Petite Anglaise

by Catherine Sanderson

  ‘You’re thinking of moving to Rennes in the summer, I hear,’ said Nick, handing me a glass. ‘That’ll be a change from the big city.’

  ‘It will.’ I gave James a sidelong glance. ‘But Rennes does have a few things going for it…’ James slipped an arm around my shoulders. I sensed that he was proud to show me off: no doubt the fact that I was a good few years younger than most of his friends’ wives or girlfriends didn’t hurt. All the same, I couldn’t help wondering how I compared, in their eyes, to Eve, or James’s ex-wife. I’d never quite managed to shake off the ghosts of girlfriends past.

  ‘Now,’ said Jane, taking a seat opposite me in the conservatory they’d tacked on to the back of their kitchen and sweeping aside a pile of toys to put her pedicured bare feet up on a footstool. ‘You must tell me about how you two met. Is it true that you fell for each other on the internet?’

  I blushed, and the hand holding my glass, which I’d been about to bring to my lips, stalled in mid-air. Where on earth should I start? How much did they know already? Did she even know what a blog was? Thankfully, taking his cue from my hesitation, James launched into a detailed explanation while I slowly sipped my drink, watching Jane furtively to gauge her reaction.

  The reason for my discomfort was simple. Our story – however romantic I could make it sound in my own head or on my blog – sometimes sounded a little tawdry in the retelling. There was no escaping the fact that I’d been living with the father of my child when we met; that I’d cheated on him, then left; that what James and I now shared was born out of the ruins of another relationship. Jane was a mother too. What on earth must she think of me? What sort of selfish, impulsive fool leaves her partner for someone she has met only twice?

  But if Jane was surprised, or shocked, she hid it well, and the conversation soon drifted back to the blog itself. Nick began quizzing me about my visitor statistics, exclaiming that my readership figures put most of the corporate sites he worked on to shame. I gave examples of the sorts of subjects I posted about – toddler tantrum problems, adjusting to the separation from my daughter’s father, day-to-day trivia – conscious that I’d only written half a dozen posts in January and was actually finding myself rather short of material these days. Later, when Jane and I moved back through into the kitchen to mix a second drink, she returned to the subject of James and me, but still I detected no hint of disapproval or reprimand in her voice.

  ‘It can’t have been easy. Dealing with the fall-out from your break-up and coping with a little one alone,’ she said, pouring me a refill, while James and Nick studied a takeaway menu from a nearby curry house. ‘I’m just really glad to see James with someone nice. You both look so happy. I bet you can’t wait to move to Brittany…’

  ‘You’re right. I can’t wait,’ I said emphatically. I really meant it. From the moment I’d met James at the airport, my faith in us had been renewed. My parents drove away, Tadpole waving gaily at me through the back window, and he pulled me close, kissing me with an intensity that told me everything I needed to know.

  ‘Well, do make sure we get an invitation to the wedding,’ said Jane as she dropped an ice cube into my glass and handed it back to me. I took it, my head spinning. Had James mentioned marriage, or was this just Jane’s way of fishing for information? Probably the latter, I surmised, although I might never know for sure.

  ‘You’ll be among the first to know, when the time comes,’ I replied with a knowing smile.

  Jane raised her glass in a silent toast. As we clinked our tumblers together, James and Nick glanced up as one, no doubt pleased to see that Jane and I had hit it off so well. James hadn’t the faintest idea what we’d been discussing, and I had no intention of enlightening him. Instead, I drained my glass, set it down on the sideboard and enquired about what we were ordering for dinner.

  26. Adrift

  Back in Paris, two weeks later, I dashed home from work, anxious to snatch some precious time alone with James before Amy was due to arrive. She and I – along with half my office – had been invited to a colleague’s hen night. Tadpole was with her daddy, and James would be staying home alone. He didn’t mind me abandoning him in the slightest – or so he’d said – insisting he had plenty of work to be getting on with, even though it was a Friday night: I still felt guilty, nonetheless. I’d agreed to this girls’ night out ages ago, never suspecting that it would fall within James’s first visit to Paris since Christmas. I’d been tempted to bail out, but neither Amy nor James would hear of it.

