‘I don’t understand,’ I said frowning. ‘I mean, if it’s over and Yves is none the wiser, then why is this all a problem, apart from whatever feelings of guilt you’re still carrying around with you? Why are you even telling me about it today?’ The long and the short of it was that I’d have preferred not to know. However eloquently Kate had argued her case, whatever the mitigating circumstances, I still felt nauseous at the thought of my friend seeking solace in the arms of this François. She’d opened my mind up to the possibility that Nico had been with Mathilde for some rational reason, to make up for something he felt was lacking at home. In my black and white vision of right and wrong, I’d never allowed for any shades of grey, and I wasn’t sure I could handle doing so now.
‘Because I’m pretty sure Yves suspects something.’ Kate put her elbows on the table and her palms to her forehead. ‘This morning, when we were having breakfast, I suggested getting away for a weekend on our own,’ she explained. ‘I said I thought we could do with some time alone together, without the kids, with no distractions… And, Sal, he turned me down.’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘He said he didn’t think being alone with me just now was a good idea. If anything, he needed more space. Then he announced that he’s been giving some serious thought to accepting a secondment somewhere abroad for a few months… I don’t want to lose him, Sal. We’ve had a rough patch, but I can’t bear the idea of him leaving. I have no idea what he knows or doesn’t know, and I can’t decide whether to come clean or to keep my mouth shut. It’s all such a mess.’
Our time was up, and once I’d paid for our drinks, hugged Kate tightly and bundled her into a passing taxi, I headed for the métro, my head spinning. On the one hand, I sympathized with Yves. Whether he was in full possession of the facts or not, he’d been wronged, just as I had, and if he chose to leave Kate, I could hardly blame him, could I? After all, I’d turned my back on Nico, adamant that there was nothing to be salvaged from our irreparably damaged relationship.
And yet it tore me apart, seeing Kate in pieces like this. I was still reeling from the news of the pregnancy I’d known nothing about and the heart-rending way it had ended, wishing Kate had confided in me at the time. Maybe if she had, none of this would have happened. I’d have done my best to talk her out of succumbing to François, to convince her the risks far outweighed the benefits, that while she was busy enjoying her trysts she was neglecting the real problems she faced at home.
There was no doubt in my mind that Kate had gone off the rails for a while. I abhorred what she’d done: the idea of her as an adulteress made me feel physically ill. But as I crumpled into a yellow plastic seat and waited for the next train, a part of me was nonetheless rooting for her and Yves to find some way to patch things up and carry on.
If they didn’t, Kate would be in an even more extreme version of my own situation, with two children to look after and a business to run. And that wasn’t a fate I’d wish on my worst enemy, let alone my best friend.
14
When the call came for parents with young children to board the Christmas Eve Cheap Jet flight to Leeds, I gave a silent prayer of thanks.
Our journey so far had been a nightmare. The taxi I’d reserved had turned up late, condemning Lila and me to a tense fifteen minutes of shivering on the pavement, surrounded by our suitcases, while I called Taxis Bleus, one anxious eye on my watch, the other frantically scanning rue de Belleville. When the car deigned to show up and we clambered inside, I leaned forward to question the driver about the state of the traffic, half shouting to make myself heard over the noise of his radio. ‘Well, the périphérique was all snarled up this morning,’ he replied matter-of-factly, causing my blood pressure to scale new heights, ‘but the situation now’ – he shrugged – ‘well, it’s anyone’s guess…’ It was only when we cruised down the slip road at Porte de Bagnolet and the electronic signs overhead announced that the ring road was ‘fluide’ – a phrase which reminded me of Anna’s unfortunate lesson about liquid metaphors – that I began to relax.
We were rocketing past Ikea, five minutes away from Charles de Gaulle airport, when Lila began to complain of a stomach ache. ‘The ceinture is squishing my breakfast,’ she said in a pitiful voice, tugging at her seat belt. ‘Mummy, I think I’m going to be sick.’
