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cheap. Only fifty pounds. I figured I could contribute that to the cause.”
    “You think I’m going to travel with you?” she said. “To Paris. You and me. You’re insane.”
    “Look,” he said, sticking a cigarette in his mouth, “it’s probably hard for you to trust me when I say you’ll be perfectly safe with me. My interests are your interests. And I didn’t steal a thing. I found the letters, and I’m giving them back. You’re going to make money you couldn’t have made otherwise. You have no reason to complain.”
    A small orange cat slunk along one of the walls on the opposite side of the street. It sat and stared across at them haughtily, as if asking what they were doing in its neighborhood.
    “We’re both needed for this,” Oliver said. “There are things in the letter that only you will understand. I have the letter, and you have the knowledge. All I want is for us to go and get the pieces. That’s it.”
    Oliver calmly lit his cigarette and took a long draw, waiting for her reply.
    “I’ll think about it,” she said.
    He nodded and pushed off the wall. “You know where to reach me.”

The Pool
    Though it was only a little after four, the sky had gone dark and all the lights had been switched on: the illuminated ads on the double-decker buses, the light of cell phones pressed to hundreds of faces, the warm glow from the windows. Everyone was moving quickly, the final panicked moments before all the shops closed and Christmas began. London was sparkling and pulsing. Ginny allowed herself to be carried along with the crowd. She had gone beyond shock into a new and completely foreign state of almost aggressive acceptance. The summer had pushed her into some weird places. She had handled it then—she would handle it now.
    When she got off at Angel station, she saw a man selling trees in the shopping plaza. Decorate. That’s what she would do. She would decorate, and she wouldn’t think about anything but decorating. It was Christmas, and she wanted to make it nice for herself and Richard. It would keep her busy, and busy was good. She purchased one of the trees, a tiny one, maybe three feet high. It didn’t weigh much; she could carry it with one hand. She walked around with it, looking blankly in store windows until she found some decorations to go with it. There was nowhere to leave the little tree outside—she couldn’t exactly lock it up—so Ginny brought it in with her. She bought up pretty much everything she found on one of the display tables full of two-for-one Christmas balls and lights and shiny objects. She bought far more than she could reasonably carry, so she carried it unreasonably, the bags cutting harsh red lines into her skin, the tree banging into her ankles as she walked.
    “Do you need help with that?” a man asked, as Ginny dragged the tree along the sidewalk.
    “No, I’m fine . . . thanks. Merry Christmas.”
    He nodded, but looked very uncertain.
    Though she had gotten a lot of things, some improvisation was still necessary. First, she had forgotten to get a tree stand. This meant finding a bucket in the closet, then getting the tree to stay upright by lashing it in place with some string, then covering the bucket in tinsel. Some of the ornaments came without hooks, so she was forced to make the hooks out of some paperclips she found. When she ran out of those, she just taped them to the tree, hiding the tape as best she could. She bought way too many lights, so she strung them everywhere—up the stairs, around the mirror above the sofa, around the television.
    She decorated until there was nothing left to hang, nothing left to cover. Then she sat on the sofa and waited.
    Paris . Oliver wanted her to go to Paris. She couldn’t deny a minor thrill at the thought. Their conversation played in her head on an endless loop. There was nothing she could have done differently. If she’d said something to Cecil, Oliver would have bolted. So she would go to Paris. She