by Sally Rooney
Before we left the country, I sent Nick an email telling him we were coming to stay. I said: I’m sure Melissa told you already, I just want to assure you I’m not planning on making a scene. He replied saying: cool, it’ll be nice to see you. I stared at that message repeatedly, often reopening it to stare at it again. It was so devoid of tone or meaning that it infuriated me. It was as if, our relationship having come to an end, he had demoted me right back to my previous status as an acquaintance. The affair might be over, I thought, but something being over is not the same as something never having happened. In my anger I even began searching my emails and texts for ‘evidence’ of our affair, which consisted of a few boring logistical messages about when he would be back in the house and what time I might arrive. There were no passionate declarations of love or sexually graphic text messages. This made sense, because the affair was conducted in real life and not online, but I felt robbed of something anyway.
On the plane I shared my headphones with Bobbi, who had forgotten hers. We had to turn the volume way up to be able to hear anything over the engines. Bobbi was a nervous flyer, or she said she was, but I thought she played it up to an extent just for fun. When we flew together she made me hold hands. I wished I could ask her what she thought I should do, but I was sure if she knew what had happened she’d be appalled at the idea of me even going to Étables. In a way I was appalled too, but also fascinated. Before that summer I’d had no idea I was the kind of person who would accept an invitation like this from a woman whose husband I’d repeatedly slept with. This information was morbidly interesting to me.
Bobbi fell asleep for most of the flight and only woke up when we landed. She squeezed my hand while the other passengers got up to get their luggage, and said: flying with you is so relaxing. You have a very stoic disposition. The airport smelled of artificial air freshener, and Bobbi bought us two black coffees while I figured out which bus we had to catch. Bobbi had studied German in school and spoke no French, but wherever we went she managed to communicate effectively with her hands and face. I saw the man behind the coffee counter smiling at her like a beloved cousin, while I desperately repeated the names of towns and bus services to the woman at the ticket desk.
Bobbi had a way of belonging everywhere. Though she said she hated the rich, her family was rich, and other wealthy people recognised her as one of their own. They took her radical politics as a kind of bourgeois self-deprecation, nothing very serious, and talked to her about restaurants or where to stay in Rome. I felt out of place in these situations, ignorant and bitter, but also fearful of being discovered as a moderately poor person and a communist. Equally, I struggled to make conversation with people of my own parents’ background, afraid that my vowels sounded pretentious or my large flea-market coat made me look rich. Philip also suffered from looking rich, though in his case because he really was. We two often fell silent while Bobbi chatted effortlessly with taxi drivers about current affairs.
It was six in the morning by the time we boarded the bus to Étables. I was exhausted, and a headache had settled behind my eyes so I had to squint at the tickets to read them. The bus took us through verdant countryside, which a white mist had settled over, shot through with sunlight. On the bus radio, voices chatted lightly in French, laughing sometimes, and then there was music. We passed farmland on either side, vineyards with hand-painted signs and immaculate drive-through bakeries advertised in neat sans-serif lettering. Very few cars were on the roads, it was early.
By seven the sky had thinned out into a soft, lipless blue. Bobbi was asleep on my shoulder. I fell asleep too and dreamt that I had a problem with my teeth. My mother was sitting very far away from me, at the end of the room, and she said: it’s expensive to get those things fixed, you know. Obediently, I worked my tongue down underneath my tooth, until the tooth came loose into my mouth and I spat it into my hand. Is that it? my mother said, but I couldn’t answer because the hole in my mouth was pumping blood. The blood tasted thick, clotted and salty. I could feel it, vividly, running back down my throat. Well, spit it out, my mother said. I spat helplessly onto the floor. My blood was the colour of blackberries. When I woke up the bus driver was saying: Étables. And Bobbi was pulling gently on my hair.
