Philippe shook his head. ‘Outbid on all but one. Real waste of time.’
I didn’t make the usual effort to commiserate and went to wash the grime of the city off my hands and face, wishing I could return to the ignorance of that morning. Where suspicion nibbles, truth bites hard.
‘Sit down,’ he said, when I went back into the living room, pouring me a glass of the Chablis I liked. ‘Brigitte called today when you were out running.’
Stupidly, I looked at him as if I wasn’t sure who he meant.
‘I was as surprised as you are.’
Brigitte was almost as taboo as infidelity. Philippe hardly ever said her name. He’d given me the condensed version when we first met on the unspoken understanding that it was a topic off limits from there on out. Following a vicious custody battle over their daughter, then only seven years old, Brigitte had poisoned Vanessa against Philippe so successfully that he had given up all attempts to see her by the time we got together. He told me it was doing more harm than good.
From the beginning I was moved by Philippe’s inability to conceal how much he minded this, by his sense of having failed as a father. It made me feel close to him. He couldn’t see his child; I couldn’t have one. Maybe he felt the same about me. As bonds between couples go, it’s rather unusual but I felt it even now and it surprised me how strongly. I didn’t have it in me to hate him – God knows, it would have been much easier that way.
I waited for him to continue, figuring it couldn’t be that important if he’d left it all day to tell me. ‘So what did she say?’
His Adam’s apple twitched and he breathed out noisily. Why didn’t he just come out with it?
‘I guess it’s to do with Vanessa…’ I couldn’t imagine what else it could be.
‘That’s right,’ he said. It was a sign of his agitation that he offered me a cigarette when I rarely smoke and a sign of mine that I took it, bending toward the lighter. I puffed out instead of inhaling, and it took a few tries to catch. I began to cough and when Philippe finished his cigarette I handed him mine, wishing I’d stuck with my Chablis. The taste would be ruined.
‘Brigitte and Vanessa have fallen out,’ he said. I nodded despite having no context for this. Neither of them was part of our lives and for all we knew they fought every day. Brigitte was that kind of woman, from what I’d managed to gather. ‘A really serious fight,’ he said, and then I got it. This was something to do with us after all. ‘Vanessa’s coming over.’
It’s funny how the mind takes refuge in the smallest details. ‘Gosh,’ I said. ‘She’s coming here? Tonight? You could have told me earlier – I only bought two steaks.’ It seemed that Nico the butcher and I were destined to meet again.
Philippe reached for my hand, with an imploring look. ‘She needs a place to stay, Alexandra.’
‘What?’
‘I wanted to discuss it with you but Brigitte put me on the spot. I couldn’t refuse. Vanessa’s my daughter.’
At least he didn’t pretend that Vanessa was my stepdaughter, not in any meaningful sense. I had seen her just once, at a large wedding outside Paris, but we’d never actually met. It was more a case of Philippe pointing her out across the room, a young girl on the cusp of adolescence. Even at such a distance I could see Vanessa had his intense dark brown eyes. Her mother pulled her away as soon as she saw us, as if there was a risk of contamination.
Maybe I’ve spent too much time watching women cry – after Christopher died my mother did little else for two years. Maybe it was knowing that my dad went to the redwood forest to grieve that first made me so susceptible to vulnerability in a man. To be raised to contain your emotions and fail now and then – when it mattered: that touches me deeply.
Philippe looked up at me through tears he did not try to hide. ‘I don’t know her anymore,’ he said. ‘The last I heard, she hated me.’
‘But you didn’t hear it from her, did you?’ It was as if I was on one of those fairground rides that thrusts you into one corner only to snatch you away in the opposite direction, the type that makes people vomit. I was furious with Philippe but not about this; right then his distress was more painful to me than my own. Isn’t it always like that when you love someone? The relationship between parent and child is unlike any other; it’s the only one both parties embark on sight unseen, no going back. I had only ever seen it from one side, but I knew it all the same. ‘Did Brigitte say what the problem was?’
‘No, she was ranting and raving. Probably using me to fire herself up for the courtroom. That’s how she always used to be.’
