by Sarah Long
‘She’s having a baby,’ said Laura again.
‘Not if I have anything to do with it,’ said Jean-Laurent. ‘It’s still very early, and I’m hoping she’ll come to her senses.’
‘A baby,’ said Laura. Babies were what she and Jean-Laurent did. Babies were years and years of dull and cosy commitment. Babies were a thing apart – they had nothing to do with affairs, nothing to do with Antoine, and certainly nothing to do with that narrow-hipped scheming blonde. She had thought she knew his game, she had thought she was playing by the same rules – but this changed everything.
‘You stupid, stupid man,’ she wept, entirely out of control and ugly in her pain as she picked up a cushion and repeatedly pushed it into Jean-Laurent’s face. Her tears were hot and raw as she berated him. ‘You just let her walk all over you. Well don’t come crying to me about it, You got yourself into this – it’s your problem. Démerdetoi!’
TWELVE
‘Oh my God, that is tricky.’
Lorinda nodded sympathetically at Laura as she took a slice of baguette from the basket and spread it thickly with butter. They were sitting in a local boulangerie that had diversified into lunches by cramming six tables into an unfeasibly small space between the door and the counter. It was not the ideal location for an intimate confessional, but at least they were speaking English, which gave them an illusion of privacy.
‘Old Barbie-face has used the oldest trick in the book to reel in her man,’ Lorinda continued. ‘That girl is so unoriginal. I can’t think what Jean-Laurent sees in her.’
‘What he sees in her now is a tiny seed of himself, doubling in size every day until he can persuade her to have an abortion.’ Laura took a savage swig of her wine. ‘He says he doesn’t want it, Lorinda, but if she does go ahead, he’s bound to love it, how could he not? And what if it’s a girl? The daughter he never had, the daughter I never had, for God’s sake. It’s just not fair!’
Two old ladies who were seated about eighteen inches away looked up from their cassoulet. Lorinda smiled at them and patted Laura’s hand reassuringly.
‘Now calm down, Laura, let’s think clearly about this and not get things out of proportion.’
‘But that’s what’s so unfair,’ cried Laura. ‘I thought I had got things in proportion. I was all ready for his great confession. I’d been through all that angst so that when he was finally ready to come clean, I was prepared. And then he tells me she’s pregnant. A little half-sister for my lovely boys. Can’t you just see the photo? The two of them cradling the newborn. Jean-Laurent will probably have it made into a Christmas card!’
She took her head in her hands.
‘Or half-brother,’ said Lorinda.
‘What?’
‘Or half-brother. It might be a boy.’
‘Well thanks very much,’ said Laura, glaring at her friend, ‘for that small consolation.’
Their lunch arrived and they both leaned back to make room for two plates of steaming rich beans, aromatic with bacon and sausage.
‘Chicken soup for the soul,’ said Lorinda in her best American accent.
‘I bet Flavia only eats lettuce,’ said Laura, tucking in and feeling slightly better. ‘You can just tell by looking at her. She doesn’t love food, does she, not like us?’
‘No, she’s a picky cow,’ said Lorinda, gesturing to the waitress to bring more bread. ‘A bloody nightmare, in fact – worse than Asa. Didn’t you notice her at your dinner, chasing that tiny bit of fish around her plate?’
‘No, I was too busy being the anxious hostess . . .’
Laura’s voice tightened and Lorinda quickly intervened to reassure her.
‘Now come on, Laura, let’s get this straight. Things could be a lot worse. It’s obvious that Jean-Laurent wants to stay with you, so the ball is entirely in your court. Though I must say if it was me, I’d want him out of that door faster than shit off a shovel.’
Laura frowned.
‘No, Lorinda, you must understand that he’s in a terrible state about this. Much worse than me. He’s so sorry, he’s just so terribly sorry . . .’
‘It’s a shame he wasn’t terribly sorry earlier on. How long has it been going on, anyway?’
Laura shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Over a year, maybe two, it makes no difference. I just feel so confused . . .’
‘Do you still want him or not?’
