Petite Anglaise

by Catherine Sanderson

  My boss and I had been getting on far better since Christmas. He’d even resumed his old habit of taking me out to a local wine bar for lunch from time to time, refilling my glass until I wondered how on earth I’d function back at the office, swimming through the afternoon in a red-wine haze. So whereas a few months earlier his question would have dripped with reproach, today his tone implied curiosity, and even some genuine concern for my well-being.

  ‘Oh, yes, sorry, it’s just personal stuff,’ I replied, my eyes drifting evasively to the view through his office window. Across the rooftops, I could see the Sacré Cœur, its milky-white dome contrasting with the powder-blue of the sky. It was safer to admire the view than to meet my boss’s enquiring gaze. The last thing I wanted to do right now was lose my composure. ‘Had a bit of a rough weekend,’ I added, keeping things deliberately vague.

  I was wary of sharing my personal life with my boss, even if we had mended our fences. And supposing I did tell him everything, he still wouldn’t understand the full ramifications of the break-up. I’d never let slip that I was planning to leave for Brittany in a few months’ time, afraid of shattering our new-found harmony.

  ‘Okay, well, I’m here if you need a chat,’ he said, sounding disappointed that I wasn’t prepared to elaborate further. A female colleague appeared at my elbow, coat slung over her arm, to take him out for lunch. I stepped aside to let her pass, grateful for an excuse to withdraw.

  Amy took their departure as her cue to pounce. She’d been shooting me quizzical looks across the top of the cubicles all morning, but so far I’d taken great pains to dodge a tête-à-tête, avoiding the kitchen and dashing to the ladies only when I could see she was tied up on the phone. Baring all on the internet, where no one could see my face crumple as I wrote, was one thing; saying the words aloud, in public, without breaking down was another. I’d sobbed down the phone to my mother, shed silent tears in front of Mr Frog, but today in the office I wanted desperately to hold it together. The last thing I needed was colleagues pausing as they passed by my desk, enquiring as to whether I was okay: their words of concern and sympathetic glances would be my undoing.

  ‘I just read your blog,’ Amy said breathlessly as she drew to a halt by my side. ‘Why on earth didn’t you call me? I could have cancelled my plans and come over. There I was, cursing you for pulling out of the hen night, thinking you’d blown us all off just so you could have another early night with James…’ In her eyes I read sympathy, but also chagrin. I’d obviously hurt her feelings by keeping her at arm’s length, letting her find out from petite anglaise when she deserved to find out from me.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ I replied, my bottom lip wobbling dangerously. ‘Please don’t take it the wrong way, but I needed to be on my own for a while.’

  ‘You could have told me that, I’d have understood and given you some space. But it would have been nice to hear the news from you directly,’ she said, still not placated. ‘I’m sure all your internet friends have flocked to the rescue as usual, but they’re no substitute for real people who know you and care about you. Don’t shut me out, that’s all I’m saying. How can I be a proper friend to you if I have to read your blog three days later to find out what’s going on?’ I nodded, unable to meet her eyes. ‘And as for James, I can’t believe he’s done this to you!’ she said incredulously. ‘I mean, when I saw him on Pancake Day everything seemed fine. And yet he must have known what he was going to do, even then…’

  I’d invited Amy over for crèpes on Mardi Gras, along with a few other friends from the office, just three days before James left. We’d taken turns flipping pancakes in the kitchen, fielded questions about our plans for July, and the subject of marriage had even come up amidst chatter about preparations for the looming hen night. Were there signs I’d missed that night? Had James been unusually quiet? Was he wrestling with the grim knowledge that none of the things we were discussing were ever likely to come to pass?

  ‘From what he said when he emailed last night, he was still trying to convince himself he could make things work,’ I said, finding myself in the uncomfortable position of defending James once again. I remembered his sickly pallor on Friday. Biding his time until he simply could not keep a lid on his feelings of doubt any longer had made him physically ill.

  ‘It must have been an awful shock for you, Cath, I’m so sorry.’ Amy put a hand on my arm. ‘But, wait,’ she said, her eyes widening, ‘didn’t you say on Tuesday that you’d already given notice on your apartment?’

