The Legacy of Lucy Harte

by Emma Heatherington

  I am frightened and disorientated and unfamiliar with the sounds of aeroplanes zooming overhead and I wonder if I should just go right back and forget all about this trip. I’m sure Lucy wouldn’t mind. I’ve done almost everything else on her list, haven’t I? Okay, I still need to throw a dinner party, but that’s easy peasy. This is… well this is a little bit scary right now and I’m not sure I like it.

  I check my phone, hoping for some sort of comfort and familiarity and I’m glad to see a message from Flo waiting for me.

  ‘Call me!’ is all she has written, so I do so straight away and turn around on the smooth white pillow and look out the window onto the blue French sky, feeling a tiny bit less lonely when I see her name on the screen.

  ‘So, is he hot?’ she asks over the usual background noise of her son pretending to be his latest animal craze.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The French guy you have picked up and fallen madly in love with, that’s who!’ she says. ‘I just know they are going to be all over you like a rash, especially with that funky new hair-do and don’t-fuck-with-me attitude. Billie, will you get down before you fall! He’s on the kitchen table.’

  ‘Jeez, Flo give me time to taste my first croissant, never mind tasting a French man! I only arrived last night and… well, oh God, what am I doing here Flo? I just woke up and –’

  ‘And what? And what? What happened, Maggie?’

  ‘Nothing happened! I just kind of panicked, that’s all.’

  Why did I even tell her? I forgot she is a mother now so it is programmed in her brain to worry more than before.

  ‘Are you safe?’ she asks. ‘Do you feel safe?’

  ‘Of course I feel safe,’ I say and I sit up and stretch. She is making me laugh now. ‘I am very sober and I am safe in a very nice airport hotel and I have hired a car to go and see some of the locality. I just… well, I just got a bit freaked when I woke up, but I’m a big girl, Flo. I can do this.’

  ‘Okay… but don’t force it,’ she goes on to say. ‘You don’t have to force it, but I just know you are going to have a great time, just like you did in Dublin, just like you did in Nashville. Lucy is with you and she won’t lead you wrong.’

  She is right. This is going to be great. If I can just get out of this hotel room and on the road I will be fine. Oh, I’m not meant to use that word, am I? I will be great! Really great!

  ‘It’s like this, Flo,’ I say just to reassure myself. ‘I’ve had my world totally tipped upside down – my whole present and future ripped apart, and I need to know that when I manage to tip it back up the right way again, I put everything back in the proper place this time, which is not necessarily going to be the same place. Does that make sense?’

  I get up and open a window and let some fresh air into my room. It feels so good and my tummy rumbles, so I lift a room-service menu from the side table.

  ‘That makes perfect sense,’ says Flo. ‘‘Billie, will you please stop climbing! You will break your leg!’

  ‘How is he?’ I ask with a smile. My godson never fails to cheer me up.

  ‘Hyper,’ says Flo. ‘His dad is home.’

  ‘Oh,’ is all I can muster. His ‘dad’ just seems to fly in and out when it suits him.

  ‘He is taking him swimming soon and you’d think to hear Billie he was going to Disneyland,’ says Flo. ‘He is so excited. Oh Maggie, it does my heart good to see them together, it really does.’

  I scan the menu in front of me. Smoked salmon on a bagel with cream cheese… and freshly brewed coffee. I think that’s what I will have for breakfast. Al fresco. My room has a balcony. I look outside again and then open the sliding door that leads outside.

  ‘And what about you and Damian?’ I ask her. ‘Are you getting on okay?’

  I hope for Flo’s sake they are and that it’s not all mummy and daddy role-play with Billie.

  ‘Well, he stayed over last night,’ says Flo and I can feel her energy all the way from here.

  ‘What??’

  ‘Don’t be cross at me, Maggie!’

  ‘I’m not cross! It’s your life and he’s the father of your child. It’s your business, buddy. Sometimes we just gotta do what we gotta do.’

  ‘Oh thanks, Maggie! It was awesome to have him back home. He hasn’t changed a bit. Sorry if it’s too much information, but we just, um, fitted together as well as we always did.’

