“It’s not about me? About what I’ve done?”
“She doesn’t even use your name. The photograph is from a news agency; it says it on the bottom. She just uses it to explain why she suddenly felt the need to pull the plug on her husband’s long-standing affairs.”
That “affairs” is plural is not lost on me.
“I’m exhausted or I’d read the whole thing to you. Can we leave it till the morning?” He points at the lilac sky and the new day outside.
“I’m sorry. I really am.”
“It’s all fine. It will all be fine.” He kisses me on the top of my head and walks out of the kitchen. His shoulders are rounded; I can see how very tired he is.
I peer at the magazine for just a few minutes more. I am going to have to exercise discipline, wait until tomorrow. There is no one to read it to me and I am simply not good enough to do it for myself.
I push the sleeves of the giant bathrobe up my arms and sweep the last of the crumbs on the table into my cupped hand. I shake them into the bin and fold the napkin I used.
I need to go back to bed.
Nadia stirs when I get back in beside her. She moves across so that I can get into the side that is not against the wall.
“You OK?” she asks me.
“It’s been a long night.”
“Tell me about it,” she says, and pulls the duvet up to her eyes. Her long sigh explains that she is going back to sleep.
I am happy with that; I cannot process any more information just now.
* * *
I wake at the same time as Nadia. I stretch my arm out and turn the alarm clock towards me; I still haven’t found my phone. It is half past ten. I cannot remember when I last slept this late. The day is warm and the sunshine leaks into the room, all innocence and encouragement.
“Shit, it’s half ten.” I have no idea if this is a school day or not. I cannot—for the life of me—work out what day it is. “Have you got school?”
“I haven’t got school.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. Very sure indeed.”
There is something wrong in her voice. She sounds like a child building up a wall of bravado, like someone trying to believe themselves.
“Nadia?”
“I’m taking a year out.”
I don’t know what to say. Thoughts clamor to the front of my mind, words jostle in my mouth. None of them are right. The pause while I juggle my ideas ends up too long and becomes an awkward silence.
“Why?” I ask.
“Shit got cray,” says Nadia in a deliberate parody of her generation. “Too much shit got cray.” She puts her face in the pillow and starts humming loudly. I don’t recognize the song.
I wonder if I should use my insider information. Is it drugs? Is that why Nadia won’t go to school?
“All that work, Nad. The marks you got in your mock A-levels.”
“And I’ll get the same for the real thing. But not till next year.” Her voice is muffled but assertive.
“What about your parents? What will they say?”
She raises her head and a broad smile beams from her face. “Not what will they say; what did they say? They already know.”
“Oh.” I cannot imagine Nadia’s immaculate mother and distracted father taking this well.
“They went fucking mental. My mum actually screamed. I mean, screamed. At the top of her voice.” She rolls over onto her back and looks directly at me. “And then listed all the people who will comment on it and who will make her ashamed.”
“Perhaps—”
“No, wait. It gets better.” She stretches out her arms and points, jabbing at the ceiling, invisible enemies and audience in the empty air. “Then she turned it into her fault. She made the whole thing about her. Where she’d gone wrong. Where my fucking father had failed—we had a good half hour on that one. Then my dad joined in, blah, blah, blah. And I fucking walked out and . . .” She makes the “and” loud and long, then leaves a dramatic pause. Nadia, as I have long known, is a consummate performer. “And they didn’t fucking notice. For ten minutes.”
“Sweetie, I’m sure they did.” Her fervor is making me uncomfortable. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say or how I’m supposed to support her. I’m sure if I had more experience with teenagers it would fall into place and I would be effortlessly able. I think of Dominique-Marie and the clouded, dewy ghosts of her perfect children in the photograph.
“They didn’t. I’m telling you. I went through to the sitting room and sat on our fucking ugly sofas and listened to every word.” She slips off track with the agility of a bird. “Our sofas are white leather and my mum had them imported from Italy. When she talks about them, you’d think she’d found the cure for cancer stuck down the side of the cushion. It’s fucking amazing.”
I give her a small smile, try to be on her side. “And are they worth it?”
“They are fucking hideous. And they squeak.” She smiles back. “And they make your arse sweat.” She sounds like herself again.
“What did your dad say?” I close my eyes and sink into the warm pillow. I like this closeness. I like hearing her talk. Apart from David, I haven’t been this intimate with anyone for years. There is a scant gap of three or four inches between us, and Nadia’s animated delivery regularly crosses that territory with a waving arm or a gesticulating leg. It’s a good feeling.
“Money. He listed every fucking penny he’s ever spent on me.” She props herself up on her elbows as if she needs momentum for this one, some forward drive. “I didn’t ask to go to fucking private school. Really, if we’re honest, I didn’t even ask to play the cocking violin.” She drops back down onto her pillow, point made. “And—the best bit—it was like taking a year out of school, sorry—my bad—taking a year out of his budget, was worse than fucking dying. Like if I stop now, that’s it. If I take a breath and maybe work for a year, I won’t be able to play the violin ever again. I won’t even—if you’re my dad—remember how to read.
“I actually fucking hate them. And they . . . They despise me.”
