by Harper Bliss
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Today’s the day,” Camille whispers in my ear. I’ve barely woken up, but the light in the room is already bright and the birds outside are singing their morning song.
“The day for what?” My brain isn’t fully working yet. We’ve been at the house in Provence for two days and arriving here seemed to have flipped a switch in Camille’s brain. The one that puts her in unmistakable holiday mood, and makes her want to double her wine intake at dinner.
She reaches for her phone on the night stand and shows it to me. It’s a text message in French, that says: Nous sommes arrivés. Diner ce soir?
“We have a dinner tonight?” I ask.
Camille looks at me, her face propped onto an upturned palm. “While I’m flattered that regular sex with me would make you forget about things you previously couldn’t stop talking about, I am a little worried now.”
I push myself up a bit more. “What are you talking about?”
“Have another look. See who the message is from.”
I take the phone out of her hand and scan the screen for clues. “It says Steph M,” I say. Then the penny drops. “Stéphanie Mathis?” Excitement quickly takes over. “Dominique Laroche’s partner?”
“That’s right.” Camille takes the phone back from me. “What should I reply? Shall I say that you don’t seem to have use of all your faculties today? That all the sex has gone to your head and left you indisposed to meet up with them?”
“Very funny.” I push myself up into a sitting position. I can’t believe this is actually going to happen.
I watch Camille type into her phone while a smug smile widens on her lips. “Voilà.” She puts her phone away and looks at me. “We’ll have to go to theirs. It’s a security thing.”
“We’ll have to go shopping. I have nothing to wear.”
Camille shakes her head. “You have plenty to wear.”
I ignore her and prattle on. “And I need to do some research.”
“Chérie.” Camille reaches for my hand. “This is not work. It’s not an interview. Dominique and Steph are on holiday. They are here to relax. Let’s try and do the same.”
“You’re going to have to do something to relax me then.”
“I believe I can think of some ways.” Camille scoots closer and wraps an arm around my waist.
I sink into her warm embrace and try to erase images of Dominique Laroche from my mind, but it’s hard, despite the insistence of Camille’s lips and hands. It’s not every day you wake up finding out you’re going to meet the president of France.
The way my stomach is coiled into knots as we drive from Camille’s to Dominique Laroche’s house in a village about ten miles away, you’d think I was about to go into my first TV interview. You’d think I was someone impressed by fame and fortune, instead of the person who, respectfully, tries to pick apart the facade of the people who populate the news—serious outlets and tabloids alike.
Maybe it’s because this is a social call that I feel so out of sorts. Or maybe it’s just because Dominique Laroche is in a league all of her own. The combination of the stature that comes with being the leader of her country, the way she rose to the top, and the grace with which she seems to move through the highest levels of politics thwarting all the attacks and criticism leveled at her, is like nothing I’ve ever come across.
“Remember, chérie, we’re not here for that foursome we talked about. It’s just dinner,” Camille jokes as she parks in the driveway.
When I look at her, she sends me a wide smile. “She’s just a person. Just a woman like us. No need to curtsy either.”
Camille’s relentless teasing makes me chuckle. She hasn’t crossed the line just yet, and I know it’s her way of trying to relax me. I must have looked like a student being driven to her first ever exam, the way I sat clammed up in the passenger seat en route over here.
I spot a discreetly positioned security guard to the left of the house, but that’s all. As we approach the front door, it gets thrown open wide and two children stand in the doorway. Lisa and Didier, I immediately think, as if I know them. Then a tall, lanky figure appears behind them and I recognize the woman from the many pictures I’ve seen of her: Stéphanie Mathis.
She says something in French to the children, but they all keep standing there.
“Stéphanie.” Camille opens her arms. “Ça fait trop longtemps.” She hugs Steph, then formally shakes the children’s hands, which they seem to enjoy greatly.
“This is my partner Zoya.” She smiles at me, and while I’ve been introduced as her partner a few times now, it still incites a little tingle in my tummy every time she does, although I guess this one could also be due to the special circumstances I find myself in at the moment.
“Pleasure to meet you.” Steph grabs me gently by the shoulders and kisses me on each cheek. “Please, entrez. Dominique is on the phone to god knows whom.” She quirks up her eyebrows at me. “She’ll join us soon.”
Steph escorts us to the terrace overlooking the garden.
“I was in charge of making dinner tonight, so I apologize in advance.” She paints a grin on her face that manages at the same time to be apologetic and effortlessly seductive. Her dark hair falls in front of her eyes and she brushes the wayward strand away with a casual flick of the wrist. Steph lifts a bottle of wine from the table. “So I shall ply you with some really good wine first. Red all right?”
Camille and I both nod. Christ, I believed Dominique would be the one with the star quality at this dinner. I’m beginning to see why she risked so much to be with Steph. I know the story, of course. And I remember the notorious video they made on the eve of the election campaign frame by frame. But whereas Dominique shone in that, Steph looked ill at ease and as though she’d rather be anywhere else. Tonight, she’s all confidence and swag and sophistication.
