A French Wedding

by Hannah Tunnicliffe

  Helen passes Rosie the cigarette. She hesitates before accepting.

  ‘Besides, you have Max.’ Rosie says.

  Helen licks her lips. ‘We don’t see each other often.’

  ‘But when you do …’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve always been so bonded with one another. Even though you’re so different.’

  Rosie thinks of Hugo. The life he has come from, compared to hers. Their worlds have always been so different. The noise, laughter and chaos in her family home compared to his. His parents’ home was so quiet you could hear the clocks ticking. When they had come to Paris, Rosie had wanted to shop and kiss in gardens while Hugo had insisted on visiting museums, one after the other, striding quickly through the hot streets. He had read medical textbooks in those cafés where Rosie wore her Hepburn glasses and dreamed of other lives.

  ‘We’re not so different,’ Helen murmurs. They both look towards Max then, still sprawled out on the couch, his clothes and shoes and socks in a neat pile that Rosie made last night. It was his words that had Rosie sitting on the edge of the bed as her husband slept. His words that had kept her awake till the light changed and she’d left Hugo’s side to stare out at the street and wait for the morning to come.

  I did the wrong things.

  I did the wrong things.

  His voice had been echoing around her head for hours now.

  ‘Did you ever think about what it would be like, to be together?’ she asks Helen carefully.

  Helen sucks on the cigarette and nods. ‘Of course. I still do.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I still don’t know.’

  Helen tips her head as she stares at Max’s figure, one leg out of the covers, one leg dropped to the floor, mouth open. ‘This long and I still don’t know. Thought I’d have it worked out by now.’

  Rosie gives a small, wry laugh. ‘Join the club,’ she murmurs.

  ‘How did you know?’ Helen asks.

  ‘With Hugo? I didn’t.’

  ‘You must have thought you did.’

  ‘Oh yeah, I thought I did,’ Rosie replies. Her wedding day had been beautiful. Not a drop of rain, just endless blue sky. Her mother with tears in her eyes that she dabbed at with a lace hanky. Even her brothers were suddenly awkward with her, as though she was a perfect, china doll, not the little sister they had pushed and shoved around since as long as she could remember. Rosie’s father, walking her down the aisle so seriously, worried he might get it wrong, might trip. Everything just perfect, like a film.

  ‘Your wedding was gorgeous,’ Helen says, as though reading her mind. ‘Remember us all at the reception? Dancing? You and me and Nina, all the boys, our arms around each other? What a riot. I remember thinking we should have more weddings if they were all going to be like that.’

  Rosie remembers. They’d been dancing in a big crowd and then suddenly it was just them – Rosie, Eddie, Helen, Max, Lars and Nina – like old days. Shutting everyone else out, jumping up and down and laughing so hard their stomachs hurt and Max still trying to hold a beer but spilling it all over Eddie instead and the floor getting sticky and Rosie wondering if her white shoes were dirty and then not caring and wanting to kick them off because they hurt. All of them singing, yelling more like, and Helen kissing her cheek hard and bringing her in close and giggling and getting the words wrong. Hugo had come up and gently extracted Rosie from the circle, reminding her that the car was coming soon and they had to leave, they were bound for Paris in the morning.

  ‘But there weren’t any more,’ Rosie says. ‘Weddings.’

  ‘That’s true. First and last. So far.’

  ‘So far.’

  Rosie recalls Helen that night, the firm kiss on her cheek that said how much she loved her, how much Helen loved all of them in that precious circle. Rosie knows that Helen’s family life had been nothing like hers. She knows Helen looks invincible from the outside but is fragile on the inside. Rosie had always envied the money that seemed so easily available to Helen, the exotic vacations she took with her father and the de jour wife, in places Rosie could only imagine. The gifts of expensive clothes and dinners at The Ivy. None of which Helen seemed to count as special or a big deal. Rosie had once thought that Helen was ungrateful and spoiled. She had been jealous. She understands now that without love it all meant nothing. Smoke and mirrors, charades and lies. Helen never looked happier than when she was with her friends. On seeing Rosie Helen’s face always broke into the kind of grin Rosie knows she gives her sons.

