by Kate Riordan
‘Sylvie, are you there?’
‘Élodie,’ I push out the word, my voice cracking on the third syllable. ‘She’s here.’
He inhales sharply.
‘Greg?’
‘Élodie?’ he says, voice oddly high with disbelief. I can hear him casting around for his cigarettes. ‘She’s with you at La Rêverie? Now?’
‘Yes. She just … appeared. We came back from a day out and she was standing on the drive.’
He’s silent again for a long moment, then starts speaking in a rush. ‘Right, look, I’m on my own with the boys tonight. Nicole’s mum has had a small stroke and they’re really upset – they were with her when it happened – but I’ll set off as soon as she’s back. The roads will be clear. I should be with you by dawn.’
‘Okay.’ My mind has gone blank again. I twist the phone cord around my forefinger, tighter and tighter, watching as the tip turns red.
‘Sylvie?’
‘I’m still here.’
‘How is … How does she seem?’
‘Different,’ I say, as I did to Camille. ‘I don’t know really. I can barely think straight.’
When I put the phone down, I don’t know whether the thought of him coming makes me feel better or not. All I really feel is lightheaded and slightly seasick, which takes me straight back to being pregnant with her. If it were possible, I’d go upstairs and sleep for a couple of days.
‘Mum, Élodie says she doesn’t have anywhere to be for a while,’ you inform me, when I emerge onto the terrace again. ‘So she’ll be able to stay longer.’
I sit down and pour myself some coffee. ‘That’s good,’ I say carefully, the word so woefully inadequate that I could laugh. Now she’s here, I can’t imagine wanting her to be anywhere else. But it doesn’t make her presence any easier.
Élodie shoots me a dazzling smile. ‘You don’t mind?’
‘Of course she doesn’t, do you, Mum?’ You smile at both of us. ‘This is your home too.’
‘Maman?’ Élodie says.
I nod. ‘It is. It’s your home. It never stopped being that.’ I take a breath, rub my sore eyes. ‘I managed to get hold of your father at last. He’s driving down late tonight. He’ll be with us by morning.’
‘So it’ll be all of us?’ You can’t keep the glee out of your voice.
‘We will be four again,’ says Élodie. ‘En famille.’ She raises her cup and you scramble for your tumbler of juice to clink against it. ‘I am very happy to be here with you. I have dreamt of it.’
I’ve dreamt of it too, so many times. Isn’t there a theory that there are infinite parallel universes, a new one created every time we make a decision? I think of those endless alternatives, multiplying like a hall of mirrors: the ones where we hadn’t risked coming back to France and the ones where we’d never left at all. I feel like I’ve slipped into one of the latter, dragging you with me. Soon Greg will be here, the slide into that other reality complete.
*
Martine turns up exactly on time for the viewing, the English couple squeezed into the back of her little Renault. She’s tiny, with a sleek cap of dark red hair and black ballet shoes that must be child-sized. The Johnsons – Barbara and Keith – are a nice couple in their late fifties, her soft-spoken and faded, him trim and twinkly. With their old-fashioned manners, they remind me a little of Greg’s parents, though these two are much more at ease with each other. I haven’t seen Charles and Margaret in years; Greg takes you to visit them once a year, around Christmas.
‘Martine said you live in England,’ says Barbara, smiling. ‘Is that right? Your accent is ever so good.’
‘Thank you. And, yes, my daughter and I live in London. Her father is English, although he lives in Paris.’
Barbara looks as though she’s going to ask why it worked out that way, but then thinks better of it. ‘Isn’t it sweltering?’ she says instead. ‘It was like an oven in that car. I thought I’d faint.’
‘They’re saying it’s the worst heatwave for a decade,’ Keith chimes in. ‘The whole area’s a tinderbox, and that’s the parts that haven’t caught fire already.’
I follow them as Martine leads the way around the house, just in case she’s unsure about anything, though she seems confident enough. They exclaim over something in every room: first the old wallpaper and original shutters, then the wooden floors and high ceilings.