‘We’re nearly there, my love,’ I reassured her. ‘You only have to keep the strap on for another five minutes and then we’ll be able to get out.’ Rifling through my rucksack, I removed the snacks I’d brought from the plastic bag which isolated them from the various colouring books, pens and card games we’d brought along for the journey, holding it ready just in case. ‘If you’re a good girl,’ I added, wielding a carrot which, in my experience, was far mightier than the sword, ‘then after we’ve checked in our luggage, I’ll buy you a pain au chocolat.’
My attempted bribery did little to stem the tide of regurgitated cornflakes intent on making an appearance a few seconds later. Lila gave a strangled cough and, in an admirable show of damage limitation, I managed to catch all but a few drops of curdled milk in the transparent bag. Lowering my bounty gingerly to the floor, praying the bag wasn’t riddled with holes, I dabbed at Lila’s clothes with a tissue. Fortunately, our driver, deafened by his radio and focused on the road, remained blissfully ignorant of what had just come to pass.
Nursing a paper cup of lukewarm tea an hour later, I stared out of the plane window over Lila’s shoulder. She’d recovered from her little episode in the car, as quickly as only a four-year-old can, and was now playing her favourite game, telling me which animal each of the clouds filing past the window resembled. It was my turn to feel nauseous now: knots of apprehension had been tightening in my belly ever since the alarm clock had sounded that morning. Our last visit to Mum and Dad’s, back in July, hadn’t gone well and, in the interim, many of my fortnightly phone calls to Mum had been fraught with tension.
I’d discussed my reticence about the visit with Anna over lunch earlier that week. ‘Spare a thought for me when you’re slicing into your Christmas turkey,’ she’d said enviously. ‘I’ll be thousands of miles away from my family, no doubt with my nose stuck in a glass of bourbon.’ Anna had been invited to a Christmas pot-luck lunch with a group of American friends she’d met through Tom, long before they broke up. Her plans sounded heavenly to me and I told her so, but Anna pursed her lips and shook her head.
‘The thing about Christmas,’ she explained, ‘is that you’re supposed to fight with your family. That’s the whole point. I can cook lunch and get drunk with a gang of expats any time. There’s nothing remotely festive about it…’
‘Well, you’re welcome to take Lila to Mum and Dad’s,’ I joked. ‘If we bought you a curly brown wig, I bet my parents wouldn’t even notice the difference. These days, I’m just the chaperone. They only have eyes for Lila…’
My words came back to haunt me with a vengeance when Lila and I arrived at Leeds Bradford airport. Mum had come inside to wait for us at Arrivals, while Dad executed leisurely laps around the airport’s perimeter fence, loath, as always, to pay the parking fee, which he qualified as ‘daylight robbery’. As soon as Mum caught sight of us, she let out a delighted cry and crouched down to give Lila a hug. It was only once she’d finished exclaiming over how much her granddaughter had grown and how her pigtails looked that she straightened herself up again and turned to greet me with a forced smile.
Mum, who looked much like me in the photos I’d seen of her in her thirties, had cut her hair progressively shorter as the years passed and opted for blonde highlights when grey began to gain the upper hand over mousy brown. I’d inherited my pale complexion and my pear-shaped figure from Mum’s side of the family too. Uncharitable as it was, it had occurred to me more than once that she and Catherine were opposites. Mum came from down-to-earth Yorkshire stock, and when we laid the dinner table, there wasn’t a napkin – let alone a napkin ring – in sight.
Dad’s estate car pulled up at the pick-up point
as we crossed the visitors’ car park, and he leapt out of the car to give both ‘his girls’ a fierce hug. He looked tired, and I knew he was counting the days until he could retire from his middle-management job at an insurance company in Leeds the following summer. Once we’d exchanged a few meaningless pleasantries, he launched into one of his favourite diatribes about the number of speed cameras on his preferred route home from the airport.
That afternoon, listening with one ear to the sounds of Mum and Dad playing Jenga with Lila downstairs, I lounged on one of the twin beds which now occupied my childhood bedroom, frowning at a copy of the Radio Times. My spirits sank further with every passing minute, and it had nothing to do with the fact that there didn’t seem to be much on TV apart from pre-historic comedy re-runs and seasonal countdowns. Being home, in this room, catapulted me back in time, making me feel like a surly teenager again, even if it had been entirely redecorated, and only the framed degree certificate hanging over my bed bore witness to the fact that it had ever been mine.