The stories she could tell. Her English isn’t half bad either. I remember the nagging wish I’ve had to interview her, and an idea sparks in my head. An idea I will have to shelve until later, because Dominique Laroche arrives, wearing a casual summer dress, no shoes, no makeup.
“Camille, mon amie.” She throws her arms wide and embraces Camille in a tight hug for long seconds while I just stand there waiting, feeling my stress levels rise again, because we may all just be ordinary people, but I do feel as if I’m in the company of extraordinary greatness tonight.
“And you must be Zoya. Enchantée.” She draws me into a hug as well and then, for a few instances that seem to pass in slow motion, I find myself in Dominique Laroche’s warm embrace. Her skin is on mine, her arms pressed affectionately against my back, her perfume in my nose.
“Pleasure to meet you,” I mumble.
“We speak English tonight, I gather?” she asks, after releasing me—because that’s how it feels. As though I had nothing to do with the impromptu hug and she was fully in charge of when she set me free from it. “Or has Camille already given you a crash course in French?”
“I’m taking classes, but we’ve only covered the basics so far, I’m afraid.”
“Sylvie’s daughter Alice is giving her lessons every afternoon,” Camille says.
“Lessons?” I say. “I would describe it more as my daily hour of torture. That girl is so strict with me.”
“You must be misbehaving then. She’s always so sweet to me,” Camille says.
Alice is training to be a teacher and everyone thought it would be a marvelous idea for her to teach me a bit of French every day, seeing as Camille’s promise to teach me turned out to be a false one, and it would be good practice for Alice as well. It’s not so much Alice’s strictness that’s the problem as my impatience and frustration with myself at trying to learn this new language which seems so impossible to grasp. Having regular lessons is only making me more aware of the vast task of trying to master it.
“English it is then. I don’t mind. I need it for my job and I can do with the practice,” Dominique says, a
s if her job is any old job.
We all sit, more wine is poured, and I have to take a few sips before my brain can process that I’m sitting in the beautiful French countryside, drinking an indeed excellent wine, in the company of the woman I fell in love with, the president of France, and her sexy, mysterious girlfriend.
We recount the story of how we met to great glee from our hosts, and for a split-second I wonder whether it would come across as totally ignorant to ask about Dominique and Steph’s first ever meeting, but then I remember Camille’s words from earlier: this is not an interview, all questions are valid, and no matter our individual levels of greatness and accomplishment, we are all just people. So I ask them.
Steph stretches out her hand to Dominique, and says, “Even though I’ll never forget the day she walked into the meeting room at the office, it feels like it happened in another lifetime.”
“My life would have been so much easier if your bosses hadn’t brought you in to seduce me into hiring their firm for my PR. They should have known you were trouble. I mean, look at you, mon amour. It’s written all over you. It still is after all this time,” Dominique says.
The passion between them is striking. They both seem totally relaxed. Maybe these are the only two weeks of the year they can be like this.
A young woman comes out of the house, and says, “Didier et Lisa vont se coucher maintenant, Madame.”
“Ah.” Dominique rises from her chair. “Time for bedtime stories. Please excuse me.”
“I’ll just give them a quick kiss and get dinner ready.” Steph follows her inside and when it’s just Camille and me on the terrace, I consider how relaxed the atmosphere is, how completely different than I had expected.
“Is she all you imagined she would be?” Camille asks with a smile on her face, leaning over to kiss me on the cheek.
“They are so normal and… in love.”
“Hm.” Camille just hums. “Dominique is usually a bit more highly strung, but she’s on holiday with her children. This is a good time for her.”
“It just makes you wonder about the lives politicians are forced to lead. Constant stress and scrutiny. Always having to be ready for something. Never letting your guard down. It takes a special kind of person.”
“Tell me about it.” Camille rolls her eyes. “My ex-husband was nowhere near being president and just being his wife was often a chore. The endless dinners and misogynistic chatter of the old boys’ club to endure. At least Dominique’s election has injected some much-needed feminine perspective and ambiance into French politics.”
“To be a woman and then come out as gay in that world.”
“Dinner won’t be long.” Steph re-emerges. “I hope you’re not expecting anything too fancy. The kids always need all of our attention the first few days we’re here. And my natural cooking ability isn’t anything to speak of.” She smiles that apologetic smile again that is so damn sexy. The hearts this woman must have broken.
This time I do restrain myself from asking the first question that pops into my brain, because it sounds too much like part of an interview. This must be so hard for you. It’s a bit of a cowardly question that would surely be vetoed before any actual interview on my show, but it’s the first thing that springs to mind when I look at Steph.
She looks as though she would be much more at home in a night club, or just casually strolling through a life she constructed for herself by being the person that she is. Anything but having to live with the constraints of a life as first lady to the first female president of her country. Of course, I only know Stéphanie Mathis from what I read about her in the press, but it seems incongruous with the person sitting across from me.
