But of course, argued the voice in Leonie’s head, abandonment was what Patrice knew best. It was what he had grown up with: all those lonely childhood summers with Josette, cut off from his parents, punished with days of silence and rejection. Escape into himself was for him the natural way to react under pressure, she knew that. She had experienced the impact of his brief withdrawal that night in the restaurant in Nice, but the next day he had been fine again.
Gaby was right; he needed time to adjust. She must keep believing in him, not lose faith. Once he had thought things through, he would return. She would set herself a limit. Let him disappear for Christmas – always a holiday fraught with too much expectation – and then start fresh in the New Year.
She dug out her next year’s diary and pencilled in a mark at the first weekend. If she had heard nothing from him by then she would accept that Thierry’s harsher view was justified, but until then Patrice would remain the man she knew and loved. She was carrying his child. She was going to bear and raise his son or daughter. She must not set out on that adventure with bitterness in her heart. Saturday, the eighth of January: she repeated the date to herself. However difficult, she would somehow keep the faith until then.
Stella arrived at dawn on Christmas morning. She had queued at Folkestone for a last-minute cancellation on the Shuttle then driven through the night. She didn’t like how Leonie had sounded on the phone and wasn’t going to be fobbed off with silly evasions, so came to see for herself what on earth was going on. She found her friend looking gaunt and strained, with nothing in her fridge but houmous and eggs.
‘Lucky I brought provisions, then,’ she said, unpacking the supermarket bags she’d carried up from her car. ‘Not exactly turkey with all the trimmings, but at least we can cobble together a square meal. Looks like you haven’t eaten properly in days.’
‘Bless you. Really. The thought of Christmas Day on my own, I couldn’t have faced it.’
‘What friends are for. So where’s Patrice?’
‘Still don’t know. Not a word.’
‘He’s coming back?’
‘No idea. He’s locked up his house, cancelled all his patients and gone.’
‘For chrissakes, why didn’t you tell me it was as bad as this?’ demanded Stella.
‘Hoped he’d be back by now.’ Leonie sat down wearily at the kitchen counter. ‘Or at least have been in touch. I convinced myself he would, tried to believe it. Don’t think I can keep it together much longer, though.’
‘Oh, Lennie.’ Stella hugged her, but Leonie pushed her feebly away.
‘Don’t be too sympathetic, or I’ll fall apart.’
‘Okay. But, Jesus, I’d like to throttle him!’ Stella tried to shake off her incredulity. ‘I know I only met him briefly, but I liked the guy! I certainly never imagined …’ She trailed off, sighing at the diminished spectacle of her friend. ‘You’d better bring me up to speed. Properly, this time,’ she warned.
‘After I told him about the baby, I half expected him not to call. But then, when he never answered my calls, I went round to his house. It’s all shuttered and padlocked.’ Leonie tried to block out Stella’s reaction, striving to relate events as levelly as she could. ‘Sylviane told Gaby he’d cancelled her granddaughter’s appointment saying he wasn’t able to re-schedule it, but giving no explanation. Apparently the pharmacist has had lots of people asking when he’s coming back. Nobody knows.’
‘Have you been to the police?’
‘Why? He left everything in order. Thierry found out he’s given notice on the office he rented. Left instructions for any post to go to the bank. I suppose some patients still owe him money.’
‘You don’t reckon he’s … You know …’
‘Topped himself?’ Leonie shrugged. ‘I don’t think so. But frankly your guess is as good as mine.’
‘I was actually thinking there might be someone else.’
‘Another woman?’
‘Or back to his wife?’
‘Who knows? My one solid fact is that I’ve no way to be certain of anything.’
‘Do you suppose he was planning to scarper even before you told him you were pregnant?’ asked Stella. ‘I mean, what if this has nothing to do with you.’ She caught the look of desolation on Leonie’s face. ‘I don’t mean that you don’t matter to him,’ she corrected herself. ‘Only that there’s something else going on. Money, or some legal thing with a patient or something?’