I want to tell her that they don’t, that they’re just misguided. But I know she will feel patronized; I know I would have just days ago if someone had given me advice about David. It’s that fear of advice that has made me so isolated; not the actual situation at all.
“Anyway, if that’s her taste in sofas, I do not want to see her boyfriend.”
“Your mum’s boyfriend? Are you sure?”
“Sure I don’t want to see him? Or sure she’s got one? Both; thanks, Grace.”
I rub my face with my hands, my bony elbow crosses onto Nadia’s side and she pushes it away.
“He will be perma-tanned, Day-Glo orange, and have really massive teeth. And I bet he wants to be my special friend.”
“You’re a weirdo,” I say. “Aren’t you more upset about their divorce? Don’t you mind?”
“No. I don’t mind at all. I just wish they’d get on with it. I hate them pretending all the bloody time.”
A money spider crawls onto my arm. I move my fingers in front of it so that it can climb onto my hand. It isn’t at all daunted by my enormity. I twirl it three times around my head like I did as a child. I pass the spider, on the tip of my fingers, to Nadia.
“Twirl it around your head like I did.”
“Why?” she asks.
“It’s good luck. It brings good things.” I wish it did.
She moves the spider around in three long circles over her head. “There. I need some fucking luck.”
“Because of your parents?”
“No. They are fine. They’ll get on and do their own thing. They can’t make me go back to school this year; if I pimp myself out as a wedding musician, I can even afford to move out if I’m driven to it. Nah, it’s all the other shit.”
“Harriet? Is that her name? The girl I met in the supermarket?”
“In the wine aisle.” Nadia laughs. “A bit. Not so much. She�
��s a twat.”
Nadia rubs her eyes with her hands, scrunching her whole face up. She wiggles the end of her nose with her fingers.
“Boys?” I ask.
She waits. I can feel her debating whether to tell me or not and I know—because of that—that she will. I can wait too. I am warm and comfortable. The idea of leaving Mr. Williams’s cocoon of a house terrifies me, although I know I must do it at some point today.
I take advantage of Nadia’s pause in conversation to look around the room for my phone. My bag is on the carpet, leaning against the side of the bed. It was here all the time.
I pull the phone out. My passport and purse are still in the bag. The shop keys are there too, and a shiver runs through me.
My phone has long since lost all power. I drop it back in the bag; I am not going to interrupt Nadia’s moment to ask her for a charger.
“Yeah, there is a boy. Was a boy. I’m not seeing him now.”
“But you were?”
She shrugs, turns over and puts her face back into the pillow. “It wasn’t a relationship. I was just, you know, seeing him a bit. Now and then.”
“Is he nice?”
“No. Not even a little bit.” She visibly tenses, stretches her long body out. I feel the duvet move over her pointed toes. “He was a massive shit, actually.”
“But you loved him?”
“No.” She lifts her head and squints at me in disdain. “No, I didn’t love him. I was a bit dazzled by him for a while. That’s all.”
She is so in control, so sure. I am certain that if she has decided not to go back to school, there must be a valid reason for it. I am not her parent, though; I am not responsible for overriding her wishes with my experience. I am in the enviable position of being able to trust her.
“He was a fucking predator, really, spider and a fly. He knew exactly what he was doing and I didn’t. Bosh. I’ve learnt my lesson, though. He’s not why I’m not going back to school yet. He’s not that fucking important. Nor’s Harriet.”
The penny drops. Charlie. Charlie who Nadia hated so passionately.
“This boy. Was he Harriet’s boyfriend?”
“Is. Is Harriet’s boyfriend. Has been since Year Ten.”
“Shit. I’m sorry. Poor you.”
“Fuck it. It was ages ago. It was snowing.”
She burrows her face farther into the pillow. I cannot see her expression, but I can read all I need from her angry shoulders, her tight back.
“This is none of my business but . . . did you sleep with him?”
She lifts her head from the pillow and fixes me with her stare. Her lip is wobbling and I can see it whiten as she tightens it and gets it under control.
She nods, a long solemn nod. It is the same one she gave me when she played her first antique instrument. She must have been five or six years old; she played “Ol’ Man River.” The sound was like deep water.
When she’d finished, I said, “Do you like it, this old violin?”
She gave that same long, slow nod and stared with her wide black eyes.
“And Harriet and Charlie got back together? Are together?”
She sits up, her whole body rigid. A silence pools between us like blood.
“How do you know his name is Charlie?”
Chapter Seventeen
Nadia has gone. It was awful.
There was no way to explain, no way to excuse what I’d done. Perhaps I knew this was coming from the first moment I picked up that book and began to read.
I didn’t read it to protect her. I didn’t read it for her own good. I have just hurt her more than she thought possible. The last port she thought she had in a squall of teenaged horror has betrayed her.
It is all about betrayal.
Before she left, while I was still fumbling with words and pulling on my clothes to follow her down the landing, she turned and yelled at me with such hate. Her words pelted me like hail, spiking into my skin and damaging my soul, but it was her eyes that hurt the most.
Her lip was curled into a snarl over a mouth still open with disbelief. Her eyes narrowed and focused and peered at me in a way that convinces me she will never forgive me, never forget what I’ve done.
