With my trusty new brogues on, I’ve walked and walked, today. Oh, I have Sam! I’ve walked! My macabre side was fed on the ghoulish sights of the catacombs to start with. I was naughty and used my old student card to get a discount! So sue me! I walked around the Notre Dame Cathedral and got a serious crick in my neck and some serious blisters on my feet while climbing the stairs. I had to make a pitstop for plasters and used one of the gardens to give my feet an airing before off I went again.
I found a corner in Shakespeare and Co and sat and read for a while between shelves of old books and people trying to pass by to get to other sections of the shop. If only I could go back in time and tell my younger self that one day I’d be swanning around Paris and visiting one of the most famous bookshops on earth… she wouldn’t believe me! I was thinking about my old battered library card today and how much use I made of it. How I used to reserve so many books at my local library and drive the librarians insane! How nothing changed when I was at uni and everyone would complain they couldn’t get hold of certain books – because I’d taken them all out! Anyway, from Shakespeare and Co I purchased some books and I have one for you, too. I bought you a beautiful old edition Proust. I know people think he was vague and detached, but I really feel like there’s something evocative in his setting a scene. Please remind me to give you the book next time we meet for coffee (I’m so, so sorry it’s been so long).
I ate in the Eiffel Tower restaurant alone (fish and chips) and watched the world as if I were the Hunchback, looking down upon everyone and everything from a great height, with such a vantage point as to be able to reason that sometimes, you just need a different perspective – to realise that each and every one of us is so small, but together we all make up this massive collective puzzle of human existence.
I ate opera cake at a tiny café and nearly had my head blown off by the espresso there. I pretended I still knew some of my school French as I buried my head in a fashion magazine from the complimentary newsstand.
As I sit here now in the hotel room, I almost feel guilty that I’ve made the most of this babymoon while Hetty has wiled away her day bathing and enjoying spa treatments downstairs. Almost, I said. Almost. Like I say, if I could have shown my younger self what I would be doing with my life one day – the friends I would have and the people I would meet and know – she would not have believed me. No way.
Anyway, I brought Hetty back a huge foot-long baguette full of ham and cheese – not the crap room service food you get – but the proper stuff from around the corner with half a packet of butter spread over doughy bread with a crispy outer crust. She forgave my absence today immediately and we danced to euro pop on the beds before cracking open boxes of chocolates and macaroons that I picked up from the common or garden supermarket over the road from our hotel.
Tomorrow I want to walk around graveyards while the morning is still dewy and fresh. I expect I’ll have to leave Hetty while I go off exploring again. She doesn’t mind anyway – she’s happy to have me explore and tell her all about it, living vicariously through me she says, while her belly is fat and her ankles are swollen.
Ah, if you were here Sam, we’d go to the cemeteries in the morning, drink Irish coffees and then buy a ticket for some sort of devastating French movie, before spending the evening searching for some live music to go and listen to. We’d get drunk and our feet would hurt, but it’d not matter. We’d stay up late talking nonsense in some all-night place and people would jeer at ‘those stuffy English’, but we wouldn’t care. I’d buy you a cravat and a stupid moustache and you’d be forced to wear them. It’d be so funny.
Alas, you’re there and I’m here, but for some reason this place really made me think of you today… maybe because you’ve told me about Paris so many times… about the times you’ve been here. It so made me want to come too and now I’m so glad I have.
We’re here for a few more days and I think we’ll try to fit in Disneyland too if we can – if only to buy a bunch of stuff for Hetty’s baby, plus Emily and Rupert.
Signing off, for now, with a glass of that aniseed drink in my hand and a lot of fuel in my soul. Love, Liza x
*
I couldn’t even articulate how happy she made me feel, just with her words. She gave me hope. There were a few indicators, but her email told me she’d not forgotten me entirely – also there was the slight dig about her husband, who she’d never talked very glowingly about over the years.
The only problem was… even if we one day did manage to find ourselves on the same page, would she ever forgive my past?
Would she understand my guilt, or rebuke it? Might she appreciate the will of a young boy to wish his sister back to life, even though his memories, though blurry, told him it was unlikely she was?
Abandoned… left out in the cold for much of my life… why would any of that change now?
I could dream about one day being with Liza, and for the time being, dreaming about the impossible was better than continuing my debauched lifestyle, which I vowed not to continue.
I was done with that.
Done.
That speck of light her letter provided could become as big as the sun, if only I had faith to hold on tight and be patient. I would need an inordinate amount of hope, but perhaps the way she made me feel and the way I seemed to have influenced her was hope enough.
Chapter Twenty-One
MY MOTHER OPENS THE DOOR looking tired and drawn. She almost doesn’t believe it when she sees us all, standing on her doorstep. Her eyes darken when she looks at me, but then as the kids shout, “Granny, Granny!” – her attention is on them, not on me.
“Sorry to do this to you, but Hetty’s out of town today with Joe at an away game. I have some errands to run and I could do with a few hours on my own to clear my head.”
She looks at the bags I’m carrying. I packed enough just in case she wouldn’t mind having them stay over.
“Coming back tomorrow morning, then?” she asks curtly.