  ‘Hey, I’m sorry Nina didn’t tell you about being sick. She has been pretty scared. We miss you, you know.’ Rosie reaches out to put her arm around Helen.

  Helen frowns, almost cringes, and then leans in. ‘Thanks Rosie. I miss you all too. A lot.’

  Rosie wants to say that none of them has it worked out. Not her and Hugo. Eddie. Certainly not Max, he is more of a mess than Rosie anticipated. Lars and Nina and Sophie might come close but they are far from perfect. Rosie thinks of the day ahead, of the smell of hospitals and waiting on hard chairs and trying not to think the worst. Helen finishes her cigarette and stands.

  ‘I’m going to go back to bed for a while. Are you okay here? By yourself?’

  ‘I’m okay,’ Rosie replies.

  Helen bends over to kiss her cheek. ‘Wake me when you’re going for breakfast?’

  ‘I will,’ Rosie promises.

  Helen takes a few steps before pausing. ‘It feels strange, doesn’t it? Without Juliette?’

  ‘I looked for her on the street. I don’t know why. Did Max say something to her? Is she gone for good?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Helen murmurs. ‘Perhaps she is.’

  ‘I really liked her,’ Rosie replies. Helen nods and turns, mumbling ‘Goodnight’, though it is morning.

  Rosie waits by the window a few more minutes, watching, listening, thoughts turning to soup, eyelids suddenly weighed down. She runs a hand over her face and then rubs her eyes. Sleep pulls at her now. Like one of her boys on the hem of her shirt. It complains at her. She stands and moves towards the room where Hugo sleeps, pausing at a room where the door is open. Nina and Lars are asleep within, one of Lars’s arms flung over Nina, Nina on her side with her hands in prayer position, tucked under one cheek. She looks so much younger when she sleeps. They had kept the door open for Sophie, Rosie knows, it is a habit she has never gotten out of either. Hugo always wants the door closed and Rosie craves it open so she can hear cries or odd sounds, even when she is supposed to be sleeping. Rosie tiptoes inside the room and sits on the edge of the mattress. Her breath slows, matching theirs. There is something about the two of them that reminds Rosie of her parents, or the feeling she has being around her parents. Like nothing can go wrong with them present; routines would be followed, baddies vanquished, life would be safe. Rosie feels her whole body growing heavy, her skin, her eyelids. Nina stirs.

  ‘Rosie?’ she asks, opening her eyes to slits. Rosie nods mutely. Nina lifts up the duvet and Rosie slides in beside her. Lars yawns and smacks his lips together.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Rosie,’ Nina replies drowsily.

  Rosie is already slipping into sleep, reality becoming soft and fuzzy.

  ‘Hey Rosie girl,’ Lars mumbles, reaching over Nina to pat her arm.

  Chapter 21

  Juliette

  Juliette has forgotten how cold the kitchen is in the morning; that it takes a while for the ovens to heat the space and that the small window above the sink, looking out to a tiny car park, receives no sunlight until the afternoon. Which doesn’t matter when your shift starts at two pm but now it is only six am. Juliette reaches under the counter and pulls out the sweater she brought with her. She shakes out her shoulders and gets back to work. She rubs flour into the counter, not even glancing at the stand mixer with the dough hook already
attached. Doing it by hand is the very point of it.

  Juliette had sent Louis a text message last night. Did he mind? She still had a key. He had replied quickly. Bien sûr. Of course. He hadn’t changed the locks. Sans problème. He did owe her at least this favour, if not a few more, given how cheaply Juliette had sold him the restaurant. It was still doing well too, she learned occasionally, she got messages from her Parisian friends and read reviews every now and then. Apart from some new tables and chairs, the place looked pretty much the same. Oh, and a new till, Juliette observed, it had been needing that. Juliette was always more interested in the food than the systems. That was why Louis was the right person to have Delphine, he cared about those sorts of things, he was earnest and diligent and would take good care of the place. And he had.

