Chapter Ten

Meg.

Nowhere will ever take the place of Paris in my heart, but I must confess that New York City is a truly special place in the Springtime. Technically, Spring was still a week away, but the city had already shaken off its Winter garments. For all its industrial artistry of brick and concrete, all its green potential condensed into Central Park, there were still flowers blooming from window boxes, and pink and white blossom decorating the trees that livened up the sidewalks.

I alighted on the platform of Grand Central Station, still fighting back waves of sickness caused by the rocky train journey from Brooklyn, the heat from the crush of people, and wrapped my scarf back around my neck as the cool air hit me like a soothing balm. The sun was beaming over Manhattan's grid of streets, but the wind was chilly, and away from the other passengers, I needed the scarf.

I listened to the clicking of my heels against the paving stones and breathing in the soft aroma of blossom as I walked from the station to the Hotel Victoria.

It was a grand building that took up an entire block on Twenty-Seventh Street, Broadway and Fifth Avenue. I nodded to the doorman, and felt him take in my appearance from my hat to the toes of my boots. I was suddenly very aware that my coat was more than a year old, and that there was a smear of mud on my left boot where a fellow passenger has accidentally trodden on my foot.

"Um… good morning. I'm meeting someone here, one of the guests."

He opened the door, but I had the strong impression that he was looking down his long nose at me and thought I should have used the tradesman's entrance. I reminded myself that I was the leading lady of a very successful show on Coney Island, and held my head high as I approached the gorgeous reception desk.

"Good morning," I said firmly to the male receptionist, trying to channel Erik's ever-present air of power and authority. "My name is Marguerite Giry, and I am here to see Madame de Chagny."

Madame de Chagny. It sounded so regal, and so suited to these expensive surroundings.

"Madame de Chagny is expecting you," the receptionist said with a smile, having opened a leather-bound folder and scanned a list. "Jimmy," he beckoned with his fingers to a young man in a bellboy's uniform. "Take Miss Giry up to Suite Two, please."

Jimmy smiled and escorted me to an elevator where there was yet another man in uniform to operate it. Erik had proceeded to have an elevator installed in the Imaginarium, so that a person could go from the ground floor to his office at the top of the building, but one operated it oneself, so it felt very strange to encounter a person whose soul occupation was to work this one.

I thanked him when I got out, and Jimmy showed me the few stops down the cream and gold corridor to a set of double doors with an elaborately stencilled Two on them in gold paint. He knocked, and they were opened by a maid. Jimmy murmured to her and at last I was allowed into the room, the maid relieving me of my outdoor clothing.

A hotel suite was like an apartment in itself and from just this drawing room I could tell that this suite was larger than my own home in the Grand Circle. Like the corridor outside, the suite was in cream and gold, like the packaging of an expensive box of chocolates. I had no time to judge the colour-scheme, because my attention was drawn to a little girl sitting on the sofa. She was about six years old, and wore a pale purple dress covered with a white smock, with violets embroidered around the neckline and hem. Her white-stockinged legs kicked to the rhythm that only she could hear, the violet laces on her white satin shoes untied. I had a not seen so much as a picture of her before, but I recognised her at once. With her clear blue eyes and brown curls, the upper part of her hair restrained in a violet bow, she was almost a mirror image of her mother when I had first met her at the age of six. I could see Raoul in her too, in the shape of her nose and chin—like me, she had her father's jawline. Her feet stopped kicking when she noticed a stranger in her midst, and anxiety flashed into her into eyes.

"How do you do, Vicomtess de Chagny?" I asked in French, and bobbed my head in a sort of minute curtsey.

"How do you do?" She replied, the automatic response of the well-bred, then: "I don't know who you are."

I smiled. "I apologise. My name is Marguerite Giry. I shared a dormitory with your mother when we both lived at the Opera House in Paris. We were best friends, from when we were about your age. We grew up together."

"But you're not friends anymore?"

"Why do you said so?" I asked gently.

"You don't come to the house."