This was an intriguing insight into Philippe’s past. Whatever my faults, nobody could call me a ranter. More of a bottler-upper. I was such a pleaser that I was forever apologising, even to people who bumped into me in the street or trod on my foot on the Metro. At work I was known for my Anglo-Saxon calm and common sense, which to me were not qualities but the only way to be. It was staying within certain parameters which enabled me to function, avoiding extremes. I suppose it comes back to putting things in boxes, building walls around them.
It makes sense that people who’ve been through traumatic experiences feel a need for control in everyday life. I know I do it but I’ve never thought about why, or about the price I’ve paid.
‘It’ll be okay,’ I told him. ‘It’s good that Vanessa can turn to you in a crisis. I’ll get the spare room ready.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, grasping my hand. ‘I knew I could count on you.’
As I opened the window and folded back the bedroom shutters to air out the last traces of my mom’s perfume, I thought how extraordinary it was to be such an intrinsic part of someone else’s life. Automatically factored into their equations, even at a time like this.
Philippe and I had been together two months when I took a trip to the UK to visit Emily, planned before we met. At the Gare du Nord he handed me an envelope as we said our goodbyes. The anticipation was so exquisite that the Eurostar was almost at the tunnel before I opened it.
Toute mon âme se consume à t’aimer. Tu es mon unique pensée.
(My entire soul is consumed with loving you. My only thought is of you.)
Words, Victor Hugo, Philippe wrote. The feeling, mine.
I gave a little gasp of joy, fingers flying to my lips. The woman opposite smiled.
And although it couldn’t possibly be true any more, nor did it feel completely false. The scent of jasmine reached me from the courtyard wall, always more intense in the hours of darkness. I might not be enough for him, but we still had something.
Chapter Ten
‘Where are you going?’ Philippe asked when he saw me pick up my bag.
‘I told you,’ I said. ‘Back to Nico’s.’ That was incredibly stupid. For me to gauge his reaction to hearing that name Philippe would have had to be completely calm. In reality he was so agitated I’m not sure he even heard me but I backpedalled just to be on the safe side. ‘To the butcher’s, to get another steak.’
He glowered as if I was one of his trials.
‘For God’s sake, Alexandra, do you seriously think the three of us will be sitting down to dinner and polite discussion?’ He shook his head. ‘You really know nothing about teenagers.’
That was a stinger but I suppose it was also true. There were awful retorts I could have made but Vanessa was a separate issue to whatever Philippe was up to. It’s strange how life can bob along evenly for years then all of a sudden several things blow up in your face. They were just too much to deal with at the same time.
Philippe and I were adults. Once I’d established what was going on in our marriage we’d either work it out or… I couldn’t actually face the possibility that we wouldn’t. But his daughter was very young when her parents split, a pawn in a vicious game until Philippe had called a halt to it. It’s hard to have your world upended at a formative age.
I overcooked the meat and we chewed our way through it mostly in silence, our attempts at conversation faltering a
fter a couple of short rallies. As the evening wore on, Philippe texted Vanessa several times and got no reply.
‘Would you just call her,’ I said in the end.
When he did, he got a recorded message saying the number was no longer in use. As far as I knew, the last time he’d used it was when he called her on her sixteenth birthday and she either couldn’t hear him or hung up, neither of us was sure which. I saw my husband diminished by pain that night. I felt it.
But at a certain point, everyone starts to question their parents’ version of events. The fact that Vanessa had fallen out with her mother gave cause to hope that she was old enough to think for herself, to give her father a chance at last. It was both a good sign and a twisted way of looking at it. For her to even think of coming here and Brigitte to allow it was a development we were still struggling to take in. You’d think there would be a million places a teenager would rather go than to an estranged parent who’d always been painted as a bastard.
