Another knock. Shannon walked to the door and put her hand on it. She took a deep breath. ‘Hello? Who is it?’
‘Oh, hi. It’s, uh, is Shannon there? I’m Faye.’
Chapter Thirty-Five
Laura
Packing to go home was so much easier; you could just throw everything in. Packing to go somewhere was what Laura hated: choosing what to wear, finding shoes which coordinated with all the outfits, remembering to pack all the toiletries. And knickers – they were easy to forget. Laura had once spent a wet weekend in Corby going commando. She could have bought a pack of new knickers, but it would have cost the equivalent to two pints of beer and she was on a student budget at the time.
Today she was even happier to be packing up her belongings. It didn’t feel like an end of something, it felt like a beginning. Soon she would be packing up a lot more when she got back to James’ flat.
Funny how she still didn’t think of it as her flat, even though she’d lived there for nearly two years. It has always been James’ place. He’d chosen the furniture and furnishings before she’d even moved in. He hadn’t let her add so much as a cushion or a lamp. There was one bedcover that that she’d chosen – with his approval – and that was it. Would she take that with her, too?
She checked her phone again. He still hadn’t replied to her drunken message. Either he was angry or he just hadn’t taken her seriously. She couldn’t blame him. This wouldn’t be the first time she’d made threats to leave and then not followed through. This time, though, there would be no change of heart. Kate was right – some people just weren’t the settling down type. James was never going to change his mind – it was time to give something and someone else a try.
There was a knock on her door. Paolo, already. As soon as she’d left Robert’s meeting, she had found him in his room and they had excitedly made plans for their next step. They both needed to serve one month’s notice so would have to return home for a while, but Paolo had already said he would come and see Laura the following weekend. He was certainly a man of action. They’d arranged to meet downstairs in the lobby as soon as they were packed, but he was obviously too impatient.
‘I’ll be one minute, hang on!’
But when she answered the door, it wasn’t Paolo.
* * *
‘What are you doing here?’
James smiled broadly. Wearing dark grey trousers and a pink shirt open at the neck, he looked as if he’d come straight from a work meeting. ‘Well, that’s a nice welcome when I’ve just paid an extortionate amount of money to sit on a stuffy train for three hours, just to surprise you.’
Laura stood back from the door. ‘Sorry. Come in.’
What the hell was he doing here? Had he got her message? He didn’t look heartbroken. Had she dreamed it?
James strode in with confidence. ‘So, how are your meetings going?’
Why was he acting so calmly? He must have heard her message by now. ‘Not terribly well. The order got returned last thing Friday night.’
James turned around and frowned. ‘What order?’
The order she had been stressing about for the last two weeks. That had kept her awake late every night and woken her early every morning. ‘Nothing. Nothing important. Sit down.’ She motioned to the chair in the corner of the room. One of those bucket seats which were so uncomfortable it made you wonder why they bothered with them. Maybe it was for occasions like this. ‘We need to talk.’
James sat down on the bed and patted it. ‘I agree. That’s why I am here.’
Laura sat down next to him. A good fifty centimetres from where he had been patting. This was the man she had slept beside the night before last and now she didn’t want to touch him. It was an odd feeling. ‘Did you get my message?’
James laughed. ‘Yes. Just about.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘It was rather slurred.’
Laura wrinkled her nose. She could possibly have been a little classier. ‘Yes, I’d had a few glasses of wine.’ She held up her hands. ‘I am in Paris after all.’
James held a clenched fist to his mouth and coughed. ‘Not like you, though, is it? Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk about. You gave me a bit of a fright with your message. Where did that come from? Not that silly argument we had on the phone yesterday afternoon?’
It was only thirty percent the argument they’d had yesterday. The other seventy percent was the other tens of arguments they’d had on the same subject. If she was honest with herself, maybe five percent of it had been Paolo. Or maybe ten percent. It really didn’t matter any more. She needed to take a deep breath and do this.
She turned to give James her full attention. He deserved that, at least. ‘James, I think maybe we just want different things. I am ready to move things up a level. Make plans. Buy a house. I understand that isn’t what you want. Maybe we just need to face that it’s over.’
‘That’s nonsense.’ James took her hands in his. ‘I don’t want to break up. I know I’ve been working a lot lately, that you have been on your own. But I will try and cut down a bit, spend more time with you.’
Laura swallowed. She would have jumped at these words just a few weeks ago. But now it was too little, too late. ‘It’s not that, James. It’s the future. I need to know where I am going. It’s just the way I am.’
James started to rub her back. It should have felt soothing. She just wanted to be sick. ‘Our future is together, Lau. It always has been. You know that. Everyone says what a great couple we are. I love you, Laura.’
Laura’s mouth nearly fell open. The ‘F’ word? ‘I don’t understand. You never want to talk about the future.’
‘That’s not true, Laura. Really, it’s not.’ He looked into her eyes with his familiar blue ones. How often had she looked into those eyes? Was this going to be the last time? A lump rose in her throat. They had been together since they were little more than children. This was harder than she’d expected.
But she owed it to herself not to back down now. ‘It is true. Every time I mention buying a house, or getting married or having children, you change the subject.’