‘Yes, he’s the father of my children. I don’t want to be a single mother. I love him. Or I did, until this.’
‘And what about Antoine in all this? You haven’t forgotten that you, too, are engaged in an adulterous affair?’
Laura smiled at the mention of his name.
‘Lovely Antoine. But I can honestly say that has nothing to do with my marriage. We neither of us lay any claim on the other.’
‘Which is exactly what Jean-Laurent would have said about Flavia before she ensnared him with her fertile womb.’
‘No, the vile Flavia is obviously looking for a life partner. Antoine is not, and neither am I, since I already have one, or so I thought.’
They ate their cassoulet in silence for a moment, then Lorinda spoke.
‘I think what you need right now, Laura, is to take a break from it all. Leave Jean-Laurent to sort things out with Barbie-face while you relax in the arms of your lover. Why don’t you take him up on that offer of a trip to Thailand? You’ve already told me that you’ve got the perfect excuse. Pretend you’re going to the hen party in Barcelona.’ Laura sighed.
‘You know, I had already decided to do just that. But I can’t. I feel that Jean-Laurent needs me.’
‘Oh yeah, like he’s needed you for the last two years while he’s been screwing that stick insect! Buck up, Laura! Do something for yourself for once in your life!’
‘But what about the children? Don’t forget I haven’t got Asa any more.’
‘As if that would have made any difference. I’ll take them after school and your lovely husband can play caring repentant Dad all weekend. It’ll be fine.’
‘But I’d have to lie some more. I’m sick of it, the lying—’
‘It’s a little white lie. He need never know – and you would never have been in this position were it not for Jean-Laurent’s staggering capacity for lying. He started it – never forget that.’
‘Well . . .’
‘Go on. Do it. You should.’
And so it was that Laura found herself in a taxi on her way to the airport. The road signs called it the Charles de Gaulle airport, but perversely all Parisians knew it as Roissy. Another plot to confuse the hapless visitor. The organisation that had gone into getting Laura this far had been so exhausting that she felt that any resulting pleasure was unlikely to outweigh the cost. She felt crushed by the weight of her own dishonesty.
Jean-Laurent had seemed almost relieved when she told him she was going away for the weekend. He was hoping she would relent and forgive him, and she had popped the question one evening when he was particularly intent on pleasing her. He had just put the children to bed and done all the washing up while she sat alone reading Sylvia Plath in the salon, the lofty injured party. He had come in with a cup of coffee for her which he had put on the Interesting Oak table.
‘Believe me, Laura,’ he had said, his hand covering hers, ‘I would do anything to make it up to you. You can’t know how much I regret this whole situation.’
He had just read a book on rebuilding trust, and sincere expression of intent was apparently the best starting point.
It was now or never, Laura had thought at the time. She would never get a better opportunity than this.
‘Well actually, Jean-Laurent, I do think it would be helpful for me to take some time away from all this. You remember I told you that Marion was organising that weekend in Barcelona? Obviously I’m hardly in the mood for partying, but I think perhaps it would help us all if I took a few days away. If you felt you could cope with the children, that is.’
He had fallen for it
hook line and sinker, the damn fool. So overwhelming was his sense of guilt that he couldn’t wait to help her find a way to forgive him. She even managed to build in the idea that she would need a few sessions on the sunbed to get rid of her betrayed wife’s pallor, thereby ruling out any suspicions when she returned with a winter suntan. It was all so laughably easy – the way Jean-Laurent must have found it so easy lying to her when she never saw any reason to disbelieve his glib excuses.
Laura had unearthed her summer wardrobe, grimaced at the sight of her pale winter body in her bikini and taken care to pack three pareos, those lifelines of the lumpen beach goddess. She had left everything organised at home and in a guilty high of excess adrenaline had even sent out all the Christmas cards. Penny Porter’s was enclosed with the vests for Thaddeus and contained a slightly barbed message congratulating her on her latest little achievement, which she hoped would be received in the correct spirit.
