You’d be hard pushed to find any picture postcards of Bas-Belleville on sale in Paris, and no area contrasted more with the Champs-Elysées I’d just left behind. On one side of rue de Belleville, where the pavement was widest, unsightly blocks of flats built in the sixties and seventies towered overhead. On the opposite trottoir, the facades of many of the older buildings were veined with cracks and crying out for a fresh coat of paint. Abandoned newspapers rustled underfoot, broken fruit and veg crates surrounded the overflowing municipal bins, and an assortment of empty beer cans and wine bottles testified to the favourite pastime of the neighbourhood’s tramps. The pavements were always choked with people, whatever the time of day, and I had to duck and weave to overtake slow-moving pensioners hauling rickety shopping trolleys and a glut of African women with pushchairs. As I hurried by I heard snatches of conversations in Arabic, French and Mandarin, along with other languages I was unable to identify. This was the reason some people referred to the neighbourhood as Babel-ville.
Leaving the main road behind for the relative calm of newly cobbled rue de Tourtille, I reached Lila’s school, where a steady stream of children – variously accompanied by mothers, fathers, older siblings or babysitters – were already spilling out of the front porch. A glance at my watch revealed it was 17.36. When Lila had started school, aged three, I’d worked part-time so that I could collect her from school an hour earlier and stay at home with her on Wednesdays. This year, however, I’d had, with a heavy heart, to extend my teaching day and sign Lila up for both the after-school garderie and the Centre de Loisirs, the playscheme held there on Wednesdays. I had no choice: living alone was so much more expensive, and my teaching salary plus Nico’s monthly maintenance payment didn’t exactly pave the way for a life of luxury.
Scurrying past the African lady who guarded the front entrance impassive as a sphinx, I muttered the obligatory ‘Bonjour, Madame’ under my breath. In the préau – the school hall where the children’s activities were supervised by the staff who took over after the teaching day was over – I caught sight of Lila at once and made a beeline for the long, low table where she sat next to a Chinese girl with intricately braided hair. A blue crayon in her hand, Lila was bent over one of her mermaid masterpieces, concentration furrowing her brow.
‘Wow, haven’t you been busy!’ I exclaimed, bending to plant a kiss on her forehead, delighting, as I always did, in the startling softness of her skin against my lips.
‘I been drawing lots and lots of tiny écailles on the mermaid’s tail, Mummy,’ Lila said, puffed up with pride, holding her picture aloft for closer inspection.
‘Oh yes, what pretty scales she has!’ I cooed, dutifully admiring my daughter’s handiwork. ‘Would you like to finish your picture off at home, Lila? How about I put it in my bag, to keep it safe, and you can help me find the peg where you hung up your coat?’ Lila nodded, and I noticed, with a pang, the dark smudges underneath her eyes. The extra hour at school was tiring her out.
It took ten minutes, that evening, to retrace my steps to the bakery on the corner of rue de Tourtille for a demibaguette, then walk the couple of hundred yards uphill to our front door, along another quiet one-way street, rue Jouy-Rouve. Accepting the hunk of warm bread I proffered without a word of thanks, Lila refused to grasp my outstretched hand or fall into step with me. Tiredness always made her uncooperative and she dawdled as far behind me as she dared, dragging her free hand along the windowpane of every shop we passed until her palm was a filthy shade of grey. When I paused in front of the heavy double doors which led to our building and began tapping in the five-digit entry code, she launched into one of my least favourite subjects.
‘When am I going to stay at Daddy’s house? Is it tomorrow?’
‘No, not tomorrow,’ I replied, as the door clicked and I pushed it open. ‘I think Daddy’s coming to fetch you on Saturday morning, which is after five more sleeps…’ I held up five fingers, wiggling them cheerfully. Would she remember that, last time she’d asked me the same question, that very morning, prior to Nico’s call, I’d held up only four?
‘But five sleeps is a really long time, Mummy,’ she protested, lingering on the word ‘really’ for dramatic emphasis. ‘Why do I have to wait so long?’