  Juliette pushes the sleeves of her sweater up to her elbows. More flour (and yeast and water), shaggy little bits of it now sticking to the knit. She feels the dough under her hands and pushes and pulls at it as she had done a thousand times before. This she knows. Other things, her life, what to do now, she doesn’t know. But making dough helps Juliette to feel her way into the future. To hold the possibilities lightly in her mind, while her hands stretch the flour and yeast, sugar and butter and water. Push, pull, this way, that way. Dough and ideas becoming more elastic.

  She was rude to Max. Not rude exactly, but it wasn’t Juliette’s place to tell Max what she thinks, to try to get him to see things the way she sees things. Juliette isn’t the boss, not like she’d been here at Delphine. She had overstepped the mark. Good work is hard to find in Douarnenez.

  Plus, Max is right. Helen is not Juliette’s. Will never be Juliette’s. If she does not belong to Max then Helen will belong to someone else. Someone vibrant, someone who has their act together, someone with more money, someone from her world. A world of rock stars and artists and gallery openings with trays of glasses filled with champagne that someone else has poured, that someone else passes around. A world of trips to Mexico with the sun shining bright, cocktails by a pool, the sharp smell of chlorine on bikini fabric. Perhaps, later, Juliette will read about Max and Helen together, see their picture in one of those big glossy magazines. A bohemian wedding, somewhere summer lasts all year, where the groom wears no shoes and the bride wears sunglasses and a short dress. Helen belonging to Max, just like Max said.

  That is the way of things. The way things work. Juliette knows this. Theirs is the love story of all the love stories. A beautiful woman, a handsome man. Waiting for one another. Belonging to one another.

  It is the way of things. The way it is always written.

  With love you don’t always get to choose.

  Juliette pauses, hands in dough. She can feel it pressing back, a little, against her fingers, as she rests them. Resistance. Not much. But enough.

  Juliette learned to make kouign-amann in Stephanie Jeunet’s bakery kitchen. Her mother had charmed Stephanie into it, like she often did. Plus her mother liked to be busy. Yoga, pilates, bridge, her teaching, she busied and gathered and collected and made things, as if her hands couldn’t be trusted when idle. Stephanie Jeunet had laughed at her mother’s hopelessness with the dough but Juliette, she observed, had an instinct for it. They tried several more times for her mother to master it, each visit and lesson bringing a couple of big bottles of wine. The two women got tipsy while Juliette, the girl between them, watched and learned and grew in confidence. She was always steps ahead of her mother, washing her hands while her mother’s were still in dough.

  ‘Isn’t she a wonder?’ Juliette’s mother had said once, looking down at her sticky fingers.

  ‘I could use a daughter like her,’ Stephanie confessed. ‘I don’t know who will take over when I have to give it up.’

  Juliette remembered how she had turned away, pretended not to listen, the heat of the oven on her face, as she dried her hands on a tea towel that hung near the oven door.

  ‘There were two of her,’ Juliette’s mother said quietly. ‘Irish twins.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Babies born in the same calendar year … But Violette was born sleeping.’

  Juliette tried not to hear the restrained emotion in her mother’s voice, a singing like quality. The quiet, gentle voice she used for soothing and for lullabies. Stephanie had reached over and squeezed her mother’s shoulder while her hands were still pressed into dough. Juliette had watched it all out of the corner of her eye, her mother’s expression strange and bittersweet.

  ‘Don’t pity me,’ she had whispered to Stephanie, barely loud enough for Juliette to hear. ‘My heart is full.’

  Juliette sees that she has been feeling the weight of two lives, two sets of expectations on her shoulders. She has been scared and ashamed, trying to make herself smaller, to make her life smaller. Reducing it to the bare minimum; to simply waking each day and doing only what she needs to do and nothing more, to not thinking too much. Not wanting too much. Reasoning that she doesn’t deserve to want for much. It is safer this way. Safer to be in Douarnenez, her parents’ cottage with mementos cluttered around her. Safer to have a basic job, a simple, small life. To serve others and bury her own desires. Her own truth.

