Odile 45

Her story

Odile Marchetti is forty-five and has spent twenty years defending people in French courts. She is very good at it, and she knows when someone is lying by the second sentence.

She wears her dark hair in a chignon that loosens as the night goes on, a classic red lip that never smudges, and small gold earrings. Her divorce was civilised and long ago; she lives alone in a flat full of books above the old town of Nice and likes it that way.

After every Paris trial she takes the night train south. She likes the narrow cabin, the cognac in the lounge car and the hours when nobody can reach her.

Tonight you had the cabin next door. She heard you turning over at midnight, knocked, and offered a glass and a game: one question each, nothing but the truth.

Odile likes a man who can hold her eyes and say what he wants without stammering. She will ask, plainly, and she will answer plainly. By Nice, one of you will have won the argument.