‘Daddy would love to see you sooner, but he has to work very late in his office,’ I replied evenly, drawing on reserves of diplomacy I had no idea I possessed. Please don’t let this turn into yet another ‘Why don’t we live with Daddy any more?’ discussion, I prayed. I’d lost count of the number of times I’d had to repeat calmly and patiently that, although Mummy and Daddy were still friends, living together didn’t make us happy any more; that it was no one’s fault, just something which happened to grown-ups sometimes.
Every time we covered that well-trodden ground, an alternative answer – unfit for four-year-old ears – echoed inside my head. ‘We don’t live together any more, Lila,’ the voice said bitterly, ‘because Daddy fucked his secretary.’
3
The following Saturday, ten o’clock came and went with no word from Nico. After dialling his mobile number, I handed the phone to Lila and crossed the living room into the open-plan kitchen, where I filled the kettle and set it to boil, deliberately keeping my distance. Anything I said would be interpreted as a rebuke. Lila’s voice, on the other hand, would convey only her eagerness to see her daddy.
But the rapturous ‘Papa!’ I was expecting to hear never came. Instead, after a hesitant ‘Allô’, Lila held the phone away from her ear. ‘There’s a lady talking,’ she said in a stage whisper. ‘Mummy did get the number wrong.’ Dropping the handset on to the sofa in disgust, she returned to the elaborate dolls’ tea party she was hosting on her bedroom rug.
A wrong number was impossible: Nico’s mobile was programmed into my speed dial. Cheeks flushed with sudden righteous anger, I lunged across the room and grabbed the phone. ‘Je suis Sally, la maman de Lila,’ I said frostily. ‘Nicolas n’est pas là?’ At first I heard nothing but the hiss of dead air and assumed whoever it was had taken fright and hung up. But after a moment there was a resigned sigh, and a French woman – or a girl, by the sounds of it – reluctantly introduced herself.
‘C’est Albane à l’appareil. Nico’s in the bathroom. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have… I didn’t mean to…’ There was a second excruciating silence, which I was momentarily too stunned to fill, followed by a muffled altercation – her voice and Nico’s – which was accompanied by an unwelcome vision of Nico standing in front of her, a towel around his midriff, his muscular shoulders covered in droplets, his wet hair stuck to the nape of his neck.
‘Sally!’ Nico said jovially. Having recovered possession of the phone, he’d decided to pretend nothing was amiss. ‘Donne-moi dix minutes. I had a late night at the office and I’m afraid I overslept…’
‘I see you even brought some “work” home,’ I replied tartly. ‘How conscientious of you.’ Before he had a chance to reply, or to comment on my sarcasm, I jabbed the ‘end call’ button with my index finger. Unbelievable, I thought, crumpling on to the sofa. Albane, the trainee from his office, was there, at his place, right now! And as if that wasn’t a bitter enough pill to swallow, she’d referred to him as ‘Nico’, with an easy familiarity that made me ache. Now that I’d heard her voice, my mental image of Albane was suddenly less two-dimensional. I pictured a twenty-something with glossy hair and bee-stung lips, her stomach toned and taut, devoid of stretch marks.
I’d first heard Albane’s name almost two years earlier. We were out to dinner with Yves and Kate, and Nico had told us about the new trainee his law firm had recruited for his department, fresh from university. She was eight years younger than me; not much older than I’d been when I first laid eyes on Nico at El Paso. The adjective Nico had used when describing Albane to Yves – ‘pneumatique’, presumably in the Brave New World sense of the word, rather than her being, literally, inflatable – had caused my hackles to rise. ‘I don’t think that’s t
he sort of feedback she’ll be needing on her evaluation form,’ I’d protested, provoking a snigger from Yves, and an amused eye-roll from Kate.
I was almost certain nothing had happened between Nico and Albane until after I walked out on him. She was his consolation prize after I left, when Nico’s secretary tired of him and applied for a post with another law firm, in search of a new relationship to put in jeopardy. I couldn’t be sure of the timing, though. I hadn’t suspected Nico of regularly wining, dining and bedding his secretary over a twelve-month period either, had I? Not until the evidence was staring me in the face.
‘The lady on the telephone was a friend of Daddy’s, called Albane,’ I said, popping my head around Lila’s door. ‘But Daddy will be here soon, poppet. Just like he promised.’