Leonie shook her head in consternation. ‘Three weeks ago I’d’ve sworn blind nothing like that was possible, but I have no idea any more who he is or what he’s capable of.’
‘I never imagined a person’s silence could be so callous,’ mourned Stella.
‘Did I tell you his grandmother’s way of punishing him was not to speak to him?’
‘For how long?’
‘Days, I think.’
‘That’s not good. That counts as quite serious emotional abuse.’
Leonie fell silent.
‘You’ve no clue as to where he might have gone?’ Stella persisted.
‘Believe me, I’ve worked through every possible permutation. Right now, if someone told me he’d been abducted by aliens, I’d simply be relieved to have the truth at last.’
‘Sorry, I’ll shut up.’
‘No, no.’ Leonie gave Stella a watery smile. ‘It’s better than getting paranoid in the middle of the night, deciphering the runes, clutching at straws.’
Stella looked sorrowfully at her friend, her expression failing to hide her contempt for what Patrice had left behind.
Stella and Leonie ate sausages and roast potatoes for their Christmas dinner, during which Leonie asked dutifully about Stella’s work and life in London. Afterwards, exhausted by the effort, she went to lie down and fell fast asleep. Stella took out Leonie’s laptop and Googled Patrice’s name, but brought up nothing she hadn’t found before, nothing that would go any way towards explaining his disappearance or shed light on where he might have gone. There were other methods she could apply, search facilities for tracing people that would be available through her office network, but she was unable to access those accounts from Leonie’s computer. It would have to wait until she went home. Deprived of sleep after her long night-time drive, Stella dozed off herself.
Leonie, sitting down beside her, woke her an hour or so later.
‘I dreamt I was breaking into Patrice’s house.’
Stella struggled awake. ‘Really?’
‘My dream-self was magically skilled at picking locks. I could observe everything from about two feet above my normal eye-line. It’s all neat and tidy. A coffee cup washed up by the side of the sink. A newspaper from the day I last saw him left on the kitchen table, his mobile next to it. Yet the milk in the fridge is fresh and the ash in the fireplace is still warm, as if he’s only just gone. I’m quite calm until I float up the stairs and reach the bedroom door, where I’m so overcome by what I know is inside that I daren’t even turn the handle. That’s when I woke up.’
‘Oh, Lennie.’ Stella grasped Leonie’s hand and held it tight.
‘In my dream, I’m convinced I’m going to find the key to all this. That I’d notice some object lying on the table, discarded by his chair. I’d pick it up, have a moment of revelation and everything would magically fit into place, miraculously come right again.’
Stella squeezed her hand.
‘I keep hoping I’m going to wake up and find it all spun into gold, like in a fairy tale. Spun into a coherent story that I can understand and be done with, instead of it going round and round in my head.’
‘How about some tea?’ was all Stella could find to say. Leonie nodded and followed her to the kitchen, where she leant against the counter in a stupor as Stella filled the kettle and rinsed out mugs.
‘I found it endearing that he wouldn’t tell me stuff,’ Leonie went on, watching vacantly as Stella threw away an empty box and searched for more teabags. ‘But it wasn’t. It’s scary
.’
Stella couldn’t help agreeing.
‘Part of what I loved about Patrice was how he was so elusive,’ she continued. ‘It drew me in, hooked me. But it meant I let him get away with not actually telling me anything, while I was so impressed by how honest he is, how he never lies. Why didn’t I ask?’ she wailed. ‘I honestly believed he was telling me about himself. But he didn’t.’
Stella handed her a mug of hot tea. ‘Don’t keep beating yourself up, Lennie. Don’t make it worse than it is.’
‘For all I know, he’s been totally cold-hearted and calculating all this time,’ Leonie went on. ‘I’m having his child, yet have no idea who the hell he is.’ She cradled the comforting warmth between her hands. ‘How could I be so stupid?’
‘You’re not. This isn’t your fault.’
‘It is! I was stupid! Why else did I just assume that he’d go along with happy ever after?’
