply. “You are asking too many questions already Adeline. Go to school.”

Ada finished her tea and went to school.

The number seven bus left Rue des Cèdres at seven fifteen and Ada was on it with her bag on her lap and her face turned to the window.

Veloria in the early morning was the kind of city that did not ease you in gently. It came at you all at once — the wide boulevards, the old stone buildings with their iron balconies, the plane trees lining the pavements with their bare branches making complicated patterns against the sky. The river Selène ran through the centre of it all, grey and quiet this morning under the low clouds.

Ada had grown up inside this city. She knew its streets and its sounds and the particular smell of the market on Place Colette on a cold morning. But looking at it from the window of the number seven bus on her first Monday at Laurent Mansion she felt something she had not felt since she was very small — like a visitor. Like someone passing through rather than someone who belonged.

She pressed her forehead briefly against the cold glass.

Get used to it, she told herself. Just get used to it.

École Publique de Veloria sat on the eastern side of the city — three connected buildings around a central courtyard, a basketball court at one end, benches along the far wall where students gathered before the bell. Ada had attended since she was twelve and the school received her the way familiar places receive you after an absence — without ceremony, simply as a fact.

She came through the gates and crossed the courtyard and felt her shoulders drop half an inch without deciding to.

Her French literature class was first. She slid into her seat near the window with two minutes to spare. Madame Fournier was already at the board, her reading glasses on top of her head in their usual position.

“Adeline. Bon retour.” Adeline. Welcome back.

“Merci, Madame.”

The girl at the desk beside her — Priya, round faced and warm eyed — leaned over immediately.

“You look different,” Priya said.

“I am not different.”

“Something happened.”

“Nothing happened.”

“Ada—”

“Mesdemoisselles,” said Madame Fournier from the front, her glasses now on her nose, a book open in her hands.

Priya faced forward. But she angled her notebook toward Ada and wrote at the bottom of the page.

Tell me later.

Ada looked at it. Picked up her pencil and wrote underneath.

Later.

She told Priya at lunch. Not everything — just the shape of it. Her aunt. The mansion. The staff wing. The woman named Margaret who had looked at her like a problem to be managed.

Priya listened with her fork halfway to her mouth and her eyes getting progressively wider.

“You are living there?” Priya said. “Inside the house?”

“In the staff wing,” Ada said. “In the back.”

“With the family there?”

“It is a big house, Priya.”

“Ada.” Priya set her fork down. “What is the family like?”

Ada could only imagine the family yet. She thought about the corridor and the boy with the loosened tie who had looked at her and walked away. About the iron gate. About the corridors.

Rich,” Ada said simply.

Priya looked at her for a moment. “Be careful,” she said.

Ada picked up her fork. “I am always careful.”

“Be more careful than always,” Priya said. And she picked up her fork too and they ate and said nothing else about it.

Coming back from school that afternoon Ada took the correct door — the staff entrance, the narrow one to the left of the main door that she had memorised carefully that morning before she left. She came through it and down the staff corridor and stopped.

Camille Laurent was standing outside Ada’s bedroom door.

She was in her school uniform still, her dark hair in two precise plaits, her school bag over one shoulder. She was not doing anything — not knocking, not trying the handle. Simply standing there with those flat dark eyes looking at the door as though she was reading something written on it that nobody else could see.

She heard Ada and turned.

They looked at each other.

“This is your room,” Camille said. Not a question.

“Oui,” Ada said.

Camille looked at her with open unhurried curiosity — head slightly tilted, eyes moving over Ada from top to bottom.

This was a child taking something apart to see how it worked.

“You go to the public school,” Camille said. “On the Route de l’Est.”

“Oui.”

“Our school is on that road,” Camille said. “The Institut Lumière. You probably see it from your bus.” She paused. “Our school is better.”

Ada looked at her. “I am sure it is,” she said evenly.

Something moved across Camille’s face — she had expected a different response and the one she received had not given her what she came for. She looked at Ada for one more moment. Then she turned and walked away down the corridor toward the connecting door without another word.

Ada watched her go.

That must be the eleven-year-old girl her mother warned her about, she thought.

She opened her bedroom door and went inside.

That evening Sophie came to Ada’s room after dinner and sat on the edge of the bed while Ada worked at her small desk. They did not talk much. Sophie was tired in a way that she was carrying carefully — not showing it, simply managing it, the way she managed everything. But Ada noticed the way her mother sat on the edge of the bed with her shoulders forward slightly, the way she pressed two fingers briefly against her temple when she thought Ada was not looking.

“Maman,” Ada said. “Are you alright?”

“Of course,” Sophie said. “Long day.”

Ada looked at her for a moment. Sophie met her eyes with a steadiness that gave nothing away and smiled.

“Work,” Ada said. “I will let you rest.”

Sophie stood. At the door she paused. “You did well today,” she said. “Coming back on time. Using the correct door.”

“I told you I would,” Ada said.

“I know you did,” Sophie said. And she went.

Ada turned back to her desk. Outside the November dark had come down completely over Veloria and somewhere above her in the main house the Laurent family moved through their evening and the mansion settled into its night silence and Ada sat at her small desk in the staff wing and thought about Priya’s words over lunch.

Be more careful than always.

She had not told Priya about the boy in the corridor. She was not sure why. She picked up her pencil and opened her sketchbook and began to draw — not him, not anything she had seen today specifically. Just lines on a page. Her hand working something out that her mind had not yet put into words.