"I had to leave Paris a long time ago, and I lost touch with your mother and father. When we met again a couple of days ago, it was a sort of accident."

"My dear Meg," Christine had entered from an adjoining room and wrapped her arms around me before I had recognised her presence. "It's so, so good to see you!"

"And you," I squeezed her gently, and felt a rush of hot tears pricking my eyes.

How ridiculous, I thought in surprise, but as Christine and I drew apart, I saw that her eyes were brimming too.

"Oh, you're looking so well."

It was true; her skin looked clear and radiant, and her hair was swept up into a large Gibson Girl style. She was wearing a stunning white cotton lace dress with a neckline up to her throat, miniaturised versions of the long mutton-leg sleeves that had been so popular a year before, and a short train. There was a cameo brooch on the high collar that looked wonderful against her fair skin and dark hair. I caught sight of our reflections in the large, gilded mirror on the wall to my right. I was wearing the forget-me-not blue dress I had made after Benedict's death, with my blonde curls in a simple braid down my back. Christine, I realised, looked like a grown woman, while I still looked like a little girl.

"Come and sit down, Meg. I have so much to share with you."

"And I with you."

"And I see that you have already met my daughter." She smiled fondly at the little girl, who was watching the maid tie her shoelaces for her. "Meg, this is Matilda de Chagny. Matilda, this is Meg Giry, my friend from when I was a little girl. Meg is the best ballerina I know."

The child's eyes lit up. "You're a ballerina?"

"I am," I smiled. "In a manner of speaking. I started dancing when I was about three years old. My mother was the ballet mistress of the Paris Opera House, and my father was the pianist."

"I'm sorry for the delay, Madame de Chagny."

Another young woman had joined us, a smartly-dressed individual with such pale blonde hair that it was almost white.

"It's quite alright, Sophie." Christine told her. "Meg, this is Matilda's governess. Matilda, darling, are you sure you don't want to stay? I want you and Meg—Mademoiselle Giry—to get to know each other."

"But it's gone eleven o'clock, Mother," Matilda explained. "It must be almost ten past now."

She did not say it petulantly, but rather like it was important, and Matilda was late for a long-awaited meeting.

"Yes, alright, I quite understand." Christine looked slightly embarrassed. "Stay close to Sophie, and do as she tells you."

"I always do, Mother." Matilda stood up and looked at my solemnly. "It was nice to meet you, Mademoiselle Giry."

"And you, Vicomtess de Chagny. I hope that we will meet again soon."

The little girl kissed Christine on the cheek, and then left the suite, hand-in-hand with her governess. Christine sighed as she watched them go, her arms wrapped around herself.

"A man from the hotel always accompanies them to keep them safe, but I can't help but worry. New York is very different to Paris."

"Indeed it is." I smiled as she turned to me. "Your daughter is lovely, if a little shy."

Christine chuckled. "Matilda is not shy really, but she is very determined that things be done in just the right way. She goes for a walk around eleven o'clock every day except Holy days, whether in rain or shine, country or town. She was even doing daily laps of the ship during our crossing."

There was a knock on the door and the maid, who had disappeared without me noticing, re-entered the room with a rolling trolley, setting out tea, coffee and little sandwiches on the small table between Christine's chair and mine. Christine dismissed her, saying that we would serve ourselves.

"I am sorry that Matilda did not stay to meet you properly, Meg, but she can become quite over-wrought when her routine is disrupted."

"I understand," I assured her. "I can't believe how tall she is. I remember reading the announcement of your pregnancy in the newspaper, but I never found out if you had had a boy or a girl."

"You read the announcement in the Époque?"

"No, one of the papers here. Did you not know that you were international news, Christine?"

Christine gave me a long look, and when she spoke her voice was soft and serious.

"How long have you been in America, Meg?"

I felt anxiety ripple over my skin. Christine was my oldest friend, someone I had never been nervous around before, but there was so much she did not know.

"Since August 1894."

She nodded slowly. "So, were you in France when Raoul and I married?"