“If that’s okay.”
“No problem, goodbye.”
I suppose I shouldn’t expect anything more, but it still hurts.
I kiss the kids goodbye and they immediately scamper towards the playroom. I suppose it’s nice that when I drop them off, they exhibit no separation anxiety or any fear about being at Grandma’s house.
As I’m leaving, a part of me wonders where Dad is. However, it’s fairly safe to imagine he’s down in the shed, where he always is.
After dropping the kids at my mother’s, I drive off and park up near the Avenues. Somehow, I find myself taking a walk down memory lane. Growing up, I lived in the city and never knew any other way of existing. We had a few different chip shops, but they were mostly on busy streets and we always had a flat above. When Gage and I moved to a detached house on a new suburban estate with no traffic, it took me months to get used to the relative quiet and isolation. If it wasn’t cars zooming by, it was kids outside the chippy, or groups of drinkers queuing up for chips after a night out – raucous and happy and sometimes rowdier than was polite. There were the neighbours, too. You could hear their TV through the walls. I could tell if they liked soaps or those soppy Hallmark Channel films… sometimes even porn. I grew up exposed, you could say. However, it didn’t change who I am. I’ve always remained the same, despite all this stuff and nonsense going on all around me.
My parents bought their dream home after they retired. They scrimped and scraped so they could have the retirement they wanted. Sometimes, I didn’t understand it. To work all your life just to have a comfortable retirement? Instead of living for the now? It was a difficult upbringing because I would often ask for money for the cinema or theatre, for theme park trips or whatever – and the answer would often be no. That’s how much of a miser my father was.
What’s even stranger is that when my kids visit their grandmother’s, they get spoilt rotten and given everything I never had. I wonder if that’s perhaps why I have always remained sol
id and staid however, because I was never spoiled. I wonder if the simple pleasure of my books is what kept me straight, even when there was all that city noise around me.
I find myself walking around, marvelling at how things have changed – and continue to. It’s different every week, and no less crammed and packed with the young, the old and the in-between enjoying their free time.
There are still a few homeless people about. No doubt there always will be. Gage sometimes helped out homeless charities as part of the team’s community efforts. He wasn’t all bad. I think he enjoyed it, actually.
I find myself suddenly standing outside a hairdressers, looking through the window. It seems to be calling me indoors. There’s the whole dead husband thing to explain when the hairdresser predictably wants my whole life story, but maybe I could just make something up. I know it’s a cliché that a woman changes her hair when she’s about to change her life, but maybe today is that day.
FOR THE FIRST time in maybe six years, I emerge with my hair down, not dressed up as per usual. As I stand on the pavement, everyone inside the salon has their eyes still fixed on me as I stand around, trying to get used to my new hair.
I’ve had a whole twelve inches chopped off. My hair is still long, but no longer long enough that I can sit on it. I think I must possess the Holy Grail of hair because even with a foot of it cut off, the hairdressers inside still can’t stop staring at my massively thick crop of long hair. It was all one length for ages but now it’s layered and structured. It’s modern and I feel liberated, actually. I do. I don’t know why I didn’t do this years ago. I’ve been living under a beehive for far too long.
If Hetty were here, we’d grab coffee and celebrate with cake too, but as it is I’m alone and don’t feel like drinking alone. Maybe I’ll get a takeaway cup from somewhere.
I’m walking for maybe five minutes, trying to find the right sort of place for takeaway coffee and cake, before I spot Warrick strolling towards me. He doesn’t see me at first, but the closer he gets, his expression changes and he walks straight up to me, hugs me and says, “You got your hair done.”
“Yeah. I was just going to find some cake to celebrate.”
“Oh, hey. I know a place.”
I give him a look. I’m not good company right now and I don’t need charity.
He shoots me a look back and tells me, “Please, all right? Let me buy you a sodding piece of cake.”
“Fine.”
He leads me to a nice place which just happens to be three doors down from where we bumped into one another. It’s rustic but the cakes on the counter look divine. Warrick has definitely been converted to cake since marrying Jules.
We place our order and sit by the window bench, facing one another. Warrick has a chic, patterned scarf wrapped carelessly around his neck, as if it was either an afterthought or a deliberate move. Either way, when you catch him in the right light, he’s absolutely devastating. I can see why Jules became hooked, though Hetty would never admit there’s something about Warrick. I wouldn’t call it rivalry between her and Warrick, but there’s something there that’s sort of vital to her, but also painful. I think he’s more like a father to her, which is why she perhaps checks her behaviour around him. He has sharp eyes that don’t miss a trick, and humongous sex appeal… so masculine. I’m a red-blooded woman, I notice things.
“What are you doing down here, then?” I ask him.
“Dropping the boys off at dance class.”
I can’t help but smile. “Oh.”
“Yeah… Jules is determined,” he says, “but I’m not sure the boys really agree. She keeps saying it’ll click with one of them, if not both. She has this whole Billy Elliot fantasy, you see.”
“Hey, there are worse parental aspirations out there.”