Jean-Laurent had kissed her a tender goodbye, wishing her a good trip and hoping that on her return they could work things out. If you only knew, she had thought, if you only knew what I am up to, and felt a small rush of triumphant excitement. She had left him the household record book that her mother had given her last Christmas, filled in with all the numbers he could possibly need. Except for the Barcelona hotel, naturally. She would call him regularly to touch base; there was no point in even giving it to him.
It had all been incredibly straightforward. She had always been amazed by those stories of men who maintained two separate families for twenty years without either wife ever getting wind of the other. Now she realised it couldn’t be easier. But it didn’t prevent her from feeling entirely wretched. Holidays were what she did with Jean-Laurent and the children, yet here she was sloping off like Bathsheba. She deserved to be stoned to death in a long black robe at the fringes of a biblical village.
She paid off the taxi and took her small holdall – one of Jean-Laurent’s lesser Mandarina Ducks – into the terminal, shivering slightly in her linen jacket. Antoine had given her her ticket and told her to check in without him, in case he was late. There was no danger of Laura missing the plane. Being unfamiliar with the world of glamorous international travel, she had allowed an absurdly huge margin for error and the girl at the check-in was suitably patronising. Most people travelling club class didn’t arrive at the airport three hours before take off.
Laura called Lorinda on her mobile: yes, the children were fine, no, they didn’t want to talk to her, no, of course she shouldn’t feel guilty, just think of how Jean-Laurent had treated her.
‘But two wrongs don’t make a right, do they?’ Laura insisted.
‘Why don’t you just forget it and come home then?’
‘I can’t do that, it’s all arranged.’
‘Well just shut up and enjoy it, in that case. Goodbye.’
Laura drifted through the duty-free shops and decided she probably didn’t need a model of the Eiffel Tower or a Hermès scarf.
She went through to the Air France lounge – her club-class ticket granted her access – and sat down to read her book, an academic study comparing the work of Rimbaud with that of Jim Morrison. It seemed that the lead singer of The Doors was quite in the debt of the French poet, and had even written to the book’s author to thank him for his translation of the poems. What lovely manners, thought Laura. You couldn’t imagine Eminem doing something like that.
She peered at the photo of Jim Morrison, wild-eyed rock star, printed alongside the portrait of Rimbaud, wild-eyed romantic poet. On balance, she would probably prefer to go to bed with Jim Morrison. Antoine was more like Rimbaud, or at least an older, less wild-eyed version. More like Charles Aznavour, really. She was going on a dirty weekend with a Charles Aznavour lookalike.
That was not to say that she wasn’t excited. Now that everything was in place, she could take a deep breath and anticipate the pleasure that lay ahead. It was wonderful to be sitting here in the Air France lounge, helping herself to free snacks and relishing the luxury of being alone.
She had done a few long-haul flights with the children, and had always emerged crushed and humiliated by her failure to keep them quiet for eleven hours, only to spend the fortnight’s holiday dreading the flight home. Jean-Laurent had usually managed to engineer things so he travelled on a separate plane; it was hard to know now whether that was for Flavia-related reasons, or simply to avoid the horror of flying with the under-fives.
How very different, then, to be sitting here in splendid isolation, dreaming of the forthcoming few days with her lover, who – to be fair – was really much more Sacha Distel than Charles Aznavour.
Once Laura was seated on the plane she began to worry seriously about whether she might be spending her adulterous weekend on her own. The thought was not unpleasant, except that she would have to pay her own hotel bill, which might look incriminating on the joint bank statement. A man with a large collection of spreadsheets settled into the seat next to her and took off his shoes, slipping his podgy feet into the complimentary cabin slippers provided.
There was no avoiding the ghastly intimacy of aeroplanes, even when you travelled club class, and the thought of sharing the lavatory with him and others like him for the next twelve hours made Laura feel quite queasy. No wonder wealthy frequent travellers bought themselves Lear jets – it was the only way they could get to crap in comfort.