I’m about to go downstairs when Martine pops her head out to say she’s going to take some decent photographs of the interior.
‘While I do that, do you mind showing them the garden?’
I lead the way downstairs and out onto the terrace. The sun is blinding after the relative dimness of the house and Barbara digs in her handbag for sunglasses.
After they admire the pool, which I’d made you skim the usual leaves and insects off half an hour earlier, Keith asks about the barn.
‘I’m after a workshop, see. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just big enough to keep a couple of cars out of the elements. I restore vintage Jags and sell them on. Not to make money – it’s just a hobby really.’
You intercept us on our way round there, smiling at the strangers, which is sweet of you because you don’t want the house to be sold.
‘How’s it going, love?’ you murmur to me in the old-man voice. ‘Shall I put the kettle on? Make us all a nice cup of tea?’
I cover my mouth with my hand and you grin back at me. Barbara and Keith are not so unlike our pretend couple.
Though I’d rather you didn’t, you follow us into the barn. It feels bigger than usual, perhaps because I’m viewing it through strangers’ eyes. Although I don’t like being in here, it’s a relief for the eyes after the intense sunlight. Keith whistles as he takes in the space.
‘Blimey, it must be twenty-five, thirty feet high.’
I see him notice the open-sided loft space in the back corner, a ladder leaning against it. ‘Anything up there?’
‘I doubt it. I haven’t gone up in years.’
‘Be careful, love,’ Barbara calls, as he begins to climb. She rolls her eyes at me. ‘He thinks he’s thirty-five.’
I glance round for you but you’re still hovering on the threshold. Your smile has gone now and you’re pale under your new freckles. I was scared this would happen. I’m just about to ask if you’re all right when Keith calls down.
‘You had someone staying up here?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There are clothes. And other bits.’
A wave of anxiety rises in me as he climbs down, Barbara steadying the ladder from the bottom. They want to see the terrace again and I can hardly say no but I want to go up that ladder and see for myself what’s there. I look around again for you, but you’ve gone. There’s no sign of you in the garden as we cross it to the steps either. The anxiety roils inside me again.
Martine is waiting for us on the terrace. ‘I’ve got a good feeling about them,’ she says, nodding towards the couple, who are surveying the lawn, Keith making a sweeping gesture and Barbara smiling. ‘You wait. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re the ones.’
‘We love the house,’ he says at the front door, after shaking my hand, ‘but we’ll need to go away and have a good think.’
‘Of course,’ I say distractedly, because I’m thinking about the barn loft and you disappearing so fast.
It seems to take for ever to manoeuvre them into Martine’s car but then, finally, they’re driving away, a cheery toot from the horn as they disappear down the drive.
I stand on the front step, paralysed with indecision. I want to check you’re okay but I also want to go back to the barn and climb the ladder, reassure myself Élodie was telling the truth by the pool. That anything left is from when she would hide out there and I would lie awake, wondering if this were the night she’d burn the whole thing down with a careless or not-so-careless cigarette. I developed a fixation with it for a while; almost a phobia. Some nights I found myself padding t
hrough the dark house to the only window you could see the barn from, the tiny, net-covered square in the souillarde. It was almost as if I knew what would happen.
I give in to the urge to move, hurrying along the overgrown footpath that loops round the side of the house to the barn, quicker than the drive. In the scrub that lines it, the racket of the cicadas is like an assault. Sweat blooms at my hairline and under my arms. A hot runnel slides between my breasts.
It’s quiet in the barn, the noises of outside cut off cleanly. I can hear my heart thudding in my ears. The metal of the ladder is cold. I can smell the iron under my clammy hands as I begin to climb, strong enough to taste, like blood from a bitten tongue.
It’s dark at the top and I have to squint while my eyes adjust. What there is comes into focus slowly: a mound of clothes heaped on an old mattress, a plastic water bottle on its side and a cigarette packet, its lid ripped off. I scramble on to what is really just a glorified ledge, a glance back to the floor making me falter because, like you, I’ve never been very good with heights.