"Not in Paris," I had the desperate desire to explain myself. "Nowhere near Paris. I was so happy for you, and I wish I could have been there."

Christine poured coffee, and passed me a cup without adding milk or sugar. I blew on the hot beverage, willing my hands to stop shaking.

"I missed you so much," she said suddenly. "Everything changed so fast. It was… Oh, Meg, I don't even know how to tell you. I remember being questioned by that police inspector in the Opera House, and then I was finally allowed to leave and all I just wanted to have some good and sleep. The next thing I knew there were gendarmes on my doorstep and they told me that the Opera House was burning. You weren't there. I knew I had seen you in the Opera House just before I left, but no-one had seen you since the fire. There was some talk from the ballerinas about seeing Madame Giry, but no-one mentioned seeing you. I thought you'd died… but there was no body, so I could never really believe it."

"I didn't want to go," I whispered to my coffee. "It happened before I realised it. I was just bundled into a carriage and that was it, never to return. There was no chance to say goodbye."

"You might have written."

"I couldn't, as much as I wanted to. We had a run away. I couldn't have provided a return address, and even without it, the gendarmes might have been able to trace me by using the paper somehow."

Christine shook her head. "You always did read too much Edgar Allen Poe."

"I'm sorry I couldn't tell you we were safe."

Christine blinked quickly and took a swallow of her coffee.

"It was so difficult without you, Meg. I love Raoul so much, but going from just… well, me, to becoming the Vicomtess de Chagny was so strange and lonely. I needed you. I felt that I had no-one to talk to, and that everyone from Raoul's walk of life was looking down at me. It took a long time for them to see me as anything other than a singer, with all the connotations that has for them. I think it was only after Matilda was born that I really became part of the family; she is so much like her father."

When Christine spoke of her daughter, her whole face seemed to light up with love.

"Do you have other children?"

"Not yet." She shook her head. "I had a difficult pregnancy with Matilda, but so far there are no siblings. I would love more children. We are trying, and there is no end of encouragement and advice." She sighed. "I never would have thought that moving in society circles would involve so many women talking about sex."

I giggled.

"Honestly. There is no shortage of high-born ladies giving me tips on how to conceive a child. Since Philippe was declared dead, Raoul became a Comte, people hardly seem to talk to us about anything else. He needs an heir."

"But you are so much more than a wife and mother," I protested. "Tell me about the music."

Christine smiled. "Sometimes it feels like music has been the only constant thing in my life. Raoul always knew that I could never give it up, and he never tried to make me. He never wanted me to give it up, he encouraged me. Even on our honeymoon we stopped our travels around Europe so that I could do a charity concert."

I remembered that; remembered being in Calais the night before our departure from France and seeing an article about the concert in a local paper. We had been in the same town, perhaps only streets apart, and I had not dared to bridge the gap between us one last time.

"Raoul helped me find a new singing tutor Monsieur Duval. He actually reminds me a lot of Monsieur Reyer; elderly, very gentle, very knowledgeable and very kind. He and Raoul helped me to keep singing and stay in the public eye. It's what my father always wanted for me. It's what Erik was training me for. I had to honour his wishes."

I wondered who she meant; her father? Or Erik?

"And have you sung at the new Paris Opera House?"

"The Palais Garnier?" Her smile was shy. "I am the company's leading lady, and have been since it opened on New Year's day of last year."

"I was hoping you would say that. I always knew it was in your future. Paris could not ask for a better prima donna."

She smiled again, a light blush spreading over her cheekbones as she looked down, and then her gaze fixed upon my left hand, holding my coffee cup to my lips.

"Are you married, Meg?"

I suddenly realised what she meant.

"You mean to Erik? God, no!" I put my cup down and adjusted the silver Claddagh ring that had captured her attention. "I was engaged to a carpenter from Ireland, his name was Benedict Adaire. He… He died before our wedding." I hated saying it, the words producing a jolt of hurt as if I had struck an old bruise. "There was a baby as well, but I had a—a miscarriage."