Even now I had never seen anything in Philippe that would justify that. His behaviour made him weak and disloyal, not cruel or evil. It caused me anguish because I loved him. It was shocking because I saw him as a good man. Right now I could hardly stand to see him so drawn and tense, lighting one cigarette from another, something I’d only ever seen in the movies. The smoke was bothering me so I rushed to clear the table. In a plastic bag on the kitchen counter was the tub of sauce that would have lubricated the steak, helping us choke it down. Unrefrigerated for too long, it had started to separate and was now translucent around the rim. But the craving for the fresh, green taste of tarragon was too much for me and I picked up a used fork and shovelled an enormous blob into my mouth with the handle. It was greasy and rancid and had me retching into the sink, running water to disguise the sound.
By the time I’d finished in the kitchen, I was beginning to wonder if this business with Vanessa was a nasty wind-up on Brigitte’s part, although there was no obvious reason for her to start playing games with Philippe after years of wanting nothing to do with him. She earned good money as a lawyer and wouldn’t even accept child support, which struck me as unnecessarily vindictive. He was now slumped on the sofa with his nose in the latest Houellebecq novel but his eyes wandered away blankly into the corner of the room more often than he turned a page.
I was about to go to him when there was a commotion in the courtyard, which would have to have been quite loud to reach us this clearly on the fourth floor. I opened the kitchen window but because of the awkward angle I couldn’t quite see the participants in an increasingly fraught exchange.
‘Mademoiselle, you are not allowed…’ came a man’s voice. Well spoken and formal, it could have been one of several of our neighbours, most of whom we knew only to greet in passing on our way in and out of the building.
‘Oh, shut up and let me pass! My dad lives here.’
There was a metallic clang as something made contact with the recycling dumpster.
‘Philippe…’ I said, without looking away. He joined me by the sink as a figure came into view from the entrance archway and started peering up at the windows, the heavy door to the street closing as the offended party left the building. The sky was scored with fading silver slashes as darkness fell.
‘Oh putain, it’s her!’ Philippe said, covering his face with his hands. ‘I’d better go down.’
He was the first to reappear, puffing as he pulled a bulky wheeled case out of the elevator. He told me she’d refused to get in with him, although it would have been a little close for comfort, it was true. The doors closed behind him but it stayed on our floor. We stood there staring at it expectantly like a pair of idiots.
‘Surely she must know to press the call button,’ I said eventually.
He turned to me as if to say I really don’t need this from you. Then his expression changed. When I looked over my shoulder, Vanessa was standing right there, towering over me. I hate to think of the first look she saw on my face.
How could anyone go from making so much noise to moving so silently? I had my answer when I noticed her boots, which had bouncy rubber platforms at least four inches thick and went up to the knee with dozens of buckles. An odd choice for thirty degree heat, but maybe there wasn’t space for them in her suitcase.
This was as bizarre for her as it was for us, I reminded myself.
‘Vanessa! Hi, I’m Alexandra. Come on in,’ I said, full of fake cheer. An American would normally have said ‘welcome’ at this point.
Inside the apartment a gust of wind made the kitchen window bang and I just made it to the door in time to stop us being locked out. Vanessa snatched her bags and barged into our home without waiting for us to lead the way. Philippe was right. I knew nothing about ados, as the French call teenagers. Ado-lescents. It sounds sinister, somehow. You look at them, the older ones adult sized but only partly formed – and have no idea what they’re capable of, still less what they’re thinking.
Vanessa had never been to the apartment but before I could suggest she put her case in the guest room, she’d dragged it into the living room, ruckling the antique Persian rug to reveal the anti-slip webbing underneath and tons of dust and crumbs. I clenched my fists behind my back to stop myself from straightening it, knowing for sure that teenagers didn’t care about dirt. For some reason it was Geneviève I thought of at that moment. Strange and messy things never happened to her. You could bet there was no crap under her rugs.
Vanessa let the case go and it fell flat, the extended handle missing a vase in the unused fireplace by a matter of inches, not that she noticed. She hurled herself onto the sofa, showing no interest in her surroundings, allowing me the chance to take her in. Maybe Philippe was doing the same. I could not imagine what it must be like to look into the face of a person who wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for me.