  She sighs with glee and I sit down on the edge of the bed and feel sorry for myself again. I look down at my flowery pyjamas. Hardly a sexy beast, me.

  ‘I’m insanely jealous,’ I admit to my best friend.

  ‘Of what? The sex?’

  I shrug, wearing a very sad and lonely face.

  ‘Well, yes,’ I admit. ‘You know exactly what I mean. The physical touch. A hug, a kiss and yes, sex. I miss it. I have been so tempted many times to text Tiernan Quinn and bag a quickie off him. I feel like a desperate slut.’

  ‘Well, go get it, Maggie!’ squeals Flo. ‘You’re in a place where no one knows you and the French men are renowned for their passion between the sheets! Va va voom! Go have a one-night stand and get it all out of your system with Jean Claude or Pierre or… what other French names are there?’

  ‘The guy in reception was called Patric,’ I laugh back, putting on my best Français accent. ‘He had a twinkle in his eye when he heard I was from Ireland.’

  Flo lets out a raspy laugh.

  ‘Oh Patric,’ she says loudly. ‘Let me show you a lee-tle someth-eeng dans ma chambre! Go get him, Mags! Go and do stuff to him that he will never forget! Show him the Emerald Isle! Your Garden of Eden!’

  I am laughing my head off at the idea. What I didn’t tell her is that Patric is about sixty- three years old with hairy ears, a hairier nose and a body-odour problem. But I get what she is saying. No one would ever know.

  ‘I will keep you fully up to date with any such encounters,’ I promise her. ‘Now, I need food so I will speak to you later tonight, okay? Au revoir, mon amie!’

  ‘Au revoir you lucky bitch!’ says Flo. ‘And make sure he wears a condom! You don’t need any illegitimate French babies in your belly, or worse, a disease!’

  ‘Au revoir!’ I say again and I hang up with a smile. Flo always makes me feel better. She is like the sister I never had and I love her dearly.

  I take out Lucy’s notebook as I wait for my room service and the world feels exciting again. I am over my nervous blip and I am ready for this! I am ready and I am going to make this work! I scan through her little list of things she planned to do and it feels good to mentally tick them off:

  1) Find the world’s tallest bridge – I’m on my way to it, I hope!

  2) Find Tiernan Quinn and kiss him – I did that one in style!

  3) Learn to play guitar – I’m getting there…

  4) Never stop dancing – I am on it!

  5) Get a tattoo – Did it, love it!

  6) Forgive friends and family – the best thing ever…

  7) Spread your wings and travel far – you bet I will! And I am!

  8) Throw a dinner party to die for – not yet….

  9) Get a new haircut – uh huh! Feels amazing, thanks Lucy!

  10) Surprise someone you love – done!

  Every single thing on her list has driven me on, taken me on a new direction and I read it often to remind myself how far I have come and how I need to keep on going. The Maggie of a few months ago is like a stranger to me now. I was literally clutching a bottle, staring into space in an apartment that felt clinical and isolated and I was letting Jeff and his rejection lead me down a very unhealthy path of self-destruction.

  I had nowhere to turn, I was avoiding everyone who loved me and my own self-loathing and low self-esteem was dragging me deeper and deeper into the gutter.

  And then I was reminded of a gift I had once been blessed with – the gift of life from a little girl who lost hers and there I was abusing it. I was allowing her precious heart to be battered and bruised a
nd walked all over, but those days are gone. Every day is a new opportunity to me now, thanks to Lucy’s guidance and I won’t ever take it for granted again.

  I pencil in my own entry – to run the mini marathon with Kevin – on to the end of Lucy’s list, which reminds me to get into exercise mode during my French vacation and I feel rejuvenated and excited, just as I do every time I achieve something for her that in turn becomes something positive for me.

  I will keep adding to our list so that my journey with Lucy doesn’t have to end as I tick off the final few things. We have much more to see and do before this journey of ours is over, but right now it begins with breakfast, which has just arrived at the door. Moments later, I am indulging in my first taste of French cuisine and my taste buds dance with every bite.

  Ooh la la, Lucy, ma cherie! Let our French adventure begin!

