Page 42 of Never

She did not want to be alone. She remembered that she had a date with Tab. She felt instinctively that he would know what to do. She showered and put on fresh clothes, jeans and a T-shirt with a cotton shawl for decorum. Then she called for a car.

Tab lived in an apartment building near the French embassy. It was not very swanky, and she guessed he could have afforded better, but he would be obliged to use diplomatic premises that could be vetted and monitored.

He opened the door and said: ‘You look dead beat. Come in and sit down.’

‘I was in a kind of shoot-out,’ she said.

‘At the N’Gueli Bridge? We heard about that. You were there?’

‘Yes. And Pete Ackerman died.’

He took her arm and led her to the couch. ‘Poor Pete. And poor you.’

‘I killed a man.’

‘My God.’

‘He was a jihadi, and he was about to shoot me. I’m not sorry.’ She realized she could say things to Tab that she had not been able to say in the debrief. ‘But he was a human being, and one second he was alive, and moving, and thinking; and then I squeezed the trigger and he was dead, gone, a corpse; and I can’t get him out of my head.’

There was an open bottle of white wine in an ice bucket on the coffee table. He poured half a glass and gave it to her. She took a sip and put the glass down. She said: ‘Do you mind if we don’t go out to dinner?’

‘Of course not. I’ll cancel.’

‘Thank you.’

He took out his phone. While he was making the call she looked around. The apartment was modest but the furnishings were expensive, with deep soft armchairs and thick rugs. He had a large TV screen and some kind of fancy hi-fi set-up with large floor-standing speakers. Her wine glass was crystal.

She was interested in two silver-framed photographs on a side table. One showed a dark-skinned man in a business suit with a chic middle-aged blonde woman, undoubtedly Tab’s parents. The other was of a small, fierce-looking Arab woman standing proudly outside a shop front: that would be his grandmother in Clichy-sous-Bois.

When he got off the phone she said: ‘Let’s talk about something else. What were you like as a boy?’

He smiled. ‘I went to a bilingual school called Ermitage International. I was a good student but I got into trouble sometimes.’

‘How? What did you do?’

‘Oh, the usual stuff. One day I smoked a joint just before math. The teacher couldn’t understand why I’d suddenly become completely stupid. He thought I was doing it to make the others laugh, a kind of stunt.’

‘What else?’

‘I joined a rock band. Of course we had an American name: the Boogie Kings.’

‘Were you any good?’

‘No. I was fired right after our first performance. My drumming was like my dancing.’

She giggled for the first time since the shoot-out.

He said: ‘After I left the band got better.’

‘Did you have girlfriends?’

‘It was a mixed school, so yes.’

She saw a faraway look in his eyes. ‘Who are you remembering?’

He looked embarrassed. ‘Oh…’

‘You don’t have to say. I don’t want to pry.’