‘Well, I’m sorry if I made you feel like that. It’s not what I meant. Everyone knows we’re meant to be together. We’re going to have all those things.’ James nudged her. ‘Your dad has even promised to give me some DIY lessons when we buy a house.’
Thinking about her parents made Laura feel wobbly. Had James really spoken to her dad about them buying a house? She was tired, hungover and sitting here with James felt like going back to reality. It was home. Everything else felt a little ridiculous. Leaving her job? Travelling? Paolo? Maybe that kind of adventure was more for the Shannons of this world.
James put his arms around her and she let herself relax into them.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Kate
Luke still wasn’t answering his phone.
The churning feeling had started at the bottom of Kate’s stomach before she’d met Shannon that morning, but she’d pushed it down. It didn’t mean anything that she couldn’t reach Luke. He might not have mobile reception where he was, or he might have left his phone in a different room, or maybe he’d tripped and fallen and thrown the phone too far to reach, or he might be at the hospital because one of the children had had a terrible accident or… Stop it.
And then she’d got his text.
Shannon had been spilling her heart out and Kate had had to force all thoughts of Luke from her mind. How could she have stopped the conversation about Shannon’s daughter – her daughter! – to start talking about her own problems? Problems she’d brought on herself.
It was impossible to overstate how shocked she’d been at Shannon’s revelation. Of everyone she knew, Shannon was the least likely to have a baby. It was almost enviable, how certain Shannon had been about not settling down and having a child. Not for her the uncertainty of if and when and who with which plagued the thoughts of most thirty-something women. Shannon’s life was full and varied and e
xciting.
And now Kate had a bombshell of her own to deal with. Luke’s text had been factual and brief.
I found Tim’s number.
Why hadn’t she thrown it away? The first time she’d met Tim in the hospital, he had scribbled his number on a leaflet about counselling which he’d found in the canteen. So old-school. If he hadn’t left his mobile in the car and she hadn’t let her battery die, they would have typed their numbers straight into their contacts. There would have been no evidence.
I called him to see if you were with him.
Dammit. If she had answered just one of the seventeen calls and messages from Luke yesterday, he wouldn’t have called Tim. Luke wasn’t a jealous husband. He wouldn’t normally check up on her. He trusted her. Maybe a little too much.
He told me everything.
Everything? What everything? What was there to tell? That they’d met for coffee at the hospital twice. For a drink once. Been to a jazz bar together. And then she’d been at his house. It was this last one that worried her. What had Tim said? Shit. Shit. Shit.
Her first instinct was to go home straight away. Face the music. The return ticket she’d bought was for late tonight, but maybe she could just change it? Whatever it cost.
But a visit to the Eurostar website showed no tickets available for the rest of the day and the airlines she checked were the same.
She couldn’t leave yet, anyway. What if Luke was on his way here already? She might be going one way as he went the other. No. She’d made the plan; she needed to stick to it. But would he? Or would she be standing at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower like a jilted bride?
When Shannon returned to the hotel to check out, Kate resumed her guilt gift shopping for the children. Anything was better than sitting still. She was unlikely to find a suitable gift on Rue Montorgueil. So she headed over to the huge underground mall at Les Halles. There had to be a toy shop in there somewhere. Nothing said ‘I missed you’ like a huge piece of primary-coloured plastic that wouldn’t be played with after the first twenty-five minutes.
As she walked she tried Luke’s number again. Several times. Still no answer.
What had Tim told him?
After the jazz bar, she had decided not to see Tim again. It wasn’t right. There was nothing going on between them, but Luke didn’t know she was meeting him and that made it wrong.
But then Tim had sent her a message about some old CDs he’d found which belonged to her. Bruch piano concertos. She’d been cooped up in the house all day and Luke had come home late and decided to go to bed early because he had to get an early train the next day. Tim was offering an escape. Kate would just drop round to his house and collect the CDs. It would only take half an hour for the whole round trip. No big deal.
She wished she could have blamed the wine, but she’d only had one glass. He’d played one of the CDs and it had brought back so many memories of their time at university. They’d laughed about eccentric tutors and he’d regaled her with stories she’d never heard before about what some of the brass section boys had got up to in the intermissions of performances.
They’d been sitting close. Legs touching. It was a strange thing, being physically close to someone you’d had a sexual relationship with in the past. The frisson of familiarity mixed with distance: a heady cocktail. Where had Tim’s girlfriend been that night? He hadn’t even mentioned her.
Every shop she passed seemed to be a clothing store. There was nothing in these shops that would suit the children. She would be better off buying them something in England on her return. There was still a while until two o’clock, but maybe she should start making her way to the Eiffel Tower. She wished she’d said earlier now. The plan had been to give Luke time to get here, but this waiting around was killing her. If he wasn’t going to come, she’d rather know now.
Still no answer from Luke.
It was the kiss that had done it. Well, the almost-kiss. At that moment, Kate had felt really good. Laughing at something Tim had said. Sipping at her wine to make it last. Feeling light. Young. Free. And then he had stopped laughing and tried to kiss her.