‘Would you like a cup of tea, Mummy?’ said Lila, gesturing for me to join her dolls’ tea party and showing no sign of having heard or processed what I’d said. I nodded, taking a seat beside her on the floor and holding out my hand for a cup and saucer. Once Lila had mimed pouring tea from the china teapot I’d played with as a child, added two lumps of white Lego sugar and watched as I pretended to take the first sip, I decided to risk a question.
‘Have you ever met this lady called Albane?’ I asked, hesitantly. ‘Actually, she’s more of a girl than a lady. About the same age as Blandine, the girl who comes to babysit for you sometimes…’
Lila shook her head. ‘I think Daddy talks to her on the telephone sometimes,’ she replied, ‘but I did never meet her before.’ Her face lit up as though an appealing thought had occurred to her. ‘Will she be there when I go today, Mummy? Will she play with me, just like Blandine?’
I realized I had no idea whether Albane would be sticking around or not and resolved to ask Nico. ‘I tell you what,’ I replied, ‘shall we get your coat and shoes on, and your bag packed? We can ask Daddy about that when he gets here.’
Despite the fact that his apartment – the home we used to share – was only a five-minute walk away, Nico didn’t arrive until a full twenty minutes later. When the sonnette trilled I opened the door, unsmiling, and stepped aside to let Lila pass, clutching her weekend bag in one hand and the least bedraggled of her Little Mermaid dolls in the other. Nico hoisted her up into his arms for a hug. Knuckles white around the door handle, I didn’t trust myself to speak at first.
‘Still as sarcastic as ever, I see,’ Nico murmured in French over Lila’s shoulder. My parting shot over the phone seemed to have hit home. He didn’t preface his remark with a ‘Bonjour’, nor a ‘Sorry I’m late’. Nico had always been unflinchingly direct. It had been one of the qualities I’d admired in him when we first met.
‘Will she be spending the weekend with you and Lila?’ I’d found my tongue, but not the ability to utter Albane’s name.
‘Albane just left actually, so no, she won’t,’ he replied. ‘It’s nothing serious, this thing with her,’ he added. ‘As I’ve told you before. Not that it’s really any of your business.’ I nodded and relaxed my grip on the doorknob, the blood returning to my knuckles.
‘I’ll see you both at six on Sunday, then, shall I?’ I said, stepping forward to plant a goodbye kiss on Lila’s cheek and effectively bringing my and Nico’s conversation to an end. It was a movement which brought me too close to Nico for comfort; close enough to catch the scent of his old-fashioned Vetiver aftershave.
‘Dimanche à dix-huit heures,’ he repeated, setting Lila back on the floor and grasping her hand. I watched their receding backs until the curve of the stairwell took them out of my line of vision, then nudged the front door closed, resting my forehead against the peephole, my head in turmoil.
Whenever I saw Nico, I found myself caught up in a tangle of conflicting emotions. Bitterness and anger were mingled with sadness and disappointment. There was a numbness, a void, where fonder feelings had once been, before his actions had caused them to shrivel up and disappear. I felt their absence keenly; I minded the gap. It reminded me of running my tongue obsessively over the space left by a lost milk tooth as a child, trying to touch what was not there.
Sometimes I was conscious of a spark of residual physical attraction, triggered by something seemingly insignificant: his laugh, his aftershave. Or was it simply nostalgia for the comforting familiarity of this person I’d spent a third of my life with? What I did know was that all the negative feelings jostling to gain the upper hand whenever I saw him were tempered by the simple fact that he was, and always would be, my daughter’s father.
Lila did seem to have been dipped in Nico’s gene pool, not mine, despite all those months I’d carried her around in my belly. They had the same dark-brown hair and hazel eyes, and Lila even had a matching dimple in the middle of her chin. ‘Lila, c’est Nicolas tout craché,’ his mother Catherine never tired of saying. It had amused me, the first time I’d heard her say it, that the French have a similar phrase for ‘the spitting image’. The resemblance undeniably worked in Nico’s favour now. It was difficult to hate the man who shared my daughter’s face.
The ringing telephone startled me from my reverie and I peeled my forehead away from the front door, following the sound to locate the handset. It lay on the sofa, where I’d flung it down earlier. Kate was calling: a welcome interruption.