It was while she was entertaining this thought that Antoine appeared in the aisle, hair immaculate, wearing a light suit that shouted Gentleman In The Tropics. He leaned across Laura’s slippered neighbour to kiss her on both cheeks. Slippers immediately volunteered to change places to allow them to sit together, but to Laura’s surprise Antoine declined.
‘No, thank you, actually I’m sitting up in first class. I need to sleep, you see. You don’t mind, do you, Laura, only some of us need to work in the morning!’
He then dropped his voice to a whisper in her ear.
‘It’s actually written into my contract with the clinic: first-class travel for me, club class for my assistant, which is the ticket you are on.’
‘No, you go ahead,’ said Laura out loud, glossing over her humiliation.
So she was being charged up as Dr Bouchard’s assistant. Would she have to dress up in a green surgeon’s gown and hand him his implements as he squeezed the prostates of his patients? Her neighbour with the spreadsheets would be in no doubt now that she was some kind of floozy, unworthy of occupying a seat that turns into a bed alongside her fancy-man. Instead she could expect a night of being dribbled over by a stranger in cabin slippers.
‘I’m just grateful to have a cloth serviette and proper cutlery,’ she added. ‘What do they give you up there, nectar and ambrosia?’
‘There’s usually caviar. And vintage champagne.’
‘Served in lead crystal? After all, if you only get ordinary old champagne glasses, you might as well pig it back here in club.’
She smiled to show she didn’t mean it; that she was grateful not to be in economy.
‘Sleep tight. See you in Thailand.’
He disappeared through the curtain to the realm beyond, with its luxuriously low person-to-toilet ratio.
Slippers turned to Laura.
‘Isn’t it fascinating how life in an aeroplane is a microcosm of the real world? Here we are, the comfortable bourgeoisie, envied by the common herds behind us, but envious in turn of the Happy Few in first. Too bad your friend couldn’t get you an upgrade.’
He turned out to be in forecasting; his job was to predict what the next trends would be. A sort of prophet for our times. He was quite entertaining and hardly dribbled at all when he dozed off during the film.
As Laura slept her way halfway across the world, Jean-Laurent was grumpily getting out of bed to fix breakfast for his small sons.
‘When’s Mummy coming back?’ asked Pierre-Louis, his short legs swinging from the kitchen stool as he took a spoonful of Coco Krispies.
‘Give her a chance, she’s only just gone,’ said his father.
‘Three more days,’ said Charles-Edouard, ‘then she’ll bring us back some presents. Won’t she, Papa?’
‘I expect so. For you, anyway. I don’t think she’ll bring anything for me.’
‘Why not?’
‘She’s rather cross with me.’
‘Why?’
‘Never mind. C’est compliqué. Do you want some toast?’
Charles-Edouard watched him critically as he cut a slice in half diagonally.
‘Not like that! Mummy always does it in soldiers!’
He took the knife from his father and cut the remaining slice into four neat strips.
‘That’s better,’ he said, lining them up carefully on his plate, the way he used to organise his toy cars into neat rows.
Christ, these kids should loosen up, thought Jean-Laurent, wondering which of his business books would be appropriate to the task. One of his fears was that he would have a child with mental problems – he knew he wouldn’t be able to handle it. A friend of his had a son who had chewed his way through his father’s entire tie collection. They all had to go along to a family therapy session where a Nosy Parker shrink had asked everyone to give their assessment of the family dynamics. The thought of it made him shudder; it was one thing to read psychology books in private, and quite another to sit around with a stranger and talk about What Makes You Tick.
Jean-Laurent was afraid of quite a lot of things these days. He had the usual French fears, of course: the taxman breaking down the door at six in the morning for a dawn raid; the prospect of a bankrupt old age, his pension fund all having been spent on fonctionnaires’ salaries, and the country peopled by old people like himself living to a hundred and fighting over what little was left in the kitty; the worry about contracting a serious illness – like all the French, he made frequent visits to the dermatologist in pursuit of rogue moles and was a regular at the high-street laboratory where they took blood tests in search of some abnormality. These were a normal part of life, the petits soucis that gave Parisians their pinched, stressed-out look.