We chat some more about their vacation plans—just chill and do pretty much nothing—and my and Camille’s plans for the rest of my stay, and then Dominique comes back out and dinner—a simple but delicious goat’s cheese salad—and more wine are served, and slowly my bewilderment changes into a more relaxed state of being, and I forget Dominique is who she is, and I could just as well be having a lovely dinner with a new pair of friends.
After midnight, the wine is still flowing freely—Camille’s intake increasing further—and everyone is a little tipsy, but it doesn’t matter because we have nowhere to be the day after and it’s summer and the woman I love is sitting next to me and the conversation is getting more and more interesting.
“I know you had your reasons, Camille,” Dominique says, “but you should have left him years ago.”
“You know why I stayed.”
Dominique nods. “I do, but look at my kids. They’re still so young, and their life, although very privileged, isn’t exactly a bed of roses, but they’ll be fine. In a way, it’s good for them now that Philippe and I are divorced. That way they can escape the whole circus of their mother being president and lead a somewhat normal life.”
“But you see them so little.”
“I know.” Dominique goes quiet for a few seconds. “But I want what’s best for them. Living with their father is definitely best for them right now.”
“Do you have children, Zoya?” Steph asks me.
I shake my head. “I do have two extremely spoiled nephews, whom I don’t get to see often enough.”
Steph nods as though she considers the case closed. “I have two kids now, I guess. Whether I wanted them or not.”
“Hey.” Dominique swats her on the knee. “The kids adore you.” She turns to us. “It often seems to me that they prefer spending time with her rather than me.”
“That’s because I’m so much younger than you and I actually do fun stuff with them.”
Dominique smiles away the playful jab, then taps Steph on the knee again. “I keep trying to convince her to have a child with me after my term is up. Can you imagine a tiny version of Steph? Honestly, he or she would just be too adorable.”
“After your term?” I’m too tipsy to suppress my journalist tendencies. “Are you not planning to stand again?”
“Whether I plan to or not is less the question than whether I can win another term or not,” she says drily.
“Come on, babe. Of course, you’ll be running again and you will win by a landslide,” Steph says.
“You have my vote,” Camille says.
“No politics tonight, please. Where were we? Oh yes, a little Stéphanie Mathis.” She turns to Steph. “I’m not sure the world can handle two of you.”
This line of conversation incites Camille to talk about Emma for a while and I glance at Dominique and Steph who are so at ease around each other, so attuned to each other’s mild teasing, so informed about each other’s innermost thoughts, that I can only conclude that love—and there is a lot of love here tonight—can conquer the greatest obstacles. It gives me hope for my future with Camille.
Chapter Twenty-Six
By the time the last week of my stay in Paris comes around, I can actually say some things in French and, when spoken slowly and clearly, understand even more. Camille has the week off, and we spend every single second of the day together.
Flo and I have struck up the beginning of a friendship, perhaps mainly based on the fact that my being in Paris hasn’t stopped her mother from babysitting Emma. In the past weeks, it has become a habit to stop by Flo’s at least every other day after Camille knocks off work, and we’ve often taken Emma home for the evening so Flo and Mathieu can have a quiet night together.
Because little Emma has lain on my shoulder so often, and I’ve looked into her wide baby-blue eyes for long stretches of time, I’ve grown surprisingly attached to her, and I can understand why being a grandmother is such an appealing proposition. Camille gets to spend all the time she wants with Emma—and every so often some time she doesn’t want—after which she gets to safely return the child to her parents.
“It’s all the good bits without the bad ones,” she said once, after Emma had been particularly fussy one evening, and we were both tired and looking forward to some peace
and quiet.
I’ve even grown fond of Alice, my daily French drill instructor, who is a nice girl at heart, and whose task of teaching an Australian woman who has never spoken any other languages in her forty-seven years is not an easy one.
Ben has divided his time off university between Camille’s house, his father’s, the Provence house, and his apartment in Marseille.
At Camille’s insistence, Sylvie has resumed her old habit of dropping by unannounced for a cup of coffee on weekends.
The only person I haven’t met is her ex-husband.
I’ve gotten a good long look into Camille’s life and as the weeks have progressed, my conclusion about her never moving away from it has only grown firmer.
A few nights before my departure, with the pressure of time weighing heavily on me, I finally work up the nerve to ask her.
“Could you ever leave Paris?”
“Of course. I’m coming to Sydney for Christmas,” she says, not catching my drift.
“I mean permanently.”
Camille stops massaging my feet. We’re sitting outside on her patio, enjoying a beautiful August evening. According to Camille the summer has been unusually splendid just because I was in Paris. “Is it time for the talk?” she asks.
“Seeing as my plane leaves in about seventy-two hours, I think it might be.”
She purses her lips together and stares into the dusk for long minutes. “I don’t know, Zoya. It’s not that I haven’t thought about it. Of course I have, but I can’t answer your question in a satisfactory manner. Maybe when Emma is older. Or when Ben doesn’t come home so often anymore. It is still kind of early days for us.”
“I don’t mean to put you on the spot. I just think we should talk about it a little. Have an exploratory conversation of the possibilities.”
“How about you?” The relaxed expression she sported while massaging my feet earlier has disappeared from her face.