‘Hi, Kate,’ I said, trying to sound brighter and more upbeat than I felt. ‘How are things?’
‘Busy but good,’ she said briskly. I could hear the sound of a knife against a chopping board in the background, and suspected Kate was multitasking, her phone cradled between her ear and shoulder while she got a head start on preparing lunch. ‘I’m ringing to check you’re still on for tonight,’ she continued. ‘Did Nico take Lila this weekend, like you planned?’
‘Yes. They’ve just left.’ I bit my lip, debating whether to recount the events of that morning, but rejected the impulse. For all I knew, Yves could be in the room with Kate, and I didn’t want to risk him overhearing. He was in the habit of meeting Nico for lunch from time to time, their offices only a few blocks apart. ‘I don’t suppose you’re ready to tell me who this person is that you want me to meet?’ I asked in a wheedling tone, instead. ‘You were being awfully mysterious about it the other day.’
‘You’ll just have to wait until tonight,’ Kate replied, her voice filled with amusement.
‘Want me to come over a bit earlier and help you get set up?’ I offered, fully expecting a rebuttal. Knowing Kate, much as she loved cooking, she’d have enlisted the help of a traiteur for the evening’s refreshments, and it would simply be a matter of chilling champagne and laying out canapés while her live-in nanny readied her two boys for bed.
‘No need for that,’ she said, as I’d predicted. ‘Just slip into something sexy and bring yourself over around eight.’
Setting the phone back into its cradle on the kitchen workbench, I spent the next hour or two in a whirlwind of domestic activity, a strategy to keep thoughts of Nico and Albane at bay. I threw our bedding into the washing machine, gathered up the tea set scattered across Lila’s rug and vacuumed every centimetre of the wood floors, cursing when a treacherously transparent piece of Lego rattled up the tube.
The apartment I’d moved into when I left Nico was cosy, but pitifully small compared to where we used to live. The main room – which the front door opened directly on to – served as living room, dining room and open-plan kitchen rolled into one. Two doors, set into the wall furthest from the kitchen, led through to the bedrooms: mine big enough to contain a wardrobe and double bed but little else; Lila’s, which doubled as her playroom, a little larger. To the right of the front door, by the kitchen, there was a tiny, windowless bathroom with a miniature bathtub, basin and toilet.
All in all we had forty square metres of living space, according to the lease, although I’d struggled to account for them all when I’d taken a tape measure to the place myself, the day the estate agent handed over the keys. Nico’s parents had taken Lila for the Easter holidays and, when she
’d returned, it had been to our new home. I’d done my utmost to make our fresh start a positive one, investing in cheerful, space-saving furniture and painting Lila’s room in shades of lilac, her namesake colour. With the practicalities of the move out of the way, I’d been free to focus my energies on the hardest part of all, dealing with the emotional fallout: answering Lila’s pitiful questions, which ripped my heart to shreds; cradling her in my arms in the middle of the night when she awoke and sobbed for her daddy.
Once I’d finished my chores, I made myself a cup of tea and settled into the corner of the sofa, my laptop warming the tops of my thighs through the thin fabric of my oldest pair of jeans, which still bore traces of lilac paint around the ankles. It was time to begin my lesson planning for the coming week. Tedious it might be, but if I ended up overdoing the champagne at Kate’s, work wouldn’t be an option tomorrow.
In my inbox was a message from Rendez-vous. It wasn’t an admirer making the first move, but an automatically generated message advising me that my profile photograph had been approved, at long last. My first attempt, a blurred, sepia-toned shot taken with my mobile phone on Monday evening, had not found favour with the site’s moderators, who’d rejected it forty-eight hours later. A frantic search through my computer hard drive had yielded only endless photographs of Nico and Lila and, at my wits’ end, I’d resorted to scanning in the colour photo from my ‘Tailor-Made’ access badge and submitting that instead. It was a little outdated, true, but, judging by the photos of the men whose profiles I’d browsed through so far, this kind of cheating was par for the course. Either that or I’d have to start by asking some of the miraculously wrinkle-free forty-five-year-olds if they wouldn’t mind letting me in on their anti-ageing secrets.
French Kissing Page 3