Zoe looks blankly at Jess and then turns back to me.
‘Um-um,’ I confirm, unable to string together a meaningful sentence.
‘S’il vous plaît?’ the guy behind me says, leaning forward to catch Zoe’s eye. He’s clearly in a hurry to pay.
Zoe glances at him only briefly, then raises one hand and says, ‘Une minute!’ before addressing me again. ‘How . . . why . . . ?’ she mumbles. ‘I mean, what are you even doing here, Jude?’
‘Um . . . kind of . . . looking for you, I imagine,’ I say, vaguely.
Zoe nods. ‘Right. Sure. Of course,’ she says. ‘We got a message from Nick’s mum, actually . . . But I didn’t think you’d turn up here. I mean . . . shit, Jude!’
‘S’il vous plaît!’ the man says again, impatiently.
‘Oui, allez! On y va!’ someone else calls out.
‘I’m sorry,’ Zoe tells me. ‘I really have to . . .’ she gestures at those queuing behind me.
‘Of course,’ I say.
‘Maybe we should just take a seat and wait for a lull?’ Jessica suggests. ‘You seem to have your hands pretty full.’
Zoe nods rapidly. ‘Yeah. That’d be good. I’ll, um . . . come over as soon as I can.’
She hands me my card back without having debited it, but when I question this she says, ‘No, it’s done.’ I’m unsure if she’s confused or giving us a sneaky free meal, but I don’t insist.
‘Are you OK?’ Jessica asks me once we’re seated at the only available table, on the far side of the restaurant. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘No idea,’ I tell her, honestly. ‘Ask me later, OK?’
‘Sure,’ Jess says, patting my hand compassionately. ‘Of course.’
I glance repeatedly at Zoe as I eat my tuna wrap in silence. I just can’t stop myself from looking her way. Partly I’m checking that she hasn’t sneaked off, and partly that she’s really there, that this is real. It’s just so strange seeing her again, seeing her as an adult, seeing her working . . . It’s so hard to believe that my sister is truly there, just a few feet away. It makes me feel weird and numb, a bit like I’m in a daydream I can’t quite snap out of.
It takes half an hour for the queue to dwindle, half an hour during which I alternate between studying my sister behind the till and staring blankly out at the street. Jess, for her part, catches up with emails on her phone.
When Zoe eventually manages to join us, she dumps her own lunch on the table and says, ‘This is mad! I can’t believe that you’re here, Jude.’
‘I know,’ I say. ‘It’s so weird.’
Zoe is looking at Jessica inquisitively, so I introduce them.
Zoe nods at Jess and waves vaguely and says, ‘Hi, Jess.’ Then, ‘And you’re Jude’s . . . friend, or . . .’
‘Girlfriend,’ Jess explains. ‘Your brother struggles with words like “girlfriend” or “partner”, or even “love”, in fact, so . . .’
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Should I have specified? I didn’t mean to be vague.’
‘Must be a family trait,’ Zoe interrupts. ‘I’m not too good with that stuff either.’ She takes a bite of her sandwich, which I note is the same as the one Jessica chose. It crosses my mind that a Vegan Deelite is probably the closest thing to a Quorn sandwich Snackway have to offer. Some things, it seems, never change. Zoe, I now notice, has at least put on some weight.
‘So how long are you here?’ Zoe asks, speaking through crumbs. ‘Because I’m not gonna be able to take more than ten minutes right now. Can I see you afterwards? Where are you staying?’
‘Do you actually want to see me afterwards?’ I ask her.
Zoe raises one eyebrow. ‘Well, yeah,’ she says. ‘I’m hardly going to send you packing, am I, bro? Not after you’ve come all this way.’
I manage to laugh a little at this, despite my desire to cry. ‘Well, good,’ I say. ‘I’m glad.’
Once we’ve explained that we have two more nights before we fly home and that we’re staying in Nice, we arrange to meet Zoe back at the campsite.
As Zoe returns behind the counter and begins to help clean up after the midday rush, I dump our wrappers in the bin and, after one last glance at my long-lost sister, join Jess outside in the sunshine.
‘Well, we found her,’ Jessica says. ‘That’s amazing.’
‘Do you think I should tell Mum?’ I ask. ‘I’m feeling like I should probably phone her. I’ve been lying to her for years, pretending that I’m still getting postcards. But this time it would be true. I could honestly say that she’s fine.’