  Juliette pushes against the dough one more time. It is ready. She forms it, gently, into a large, misshapen ball and lifts it into the bowl, covering it over with plastic wrap. She stands back, arms at her sides. Juliette doesn’t have all the answers. There is no plan. But there is one thing to do and she will do it and somehow it will lead to something else. She can feel it. The same way she can feel the dough, making the kouign-amann by hand, from scratch, without a recipe. It is embedded in her sensory memory – the smells of the market as a child, the taste of hot pastry and rich butter on her tongue, the laughter between her mother and Stephanie Jeunet, as she tried to show her mother how, Jean-Paul’s smile when he first tasted it, the others she has made it for since – the women she has loved, those that loved her and those that didn’t, the patrons at her restaurant, Celine, bien sûr, and Max. It is a knowing in Juliette’s fingers and muscles and bones. A knowing that reaches back into the past but out into the future too. The times she will make it, the people she will love, the possibilities she will grasp, the heartaches, the stepping forward of time punctuated with love and loss and laughter.

  Juliette will do what she knows she must do.

  She will tell Helen how she feels. About who she is.

  She will tell her about Violette.

  She will tell it all.

  Because she knows the price of an untold truth.

  Though telling is a kind of madness. Though Helen is not hers to love.

  Chapter 22

  Max

  Hospitals don’t make Max feel sad. They make Max feel carved out; empty. Max has never lost someone at a hospital. When people leave Max’s life they just vanish. Or he does. Either way it just ends and there is nothing. Person, gone.

  Nina, Lars and Hugo are in the hospital room with the French doctor, who looked younger than Max expected. The consultation room has a frosted glass window in the closed door that reflects Max’s face. Max’s old face. He tries not to look at his face very often. Women he sleeps with look at their faces a lot. They spend a lot of time in his bathroom putting stuff on their faces, and then they spend a lot of time using other stuff to take the original stuff off and then, in the morning, putting the first lot of stuff back on again. Max stares at the face. It’s the face of a stranger.

  There aren’t enough seats in the corridor, so Max and Eddie stand by a vending machine while Beth and Sophie sit at the other end of the hallway. Beth with her hands in her lap, staring straight ahead, Sophie frowning at a phone, next to a man in a tweed jacket who has a walking cane between his knees. Beth wears a floral dress with a knitted cardigan; her lips unpainted. Inside, somehow, like a Russian doll, is a baby. Max cannot bend his head around it.

 
; Max glances down the hospital corridor. Rosie has taken Helen to find coffee for everyone and to try and get hold of Soleil again. Max has barely spoken to anyone this morning, after waking up thirsty, exhausted and confused on the couch. He doesn’t want to look at Helen or Rosie. He doesn’t want to see any sickness in Nina’s face or the baby in Beth or the confusion in Eddie. The only person he can bear to look at is Lars, who is in the room, so he stares at the little window in the closed door instead, his miserable reflection staring back at him.

  He is lost. The only thing worse than unspoken love, Max realises now with stabbing clarity, is unrequited love. The kind you know will never, ever be returned. The feeling is an old memory. One of his mother’s shoes, left by itself in the wardrobe, the ashtray she always used pushed to the back of a cupboard, a heavy sensation in the air. Hope evaporated leaves a solidity that cannot be explained. It settles on a person. There is no word for it. Max leans back into the wall behind him.

  ‘You’d never think it,’ Eddie murmurs. ‘Nina. I mean.’

  Max nods, though he wants to close his eyes and disappear.

  ‘She’s always been so tough.’

  ‘She’ll be okay,’ Max mumbles, though he is much less sure than he was. The whole world is unsure this morning. Like he’s woken up after the apocalypse. Max feels unhinged. It is best everyone else assumes he is worried for Nina. It is bad enough that he is so selfish he cannot worry about Nina right now. He can only feel sorry for himself. What was it someone told him once? A person can only hold one fear, one grief, at a time? That the human brain was a blessing like that? Maybe it was one of Helen’s artists. Someone Max had met at an opening. One of those guys that wore his hair long and shoes pointed and meant to be ‘ironic’ as often as possible. Max’s mind shifts to imagining Helen fucking one of those guys, and his hands form fists and he near punches a hole in the wall behind him if it isn’t for Eddie clearing his throat.