by Lia Louis
I polish and clean the windows, and I water the tomato plants, running a finger along the stalk of one, and smelling the deep, viney smell on my fingertips. I wouldn’t usually touch them, Louise’s pride and joy, but the summer sun burning through the windows of the conservatory is drying out the soil. I stand among the books and the plants afterward. I’ve never really been out here. It’s Louise’s room, and as a lodger, I only need to use the bathroom and kitchen. There are hundreds of books out here, and I feel sad that she can no longer read the words. I run a hand along them, stopping when I come to the many weird ornaments between and in front of them, and photos too. Mostly of scenic beaches and mountains, but some of people. Two are black and white. Three are color. And all feature a woman with short, bobbed, shiny hair, standing beside someone who is undoubtedly a young Louise, age twenty-five to thirty, I’d say. In all of them they are smiling, widely, holding on to each other, shrouded in happiness and sunshine. There are yellowing postcards propped against things, too, and ceramic bottles painted in tribal patterns, and plates with country names painted on them by hand. A display of a life lived. Not of a recluse. And I wonder here, among it all, when she stopped taking adventures.
I take tea up to Louise, in between dwindling the day away, sitting in the conservatory in the sunshine and reading the best man book, my legs bent under me, a cup of coffee on the windowsill, but my mind wanders. To Marv. To his face, drained of color. To Eliot. And I can hardly bear it. I’m nauseous when I replay yesterday, when it swirls through my mind, a mess of emotions and memories and shocked faces on doorsteps. I have to state it to myself, to tune it all up, like an old radio. Marv. Marv has been my dad all along. Marv is my father.
At four, I set a tray of biscuits and two satsumas, and two cups of mint tea not just for Louise, but for me. “Good for the stomach,” she always says as she pours it, and today, I could do with something to help settle it. Before I take the tray up, though, I take a book from Louise’s shelf. There is a butterfly breaking out of its cocoon on the cover. I don’t know what it’s about, but it looks dog-eared, read more than once.
She brightens, unmistakably, as I appear in the doorway, looking away from the window she was staring through.
“I’ve brought supplies for you.” I smile, placing the tray across her lap. “And for me too. I thought I could read to you,” I say. “If you’d like.”
Louise’s cheeks flush, her mouth open, as if searching for the right thing to say. “I, uh… I’m sure you have better things to do…”
I shake my head. “I’d love to. This one caught my eye, actually.” And I see the glimmer in her eyes, of excitement at the sight of the book in my hand.
“Ah. Have you read it?”
“No,” I say.
“Do you like love stories?” she asks, and I lower myself to sit at the foot of Louise’s soft, creaking bed.
“I do,” I tell her. “They’re my downfall, actually.”
* * *
WhatsApp from Lucas Moreau:
Hey Em, was thinking…
WhatsApp from Lucas Moreau:
Mum and Dad are away for the next couple of weeks and, not this weekend but next, it’s Marie’s birthday. The bridesmaids and her mum have arranged a thing at her place and Marie would love you there. But I thought we could go to the beach too? Say hi to our spot, have some time together, chill, just us, like old illuminous ketchup times!
WhatsApp from Lucas Moreau:
I’ll even let you choose the movies. (I just ask that it isn’t that fucking Vanilla Ice film.) Let me know.
Marie’s parents’ house is huge. The sort of house painted on the labels of wine bottles. I am greeted by her mother, who is the loveliest and most glamorous woman I have ever seen. She is fanning her face when she answers the door, her blond hair, in Marilyn Monroe–style curls, bounce as she moves.
“Salut!” she says, and I tell her I’m Emmie, Lucas’s friend, and without hesitation, she squeezes me.
“Oh! The best woman,” she says in a posh English accent. “I have heard so much about you from Marie and from Lucas. Please, come, upstairs. You are just in time for nails!”
She leads me up a huge spiral staircase, the carpet springy like sponge cake, and into a room with a baby grand piano and opened double oak doors. There must be ten guests arranged in the room on sofas and armchairs, all female, and three smiling women at their feet and hands, painting and filing and fussing. Everything here is dripping with class and money, and I instantly feel like a stray cat, lost in Buckingham Palace. Marie looks delighted to see me and comes bouncing across the thick beige carpet toward me.