Jess takes my hand and gives it a squeeze. ‘Maybe later,’ she says. ‘Talk to your sister first. See how she feels about it, maybe?’
I chew my bottom lip and nod. ‘I suppose.’
‘If you’ve been telling her Zoe’s fine, it’s not as if she thinks she’s dead or anything, anyway.’
‘No, I guess not,’ I admit.
‘So what now?’ Jess asks. ‘We’ve got over three hours to kill.’
I pause and look back at the shop. ‘She won’t vanish, will she? You don’t think she’ll just run off again?’
‘No!’ Jess says, definitively. ‘No, she can’t, can she? She’s at work until six, and then she goes home to where all her stuff is, to where her boyfriend is, apparently. And by the time she gets there, we’ll be waiting. So I really can’t see any way she could vanish, even if she wanted to.’
I nod and try to take a normal breath, but it’s hard. ‘That makes sense,’ I say. ‘It’s just . . . well, it’s Zoe. You don’t know her.’
‘That’s true,’ Jess says. ‘But I really think that you’ll be fine. And I think she wants to see you. But what now? What do you want to do in the meantime?’
‘I’ve really no idea, Jess,’ I tell her honestly. ‘I feel really . . . strange. A bit floaty . . . Can you just decide? ’Cause I really don’t care what we do.’
‘Sure,’ Jess says. ‘Happy to. So there’s a little village we went past, and I was thinking . . .’
Thirteen
Jude
We return to the campsite just after five-thirty. We’ve spent a pleasant enough afternoon wandering around a nearby village called Valbonne, but I’d struggle to specify anything that we’ve seen, or even relate any conversation that Jess and I have had. I’ve been obsessively thinking about Zoe all afternoon, compulsively running potential snippets of conversation through my mind.
Though our day in the sunshine has been nice, it’s shockingly cold at the campsite. It’s nestled at the bottom of a valley, so the sun has long since vanished behind the hills and an eerie mist is drifting up from the river and swirling around the mobile homes.
I take my jacket off and add a pullover before slipping it back on. Stupidly, I have left my overcoat in the apartment. I hadn’t expected to be needing it.
While we wait we walk once around the perimeter, but then, driven by the cold, which is especially intense near the river, we’re forced back to the car, where we run the engine just long enough to warm ourselves back up again.
At five past six a little pink scooter comes through the entrance. The rider beeps twice on the puny horn and waves at us before revving up and continuing into the campsite.
‘Your sister’s a biker,’ Jess comments.
‘She must be bloody frozen.’
We lock the car and follow in the direction the woman indicated this morning until we spot Zoe’s scooter parked up beside one of the cabins. The door opens as we approach and Zoe beckons us in. ‘Come inside!’ she says. ‘It’s freezing out there.’
The cabin is basic but warm. Considering that this is where Zoe lives, it’s also surprisingly clean. The state of her bedroom had always been something of a standing joke growing up.
When I comment on this, Zoe says, ‘Oh, that’s not me. That’s thanks to Nick. I’m still as messy as ever.’
She makes us mugs of tea and then, somewhat frustratingly, asks Jess how she and I met. Frustrating because I’d
much rather be talking about Zoe.
Just as Jess is finishing her hyper-detailed chronology, the door opens and a woman steps in. She must be a very good friend of Zoe’s, because without a word of invitation she pulls a fold-out chair from behind the refrigerator and joins us around the tiny dining table.
‘Hello!’ she says, shaking our hands. ‘A family get-together. I wasn’t expecting that when I got up this morning. So, what’s happening?’
Jess and I glance at each other confusedly and then back at the woman and then at Zoe.
‘Oh,’ Zoe says. ‘Sorry. This is Nick.’
‘Oh . . . you’re Nick,’ I say. ‘Sorry, I was . . . never mind.’
‘Expecting a guy, perhaps?’ Nick asks, sounding amused.
‘Not at all,’ I say. ‘I . . . um, wasn’t expecting anything in particular.’
‘It’s Nicola, actually,’ she tells us. ‘But everyone calls me Nick, so . . .’
‘Sorry, but . . . just to get this clear,’ Jessica says. ‘You’re Zoe’s friend, or her partner?’
‘Both, I hope,’ Nick laughs, shooting Zoe a glare.
‘I should have told them,’ Zoe tells her. Then, addressing us, she continues, ‘Sorry, I should have warned you.’