‘You were in love, Lennie. That’s what love does. Besides,’ Stella went on, ‘it’s a romantic dream to expect to know anyone entirely. Everyone keeps some little part of themselves private. And he may have lied as much to himself as to you. If not more.’
Leonie nodded obediently, but went on lecturing herself for so willingly letting herself be duped.
Stella comforted her as best she could, but their Christmas Day ended in misery. As they went to bed, Stella took a deep breath, obviously making up her mind to say something: ‘I know you’re not ready to hear this, but Patrice has not behaved honourably. Even if he comes back, and even though he’s the baby’s father, you shouldn’t forget that.’
Leonie nodded, too sore to speak. Stella looked at her wretchedly, clearly wishing she could do more to relieve her pain, but all she could do was hug her tight. ‘Sleep well, Lennie. Happy Christmas.’
But the nights were the worst. The moment Leonie closed her eyes, she was swept away on a wave of longing and regret for all she had lost. She felt his physical absence like a homesickness. Along with the craving for his smell, his touch, the warmth of his body next to her in the bed, came renewed anguish to be released from the ache of not knowing what had happened. Where was he? What were his thoughts? Did he still love her? For all his lack of candour, she could not believe that what he had told her instinctively with his hands, his mouth, his body, had been a lie. It was so easy in the dark to imagine him back beside her; she had only to roll over to imagine she felt his warm back press against hers. The memory of his touch was sharp and real even while her body felt butchered and toxic. Never before had she experienced the duality of mind and body so forcibly. It drove her mad, stopped her sleeping. Her body, the source of such joy and pleasure, felt old and weary. So far, the new life inside her was still only a concept, a blue mark on a plastic stick; meanwhile every heartbeat was a reminder of her mortality.
The memory of the last night they had spent at his house was the hardest. She tried to avoid the probability that their final hours together had been so close and sweet not because he loved her and was happy they were to have a child but because he already knew that he was leaving. Ignorant, she had actually watched him make his silent decision as he sat at the kitchen table, looking around the room as if for the last time; had observed him relax because, with his valediction clear before him, he had felt safe with her, perhaps the only time he ever did. All the tenderness and love he had expressed that night, those murmured endearments, were in reality regret, apology, sorrow at the chain of events he had determined to set in motion in the morning. Their love-making had been his guilty Judas kiss, the worst lie of all, something monstrous, as if, somewhere deep in him, the reality of her had already ceased to exist. Reviling his betrayal, yet yearning to hear him say all those wonderful words again, she fell asleep.
The following morning dawned dry and clear. Stella suggested a walk and Leonie chose the path beside the river. While Stella buttoned up against the chill rising from the dark, fast-flowing water, Leonie seemed oblivious, her mind going round and round on its now sickeningly familiar loop.
‘Do you know anything about the Way of St James?’ she asked Stella abruptly.
‘It’s part of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, isn’t it?’
Leonie had no idea.
‘I’m sure it is,’ Stella went on. ‘Why?’
‘He said once that he walked here, followed part of the Way of St James.’
‘Walked from where?’ Stella asked.
‘I don’t know. I assumed it was like a vacation. I wasn’t really paying attention, but what if he’s done this before?’
‘Left other women the same way, you mean? Just walked away?’
‘Literally walked out on his whole life. Arrived here on foot, with what he could carry.’
‘There are people who do that,’ agreed Stella. ‘Simply go off with no warning, no plan of what they’re doing. People who go missing because they’ve forgotten who they are.’
‘Except that he was heading for his grandmother’s house when he came here, wasn’t he? So when he set off, he knew his destination.’
‘He refuses to drive, doesn’t he?’
Leonie nodded.
‘So what’s all that about?’ mused Stella. ‘When you first told me, I wondered if maybe he’d been responsible for some dreadful smash-up.’
‘If so, then it didn’t leave a mark on him.’ Leonie realised she was becoming confused by her own tangle of suspicions. ‘Oh, nothing makes sense!’ She linked her arm in Stella’s.
‘Lennie, this will pass. You will get over him.’
‘I don’t want to get over him! I want him here!’ Her voice cracked. ‘Even if I never see him again, I need to know that he did love me.’