  ‘I’m sure that was what prompted James to act when he did,’ I said dryly. I pulled open the top drawer of my desk to reveal the letter I’d composed to my landlord a few days earlier. It was ready to post, lacking only a stamp. Amy let out a long, low whistle. It had been a close call.

  ‘Listen, I have to dash,’ she said, glancing at her watch. ‘I’ve got a client lunch. But if you do want to talk about things – or if you just don’t feel like being on your own – I could come round one evening, if you like. I know it’s easier for me to come to you, so you don’t have to get a babysitter…’

  As she turned to leave, I took out the letter to my landlord and tore it into tiny pieces, scattering them into the waste-paper basket like ragged confetti. A few feet away stood a mechanical shredder with gleaming metal teeth which would have devoured the envelope with a growl and turned it into thin paper streamers. But there would have been no satisfaction in that. I needed to feel the paper tear, see the fragments fluttering slowly downwards, carrying my shredded dreams with them.

  I spent my lunch hour working on a new blog post. A phrase from a reader’s email had lodged inside my head. ‘The first forty-eight hours are always the hardest.’ My forty-eight hours were up, and the desire to sob out loud and stare blankly at walls seemed to have left me, so maybe there was some truth in that statement. I began to write and, letting my fingers drift across the keyboard, I composed a post about how I wanted to feel.

  I will never regret our paths crossing back in May. Wouldn’t trade the panic-inducing intensity of that first evening for all the stability in the world. I felt reborn. Indescribably happy. The future was suddenly filled with unexpected promise.

  The more I wrote, the more the words breathed life into the feelings they described.

  We shared some perfect moments, he and I. Moments which marked my life indelibly; moments which my present anguish cannot erase.

  How could I ever forget? After all, the highs and lows of our relationship were documented on my blog, preserved for posterity. All I had to do if I wanted to relive our first night in the hotel, my first trip to Brittany or our day at the beach was rummage through the archives of petite anglaise and re-read what I had written. Those memories would never leave me.

  As I wrote, I became conscious of a weight lifting: it was a relief no longer having to deal with doubt, no longer repressing the nauseous guilt I’d felt at the prospect of separating Tadpole and Mr Frog. Examining my feelings in public, prodding my bruises to see how much they really hurt, despite everything I’d been through, blogging still felt natural, necessary and cathartic. I could write myself back to health, I realized, finding solace in petite anglaise as I always had.

  When I’d finished, I enabled comments once more. Something told me that, in the absence of James, petite anglaise would step into the breach and do her best to fill the empty space he had left in my life.

  ‘You should leave this place,’ said Mr Frog, gesturing from the fireplace to the arched window with a sweeping motion of his chopsticks. We sat on separate sofas. A wide expanse of coffee table stood between us, littered with aluminium takeaway containers, their contents covered with a thin film of grease. I’d bought Chinese food from the traiteur downstairs after work, partly to stall Mr Frog into hanging around for longer, but also as a gesture of gratitude for his unexpected support over the weekend.

  I brought a forkful of rice to my mouth. I’d barely touched my food, but I knew I needed to make
a show of keeping my strength up. I didn’t want him worrying about whether or not I was in a fit state to look after Tadpole. The daily routines I’d built around her were the scaffolding holding me upright.

  ‘I know I can’t afford to stay here in the long term,’ I sighed. ‘I could justify it when I thought I was leaving Paris in July. But now I’ll definitely need to think again.’ I leaned over to my bag and pulled out a classified-ad magazine. ‘I had a quick look at what’s on offer on the way home. Cheaper means smaller, probably a one-bedroom flat, which is a depressing prospect. The only way to make it palatable might be to buy a place, instead of renting.’

  I pictured myself ditching my bed and mattress in favour of a sofa bed which I would pull out every night, transforming our living room into a bedroom. Or the alternative: sleeping above Tadpole on a mezzanine bed. I’d always been impatient to clamber on to the first rung of the property ladder, as Mr Frog knew only too well, but it had never occurred to me that I’d have to do it in quite such a literal sense, by sleeping in a glorified bunk bed. It was a sobering thought, after daydreaming about a cottage with a garden for the best part of a year.