I pick through the clothes, looking for signs of recent occupation. But I’m just not sure. I can’t be certain if the denim jacket, soft with wear, and a couple of sun-faded T-shirts are old or not, even if they’re hers or not. I thought there would be no doubt – something I remember from the past, or else something that is definitively not hers – a man’s overalls or boots, proof that a stranger had slept rough here for a time. Which is, perversely, a less alarming idea to me than the thought of Élodie hiding out here while we were in the house, unaware that all those uncanny feelings I was having about her being close by weren’t so fanciful after all. That they were real. My eyes alight on the foil square of an empty condom wrapper. I snatch it up and turn it to the light to read the expiry date. 1998: five long years away. Surely it must be new.
And then an explanation occurs to me, and I curse myself for not thinking of it before. Perhaps all of it belongs to Luc. That was why I’d caught him hanging around. Maybe he was using this place, or had been, as somewhere to escape his mother’s suffocating attentions. He could have been using it for years, filling the pool for himself, not us. I wondered if he’d ever brought those boys on mopeds back here for a party, or maybe a girl.
The denim jacket has something hard in the breast pocket and I slip my finger under the metal button. It’s a lighter: the cheap disposable kind, made of clear purple plastic. I push down the wheel with the side of my thumb, and a flame sparks. I wonder who was the last person to do the same, and where they did it. I think about the souillarde’s scorched walls.
I find you in the salon, where you’re sitting on the very edge of the armchair where Élodie had sat when she arrived, your hands clasped between your bare knees. I perch on the arm and that’s when I see you’re clutching your inhaler. I reach out to stroke your hair.
‘What’s set that off? Something in the barn?’ I can’t tell if my voice sounds natural or not.
I don’t know what you’ve recalled, but I hope it’s unformed, unspecific. An aversion to the barn that you don’t understand, and may put down to something irrational and harmless. A fear of shadowy corners, of insects or rats.
There’s still a wheeze in your chest; I can hear it clearly. You look back at me and your eyes are unfocused. I know it’s not me you’re seeing.
1982
Before you, we had become a fractious three. Now, despite our best efforts not to, we end up forming two evenly split factions, Greg and I more unable to communicate than ever. It doesn’t help that he was hard on you from the start, much stricter than he’d ever been with Élodie. I wonder sometimes if he’s punishing you for not having the difficulties Élodie has. The unfairness of this occasionally makes me despise him.
Your wheezing starts when you’re almost three, and I take you to the village doctor. It’s a new one now, a woman, and she diagnoses you with asthma. She tells me that an attack can be triggered by lots of things: exercise, allergies, hay fever.
‘I wouldn’t worry,’ she says briskly, writing a prescription with a gold-nibbed fountain pen that somehow speaks of a calm, ordered life. It briefly makes me want to swap places with her. ‘It’s probably something in the garden that’s set it off, or something blowing over from the fields. You might try a foam pillow too. Feather allergies are common.’
Back on the street, I take your hand and cross the road to the pharmacy. When I pull out my purse to pay, I see at the bottom of my bag the little notebook I’d intended to show the doctor. I’d changed my mind when she looked at the clock, just like old Dr Bisset would have done. Inside its pages, I’ve been keeping a log of all the times you get wheezy and I notice that any possible triggers for the attacks – I’ve looked this up in the library – simply don’t correlate to times you’ve been in the garden. I’d swapped your old feather bolsters for foam pillows months ago; you were still getting wheezy.
What I have read about, but the doctor hasn’t said, is that asthma can also be set off by strong emotions, especially in children. Laughter is apparently one of the commonest triggers of this type. With you, it isn’t laughing I’m worried about.
Now I have the doctor’s official diagnosis, I feel able to show Greg the logbook: my record of all the times your breathing has grown laboured, your little chest heaving, eyes wide and panicked as you look to me for help, unable to get any words out; the terrible rattling wheeze I’ve started hearing in my nightmares.
He takes one look at it and throws it on the table, where it lands in a ring of spilt wine, red soaking into the cover.