‘Warned?’ Nick says. ‘Why, is there a problem here?’
‘No,’ Zoe says. ‘Don’t be like that. You know what I mean.’
‘Is it a problem for you?’ Nick asks, looking between me and Jessica.
We both shake our heads in reply. ‘Not a problem at all,’ I tell her. ‘Just a surprise. But then my sister’s always full of surprises.’
‘She is,’ Nick says, reaching out to stroke Zoe’s back. ‘That’s why I love her so much.’
We sit in embarrassed silence for a few seconds before Jess comes to the rescue. ‘So, Zoe,’ she asks, using her social-worker voice again. ‘Did you say something about Nick’s mum phoning you?’
Zoe nods. ‘She emailed us, actually. The phone’s out of credit, so . . .’
‘I bought a top-up card today,’ Nick tells her, as an aside. ‘I just haven’t done it yet.’
‘Good,’ Zoe says. ‘Thanks.’
‘So the woman we met in the commune, Nuala . . .’
‘She’s my mum,’ Nick confirms.
‘Oh,’ Jess says. ‘I didn’t realise. But now you say it, you do look a bit alike.’
‘Yeah, people always say that,’ Nick says.
‘I can’t believe you went to Siochain House!’ Zoe says. ‘What was it like? Who did you see?’
‘It was cold,’ I say. ‘It was really cold. And we saw, um, Gunter, and Nuala, of course. No one else, really. There were two women outside as well, but we didn’t really speak to them.’
‘There was that guy reading a book,’ Jess adds. ‘Darren?’
‘Dillon?’ Nick suggests.
‘Yeah, that’s it.’
‘What did you think of the place?’
‘It was nice,’ Jessica says, presumably being polite.
‘Nice?’ Zoe repeats, disdainfully. ‘Really?’
‘Zoe hated it,’ Nick explains. ‘I’m not that keen these days, if I’m honest. But I grew up there so I have a different relationship with the place.’
‘You grew up there?’ Jessica says.
‘I didn’t hate it,’ Zoe tells Nick. ‘They hated me.’
‘They did not,’ she replies. ‘They may have hated how little housework you did. But they didn’t hate you.’
‘They did,’ Zoe tells me, nodding to reinforce the point. ‘But Nick’s right. I wasn’t into it at all.’
‘It’s changed a lot,’ Nick says. ‘When I was a kid it was great fun. There were loads of people living there, maybe thirty or forty adults. And what with the whole free-love thing in the seventies and early eighties, there were quite a few kids there, too.’
This is this first indication I’ve had of Nick’s age. With her short hair and boyish features, she’s got one of those faces that makes it impossible to guess. She could be anything between thirty and fifty years old. If Nick was conceived in the late seventies or early eighties, I guess it must be more like forty.
‘A few of us didn’t know who our dads were, which was challenging, I suppose,’ she continues. ‘But it was parties for the adults and treehouses and teepees for the kids. I had an amazing childhood there, despite it all being a bit weird from an outside perspective. But of course, that’s all pretty much gone now.’
‘Nick wanted to move back there,’ Zoe explains. ‘But it didn’t work out. Which is my fault, of course.’
‘Not entirely,’ Nick says. ‘I think my memories were a bit rose-tinted. As a kid, it’s all running around and campfires, yeah? But for the adults, I think the whole self-sufficiency thing was pretty hard going. Plus, it’s dying, really. It’s almost dead, actually. A group of us moved back to try to . . . to try to rejuvenate it, I suppose you’d say. But it didn’t really work. The oldies are all set in their ways. No one wanted to change anything to accommodate us. And of course, Zoe didn’t fit in at all.’
‘So you came here instead,’ Jess says.
‘Yes, why here?’ I ask. ‘Why France?’
‘Well, I’m a teacher,’ Nick says. ‘I saw a job advertised at Berlitz in Sophia. And we thought, Why not?, didn’t we? We both fancied a bit of a change. And some sunshine!’
‘You teach in French, then, or . . . ?’
‘I teach English,’ Nick says. ‘To French people, mainly.’
‘She’s teaching me French, too,’ Zoe says. ‘She’s a brilliant teacher.’
‘And you?’ Nick asks now, addressing both of us. ‘How did you end up here?’
‘Well, they came looking for me, didn’t they?’ Zoe tells her, speaking in that same tone of adolescent disdain I remember from when we were younger.