“Darling Emmie!” she says. “Thank you so much for coming. It is so lovely to see you.”
“Happy birthday, Marie. I got you, er… a little something.” I eye the top of the baby grand, lined with square, rope-handled gift bags, designer names on the side of them, and instantly wish I’d left my gift on the backseat of the taxi Lucas put me in. I almost forgot it. The cab driver called me back and handed it to me. A box of handmade vegan bath bombs and a recipe book on avocados.
“Merci, mon amour, you did not need to,” she says, putting my gold-wrapped gift among the towers of gift bags. “And are you okay now? Really?”
I blink. “Um. Yes?”
“Lucas told me all about it,” she says, and I feel all eyes on me—pairs and pairs of strangers’ eyes. “About your mother and the cards that arrived from your father and how you thought he knew nothing of you and… gosh, I was so worried, you seemed so sad on the screen and Lucas said—”
“I’m fine,” I cut in. “It’s all fine. So, are these your friends?”
Every one of Marie’s friends is lovely and welcoming. They smile, break out of their fast, French conversations to talk to me—well, as much as the language barrier allows—and to get me champagne. They keep my glass filled up, pass around the canapés, all colors of the rainbow, and nudge me, smilingly, to tell me I have to take more than one. And after a while, after I switch off from playing a scene in my head of Lucas and Marie over glasses of wine, over an elegant, grown-up dinner, discussing my car crash of a life as if it’s something to be dissected and analyzed, in the style of a book club meeting, I’m having a nice time. I’m having a really nice time here, actually, in this beautiful house, with gorgeous food and crisp, cold champagne. Maybe I needed this. An ocean away from my normal life, from Marv, and the sleepless nights that taunt me at the moment. Pure escapism, that’s what this is; face glowing with the warmth of champagne and laughter, and my hands, like silk now, and glistening with sparkly red polish.
The doorbell sounds, and Lucille, maid of honor, jumps up to get it at the same time as Marie’s mother does.
“No, no, sit,” Lucille says, waggling her dry nails.
“I think you should open gifts,” says a woman who introduced herself, in a London accent, as Marie’s roommate from uni. Isabelle. She passes a light blue Tiffany bag to Marie. “This is from me and Ben.” Marie’s hands press into her chest and she cocks her head to one side. “You spoil me,” she says, and pulls out a box. It’s a beautiful bracelet, with Marie’s birthstone hanging from the chain. We all lean in to get a closer look, and it’s passed around, held high, admired like a new baby.
“Latecomer!” Lucille giggles from the doorway, and beside her is Ana. Eliot’s Ana, a cream pencil dress hugging her tall, willowy frame, a wide, shimmering smile on her face. The smile she seems to use for everyone else, bar me. I’m surprised to see her here, really. I didn’t think Ana and Marie were friends, but then again, Marie is marrying her boyfriend’s brother. They’ll be a hop, skip, and jump from in-laws soon.
Ana launches into a gushy, fast French frenzy, standing back and taking in Marie and the beautiful chiffon floral dress she’s wearing, and Marie does the same to her. They kiss each other twice, once on each cheek, and Ana takes a seat beside me, on a gray, arch-backed armchair.
“Hello.” She nods to me, and I l
ean forward, almost too hastily, to grab a champagne flute for her. As if to impress her. The way someone does in secondary school, to the cool girl in sixth form who looks at everyone as if they are shit on her shoe. She shakes her head at me, nostrils practically flaring.
“I do not drink.”
“Oh,” I say. “Right. Well, that’s good. More brain cells.” I don’t know why I say that, but it may be because I have murdered several of mine in just under two hours.
Marie opens all her gifts and acts as if I have given her the Hope diamond when she opens mine. She passes around the bath bombs, and the girls smell them, talking in fast French I don’t understand. Ana doesn’t take one when they make their way to her. She just studies the back and front of the avocado recipe book and says to Marie, in English of course, “But you hate cooking.” My heart sinks.