Stella stopped on the path to hug her friend. ‘Shush now. It’ll all come good. You’re going to be fine.’
Leonie stood crying, not even raising her hands to wipe away her tears. Stella began seriously to fear for her friend. ‘Listen to me,’ she said, shaking Leonie’s shoulders, trying to get her to concentrate. ‘You have to start thinking about yourself. You’re fabulous. A much better person than him.’
‘But I don’t feel whole without him,’ Leonie wept. ‘Being me’s not enough any more.’
‘I hate leaving you,’ said Stella two days later. It was a damp, misty morning. She had loaded up her car and now stood beside it with Leonie shivering in the cold. ‘Are you going to be all right?’
‘I have to be, don’t I?’
‘Oh, Lennie, I had such faith that this would turn out well. I still can’t believe it hasn’t.’
‘It was never going to work. It’s been in him all the time to do this. And part of me always knew it.’
‘Then you’re better off without him.’
Leonie nodded, unable yet to conceptualise any notion of a viable future.
‘Take care of yourself. Call me if you need me.’
‘I will. Promise. And thanks, Stella. For everything.’
The two women embraced, and Leonie stood and waved as Stella, fighting back tears, drove off. As Leonie went back indoors alone, she couldn’t help feeling relieved. The constant effort of emerging from her thick fog of sadness to pay proper attention to another person had sapped what little energy she had. Now she was free to return undisturbed to her own relentless thoughts. Disappointment, she was learning, was a very under-rated emotion. It was not that she felt betrayed at being left to have their child alone: she had never made Patrice aware of her avid hunger for a child, of her sense of time running out. On that subject, as she had to acknowledge in her most self-lacerating moments, it was she who had tricked and misled him. No, her grief now was for the loss of an imagined future, of all the cherished illusions and daydreams she’d allowed herself to believe could indeed come true because they loved each other. The unfairness of placing such a burden upon him did not prevent her feeling its loss. The final wrench – like pulling a barbed arrow out of her heart – would be to let go of all those dreams, and that she cou
ld not accomplish because to do so must surely kill her.
All the while, a fierce and insidious internal voice kept whispering eagerly that it wasn’t over, it couldn’t be, not something so precious and special. She knew this was fantasy, but the idea of returning to a life without even the potential for such bliss was unbearable. Without the ecstasy she believed she and Patrice had shared, then her life stretched ahead cold and meaningless: she did not want it, not even now that it held the child for which she had yearned. Such comfortless thoughts frightened her. What kind of mother would she be if she couldn’t stop such despair intruding on her view of the future – her child’s future? She had to find some new way to live with herself, to fall out of love. She reminded herself that she had done so before, after Greg, when she had first come to France, and for a second she saw that it might be possible to survive this dreadful pain, to forgive herself for being so undeserving of Patrice’s love.
But she knew she had never loved Greg with the same visceral attachment, never felt her own identity as obliterated by the loss of his love for her. She had been younger and more hopeful and had chosen to leave. And even though she no longer really cared, she still heard through Stella where Greg was and some news of what he was up to. Patrice’s exit was a rebuke to everything she thought she’d known and understood, to her very existence. She could no longer comprehend anything about a world where this could happen.
The week after New Year Gaby re-opened the office and Leonie went back to work. She also made an appointment to see a doctor about her pregnancy, something she had postponed before Christmas in the vain hope that Patrice would return and be there to accompany her. Gaby immediately reported that neither she nor Thierry had gleaned any new information, though Leonie guessed that, whatever talk there was in the town about Patrice’s continuing absence, Gaby chose not to repeat it. She was grateful that the older woman’s loyalty and discretion overruled any relish she may once have had for gossip on the subject. Leonie recalled guiltily how dismissive she had been of the Duvals’ life together when she had taken Patrice to their house for dinner. How had she permitted herself to belittle such warmth and kindness? Was it merely because she had been, as Stella had dubbed it, too loved-up to see what really mattered? If so, she had learnt a hard lesson.
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