12
Melissa was waiting for us at the bus stop, right by the harbour. She was wearing a red wrap dress, low-cut and gathered with a ribbon at her waist. She had large breasts, a generous figure, not at all like mine. She was leaning on the railings gazing out onto the sea, which looked flat like a sheet of plastic. She offered to help us with our bags but we said we’d carry them ourselves and she shrugged. The skin on her nose was peeling. She looked pretty.
When we got to the house, the dog ran outside and started yelping and jumping up on its back feet like a little circus animal. Melissa ignored that and opened the gate. The house had a huge stonework façade, with blue-painted shutters on the windows and white stairs running up to the front door. Inside, everything was pristinely tidy and smelled faintly of cleaning agents and suncream. The walls were papered with a pattern of sailboats, and I saw the shelves were full of French-language novels. Our rooms were downstairs, on the basement floor: Bobbi’s looked out over the yard, while mine faced the sea. We left our luggage inside and Melissa said the others were having breakfast out the back.
In the garden, they had a large white tent covering a table and chairs, with the canvas doors rolled up and tied with ribbon. The dog followed at my ankles and shrieked for my attention. Melissa introduced us to her friends, a couple called Evelyn and Derek. They looked the same age Melissa did, or maybe a little older. They were laying out cutlery on the table. The dog barked at me again and Melissa said: oh, she must like you. You know she needs a passport to travel overseas? It’s like having a toddler. I laughed at nothing, while the dog butted her head against my shins and whimpered.
Nick came out of the house, carrying plates. I felt myself swallow, hard. He looked thin and very tired. The sun was in his eyes and he squinted over at us as if he hadn’t seen that we’d arrived. Then he did see us. He said, oh hi, how was the trip? He glanced away from me and the dog howled. Uneventful, said Bobbi. Nick put the plates down and wiped his hand against his forehead as if it was wet, though it didn’t look to be.
Were you always this skinny? Bobbi said. I remembered you bigger.
He’s been sick, said Derek. He had bronchitis, he’s very sensitive about it.
It was pneumonia, Nick said.
Are you okay now? I asked.
Nick looked in the direction of my shoes and nodded. He said Yeah, sure, I’m fine. He did look different, his face was thinner and he had damp circles below his eyes. He said he’d finished the antibiotics. I pinched hard on my earlobe to distract myself.
Melissa laid the table and I sat beside Bobbi, who said funny things and laughed a lot. Everyone seemed charmed by her. There was a plastic, slightly sticky tablecloth covering the table, and lots of fresh croissants and various preserves and hot coffee. I could think of nothing to say that wouldn’t make me feel unwelcome. I stayed quiet and refilled my coffee cup three times. In a small bowl next to my elbow was a stack of glittering white sugar cubes, which I sank into my cup and stirred one by one.
At one point, Bobbi said something about Dublin airport, and Derek said: ah, Nick’s old haunt.
Do you have a particular love of the airport? Bobbi said.
He’s a jetsetter, said Evelyn. He practically lives there.
He’s even had a wild affair with a stewardess, Derek said.
My chest tightened but I didn’t look up. Though my coffee was already too sweet, I lifted another sugar cube and placed it on my saucer.
She wasn’t a stewardess, said Melissa. She worked in the Starbucks.
Stop that, Nick said. They’re going to think you’re serious.
What was her name again? said Evelyn. Lola?
Louisa, Nick said.
Finally I looked at him, but he wasn’t look
ing at me. He was smiling with one half of his mouth.
Nick went on a date with a girl he met in the airport, Evelyn said to us.
Unwittingly, said Nick.
Well, a bit wittingly, Derek said.
Nick looked at Bobbi then, with an expression of feigned exasperation, like: okay, here we go. But truly he didn’t seem to mind telling the story.
This is like three years ago, said Nick. I was in the airport constantly at the time, so I knew this girl to see, we sometimes talked while I was waiting for my order. Anyway one week she asked me to meet her for coffee in town. I thought …
At this, the others all started talking again, laughing and making remarks all at once.
I thought, Nick repeated, that she actually just wanted coffee.
What happened? said Bobbi.