Marie ignores her and says, “But I like avocados.” Then she leans and kisses me on the cheek. “Baths and avocados. You know me better than Lucas does.” I see Ana smirk. I look at her and force a huge, glittering smile. You will not ruin my afternoon, super bitch, and I will not let this urge to run from this room and from this house, into the French countryside, win. I knock back another mouthful of champagne.
The nail technicians leave, and the natural sunlight of the room dims as thick, smoky rain clouds drift in front of the huge bay window. Ana talks constantly, and I pick up random words to hazard a guess that she’s talking about a new home she “can’t wait” to move into. “Bravo, Paul McCartney,” Lucas would be saying now. “Nice work.”
Eliot’s name is mentioned several times, too, and it’s strange, but I can hardly imagine it’s the same person. The Eliot who is with this cold, smirking woman. The Eliot who held my hand outside Marv’s. Who saw me up to my room, who drew the curtains as I collapsed into bed.
Desserts are handed out—tiny little mousses and parfaits—and there is a conversation sweeping the room, commandeered by Ana, who seems to be quickly, huskily, questioning people one by one. I can’t quite grasp what with my Paul McCartney French. She talks a lot. Probably because she does nothing but listen in her job. I can’t imagine feeling comfortable enough to air a grievance about a below-par appetizer with Ana, let alone air the things that frighten me the most.
“And you?” she suddenly says, turning to Isabelle, Marie’s uni roommate. “Are you married?”
“Yes. I’m married,” she says with a smile. “Ben. We met when we were eighteen. We have a son. He’s two.”
“Ohhh, I remember so well,” says Marie, giggling, tiny parfait spoon at her lips. “He was best friends with this guy who was in our shared house, and she used to wait every day, hoping he would come over.”
Isabelle laughs, tucking mousy hair behind her ear, and nods. “It’s true,” she says as Marie chatters in French, translating to a friend at her side.
“And I would say to her, ask him,” Marie carries on, to us. “The guy we live with. Ask who his friend is, but she wouldn’t.”
“So I just waited, and then when he did appear—”
“She would rush to my room and steal all of my makeup,” laughs Marie, reaching across and grabbing Isabelle’s hand. “It took her such a long time to even speak to him.”
“I just used to swish about, hoping he’d say hi.”
“Full face of makeup on a Sunday morning,” giggles Marie, and Isabelle laughs. “Yep. Now, poor soul gets this face,” she says, gesticulating with a hand at her pretty, pale face, “with no makeup, baby puke in my hair—”
“And he still is hopelessly in love,” adds Marie.
The girls aww and coo, even Ana, which is almost like seeing your teacher in the supermarket. It looks completely weird and wrong.
“This is like Eliot and me,” says Ana, and I can’t help but freeze at the mention of him again. “It took us such a long time,” she says, “to finally admit how we felt. He started staying later and later after sessions, and I would hate him leaving.”
“Ana is a psychotherapist,” says Marie to Isabelle, who says, “Oh wow, and Eliot was a client?”
“He came to me with a broken heart.” Ana smiles, as if she has rehearsed this before, and if this were a film I was watching, even I, a romantic, would definitely pretend to be sick at that line. “And I fixed it,” Ana says. “Romantic, no?”
No, I want to say. No, it isn’t actually, Ana, because he is lovely, and you are not.
“We of course waited until his therapy ended until we began anything. And then there were a lot of texts, and a lot of coffees as friends.” She rolls her eyes and titters a laugh. “But it was obvious. He was besotted.”
“Really? Why?” I want to ask, but instead I knock back my champagne and realize that perhaps I should stop, as that “why” was mere centimeters from spilling from my mouth.
“Oh, how lovely,” says Marie’s mum. “I’ve not spent much time with Eliot, but he seems just as lovely as our Lucas.”
Marie smiles over at her mum, dreamy-eyed, and Ana nods.
“Oh yes. My Eliot is,” she says, looking out the side of her eyes at me. “So loyal. And romantic.”
“Same as Luke.” Marie beams, and the girls melt into smiles and giggles.
I knock back the rest of my champagne. I top it up.