I had not expected it to be this difficult to talk about Benedict, and the child who had never been mine. I so rarely spoke of it and since most of my colleagues had known Benedict, I could avoid any conversations that might turn to him.

"I'm so sorry," Christine took my hands, her eyes full of sympathy.

"There's something else, Christine. I have to tell you that… Mother died. She died in November, on her birthday. It was very sudden, a brain aneurysm. She didn't feel any pain."

That wound was fresher, always threatening to bleed.

"Oh, Meg," Christine whispered, her eyes filling with tears, and then she was holding me and we were both weeping. It had not occurred to me when I was younger that Christine had no mother-figure in her life besides Antoinette Giry. Thanks to our swift departure from Paris, Christine had now lost her twice. I felt like the lowest creature on Earth.

"I'm sorry, Christine. I should have written to tell you that Mother had died."

"You must have had so much else to think of, don't feel guilty. Oh, Meg… were you and Madame Giry with Erik all this time? Is that why you cut yourself off from everyone and let us think you were dead?"

Despite the softness of her tone, my immediate instinct was to hide my face from her, concealing it in my palms. Very gently, Christine took hold of my wrists and lowered my hands.

"Meg, dear friend, please tell me what happened the day of the fire."

She gave me a handkerchief and sat quietly, listening as I stumbled into a history of the last seven years. I told Christine that I had no foreknowledge of the destruction of the Opera House, and that I was still in the building when the explosions started.

"Do you think Erik knew that?"

"I'm sure of it. The gendarmes were questioning me at the time. But he assured me that everyone got out of the building unharmed."

I told her how Mother and I had been ordered into a carriage, and how Erik had driven us out of Paris.

"He has all of our things packed up in that carriage." I almost laughed as another recollection flitted across my mind like a butterfly. "Do you remember when we met that afternoon? You saw it before I did; you said that my belongings had gone, and asked what other dormitory I was moving into, do you remember that?"

Christine shook her head. "I remember seeing you, but I don't remember us speaking. I wish I did, given that it was the last time we would speak in seven years."

"Neither of us knew that, Christine."

She refilled our coffee cups, and insisted that I eat one of the sandwiches.

"I think there is more you have to tell me, Meg," she said gently. "Why do you call him by his Christian name? Why did he take you and your mother with him that day?"

"I think he was lonely," I admitted. "I think… Oh, Christine… Erik told me what happened in his home, the night of Don Juan Triumphant. I hope you don't mind."

"I would have told you myself, if I could."

"When Erik was your tutor, did he tell you anything about his background?"

"He didn't speak of himself much. He talked about me, and his plans for my future."

I took a deep breath. "Then I beg you to keep this information to yourself."

"Of course, if I must."

"Promise me!"

"Very well, Meg, I promised."

Was this wise? I asked myself. Divulging Erik's secrets?

"When you first started taking secret singing lessons and talking about having an Angel of Music, I didn't know who you were talking about, that he was the person I knew as the Opera Ghost, or the Phantom of the Opera. I thought he was some mythical figure made up by my parents as a bedtime story. Oh, but there was so much more going on."

And I told Christine how my parents had discovered Erik as a young man caged in a gypsy fair, and had determined to help him escape.

"I always knew that there was some connection between Erik and your mother. He always spoke of her far more respectfully than he spoke of nay of our managers."

"Do you remember the night that I snuck out of the Opera House to meet a suitor, when I was sixteen?

"Yes, I remember. He was called Patrice, I think. He tried to make you go too far, and you had to fight him off."

"That was what I told you," I shook my head. "But it was only partially true. The man's name was Jacques. I'd never met him before that night, he was just someone I met in a bar. I let him buy me a drink, I let him flatter me, and I let him walk me home."

"And you had to fight this Jacques off?"

"I tried to, but he was too strong for me."

The memory of the terror I had felt, pinned between a wall and the cobblestones of a Parisian back alley with a predator ripping at my clothing, flashed through my mind like a bolt of lightning. For a split second, it was as real and raw as it had been in that moment, but then it was gone.