Well, when I got there, I realised it was supposed to be a date, Nick said. And I completely panicked, I felt terrible.
The others started to interject again, Evelyn laughing, Derek saying he doubted Nick felt all that terrible. Without looking up from her plate, Melissa said something I couldn’t hear.
So I told her I was married, Nick said.
You must have known at some level, said Derek. What she was after.
Honestly, Nick said. People have coffee together all the time, it just didn’t occur to me.
It’s a great cover story, Evelyn said. If you did have an affair with her.
Was she attractive? said Bobbi.
Nick laughed and lifted a hand palm-up like, what do you think? Ravishingly, he said.
Melissa laughed at that and he smiled down at his lap, like he was pleased with himself for making her laugh. Under the table I stepped on my own toes with the heel of my sandal.
And she was stupidly young, wasn’t she? said Derek. Twenty-three or something.
Maybe she knew you were married, Evelyn said. Some women like married men, it’s a challenge.
I stepped on my foot so hard the pain shot up my leg and I had to bite down on my lip to stay quiet. Releasing my heel, I could feel my toes throbbing.
I don’t really believe that, said Nick. She also seemed pretty disappointed when I mentioned it.
Evelyn and Derek went down to the beach after breakfast, while Bobbi and I stayed to unpack our things. We could hear Melissa and Nick talking upstairs, but only the cadence of their voices, not the actual words. A bumblebee flew through the open window and cast a comma of shadow on the wallpaper before flying out again. When I finished unpacking I showered and changed into a sleeveless grey cotton dress, listening to Bobbi singing a Françoise Hardy song in the next room.
It was two or three o’clock when we all left the house together. The route to the beach was down a little paved hill, past two white houses, and then a zig-zag of steps set into the cliff rock. The beach was full of young families lying out on coloured towels, applying sun lotion on each other’s backs. The tide had receded out past a crust of dried green seaweed and a group of teenagers were playing volleyball down by the rocks. We could hear them shouting in foreign accents. The sun was beating onto the sand and I was starting to sweat. We saw Evelyn and Derek waving to us, Evelyn in a brown one-piece swimsuit, her thighs pocked like the texture of whipped cream.
We laid our towels out and Melissa put some sun lotion on the back of Bobbi’s neck. Derek told Nick the water was ‘refreshing’. The smell of salt stung my throat. Bobbi undressed down to her bikini. I averted my eyes from Nick and Melissa while they undressed together. She asked him something and I heard him say: no, I’m fine. Evelyn said, you’ll burn.
Aren’t you getting in the water, Frances? Derek said.
Everyone turned to look at me then. I touched the side of my sunglasses and lifted one shoulder, not even a full shrug.
I’d rather lie in the sun, I said.
The truth was that I didn’t want to change into my swimsuit in front of them. I felt I owed it to my own body not to. Nobody minded, they left me where I was. When they were gone I took off my sunglasses to make sure I didn’t get tan lines on my face. There were children playing with plastic toys nearby and yelling at one another in French, which sounded urbane and sophisticated to me because I couldn’t understand it. I was lying on my front, so I couldn’t see the children’s faces, but occasionally in my peripheral vision I caught a blur of primary colour, a spade or bucket, or a flash of ankle. A weight had settled in my joints like sand. I thought about the heat on the bus that morning.
After I turned to lie on my back, Bobbi came up from the water, shivering and looking very white. She wrapped herself in a huge beach towel, with another light blue towel draped over her head like the Virgin Mary.
It’s Baltic, she said. I thought I was going to go into cardiac arrest.
You should have stayed here. I’m a little too warm if anything.
She removed the towel from her head and shook her hair like a dog, until a shower of droplets hit my bare skin and I swore. You deserved it, she said. She sat down then and opened up her book, her body still swaddled in the big towel, which had a picture of Super Mario on it.
On the way down to the water everyone was talking about you, she said.
What?
Yeah, there was a little group conversation about you. Apparently you’re very impressive. It’s news to me, obviously.