* * *
The girls chatter among themselves. About boyfriends and girlfriends and husbands doing the most wonderful things—the real things, like pulling up their knickers when they were so drunk on drugs post–wisdom teeth removal, like baths run, like journeys to the middle of nowhere to pick them up, post–pub crawl. Of proposals. Of romantic dates and funny anecdotes, and I sit nodding, cheeks aching with the amount of grins and smiles I am dishing out. Even Lucille is joining in, telling everyone how she and Mr. Aftershave Ad from the bar are on their third date and she feels “different” with him. And I am trying hard to ignore it. This empty pit in my stomach. Loneliness. That’s what it is. I recognize it, with a sinking heart, like an old symptom you thought was cured.
“You, Emmie?”
I look up. All eyes are on me. Ana stares over from beside me, her question hanging in midair.
“Me?”
“Yes. Are you married?” asks Isabelle hopefully.
“Nope,” I say. “No, I am not.”
“Boyfriend?” asks Ana, her eyes hooded and head to one side, as if she is enjoying this, and it’s weird, because she knows the answer. We had this discussion on the way to the bar, in the back of a taxi. It was the only thing we did talk about that night. Well, that and the joys of a trouser press.
“No,” I say. “Still single, from the last time you asked me. But happy with that.”
“You’re one of the lucky ones,” says one of the women, and everyone laughs, and thankfully, the conversation moves on. Nails are shown off, drinks are drunk, and desserts turn into tiny cheeses and fruit.
“Oh!” I hear Marie say from behind me as I reach for my champagne. It’s my fourth, I think. Maybe fifth. “I’m going to show you girls the montage.”
“Montage?” asks her mother. “Of bridesmaid dresses?”
“No, no, of Lucas and me. Photos that are going to be on a, er… er…” Marie hesitates.
“Projector screen,” Isabelle says, and Marie nods.
“Yes. Oh, I was crying when my brother showed me. I know it’s early, that there are still months to go, but I want to be organized. I show you sneak peek.”
And I know, filled champagne glass in my hand, stomach nauseated, that I can’t stay here for this. I have to leave. So as everyone chats, and as Marie ducks off for her laptop, her mother switching on the television above the fireplace, I slink off to the bathroom, two doors down. I breathe in deep breaths, hunched over the glistening countertop basin, panic heaving in my chest, my head swirling with what feels like multiple golf balls rolling. I can’t sit through that montage. I can’t sit beside Ana any longer, either. I’ll make up an emergency. Leave. I need to leave.
With
my phone in hand—a Rosie tip when faking an emergency phone call, for it to appear more authentic—I go back into the room and find Marie and tell her I’ve had a wonderful time but I have to go. “My friend Rosie has just called me crying, and I need to go back to the cottage and talk to her.” It sounds fake to me, my words too matter-of-fact, too wooden, but Marie, barefooted and clumsy with champagne-consumption, doesn’t press for me to stay, or pry. She does insist on calling me a taxi, though.
“No. It’s okay. Lucas gave me a number, so I can do it.”
“No, no, I insist.”
Her friend tugs on her arm, a laptop open in her lap, and before she can say another word, I hug her and walk away, at the exact moment a photograph of Lucas and Marie appears on the TV screen, his nose nuzzled into her neck, Marie’s face glowing with happiness. There is a chorus of coos and happy cheering as I descend the stairs and leave.
* * *
I am lost. I am completely and utterly lost. I left Marie’s parents’ house so quickly, taking a left and walking purposefully, my mind racing, my body sighing with relief at being out of there, of feeling so lonely, so tiny, so insignificant, with nothing to offer a room full of people with vibrant, wholesome stories of love and family. No heartwarming anecdotes about my mother, no partner in crime to speak of who would pull my knickers up for me, or still find me completely lovable and attractive mid-winter-vomiting-bug. No stories about my dad. Nothing. Lonely. Small. That’s exactly how I felt, and so I kept walking, as if to walk it off, the way you do a stiff muscle in the morning, hoping that shortly I would come to the town or even village of this leafy, hill-bordered area in which Marie’s family lives. But after twenty minutes of aimless walking in one direction, I find myself completely and utterly lost in the wilderness, trudging on and on, and seeing only one house, set back, gated, quiet, to every seven thousand bloody trees. And now it is raining. The thick smoke of the clouds have given way, and my sandals squeak with water every time I walk.