"Erik saved me. He got Jacques off of me, and brought me home. It was the first time I met him, but certainly not the first time he met me."

"You already said that Jacques was a stranger."

"I meant Erik. Of course, by that point in time, he had known me for sixteen years. He had watched me grow up. Completely unbeknownst to me, he was good friends with my mother, although he and my father never really got along. Erik told me that he was watching Faust with Mother when she went into labour with me. He helped her to her rooms, but the opera was underway and Papa was in the orchestra pit, playing the piano. Erik delivered me himself."

"I had no idea," Christine whispered.

"Nor did I. Erik said that I wasn't breathing when I was born. He had to use his own breath to save my life. That is why he saw me as belonging to him, in the same way that I belonged to Mother. If it wasn't for Erik, I wouldn't be alive. I believe that when he decided to leave Paris and take Mother and I with him, he wanted companionship, some sort of a family."

I continued my story, seeing my friend's face whiten when I told her about Danton House, Erik's childhood home in Corbeaux. She knew without me having to say so that this was where he had been planning to live with Christine, after forcing her into marriage. I did not describe my own observations of Danton House; how Erik had paid for extensions and improvements to his inherited property, creating an environment where he could live with a spouse. I told her about the forged documents Erik had provided to avoid the suspicions of the Corbeaux residents, which named Mother as Erik's wife, and myself as his stepdaughter.

"It was my fault that we ended up working for a freak show there in Normandy. Granjin's Travelling Fair, it was called, after its owner. I was a dancer there, and Mother worked on the coconut shy. Erik was working as a magician at first. Then he started taking off his mask so that people could laugh at him, humiliate him.

"He—he did this voluntarily?" A tear ran down Christine's cheek. She had seen for herself Erik's reaction to having his mask removed.

"The owner paid him double when he did, and Erik had already decided that we were going to buy ourselves out of our contracts and move on. He was inspired by Granjin's, I'm sure, and wanted to share his music and creativity, on his own terms."

I swallowed and looked down at my skirt, rubbing the forget-me-not blue fabric between my fingers. Christine watched me, then spoke softly:

"Why do you say that joining this travelling fair was your fault?"

"I found out about it. I suggested we join it, because I knew our finances were poor. But after a while I knew that Erik was struggling working there. His temper was…"

I shivered, remembering how angry he had been when I had disobeyed him and discovered that he was not only allowing himself to be unmasked in public, but tied up and humiliated for the entertainment of the crowd.

"I remember his temper."

Christine took my right hand and turned it over, running her thumb over my palm. In order to punish her while she had been his student, Erik had decided that the best way to punish her was to hurt those she loved. He had held my hand over a candle flame until she begged for forgiveness, and he was satisfied with her contrition. The burn scar on my right hand was barely visible now, but we both knew it was there.

"Meg, did Erik hurt you?"

I took my hand back from her and dropped my gaze to my skirt.

"He did," she concluded. "Badly?"

"Only once," I mumbled, shame sending heat flooding to my cheeks. "For disobedience."

"But you said your mother was with you, how could she allow it? What happened, Meg?" She curved a finger under my chin and lifted it so that I was looking at her. "Tell me the truth."

I did not want to tell her, but that tone of maternal command was one that I could not refuse.

"He did warn me what would happen if I disobeyed him," I began. "He told me that he would beat me bloody."

"And he is not a man who makes idle threats."

"Indeed. He talked to Mother for hours before he punished me, she didn't let him do it in anger, but she agreed that I deserved a beating."

"He beat you?" Christine looked appalled. "How could he have the right—"

"That was my argument," I interrupted wearily. "That he didn't have the right because he was not my father. It didn't do me any good. With Mother's permission, he held me down over his desk, and whipped me with his belt."

"My God!"

Saying it aloud made the memory of that pain and humiliation come rushing back, but my friend's shock made me want to defend Erik and how he had changed in the last few years.

"He treated the wounds afterwards and, needless to say, I learned my lesson."