  As the métro screeched into Buttes Chaumont station and the doors parted with their familiar spring-loaded sound, I plotted. I’ll jump into the shower, I thought to myself, then drag him to bed for a while, until it’s time to get my glad rags on. Before I go, I’ll order him a pizza. Yes, that would be a nice gesture. Save him cooking for one.

  ‘Hi, honey, I’m home,’ I called as I stepped inside, aiming for some approximation of an American accent but failing miserably. There was no reply, which was puzzling. Usually, at the merest hint of the lift door opening, or of my footfalls on the landing, James would rush to the door before I’d even had a chance to touch my key to the lock. I glanced along the corridor. The slice of living room I could see from the hallway revealed only an empty seat before the dining-room table; a lifeless laptop with a blank screen.

  I found James sitting motionless on the sofa, a crime novel hanging limply from his hand. He was chalky pale. Either he’d had some bad news – his father perhaps? – or he was coming down with something nasty. So much for diving between the sheets for a while, I thought, crestfallen, conscious of how selfish my inner voice sounded.

  ‘You okay? You look pretty rough…’ I made no move to join him on the sofa: there was something about his posture that didn’t invite contact. Instead I hovered uncertainly in the middle of the room.

  ‘Something I ate, I think.’ He put a hand to his stomach. ‘I’m not feeling too good.’ Now I came to think of it, James had complained of the very same thing last time he visited, almost three months ago, in early December. Something about Paris didn’t seem to agree with him.

  ‘That’s odd,’ I replied, frowning, ‘because I’m fine, and we both ate the same meal last night. Maybe you picked up a bug on the train the other day…’

  James was cleanshaven, and wore a biscuit-coloured jumper, both of which exaggerated his pallor. I definitely preferred him with a five o’clock shadow, and was prepared to weather any amount of stubble rash, if necessary. He’d put on weight since we first met, we both had: contentment was taking its toll. My trousers fit more snugly around my hips than before, but in James the gain was most visible in his face: no longer taut and angular, the skin around his jaw line was slackening.

  ‘Are you going to be okay on your own?’ I said doubtfully. ‘Because I can cancel my plans, if you…’

  ‘No! Don’t do that,’ said James quickly, not letting me finish. ‘I’ll just get an early night and sleep it off. Don’t worry about me.’

  ‘Well, okay, if you’re sure,’ I said with an inward sigh of relief. An early night with James might have been what I was craving earlier, but tending to an invalid on his sick bed wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind. ‘In that case, I’m going to have a quick shower and start getting ready to go out. Unless you want a cup of tea, or something, first?’ James shook his head. I moved into the bedroom, still wearing my coat, and sat on the edge of the bed, bending to unzip my boots and free my calves from their prison. Oh yes, I’d definitely put on weight: my boots didn’t use to pinch.

  I was rubbing the angry red imprint below my knees when James appeared in the doorway. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him lower himself on to the stool in front of my computer. It looked comically small all of a sudden, dwarfed by his size.

  ‘Catherine?’

  Something I detected in his voice, in the way he said my name, derailed me, and I straightened up with a sharp intake of breath, waiting mutely for what in a blinding flash of six
th sense, I suddenly knew must follow. He closed his eyes for a second and swallowed with a grimace, as though clearing his throat of bile. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said finally, ‘but I just can’t do this any more.’

  There was a ringing in my ears and for a few seconds I thought I would faint, side-stepping my body to avoid hearing whatever he was about to add. But my vision clouded then cleared: there was to be no escape. ‘I wish I didn’t feel this way,’ he continued in a pained voice, ‘I wanted so much to make this work.’

  ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this, after everything we… after everything I…’ But there seemed no earthly point in finishing my stunned protest. I pressed my fingertips to my temples and bowed my head forwards until my elbows touched my knees, curling into a tight, defensive ball. The brace position, as it is referred to on those laminated cards tucked into the seat pocket of aeroplanes, an instinctive, futile pose offering no real protection from the cruel, lancing words which kept on coming.