Both of her parents being from the south, Vanessa had a dark Latin look about her but whereas there was previously some resemblance to her mother, a tiny Rottweiler in stilettos, that had gone now. She didn’t look much like Philippe either, other than in her unexpectedly tall and heavy build. Her dyed black hair was unwashed and her face caked in the wrong shade of foundation, which drew attention to her bad skin. But the poor girl was having a rough time and I could see that one day she would emerge from this phase to be absolutely stunning. Her eyes, rimmed with thick kohl and smudged mascara, already were.
‘Would you like something to drink?’ I asked. ‘We have juice, water, maybe a Diet Coke…’
‘Vodka.’ That was the first word she ever said to me. Vodka.
Philippe gave a tiny nod. My mom had polished off the Finlandia so I resorted to some cranberry Absolut we’d been given and never opened. The ice cubes splintered as the liquid crept into the space around them. You could get drunk on the vapour. I only poured two glasses. ‘I’ll give you two some privacy,’ I said. It was late and lying flat on my bed in a darkened room felt like an outlandish fantasy.
‘No, Alexandra,’ Philippe said sharply. ‘Stay, please.’
‘This has nothing to do with her,’ Vanessa said, before repeating the phrase in English for my benefit, which offended me more.
‘You know I speak French,’ I said. Well enough for her to understand me and demand vodka. She waved her hand as if I was an irritating fly, presenting Philippe with a dilemma. He could get off to a bad start by reprimanding her rudeness, or he could let it go. I made a throwaway gesture of my own. This didn’t need to be any more difficult than it already was.
‘So,’ he said, trying to smile at his daughter. I lingered, still hoping to slip away, but he motioned to me to join him. He was afraid of her and I bet she knew it. ‘Why don’t you tell us what this is about? Your mother didn’t explain.’
I wished he wouldn’t speak to her that way. His slow, patronising tone seemed calculated to annoy her, as if he were talking to a child half her age.
‘The stupid bitch,’ Vanessa spat out. Her droplets of saliva sat there on th
e glass table, glistening.
She was daring Philippe to contradict her and prove himself a liar. But she didn’t know him any better than he knew her. He was smarter than that. ‘That doesn’t tell me much,’ he said.
She sniggered before turning to stare at me. ‘You’re nothing like her. I suppose that’s something.’
I laughed openly, which wasn’t good. How she thought she could tell I wasn’t a bitch by looking at me, I did not know. ‘Your English is excellent,’ I told her. Unusually, I wouldn’t have guessed from her accent she was French. We both sounded mid-Atlantic, like those actors who can do American convincingly without being the real thing: Hugh Laurie, Cate Blanchett, Charlize Theron. My mother frequently complained that I sounded British, referring more to my turn of phrase. It was hardly surprising.
‘English is the language of the struggle,’ Vanessa said.
‘What struggle?’
She gave me a pitying look. If I needed to ask I was too dumb to deserve an answer. ‘Do you think this is sustainable?’ she asked, making a global sweeping motion with both arms. It wasn’t clear what she was referring to, but I was pretty sure the answer was no.
Chapter Eleven
Geneviève was very keen to get her hands on our new book. Unlike Henri and Philippe, her taste tended toward the traditional and conservative, as nobody who had visited their apartment could have doubted. There must have been hundreds of its kind in the area, rarefied private spaces exuding the taste and refinement of a historic monument you’d pay to visit, like Edith Wharton’s house, but on a miniature scale. It couldn’t have been much fun for an only child to grow up in this environment, so enriching in one way, so sterile in another.
Geneviève had the dual benefit of ample funds and time on her hands and although I couldn’t recall her paying for a copy – or handling cash at all, actually – her enthusiasm for our twice yearly publications benefitted Editions Gallici in a way that was hard to quantify. To the left of the fireplace in her living room was a huge bookcase where a sizeable collection of our titles took pride of place. Thanks to her, several distinguished art critics with aristocratic names now acknowledged almost everything we brought out, giving us prestige and publicity that money couldn’t buy even if we had it. There was something admirable about Geneviève’s patronage of the arts. She existed on a superior cultural plane where it was irrelevant that the rest of the world was hooked on gadgets.
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