I’d made countless trips to Yorkshire with Nico over the past years, and having him around had made a huge difference. Mum, in particular, treated me differently when Nico was there, addressing me as an adult equal, and the little things which tended to grate on me after two or three days at home had seemed trivial and harmless in his presence. Pushing the twin beds together every night, we’d poke fun at Mum and Dad’s foibles, in French, after we turned out the lights, and there had been lots of muffled sex. There was something about the floral wallpaper, the chintzy bedspread and curtains which, Nico once confessed, made him want to ‘desecrate’ the room.
But when I’d visited in July, for the first time in years without Nico by my side, I’d felt myself slowly succumbing to the undertow, just as I was now. Whether she realized it or not, Mum had reverted to talking to me as though I was a recalcitrant teenager again, now that she no longer had an outside audience. In response I’d become defensive and resentful, reprising the role of my teenage self to perfection, spending much of my time holed up alone in my bedroom.
As dinnertime approached, I forced myself to go downstairs and lend Mum a hand in the kitchen, while Dad and Lila decorated the Christmas tree together in the living room, a task they’d saved until she arrived. ‘How do you want these chopping?’ I asked, when I’d finished peeling the carrots. Mum, who was busy stirring Yorkshire-pudding batter, looked up from her bowl with a blank expression, as though she hadn’t understood my question. ‘I thought maybe we could roast them in the oven with some cumin?’ I suggested. ‘Or we could sauté them with herbs and garlic? You know, for a change…’
‘I don’t think I’ve got any cumin,’ Mum replied, pronouncing it ‘come-in’. ‘Besides,’ she added, ‘I think your father would prefer them steamed, as usual.’
I sighed and began chopping, my shoulders slumped in resignation. I knew I had to tread carefully where the subject of food was concerned, and it had, admittedly, been a long shot. ‘Just because you swanned off to live on the Continent,’ Mum was fond of saying, ‘it doesn’t mean we all have to start seasoning everything with garlic and eating half-cooked beef with blood gushing out of it.’
Abandoning my chopping board for a moment, I peeped through the serving hatch to see how the Christmas-tree decorating was progressing. Dad was busy untangling the knotted garland of fairy lights, replacing dead bulbs as he went along, while Lila examined the box of decorations with interest. ‘Look, Granddad,’ she exclaimed, dangling a bauble on a string from her forefinger. ‘It’s got lots of paillettes, this one. It’s really pretty.’
‘Paillettes means “glitter”. Or “sequins”,’ I explained, intercepting Dad’s nonplussed stare. Since Lila had started school, her French vocabulary had broadened noticeably. In conversation with me, she’d begun peppering her English phrases with French words, pausing from time to time to give me the opportunity to supply her with a translation. This was fine at home, but at Mum and Dad’s, Lila’s bilingual sentences caused problems. I’d returned from a trip to the village newsagent on my previous visit to find all hell breaking loose. Lila was refusing to drink her juice without a ‘paille’, growing increasingly frustrated at her inability to make herself understood. While Mum looked on helplessly, Dad leafed through my old Collins Robert dictionary, looking for the relevant entry. But as he hadn’t a clue how the word was spelled, his chances of success were slim.
‘Arrête tes caprices, Lila!’ I’d bellowed, throwing down my newspaper in exasperation. ‘Grandma and Granddad don’t have any straws, and you can drink perfectly well without one!’ I often found myself reprimanding Lila in French: the language switch was unexpected, and never failed to stop my daughter in her tracks. But I could see from the expression on Mum and Dad’s faces that they didn’t appreciate this at all. It made them feel excluded in their own home.
‘So,’ said Mum, when I’d returned to the kitchen table to resume my chopping, ‘you haven’t said anything more about this internet dating business of yours. Does that mean you’ve seen sense and decided to knock it on the head?’