"You never disobeyed him again?" Christine knew me too well, even after seven years apart.

"I never let him catch me."

"I don't know how you could stand being treated like that."

"What choice did I have? I couldn't run away; I didn't have an inheritance or my own income. I had to stay. But I knew that we couldn't continue working for Granjin, and so I made a bargain with him."

"What bargain?"

"I gave him the only thing that I had of value, and he released us from our contracts."

Christine stared at me, and my shame was so hot that I believed that I might spontaneously combust.

"You let him… Oh my God, Meg…"

"Please don't ask me any more about it, Christine."

"But does Erik know?"

I shook my head.

"Does anyone know?"

"Only you. I never told Mother, I couldn't bear it. I told Benedict, my fiancé, and as far as Erik knows it was Ben I lost my virginity to. It was what I had to do so that we could leave France, and immigrate to America."

My coffee had gone cold, but I kept speaking, telling Christine about our time in Brooklyn, although I could not bring myself to admit that, once again, I had traded my body for our gain. I tried to make it seem that the relationship I had had with Thomas Seymour had not only been secret, and was to remain so, but was not transactional. Given her reaction to my admission about Granjin, I decided my venture into the world of prostitution was a secret that I would be taking to my grave.

"Helping Erik create the Imaginarium truly changed my life. It changed his too, of course, he had to learn how to communicate with other people, how to negotiate rather than demand, for example. He is a very good businessman, and employer.

Christine raised her eyebrows. "He is? I remember what it was like having Erik as a tutor, Meg. Yes, he could be encouraging, but he could also be terrifying."

"He still can be," I admitted. "I'm not saying that he never loses his temper, but such instances are few and far between. I don't think I remember the last time I saw him do so."

He hadn't been angry when he had killed the four muggers who had murdered Benedict, I thought. He had been eerily calm.

"He also knows what it is like to be treated like a freak, so he doesn't treat his workers the way that he was treated. He has gained employees because he has a good reputation from his staff. He treats them like human beings, and he pays extremely well."

"I did not think of it like that," Christine nodded, "that he understands what it is like to be in the same position that his workers are in."

"And he recognises talent," I shrugged bashfully. "He made me his leading lady when he decided that the Imaginarium would become a permanent fixture on Coney Island."

Christine beamed at me. "Oh, my dear, I'm so glad. Madame Giry must have been so proud of you."

Even as I beamed back, I felt the tears prick my eyes. "I think she was. I hope she was." I sighed. "And of course while it was still a travelling show, the Imaginarium introduced me to the love of my life, Benedict Adaire."

And I told Christine about the Irish carpenter who had stolen my heart, feeling that peculiar mixture of joy and sorrow which covered my memories of him, how he had illuminated my life, supported me, given me the chance of having a child, and how he had died. When I had finished, Christine took both my hands in hers, kissed me on the cheek, and then rested her forehead against mine.

"You have been through so much, Meg. I wish I could have been with you through it all."

"And I wish the same for you. You're a mother, Christine. I should have been with you during your pregnancy, at your side for the birth. Your Matilda should be calling me Aunt Meg. We left because we had to, because if we had stayed, I'm certain that Mother and I would have been imprisoned."

"Oh, surely not."

"Christine, Mother and I knew about Erik, we knew more than I think you realised The gendarmes would have had more than enough evidence to lock us away, and no-one would have vouched for us."

I had to tell her one last truth, I realised, as painful as it would be. I had to tell her about her brother-in-law. I could feel panic already limiting my breath, clouding my mind, making black dots dance at the edges of my vision.

"Let us make a bargain, Meg, here and now. Let us agree to keep in touch from here on out, and not have secrets from each other."

She pulled back from me when, without warning, I burst into tears.

"Meg, dear girl, what's wrong?"

"Oh, Christine!" I sobbed. "I have to tell you something terrible."

Her eyes were wide with alarm.

"What is it, Meg?"

"I need to tell you what happened to Philippe de Chagny."