‘What do you want me to do with this?’ He stands up and shoves his chair back under the table so hard that the cutlery jumps on the plates. ‘What do you want me to say?’
‘I want you to back me up on this, Greg.’
‘To who?’
‘I don’t know – maybe just to me. Maybe I need you to actually sit down and listen to me properly for once, so that we can help her. What if we went to see Dr Morel again?’
He’s been pacing as though he can’t wait to leave the room. Now he strides to the door.
‘I’m not discussing this again. You know what I think of his sinister little diagnosis. She’s just a child. So she resents her little sister sometimes. What child who’s been the only one for so long wouldn’t?’ His outward denial is almost a reflex now. He’s been doing it for so long he doesn’t know how else to be. The more I push, the more he resists.
He leaves five minutes later, not returning until dawn, when he comes in and starts packing for his next buying trip without a word.
‘Oh, so you’re running away again? What a surprise.’ I can’t help it. Tears and pleading never work with him because they make him feel guilty, which he hates, so I’m now reduced to this kind of bitter jibing. He doesn’t reply and is gone by seven, a day earlier than necessary, adolescent wheel-spin on the lane as he drives away.
It’s always hurt that Greg won’t support me when it comes to Élodie. Now I start doing the same thing to him if he tells you off, and the shaming thing about it isn’t my own hypocrisy but the pleasure I get from undermining him just as he has me so many times. A continuous tally of what’s unfair click-clicks in my head, an endless cataloguing and calculating of his crimes, Élodie’s crimes, the injustices suffered by you, by me. Click, click, click. And because my memory is so much better than Greg’s – because I remember everything, going back years – I begin to win the arguments I’ve previously lost because I’ve been too upset by the confrontation to fight back. Now, at least when it comes to our marriage, I find it difficult to care as much as I once did.
‘I want us to find our way back to each other, Sylvie,’ he says, on the odd occasion he gets maudlin drunk, rather than the passive-aggressive kind I’m more used to. And I look at him, my face no doubt shuttered and unmoved, because I can’t fathom how we can ever cross such vast distances to reunite. It feels much too late, and like too enormous an effort. I can feel mysel
f turning cold, closed off to everything but you.
1993
You’re drained after all the Ventolin you’ve taken since the barn and go to lie down in your room. When I put my head round the door half an hour later, you’re asleep with your headphones on. On the floor is a half-written postcard to one of your school-friends. I would never normally read something not meant for me, but worry trumps privacy. Who knows what you might admit to a friend rather than your mother? But your looping, aqua-blue script gives nothing away. Surprisingly, it doesn’t even mention Élodie. I don’t know what to make of that.
To distract myself from puzzling over you, and where Élodie might have gone, I station myself in the smallest bedroom, which became something of a dumping ground in the years after Élodie was born. I make myself start going through the clutter, deciding what to keep and what to hand over to a man whose name Martine has given me: he has a stall at the local brocante market. With every item I label, a little voice says, This is it: the end of an era. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised: this is the break-up of my family home, where you and I both took our first steps, spoke our first words. Where Élodie did too. I’ve been at it a while when I hear an engine too high-pitched and whiny to be a car. I go to the window just in time to see a girl clamber off the back of a moped. It’s Élodie. She hasn’t been wearing a helmet and her hair has been whipped by the dry breeze into long, tangled waves. The man she’s with takes off his helmet then, shaking his long fringe into place. It’s Luc.
He reaches out to grab her hand but she dances away. She blows him a kiss as she runs up the drive towards the house. I hear the front door open and bang shut but I don’t move, watching Luc for a moment longer. As he puts his helmet back on and revs the engine, dejection weighs down his movements – I can see that even from here. I think about the clothes and condom wrapper in the barn.
I expect Élodie to come upstairs but she doesn’t, and I force myself to carry on with my task. I’ve lost concentration now, and soon I’m back at your door, seeing if you’ve woken up. The bed’s empty, the covers pushed back as though you’ve left in a hurry. I run downstairs but no one’s there.