“Don’t I know it.” Our drinks are delivered and he goes quiet for a moment. Our cakes follow but neither one of us picks up our forks. He’s thinking about something…
“She just wants to keep the tradition alive,” I reassure him, “but I’m sure she won’t pressgang them into continuing, not if they really don’t want to.”
Warrick looks up, as if he’s not been listening. “Sorry, Liza. I’ve got things on my mind.”
“Oh, like what?”
He takes a sip of his coffee (black) and cuts his cake into rectangles before eating it with his hands in perfectly caveman fashion.
“It’s Joe,” he says.
“Yeah? What about him?”
“He’s keeping something from me. You don’t know what’s been going on, do you?”
I swallow hard, but when I do, he knows immediately that I know something.
“If you just tell me, Liza it’ll stay between me and you. I just need to know. It drives me crazy when he doesn’t tell me things. I start wondering all sorts… you know… because of how his mother was.”
“Ah yes, his delightful mother.” God rest her soul.
“Yeah. So, could you…?” He puts his hands together in a begging fashion.
“Liverpool want to sign him, that’s all.”
Warrick looks stunned. “Huh?”
“It was almost looking set, according to Hetty, although she was very cagey and said even she wasn’t supposed to know anything about it, because you know how it is… but I feel like… maybe… I wonder if she said she’s not ready to leave and that put the dampers on it all. Because it’s all on hold at the moment. I don’t know what’s transpired in reality. It could have been that the funding isn’t there… or whatever… maybe the contracts didn’t get approved. All I know is that, maybe, just maybe, Hetty told him she’s not ready to leave… not after everything recently. I have a feeling on that, but a feeling’s all it is.”
Warrick scratches the back of his curly head, digesting it all. Then suddenly, he raises his cup. “Liverpool want to sign my son! My son! My boy! My son!”
I clock him around the head, only playfully though. “Shurrup. We’re not meant to know, you idiot.”
“Shit, you’re right. Sorry. Yes.” He pretends to pull himself together. “Non-proud dad here, nothing to see. Everyone move on.”
I chuckle and finally dig into my cake. “Where’s Jules, anyway?”
“Sat in her office with a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door. She’s in the thick of marking exam papers. She’ll be okay. She just needs a day locked up in there to get through it. I’d only be distracting her if I went back home, apparently.”
We share a giggle. Warrick’s just so easy to get on with.
“So, anyway. You’re looking much better,” he remarks, “and the hair, too.”
“Thanks. Thank you. I’m getting there.”
“Seen anything of Sam?” he asks, bringing the cup to his lips, as if to hide something while he awaits my response.
“What is it you have against him?”
He puts his cup down. “I have nothing against him.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t. I have nothing against him. I’m like you though, I just have a feeling sometimes… and my feeling about him is one of wariness.”
He looks sheepish. It doesn’t suit Warrick. He’s in everyone’s business, that’s who he is. He knows everyone round here and everyone knows him. He’s a steadfast presence… and sheepish is not his gig.
“What made you feel wary?”
“I saw the way he was looking at my wife at that careers evening. Believe me, I know men look at her. I look at her. I’d sculpt her naked body if she’d allow me to, just so I could keep her in my office all day long, but there was something about the look in his eye I didn’t like.”
“Okay…”
“Do you hate me?” he asks, because he’s used to dealing with all walks of life, even young women in the throes of new love.
“No. I have a feeling, too.”
“Oh, crap. I’m sorry.”
“You’d really keep the sculpture in your office? What if people saw?”
He le
ans forward. “I’d have to obliviate them.”
“What, just for seeing her naked body in clay form?”
“Yeah. They’d all have to be obliviated.”
We laugh and I lean back, shaking my head. I watch him finish his cake while all I can do is stare at the rest of mine. My appetite has been like this since Gage died. It’s as though all the food put in front of me feels like death… or something, I don’t know – and I don’t want to eat more death.
“Can I be honest with you? Like a bit gory even? Hetty wouldn’t think it was gory, but you might.”
His nose wrinkles. “I’m good with gore.”
“Last night, it was the first night since Gage passed, that I… you know… with Sam.”
“Oh. Okay, not too gory so far.
“Wait, it’s coming. So, we had this massive long chat before the other stuff… and he was really sweet and everything, made me feel like he understood… but then this morning, he took it upon himself to feed the kids breakfast. Emily even asked me if he’s her new dad. She’s not stupid. It must have been the way he was acting around her. Then he suggested moving his stuff in. Just like that. So casual. ‘So, I’ll bring my stuff, then?’ sort of thing, even though it’s only been two months. Two months.”
A deep frown gouges a look of disbelief into Warrick’s Gallic face. “What?”
“I don’t know if it’s because we had sex last night and he thinks that means he can move in, or that he thinks grief just stops one day… or that my kids don’t matter or that he doesn’t have to earn my trust over time, but I was shocked and I told him I had things to do today. He tried to leave the house with dignity, but he was trying to get me to react. It wasn’t right, Warrick. It was plain weird, really. It was lovely last night, but by the light of day… you know?”
He’s nodding his head – and even looks a bit disturbed. Maybe I should be more disturbed, I don’t know. Warrick chews his thumb while looking out of the window.
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