A week later

The days had rolled by, just as the city rolled by now. The afternoon sun glanced against the windows of the Réseau Express Régional carriage. A cap pulled low on his forehead and a pair of sunglasses shading his eyes, Jack sat with shoulders hunched, low in his chair. Every minute or two, exhaustion pulled him down towards sleep – until light flashed against the window-pane or a jarring tone signaled the departure from another stop. In a half-sleeping state, he imagined that he could spend the rest of his life like this, never getting anywhere, just rolling around the same set of tracks, drifting in and out of awareness of the world. Once, someone sat down next to him, but he blinked and they were gone.

By the time he reached Mairie d'Ivry, he'd slept a total of twenty-five disjointed minutes. He shuffled out of the station, hefting the light backpack on his shoulder, the strap chaffing. A glance down and he shook the bracelet of his heavy-wrist watch. Sean's watch. It was mid-afternoon. Paris. What was he doing here?

He fumbled in his pocket for a piece of paper, a printed map. It was a quarter of an hour walk to the address Emilie had given him. From another pocket, he fished out his mobile phone. It warned him that he had five missed calls, labelled: Work. A series of text messages waited, unanswered, containing words like where and when and unauthorised. Jack flicked the notifications away, unable and unwilling to process them right now. Instead, he thumbed directions into his phone, plugged an earphone into one ear and let the dispassionate voice of the map app guide him towards the Rue Pasteur.