‘I put it on hold for a few weeks before Christmas,’ I replied, resenting both Mum’s tone and her dismissive turn of phrase but doing my utmost to remain calm. ‘My first few dates weren’t up to much, but the chances are I’ll pick up where I left off in the New Year…’ In truth, I’d given serious thought to removing my profile altogether but, in the end, I hadn’t gone through with it. For one thing, my one-year subscription hadn’t been cheap. And, that aside, my Rendezvous anecdotes had provided me with plenty of conversation fodder over the past three months. Anna and Ryan, who’d been privy to the most tragic profile pictures and sleazy chat-up emails, were always clamouring for updates.
‘Do you even know what it is you’re looking for?’ asked Mum, her intonation making it plain she very much doubted I did. She’d set the bowl of batter on the sideboard – letting it rest – and turned to face me now, affecting a bewildered expression.
‘I don’t think I need to define anything in advance,’ I countered, my chopping motion becoming more vigorous as my hackles rose. ‘I mean, depending on who I meet, I might want a bit of fun, a few dates, a short fling. There’s a lot of middle ground between being alone and being in a relationship, you know, Mum…’ The root of Mum’s problem was, I suspected, that she didn’t know: Dad had been her one and only boyfriend. Or so the story went. No wonder she found my ‘predicament’ – as she called it – so difficult to relate to. It was so far beyond her own experience.
‘And what does Lila think about her Mummy having “menfriends”?’ Mum asked, her tone still sceptical, gesturing towards the living room with the tea towel she held in her hand.
‘Absolutely nothing,’ I insisted. ‘She hasn’t met a single one. I only ever go on dates when Lila’s at Nico’s, and I wouldn’t bring any Tom, Dick or Harry home to mine, regardless of whether she was home or not.’ Conscious of Lila and Dad in the next room, I kept my voice low, even though it now trembled with anger. It was galling to hear my mother talking as Nico had, that night at Chapeau Melon. Anyone would think the two of them were in league against me.
‘I’m sorry, Sally,’ Mum replied, sounding anything but. ‘I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but I can’t help wishing you could put all that business from March behind you and find a way to patch things up with Nico. He’s a good man. He’s Lila’s father. He made a mistake, but hasn’t he paid for it by now?’ She sighed, her eyes glazing over for a moment. ‘Perhaps if the two of you had got married – like Kate and Yves – none of this would ever have happened.’
Her mention of Kate – Mum had always adored immaculate, successful Kate – was the drop of water which caused the vase to overflow, as the French would say. ‘Mum, you have no idea what you are talking about,’ I yelled, too exasperated to hold myself in check any longer. ‘Wonderful Kate – whom you’ve always insisted on putting on some sort of pedestal – is having all sorts of marital prob
lems. You don’t know her, and you obviously don’t know me very well either. And you have no right whatsoever to tell me I ought to have stayed in a relationship with a man who thought nothing of cheating on me with his secretary for months on end.’
Leaving my mother opening and closing her mouth like a goldfish, I stormed out of the kitchen and into the hallway, grabbing my coat from its temporary resting place on the end of the banister and sliding my feet into my boots. Dad appeared at the living-room door, still clutching the fairy lights, his face slack with shock. He might be a man of few words, but his silences spoke volumes.
‘I’m sorry about the scene,’ I said quietly, buttoning my coat with unsteady fingers and feeling dangerously close to tears, ‘but Mum was way out of order… It’s ironic when I think about it,’ I added, shaking my head. ‘Nico’s own mother thinks leaving him was the right thing to do, but mine stands there reproaching me for not taking him back, and seems to think that, if I choose not to, I should resign myself to never going out with another man for as long as I live…’
If Lila hadn’t appeared in the doorway, trailing a bushy piece of luxury Marks & Spencer tinsel in her wake and looking at me questioningly, I think Dad would have said something. As it was, he gestured at his granddaughter and shrugged. ‘Mummy’s going out for a little walk, my love,’ I said, touching my hand to Lila’s cheek, wondering how much she’d overheard, but thankful I’d refrained from mentioning Nico by name. ‘I’ll be back soon, sweet pea,’ I told her, dropping to my knees to encircle her in my arms and give her a reassuring squeeze. ‘You finish decorating the tree with Granddad, while I get some fresh air…’
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