Her parting shot left ripples of anger, palpable waves of thick air, in the hallway. She stood, framed by the front door, the outside world ready to take her, the door ready to slam behind her and emphasize that she was gone.
“You’re a fucking train wreck of a forty-year-old who reads people’s diaries and shags other women’s husbands. But I thought I could trust you. What a fucking twat I am.”
It wasn’t the words, it was the way she delivered them; the pitch, the tone, the rhythm.
When she slammed the door, the house rattled. When we stopped shaking, the house and I, there was a huge hole where she had been, a rip in the fabric of my life.
Nadia has gone, is gone, and Mr. Williams and I are having a cup of tea. It is as far forward as I want to think.
“So the book was there, under the counter, and you dipped in and out a few times?”
“Twice.”
Mr. Williams shrugs his shoulders, shakes his head slightly. “It’s wrong, it’ll always be wrong, but—honestly? People have done worse things.”
“It’s a bad time for her. Her parents are divorcing—very messily.”
“I’m not sure there’s another way,” he says.
“And she’s had a thing with her best friend’s boyfriend. Although she says it was over by the spring. And I’ve read her secrets. Oh, poor little Nad.”
Mr. Williams stirs the tea in the pot, replaces the lid, and taps the spoon twice against his saucer. “Can you text her? Try and explain.”
“Ah, my phone’s dead. I’d forgotten. Do you have a charger?”
Mr. Williams stands and rootles about in one of the kitchen drawers. “Will this work?” he asks and hands me a charger that looks nothing like mine.
I shake my head. “Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe she needs a while to calm down. Maybe I need longer to think about what to say to her.”
“Many forms of sorry followed by what’s done is done?” Mr. Williams smiles gently. “She’ll get over it. So will you. Worse things have, honestly, happened at sea.”
“Does there come a point where you wouldn’t forgive my behavior, Mr. Williams? I must look a bit of a slimeball to you. Nadia’s not wrong with her summing up.”
“It’s been a long life, dear. And if I’ve learnt nothing else, I’ve learnt never to be surprised and—whatever ever else may happen—never to cast the first stone.”
There’s nothing I can add, apart from my immense gratitude and relief that he is who he is. Mr. Williams waves away any praise I try to give him.
“What’s next, Grace?”
I panic slightly, wondering if any of this could get worse, if I have anything left to lose.
“I meant in terms of improvement,” says Mr. Williams, “reparation, if you will.”
“I need to go home. Get changed. And then, I suppose, start trying to put things back together. The shop, Nadia.”
“But not David?”
“Not David,” I say, and I am certain. “Would you tell me what Dominique-Marie’s article says, though? Could you translate it?”
He nods. “I’ve read it through a few times. I think I have it pretty much sorted. My French is rusty.”
“Well, mine, as you know, is a liability,” I say to him, and smile. “So anything will be an improvement.”
We settle ourselves at the table, the teapot between us and our cups steaming in the breeze that blows through the open back door. Autumn is coming, the sun has taken on a harvest glow and the plants around the doorway are tangled and drying.
Mr. Williams clears his throat and I smile.
I don’t know what to expect from this woman and her contacts in the media. I do know that if it were me, this article would be about revenge, with a possible side of saving face. I wouldn’t shy
away from apportioning blame.
“She starts off with the title. As I told you last night.” He corrects himself. “This morning, this morning. ‘Leading human rights lawyer asks for kindness a little closer to home.’ Do you want me to translate exactly? Every line? Or the gist of it and the important bits?”
I know what he wants me to say; I can see it in his tired eyes. “Just the important bits is fine. Thank you.”
He nods. “Good, much of the middle section is statistics; number of divorces in France, number of people to take lovers, that sort of thing. Irrelevant to us, I think.”
I like that he says “us” as if this is “our” problem.
“It starts off about David. It says: ‘Dominique-Marie Martin’s British-born husband was feted by all of France for being the mystery hero in July’s incident at the Porte de Pantin station. David Hewitt, a businessman, put his own well-being to one side and dashed onto the tracks to save the life of Muminah Yusef and her unborn child.’ Then there’s a section about Mrs. Yusef—how she is now, that sort of thing.”
He moves his finger along the paragraphs, his lips working soundlessly as he rolls the words around, tries them for fit.
“ ‘Unfortunately, Mr. Hewitt’s concern for the safety of a stranger didn’t extend to his own family. CCTV footage of the incident clearly revealed that Mr. Hewitt was accompanied on his trip to Paris by his British lover. This situation put into action a chain of events.’ Sorry,” Mr. Williams says, “that’s clumsy but it’s the general meaning.”
“Your French is amazing.” I am deeply impressed.
“My first degree is in French. I read French Politics at Cambridge as an undergraduate. A jolly long time ago, mind you.” He smiles. “And I love France. Leslie and I went whenever we could.” His voice drops slightly. “You know; when we were able to get away together.”
“I do know.” I pat his arm.
“ ‘When Dominique-Marie first met her husband, she guessed he would always have difficulty settling down. He had left his first marriage behind him in England—’ ”
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