Nick doesn’t flinch. ‘Yes, I got that,’ she says. ‘I mean, how? How did you find us? Mum didn’t give you the address, did she?’
‘Oh, no. No, she was very careful not to do that,’ I say.
‘So how?’ Nick asks.
‘It’s, um, a bit embarrassing,’ I tell her, gritting my teeth.
‘Go on,’ Nick urges.
So I explain how I looked in her mother’s computer, at which Nick laughs, and then Jess and I spend a few minutes retracing our adventure backwards.
‘Wow,’ Nick says, once we’ve finished. ‘So, Buxton, Blackpool, Portpatrick . . .’
‘Morecambe, too,’ Zoe adds.
‘Morecambe,’ Nick repeats, ‘and then here?’
‘Via Gatwick and Nice,’ I say. ‘It’s been quite a trip.’
‘Sounds it.’
‘It’s been fun,’ Jessica says. ‘We’ve had a great time, haven’t we?’
‘And all to track down Zoe, here,’ Nick says. ‘You must have really wanted to find her.’
We all turn to look at Zoe now, which is bad timing. Her eyes are glistening with emotion. ‘I’m sorry, Jude,’ she says. ‘I didn’t mean to be so hard to find. It’s just . . .’
Nick raises one eyebrow and laughs out loud at this. ‘Oh, she did,’ she tells us. ‘She definitely meant to be this hard to find. But well done. You managed to track her down anyway.’
We chat for about an hour, the conversation flowing relatively easily. We talk about our jobs, first Jessica’s and mine, and then Nick’s TEFL post at Berlitz. Finally Zoe explains that she’d already worked for Snackway in Blackpool, which enabled her to get the job here, even though her French isn’t great. ‘Back home, it was one of those shitty zero-hours contracts,’ she explains. ‘But thankfully they don’t allow those in France, so here I actually know what hours I’m going to be working and get paid for them.’
They explain to us how they had driven down in Nick’s old camper van, but how the engine had failed one day as Nick drove home from work.
‘We were living in a tent, really,’ Nick says. ‘We were just using the van for transport.’
‘But
it was full of all our stuff,’ Zoe explains, ‘so we had to empty it when it broke down. It ended up being scrapped.’
‘Poor Victor/Wictoria,’ Nick says. ‘That’s what I called it, by the way. Victor/Wictoria, the VW Van.’
‘The owner here offered us this place for the winter and we jumped at the chance,’ Zoe says. ‘It’s really cheap. The only downside is that we have to move out before June. They rent them out to tourists and what-have-you over the summer. So we’ll probably look for a proper flat or something by then.’
‘If we can save up the deposit,’ Nick says.
‘Yeah. Neither of us are brilliant with money, are we?’ Zoe says, looking at her partner with amused complicity.
Just chatting like this is fine, I suppose. Nick seems nice enough, and Zoe is about as relaxed as I’ve ever seen her. But I’m also finding the whole thing frustrating. Because with Jessica and Nick present, there’s some kind of invisible barrier to getting down to the nitty-gritty. It’s as if there’s an unspoken agreement to avoid anything intimate, or difficult, or important.
Zoe, for instance, hasn’t once asked me about Mum or Dad. And with the ether filled with shallow chit-chat, the space in which I might address the elephant in the room – namely why Zoe ran away in the first place – seems entirely absent. We’re stuck in a groove of frenetic banalities and there’s no way I can think of to change the record.
By seven-thirty, I’m feeling unexpectedly tired. Something about chatting about one thing while simultaneously imagining what I’d like to be saying is wearing me down. I’m also starting to feel quite hungry, and there’s been absolutely no suggestion of food.
‘So, tomorrow,’ Nick says, after a brief silence. ‘Has Zoe spoken to you about tomorrow?’
‘Um, no,’ I say, wondering when Zoe spoke to Nick about tomorrow. They had clearly hatched a plan before we even arrived.
‘OK, well, I’m off in the morning,’ Nick says. ‘And Zoe’s off in the afternoon. So if you fancy it, we could show you around, but it’ll have to be separately. We’d have to take it in turns.’
I glance at Zoe, who shrugs and smiles thinly, and from this I somehow work out that this is all Nick’s idea, and from this I further deduce that Nick is the one who decides stuff in this relationship. It’s amazing how much you can pick up from a glance and a shrug sometimes.
The Road to Zoe Page 22