  ‘I can’t let things go any further. I can’t let you uproot everything and come to live in Rennes. Because I don’t think I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Not any more.’ I could not raise my head. I had no desire to see the face that went with that voice.

  ‘You don’t love me any more,’ I said flatly. Silent tears finally began to drip on to the inside of my glasses, down the sleeves of my coat, dampening my forearms.

  ‘I did. I still do. But not enough. I’m so sorry.’ I couldn’t be sure, but I thought he might be crying, too.

  It was over. A handful of innocuous-sounding, everyday words had demolished every hope, every dream, every promise I’d clung to since the day we’d met. I saw us standing on the street corner welded together that first night, before I tore myself away and leaped into a taxi. I saw us entangled in the hotel, my toes curling with pleasure. I saw his hands cupped around my belly in the bathwater. A house of cards, destroyed by one cruel gust of wind. My world was imploding before my horrified eyes.

  When I left Mr Frog I’d foolishly, recklessly pinned everything on James, projecting every second of my future on to him. I was aware of the risks, I knew love came with no guarantees, but I’d hurled myself headlong into this new adventure all the same. I’d wanted so desperately to feel things intensely, and my wish had been granted, at a terrible price.

  ‘I want you to leave,’ I said suddenly, my words clipped and precise. I would not debase myself by begging him to stay. Let the incision be clean; let the scalpel be sharp and sure. I listened as he gathered his belongings with merciful speed, his suitcase already packed, the manoeuvre anticipated. I heard him zip his computer pouch closed, ease his arms into the sleeves of his jacket, tie his shoelaces.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, from the doorway. Tears dripped from my chin, mingled with my hair; my mouth filled with brine. Still I would not look.

  When the front door closed behind him with a dull thud, I finally raised my head. My gaze was drawn to something glinting by the computer, which had not been there when I entered the room: his copy of my keys.

  Crumpling on the bed, still wearing my coat, I sobbed noisily, messily, into my pillow until my head throbbed, howling until my throat grew hoarse. Less than a year ago, Mr Frog had sat on this very same spot while I delivered my speech. Now my turn had come. Two relationships had begun in the Café Charbon and ended here, in this very room, mocking me with their perfect symmetry.

  ‘Can’t make it tonight, sorry,’ I told Amy by text message when the first round of sobbing finally subsided.

  ‘Why ever not?’ she shot back immediately. I could sense that she was angry, probably assuming I’d fallen victim to nothing more than post-coital torpor, but I couldn’t bring myself to explain what had happened, not yet, so I made no reply. If I called her, my voice would fail me. She would come here, witness this sorry spectacle, try to persuade me to go out, anything to stop me from marinating in my own tears, home alone. But a hen night was the last place on earth I needed to be right now. And maybe, just maybe, there would be a knock at the door. James would crawl back, begging my forgiveness. He knew now he had made a dreadful mistake. He’d tried to leave, but found he simply couldn’t.

  By midnight, however, I was resigned. James wasn’t coming back; in fact, he was probably in Rennes by now. Dry-eyed, terrifyingly calm, I knew what I had to do. Let petite anglaise be the bearer of my bad news. Let her distil my pain, my shock, my disbelief, into a series of neat sentences; let her pin the confused tangle of emotions to the page with words. Our relationship had been born out of the blog, so wasn’t it fitting to announce the ending there, for the whole world to see?

  Once I hit the ‘publish’ key, there would be nowhere left for me to hide. I’d have no choice but to face up to the grim finality of what had happened, to nip any futile hope of reconciliation in the bud. This is what I wrote:

  I am a rudderless boat turning in dizzy, uncomprehending circles on a sea of noisy tears. He doesn’t want me any more.

  I disabled comments for the second time in the blog’s history, sending my howl of anguish across cyberspace then beating a hasty retreat. I had no desire to hear a chorus of ‘I told you so’s and ‘poor you’s echoing back at me, and I also knew instinctively that my readers would be quick to condemn James, on the basis of the scant information at their disposal.

  Once it was done, I crawled into bed: spent, exhausted and fully clothed.