Did it count as a kiss if your lips touched for less than a nanosecond? Kate had jumped up so fast, the wine had been spilled on his cream sofa. She hadn’t stopped to apologise. Just grabbed her coat and escaped to the car. Hadn’t even taken the CDs with her. She’d been so distracted on the way home that she’d got lost. She was making a habit of that: literally and metaphorically.
That was why she’d come here. Somehow, she’d taken a wrong turn and got lost. When she was a kid and had lost something, her dad always said, ‘Go back to the place you last had it.’ So she had.
But nothing about this weekend had gone to plan. And not just the wild night out with Shannon, who had turned out to be both too busy and too pregnant for such a thing. It had been good to see her friend, but right now Kate wished so much that she hadn’t come.
Her phone beeped and she snatched it out of her bag. It was a photo of the Eiffel Tower with a message: I’m here. Where are you?
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Shannon
Faye was absolutely beautiful. Clear skin, long blonde hair, white teeth. She was like an American teenage poster campaign. Looking at her took Shannon’s breath away. Was this how men felt when they looked at a beautiful woman? It was intoxicating.
Faye was framed in the doorway like a work of art. A rucksack on her back, wearing khakis and a white vest top, she smiled. ‘You must be Shannon?’
Shannon nodded and held the door open for her daughter to come in.
Faye walked through the door and turned around to face Shannon again. ‘I guess my dad told you I was in Paris?’
Shannon nodded. She still couldn’t speak. Her dad. Adam. Faye looked a lot like him. She had his mannerisms too, tucking her hair behind her ear, twitching her nose.
‘So, I guess, uh, this is a bit of a surprise. Me turning up, I mean?’
Shannon nodded a third time. God, she wanted to touch her. To hold her. To pull her close and breathe her in. It was overwhelming. She coughed, in the hope that some words might magically appear in her mouth. ‘He said you were here, but he didn’t know if…’
Faye looked down at the floor, hooked her thumbs into the straps of her backpack and ran them up and down it. ‘Yeah. I told him I wouldn’t just look you up without telling him. I nearly didn’t but, you know, seize the day and all that.’ She stared up at Shannon through her eyelashes, studying her face, as if gauging her reaction.
Seize the day? Maybe this goddess had a little bit of Shannon in her, too. It was so hard not to search for any physical resemblance; she didn’t have that right. She took a deep breath. Speak, you dumb woman.
‘How was your flight here?’ What a ridiculous and inane question to ask. Especially when she actually wanted to ask her about the last eighteen years of her life.
Because she did. Suddenly, she wanted to know everything about this amazing creature standing in front of her. What did she like to do? What were her friends like? What was her favourite flavour of ice cream?
Faye frowned and scratched her head. She looked just like Adam when she did that. ‘Yeah, it was cool. I came over with a group from my school.’ She looked around Shannon’s room. ‘Our hotel is nothing like this, though. Why are you staying in a hotel when you live here?’
Shannon laughed. She liked the girl’s directness. ‘My boss wanted me to stay here.’
She watched Faye take in the room. Her bright blue eyes darting from the TV to the desk to the bed. She could just watch her for ever. Every tiny movement. Every blink. Should she hug her? Could she?
A couple of times, Faye’s eyes rested on Shannon and then she looked away again. Her fingers tapped on the sides of her legs. Shannon wanted to say something that would put Faye at her ease, but she didn’t want to rush her either. Eventually, Faye turned to face her. ‘So, you’re my birth mom?’
Shannon nearly lost her footing. �
�Yes. I am.’ Her heart was fluttering, her temperature rising. Was it the baby hormones or was she about to cry? Again. She took a deep breath and opened her mouth with no idea about what she was going to say. ‘I am so sorry, Faye. For everything. So, so sorry.’
Faye bit her lip and her eyes filled. ‘Don’t apologise. I’m the one who appeared from nowhere. I just wanted to meet you and…’
All Shannon wanted to do was throw her arms around this girl and pull her close. Where had these feelings come from? This was the first time she had seen her in eighteen years – since she was barely born – and yet she felt as if she’d known her for ever. Did Faye feel the same way? Slowly. Slowly. ‘Shall we sit down?’
Faye nodded gratefully. ‘That’s a good idea.’ She perched on the edge of Shannon’s bed.
Shannon wanted to sit next to her, put an arm around her. But she settled for pulling over the desk chair instead. Once she was seated opposite, she realised it had been a bad decision. It looked as if she was about to conduct a job interview. ‘Are you enjoying being in Paris?’
Faye nodded. ‘Yeah, I love it. I’m an art major so this is, like, Heaven to me. When Dad told me you lived here, it felt like fate, y’know?’
Shannon was worried about Jessie. Kind, thoughtful, unselfish Jessie. ‘And how does your… mom feel about you coming?’
Faye rolled her eyes. ‘You know mothers. Wanted to check I had enough underwear, that I hadn’t packed anything inappropriate, that I had the hotel details and money for a cab in my purse at all times.’
Shannon smiled. ‘No, I meant about you coming here. Meeting me.’
Faye traced the design on the bed quilt with her finger. ‘I didn’t tell them I was coming today. I know I said I would, but it was kind of a last-minute decision.’
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