  With a full belly and all the time in the world, I enter the coordinates for the Millau Viaduct bridge into my phone and the clever sat nav tells me it will take just over an hour to get there. I have done some research on the place and since you can’t walk across it on foot, I plan to cruise across it in the car and see where it takes me. Then I set off north towards the Tarn Valley with the radio blasting and no one to tell me to turn it down.

  Jeff hated loud music in the car. He said it distracted him and even if I was driving, it made him nervous. He never, ever went over the speed limit, which I know is not essentially a bad thing, but what I am trying to say is – he never really broke the rules in life.

  Up early, work all day, bed early, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. It was safe, it was reliable and at the time I went along with it, but now, as I drive along this strange road in a strange country with the sun beating down on my hired car and French cheesy pop tunes belting out, I realise we really didn’t have an awful lot in common.

  Okay, he liked live music, I’ll give him that. He liked to travel, but only at certain times of the year. He was a package-holiday type of guy – no risks, no chances, just A to B to C and back again.

  He also had trouble relaxing when he did have down-time, which really irritated me. I could find time slipping away with a paint brush, restoring old furniture or writing in a journal yet he always had to be busier, more practical and everything was urgent. He was just like his father in that way. Everything by the book. Everything the opposite of me.

  I am very proud of how I am managing this whole right-side-of-the-road business and I find peace in my heart and mind that he is not here dictating to me to indicate now or brake now or Jesus, Maggie are you blind? You’re going to kill us!

  In fact, it’s actually blissful here without him. I never, ever thought I would say such a thing, but I am in a state of heaven as I take in the sights around me without him chirping in my ear and it’s like my life with him is a world away.

  I think of him and Saffron and their baby and, to my surprise and great delight, I don’t feel sick any more. I feel numb to it. I feel free from it. I actually feel like I have had a lucky escape and it’s bloody well brilliant!

  After my visit to Nashville, the power of forgiveness has changed my whole outlook entirely and has strengthened me from the inside out. Holding on to such resentment and pain from the past is damaging to the heart and soul, I now realise. Perhaps that’s what Lucy was trying to remind herself of when she said to forgive your friends and family – not always perhaps because they deserve it, but sometimes because it is better for you to release the pain in a form of forgiveness?

  The peace in my heart that I now have with my brother has helped me see how nourishing it is to forgive and let go and it’s how I am slowly healing from Jeff’s rejection. I can see now the imperfections in our relationship. I can see now how he wasn’t the person I believed him to be. He wasn’t a loyal or committed husband and he certainly didn’t love me like he said he did.

  I need to constantly remind myself that he doesn’t deserve me and that I deserve better.

  Someone else will love me, I remind myself now. Someone else will treat my heart like it deserves to be treated, but in order to let that someone else in, I needed to forgive Jeff and set him free from my mind. I needed to heal and I am healing every day and it feels so good.

  ‘Woo hoo!’ I shout into the open road and I long to beep the horn, but I’m not that cocky at this driving malarkey just yet. I need to stay focused on the route ahead.

  Montpellier itself is a delicious mix of old and new, from the ancient Opera House and myriad narrow streets to dazzling modern architecture, which gives the impression of two very different worlds.

  I will explore it more on my way back to the airport, whenever that will be, but for now my sights are set on the Tarn Valley, which in no time at all I am approaching – I am moving into wild scenery and colours of regal purples and greens so lush that I feel like I am travelling through a French rainbow.

  With its thick-walled stone houses, steep emerald valleys and deep gorges, this is France at its most beautiful, from what I have seen so far in my lifetime. I inhale the scenery and drive at a pace at which I can take it all in, feeling no sense of time or rush and the wonderful knowledge that I can go where I want in this area when I want and don’t have to please Jeff – with his moaning and need for an itinerary.

  The town of Millau – pronounced Mee-yo, which I have decided is where I am going to put down some roots for a few days, is truly magnificent in a picture-postcard way. I resist the urge to drive straight to the bridge and instead park up in a bid to find some accommodation. It’s impossible to ignore the bridge’s magnificent structure in the distance and from where I am, it looks every bit worth the journey.

  Je suis ici, I text Flo. C’est magnifique!