  ‘Wow. That’s a big step,’ said Mr Frog. ‘And not something you should rush into, either. But it does make sense… I could help you move, when you do find something. Get some of the guys from work to help with the heavy lifting.’ I smiled. It was true that my friends, people like Amy, Caroline and Elisabeth-Coquette would be no match for five flights of stairs and all my furniture.

  ‘I never imagined you’d have it in you to be so nice to me.’ The words tripped out of my mouth as though I were thinking aloud. It was all I could do to stop myself from finishing the sentence with ‘… after everything I put you through.’ I’d never dared such directness before. What I’d done to him and how he felt about our break-up were taboo subjects we still tiptoed around. And his feelings for me now – whatever they might be – were a no-go zone.

  ‘Well,’ said Mr Frog cautiously, ‘I’ll always care about how you are doing. If you’re okay, our daughter’s okay.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said awkwardly. ‘I will need help. I need to make a lot of changes in my life. A new home. A new job, eventually. I’m starting to think the hardest thing wasn’t losing James, it was losing all the plans we’d made, everything we’d mapped out. Now I have to face up to whatever I don’t like about my life, on my own, without running away to Brittany.’ I’m right back to where I was before I met James, really, I thought to myself. I’ve spent the best part of a year describing a complete circle.

  ‘Well, you won’t be completely alone. I’ll be here,’ said Mr Frog. ‘And what about all those friends you’ve made through your blog?’

  ‘I neglected them from the moment I met James,’ I admitted. ‘I had so little free time, and I didn’t see the point in investing too much of myself in Paris people when I was so sure I’d be leaving. So I’ve got my work cut out now. Some of them probably won’t want to know. I can’t exactly blame them.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself. They’ll rally round. And you’re stronger than you think. Ça va aller, j’en suis sûr.’ Mr Frog reached for the last dumpling.

  Gathering up the remains of our meal after he’d left, his words echoed in my head. ‘I’ll always care about how you are doing.’ Was I reading far too much into his caring behaviour over the last two days? Or could it be that he still had feelings for me?

  Later that evening I stared at the computer screen, my mind in turmoil, my forefinger hovering uncertainly above the mouse button. Would it be healthier to delete James’s emails with one merciless click? If they were no longer there, I wouldn’t be tempted to read and re-read them, playing back my favourite memories time and time again, unable, or unwilling to lay them to rest. Was it safer to forget how ravenous I’d been in the beginning; how I’d yearned to crawl inside his skin?

  In my mind’s eye, I pictured James delivering the news to his parents, his daughters, Eve, his friends from home. A part of me hoped, cruelly, selfishly, that they had told him he had behaved like a fool – that he was unlikely to get another chance like that in this lifetime. The James I saw in my head was gripped with remorse.

  But I could never take him back, never erase those caustic, wounding words which I summoned to the forefront of my mind whenever I was tempted to pick up the phone and beg him to reconsider. ‘I don’t love you enough,’ I heard him say. ‘I just can’t do this any more.’

  And so, for now, I left his emails intact, undeleted. Replaying those memories made me wince, but I knew it was a necessary form of self-torture.

  29. Opaque

  Tadpole trotted ahead of me down the aisle of the plane as I scanned the seat numbers for row twenty. We passed an assortment of pensioners, children in full Disney regalia, couples cuddling up in warm anticipation of a romantic weekend in Paris, businessmen armed with laptops. We were on our way back home to Paris after spending a weekend in Yorkshire with my parents. Long talks with my mother – I talked, she listened – and a change of scenery had done me the world of good. As for Tadpole, their first and only granddaughter, she’d been spoiled rotten as always, lapping up all the attention lavished upon her as if it were her birthright.

  After much stopping and starting while fellow passengers grappled in slow motion with hand luggage and coats, we eventually reached our seats. Tadpole clambered across to the window and began fiddling with her seatbelt, a look of fierce concentration etched on her face. ‘Mummy, help me put on my strap-on!’ she cried, after a couple of unsuccessful attempts at fastening the metal clasp. I put a hand to my mouth to stifle a giggle, wondering if anyone had overheard.