Who says so? I said.
Can we smoke on the beach or not?
I told her I didn’t think we were allowed to smoke on the beach. She sighed performatively and squeezed out some remaining seawater from her hair. Because Bobbi would not tell me who had complimented me, I felt certain it had actually been Bobbi herself.
Nick didn’t really say anything, she said. About whether you’re impressive. I was watching him, though, he seemed very awkward.
Maybe because you were watching him.
Or maybe because Melissa was.
I coughed and said nothing. Bobbi took a cereal bar out of the bottom of her handbag and started chewing on it.
So how bad is this crush, from one to ten? she said. Ten being the kind of crush you had on me in school.
And one being a really serious crush?
She laughed, even though her mouth was full of cereal bar.
Whatever, she said. Is it like, you have fun talking to him online, or like, you want to tear him open and drink his blood?
I don’t want to drink his blood.
I landed a little heavily on the final word of this sentence without meaning to, which made Bobbi snort. I’m not ready to think about what else you want to drink, she said. That’s fucked up. I thought about telling her what had happened between me and Nick then, because it could be framed in the format of a joke, and anyway it was over now. For some reason though, I didn’t say anything, and she just said: sex with men, how weird.
13
The next day we were clearing up the breakfast dishes and Melissa asked Nick if he would take the car to some shopping complex outside town to get new deckchairs. She said she had planned to go the day before but she forgot about it. Nick didn’t seem wild about the suggestion, although he said he would go. He said something like: oh, that place is fucking miles away. But not with any particular conviction. He was washing up the dishes in the sink and I was drying them and handing them to Melissa to put back in the cupboard. Standing between them I felt clumsy and unwanted, and I was sure Bobbi could see I was flushed. She was sitting on the kitchen table swinging her legs and eating a piece of fruit.
Take the girls with you then, Melissa said.
Don’t call us girls, Melissa, please, said Bobbi.
Melissa gave her a look and Bobbi bit into her nectarine innocently.
Take the young women with you then, Melissa said.
What, like for my amusement? said Nick. I’m sure they’d rather go to the beach.
You could take them to the lake, Melissa said. Or you could go to Châtelaudren.
Is that place there still open? he said.
T
hey discussed whether the place in Châtelaudren was still open. Then Nick turned to look at Bobbi. His hands and wrists were wet.
How do you feel about long car journeys? he said.
Don’t listen to him, it’s not that long, said Melissa. It’ll be fun.
She laughed when she said this, as if to signal that she knew perfectly well it would not be fun. She gave us a box of pastries and a bottle of rosé wine to take in the car in case we wanted to have a picnic. And she pressed Nick’s hand quickly when she thanked him.
The car had been sitting in the sun all morning and we had to roll the windows down before we could even get in. Inside it smelled like dust and heated plastic. I sat in the back and Bobbi leaned her little face out the passenger window like a terrier. Nick switched on the radio and Bobbi withdrew her face from the window and said, do you not have a CD player? Can we listen to music? Nick said: sure, okay. Bobbi started looking through the CDs then and saying whether she thought they were his or Melissa’s.
Who likes Animal Collective, you or Melissa? she said.
I think we both like them.
But who bought the CD?
I don’t remember, he said. You know, we share those things, I don’t remember whose is whose.
Bobbi glanced at me over the back of her seat. I ignored her.
Frances? she said. Did you know that Nick appeared on a Channel 4 documentary about gifted children in 1992?
I looked up at her then and said: what? Nick was already saying: where did you hear about that? Bobbi had taken one of the pastries out of the box, something with whipped cream on top, and she was spooning the cream into her mouth with an index finger.
Melissa told me, she said. Frances was also a gifted child so I thought she’d be interested. She wasn’t on any documentaries though. She also wasn’t alive in 1992.
I went downhill from then, he said. Why is Melissa telling you this stuff?
She looked up at him, sucking the whipped cream off her finger in a gesture that seemed more insolent than seductive.