  Cool! She replies. I knew you’d find one! And how is the place itself?

  Dirty bitch! I reply back. That’s what I meant and you know it.

  The mood in the air in Millau, une ville d’art et d’histoire, spells authentic French food, the finest of wines and easy, laid-back living and when I find a place to park up, I step out of the car into the morning sun and stretch and smile at the new world that awaits me.

  I find a quaint little shaded seat outside a café bar, feeling very Audrey Hepburn (okay, Audrey Hepburn with red hair) in my oversized hat and sunglasses and I order a vin rouge and sit back on my seat and take it all in.

  ‘Are you staying here or just passing through?’ the waitress asks politely, with a smile, as she takes my order.

  ‘I’m hoping to stay for a few days,’ I reply. ‘It’s more of a short break, I think, but I’m not sure yet. I’ve just arrived this minute and my main aim is to check out the bridge for a friend.’

  ‘Ah, the bridge,’ she says. ‘Everyone comes to see the bridge. I came to see the bridge three years ago and I am still here! I’m Starling. You are very welcome to Millau.’

  ‘Why, thank you, Starling!’ I reply. If everyone in Millau is as friendly as she is, I can see why she stayed. ‘I’m Maggie.’

  ‘I warn you, Maggie,’ she laughs. ‘It can be very addictive here – the food, the wine, the countryside and the sunshine – especially at this time of year. Not to mention the charming men…’

  I give her a knowing smile. ‘So that’s really what keeps you here?’

  She nods and gives me a wink.

  ‘This is my fiancé’s family restaurant. His dad, Anton, is my boss, but it’s cool.’

  ‘Well, it certainly is a delightful town, from what I see so far,’ I agree with her. ‘I look forward to sampling the hospitality and, I have to say, you are a fine example of what to expect.’

  ‘Ah, thank you,’ says Starling. ‘You like wine, yes?’

  Me? Wine? If she only knew just how much I like it sometimes….

  ‘I do like wine. Don’t we all?’

  I hold up my glass.

  ‘Good. There is a wine bar, Le Bouchon, which I really love a few streets away,’ she says. ‘There is a piano and guitars and a wonderful at
mosphere, where lots of tourists, locals, couples, families and single people go. Nice single people. It will help you settle in. That’s where I met my man.’

  She gives me a nod and a clever smile.

  ‘I am not here for romance,’ I assure her. ‘No, really, I am not!’

  Despite my conversation with Flo earlier, romance and men really are the furthest things from my mind. I am more than happy to enjoy my surroundings without any complications, thank you very much. I am here to complete the final parts of Lucy Harte’s list and I trust in her to take me in the right direction, whatever that may bring.

  Starling rolls her eyes dramatically.

  ‘But Mademoiselle –’

  ‘Just Maggie is fine,’ I smile.

  ‘Oh, Maggie! You simply cannot come to France and not experience a bit of light romance,’ she exclaims. ‘You could meet the man of your dreams. At least, the man of your dreams for one night, anyhow!’

  She laughs and then leaves me with a hand-scribbled note of the name of her piano bar. Le Bouchon. I might check it out. It’s nice to have a recommendation from someone who knows the locality.

  ‘Oh, Starling?’ I call out to her.

  ‘Oui, Mademoiselle?’ She looks pleased to be of assistance again.

  ‘Sorry, I don’t mean to be a pain, but I don’t have anywhere to stay as yet. Perhaps you might know of somewhere? A hotel, or even an apartment or a cottage – anything?’

  She pauses and thinks for a moment.

  ‘I think, to look at you, that you would like something, can I say, quirky?’

  I raise an eyebrow. ‘Yes, but I’m really not too fussy.’

  ‘I will find you somewhere nice,’ says Starling, and I have no doubt that she will. ‘I will ask Anton about a great idea I have.’

  Starling comes back moments later with a complementary glass of red for me and I realise that if I accept it, which it would be incredibly rude not to, I will have no choice but to park up for the night and stay within walking distance. Sod it… I decide to go with the flow.

  ‘Merci beaucoup,’ I say to her when she tells me the wine is courtesy of Anton.