  ‘Wait a minute, honey, we need to take your coat off first,’ I replied, shoving my bag under the seat in front with my foot and removing first my jacket, then Tadpole’s. When I turned, I saw an attractive man stowing a bag in the overhead locker. ‘Can I help you with those?’ he enquired, gesturing at our coats. He was in his late thirties, at a guess, and wore smart jeans and a patterned shirt, his dark hair gelled rather too liberally for my taste. His voice was pleasant, educated, his accent difficult to place.

  ‘Thank you, that’s very kind of you,’ I mumbled, flashing him a shy smile as I handed over my mac and Tadpole’s lightweight jacket. The man sat down in the aisle seat to my left and I contemplated him surreptitiously through my eyelashes. He was balancing a laptop on his knee, but made no move to open it.

  As I unpacked my Tadpole entertainment kit – crayons, a drawing book, a Mr Men sticker book – I became aware of a certain restlessness in my travelling companion. Was it my imagination, or was he casting around while the last few passengers filed in, trying to gauge whether there were likely to be any free seats left elsewhere? Sure enough, no sooner had the hostess heaved the main door shut and pulled the red tape diagonally across it than my handsome neighbour sprang to his feet.

  ‘I’m just going to move and give you two some space,’ he apologized, looking from me to Tadpole. ‘No offence intended.’

  ‘None taken,’ I muttered, hoping I’d managed to sound nonchalant; the opposite of how I actually felt.

  How I felt was afraid: afraid that in this inconsequential little exchange I’d just seen the shape of things to come. For the first time in years I was single. And this time I was not just a single woman, but also a mother; part of a package. The little person occupying the window seat by my side – her rag doll wedged between her seatbelt and her tummy – the sum total of what was most precious, most valuable in my life. But she could also be grounds for rejection. Seeing Tadpole by my side, some men would assume I had a partner; others simply wouldn’t want to know.

  I was in no hurry to find someone new, I just wanted to be able to tell myself that an attractive man might be pleased to be allocated the seat next to mine. By changing places, he had unwittingly dealt my self-esteem a glancing blow, forcefully bringing home to me what an uphill struggle might lie ahead.

&nb
sp; ‘What are you still doing here?’ said Amy, looking pointedly at her watch. It was five past six. Usually by that time I’d have been long gone. ‘Don’t you have to dash off to the nanny’s?’

  ‘It’s my night off,’ I explained, shaking my head. ‘It’s silly, I’m not even working, I’m just faffing around really, putting off going home.’ Home wouldn’t be much different, mind. I’d shut down my office computer, then power up the one in my bedroom instead. Writing, commenting, chatting, surfing, these were the only activities I could manage right now. If I tried to read a book, my mind constantly wandered off the page, and no matter how many times I jerked it back again, it wouldn’t hold still. Television was worse: I found myself staring at it blankly, without the faintest idea of what I was watching.

  ‘Well, listen, if you’ve got no plans tonight, I’m joining a friend for a birthday drink, although I have to shop for a present for her first. Why don’t you come? She won’t mind if I bring someone along, and I could do with some help choosing the pressie…’

  I wasn’t dressed for going out – in fact I’d go so far as to say it looked like I’d put my outfit together in the dark that morning – and I didn’t even have a powder compact in my bag, but anything had to be better than pining at home, alone. I still hadn’t had the willpower to delete James’s messages and, as if that wasn’t masochistic enough, I’d started scanning the visitor statistics to see whether he was still reading petite anglaise, looking for a single footprint on a road trodden by thousands.

  ‘Okay, you’re on,’ I said. ‘For the present-shopping, at least. I’ll play the rest by ear. I suppose I should be making more of my nights off; although I don’t want to be out too late, what with work tomorrow…’ It was tempting, while I still felt so fragile, to stay at home and hide behind my computer monitor, burrowing deep into my blog. Petite anglaise had become my refuge, and the frequency of my posts had doubled since James had left. But I couldn’t hide there for ever.