  It was the familiar sound of his breathing, deep and regular, which alerted me to his presence a few hours later. I stretched out a sleepy arm, resting it on the smooth, hairless warmth of his chest, feeling its rise and fall. I raised my head so that I could study the shadowy contours of his sleeping face. He was here, with me; all was right in my world.

  Until in one nauseating instant the memory of his words slammed into me with all their force, shattering the cruel illusion. ‘None of this is real,’ screamed a voice inside my head. ‘He can’t be here!’ I struggled to swim up through the velvety layers of sleep, willing myself to wake. My dream was about to morph into a nightmare, I felt sure of it, and I wanted out. With sickly dread I watched as James’s eyes flicked open. I tried to withdraw my arm, but he clutched at it, restraining fingers gripping tightly on to my wrist. ‘Let go of me!’ My scream was strangled in my throat, the sound which emerged only a risible croak.

  Suddenly James’s body was wracked with hacking coughs, increasing in violence until the force of them made him retch. Recoiling in horror, I watched as he vomited something black and viscous on to the bedclothes, his eyes as appalled as my own. I clawed at my face with my free hand, biting my own fingers, desperate to jar myself awake.

  But there was nothing I could do. James began to decompose before my eyes, moaning as if in excruciating pain. Soon, all that remained in the bed beside me was a pool of something foul-smelling and brackish where his body had been.

  Drenched with perspiration, heart thudding, I opened my eyes to find the bed empty. The nightmare was over, but when I held my right arm up to the red light cast by the digits on my alarm clock, a part of me still half expected to find livid fingerprints encircling my wrist.

  27. Mouchoir

  The next morning I sifted through every single thing James had said, every look he had given me over the past few months, searching for clues, signs, hints. Holding every tense moment, every harsh word up to the light I examined each one closely. Just when did he stop mentioning marriage, or a baby? When did the brochures of barns and cottages in the countryside stop appearing in his apartment? How different, how altered everything looked, knowing what I now knew, eyes narrowed to squint through the prism of hindsight.

  ‘I can’t do this any more,’ he’d said, as though being with me made him physically ill. I’d been so preoccupied with battling my own anxieties, I never suspected that James was having silent doubts of his own, quietly wrestling with his demons. Probing, measuring the depth of his feelings. Finding them wanting.

  Long period
s of time staring vacantly into the middle distance gave way to occasional bursts of frenetic activity. Gathering up every possession of his I could find in an act of ritual cleansing, I stuffed them into a large envelope: my keys to his apartment, a borrowed DVD, a stray T-shirt from my laundry basket, a razor left on the side of the bathtub. There wasn’t a great deal: he’d been a perpetual visitor, living out of an overflowing suitcase, never hanging his shirts in my wardrobe, or buying a spare set of toiletries to leave in my bathroom.

  On my computer’s hard drive I found only a handful of photos. A self-portrait James had sent to my phone, a week or so after we first met. A picture, taken by me, of Tadpole dressed as a fairy, with James a shadowy figure on the sofa in the background, an unwilling subject. Not a single image of us together. As an entity, a couple, it suddenly seemed as though we had only ever truly existed on the page. Because there was no shortage of words to prove what we had once been: text messages stored in my mobile phone, hundreds of archived emails, scores of comments on petite anglaise, both before and after we met. In a drawer by my bedside I found a handful of Post-it notes he’d left for me to find in happier times. An ‘I love you’ on my pillow, an ‘I’ll miss you’ on my computer screen. Our relationship had begun with words, and now words were all that remained.

  I ran a bath and retreated under water, where some sounds were muffled, others oddly amplified: footfalls in the apartment above, the distant sound of a television, the frantic rocking of a washing machine as it reached the climax of its spin cycle. A memory surfaced, of days spent off school with ear infections as a child. Inside a cocoon of pain, I’d listened to the faraway, otherworldly sounds of my mother washing up, hoovering or talking on the phone while I lay upstairs in bed. I felt the same detachment now I’d felt then, listening to life continuing elsewhere, as normal, while mine stood stock-still. I was wispy, insubstantial; a ghostly shadow of my normal self, unable to connect with the world around me.