by Claire King
When the time came to find our moorings again we steered ourselves away from the sea as though it had been a dream. Back through the grazing horses, with wildness in their eyes and their tangled horsehair whipped by wind. Away from the scudding cirrus clouds and the tall grasses. Away from the brackish locks and the sulphur-scented air, and back through alleys of poplars and whitewashed blue-shuttered cottages sheltered by the soft rise and fall of the land. Back upstream we went, to the familiar safety of the weary shallows, pursuing the end of the story like salmon do. And then Amandine was gone.
Not a day goes by when I don’t miss her.
Months later, in the middle of a bitterly cold December night, I woke with a start and a heaviness in my stomach like a sunken stone, knowing I had made the worst mistake of my life. You were already with me by then, filling the gap she left, and I lay there in the dark, edging away from you as though creating twenty centimetres of space between us would repair the damage done. As though not touching you now could change anything. Eventually you shivered and shifted under the covers until there you were again warm and naked against me. I lay a hopeless hand on your shoulder and waited for daylight, bereft.
By dawn I knew that calling her was inevitable. I knew it would hurt you, and did it anyway. Even though nothing came of it in the end, the intent itself must sting and for what it’s worth I am sorry. Perhaps you remember that day; you left at the usual time for work, but you had to come home early. Immediately your footsteps had faded I had grabbed the phone. I tried several times, thinking I had misdialled, but there was no mistake, the digital voice on the line was insistent: Amandine’s number was no longer in use. It didn’t make sense. In those few grey hours before dawn I had imagined any number of scenarios, I had played discussions in my head, with Amandine, with you … but I hadn’t imagined that she would simply not be there. I began to imagine the worst. I thought of calling the police, ringing around hospitals, but even I could see they wouldn’t take me seriously. A person can’t be declared missing based on the irrational fears of one man who hadn’t tried to contact her once in … how long must it have been? When I had calmed myself I realised there was most likely a more rational explanation. She’d switched to a different phone company perhaps. Of course, that must be it.
High on adrenaline and hope I practically ran over to her apartment in the centre of Toulouse. The metro would have got me there faster, but I always found the walk along the towpath helped me organise my thoughts, and by the time I arrived I would be ready to express myself without faltering. The streets of Toulouse were almost empty. On the Allées Jean Jaurès, just the shadows of a few homeless souls sleeping in doorways, hunkered down in sleeping bags against the cold, with their scrawny dogs curled by their sides. The pavements of the Boulevard de Strasbourg were busier, and the road just starting to back up with tetchy drivers, the heels of their hands quick on the horns. As I turned down past the library I felt a shiver of relief, yet at the same time nerves swelled in my stomach like waves. Just seeing the vast rise of the church in the square once more and the marble steps up to Amandine’s building sent thrills racing across my skin. By the time I came to a stop, breathless, by the stuccoed entrance to her apartment I was feverish with excitement and knew exactly what I was going to say.
I could recite that speech to you now, exactly as I had planned it. I tumbled those words like pebbles as I made my way to her house until they were polished so bright as to be irrefutable. I still have them, set aside and waiting for their moment in the light. How is it that some things are forgotten so easily while others wait around with purpose, optimistic in the face of experience?
I never did have the chance to tell Amandine how I felt. It was a stranger who answered the buzzer that day. She wouldn’t let me in, but she came downstairs, hurriedly dressed. Amandine was gone, she said. She left months ago. She must have sensed my confusion, because for someone disturbed at such an hour she was remarkably sympathetic. She was young and polite and looked me in the eye. But, she said, she couldn’t tell me where I could find Amandine Rousseau. She stood with me on the steps while I explained what had happened. How I had made the worst mistake of my life. I felt the cold then. A wild wind whipped around St Sernin and howled past us into the lobby. I should have brought a coat. The woman put her warm hand on my arm, she could see I was upset and cold, but she still didn’t invite me inside. Then a taxi arrived to bring me home.
I must have called you, because you were there when I got back, waiting with money in the car park by the canal. I had left in a hurry with empty pockets. I stared down at the asphalt as you paid the driver. I was embarrassed, yet you were as kind as ever. As we walked back over to Candice together you took my hand in yours, and I remember how it trembled. You didn’t ask any questions, just pulled out the piano stool for me and went to make some tea. Sometimes I wonder what I’d do without you.
Perhaps Amandine went to Paris after all. Still, it wasn’t like her to just disappear. Had I hurt her more than I’d thought? I did the best I could. I’d hoped we could be friends, but I suppose that wasn’t enough for her. Or maybe it was too much. Sometimes it’s easier to sever ties completely than to live in the shadow of what might have been. I hope wherever she is that she found what she was looking for.
When I think of her now, as I often do, I am so grateful that at least we had that time together. I can still picture her on Candice on that journey. We are standing together at the helm. She is close, so close beside me that I can feel the air between us shift with the rise and fall of her breath. The canal is dark, but there’s light at the end. The air is hot, but a pale wind blows through her hair, long and dark around her bare shoulders. She smells of cinnamon, fresh-cut grass and horses. I can hear the insistent rocking of her heartbeat, feel the strength of it resonating. And above it her voice is a hymn, calling back to me like a distant violin, white noise like static.
Many Thanks and One Apology
Thank you to my agent, Annette Green, for your continued support.
Janet Mackenzie and Tracey Upchurch – thank you for reading a draft in edits and kindly telling me what I needed to hear to keep me sane.
Sarah Salway’s writing group – thank you for taking the time to consider the title of this novel, and for all your ideas. I hope you approve of the title that emerged.
Claudia Watts, for teaching us the importance of the colour of a kingfisher’s beak.
For suggestions on details within the story, thanks to the Twitter and Facebook hive mind:
@AlysStuart, @AJ_Wils, Andrea Hernández, @BathStoryAward, @bcurranYA, @bjwalsh, @BookMagpie, @bookshaped, Catherine Breheny, Claire Tinsley, @ConfusedMuse, @DandelionGirl01, Danielle O’Keefe, Evie Dudley, @Frizbe, @GillHoffs, Heather Todd, @helennsta @jamesgwriter, @joannechocolat, @jendelamere, Kalman Reti, Kirsty Simpson, @LissaKEvans, Liz Wray, @LouiseTondeur, @MargotMcCuaig, Matt Wray, Nora Anderson, @PercivalAlison, @PeteDomican, @RachaelDunlop, Richard Leach, @RosieBBooks, Sam Loynes, @SarahBallWriter, @Sea_Penguin5, Sue Haigh, @SullyJulia, @SwallowDares, @thebooktrailer, @TracyShephard, @VanessaGebbie and @writeanne.
Special mentions to Rosemarie Sayer, who placed the wooden horse in Baptiste’s mother’s violin case, and @DillyTante who uncovered Sophie’s real name.
My heartfelt, pre-emptive thanks go now to the team at Bloomsbury who take things from here, as well as the many booksellers and librarians, who in their turn help to put this book into the hands of readers.
Finally, for Charlie, Amélie, Beatrix and everyone else who has had to put up with Baptiste’s and Amandine’s moods and preoccupations throughout all this, as if my own were not enough: sorry about that.
A Note on the Author
Claire King’s debut novel, The Night Rainbow, was published by Bloomsbury in 2013. She is also the author of numerous prize-winning short stories. After fourteen years in southern France, Claire has recently returned to the UK and now lives with her family by a canal in Gloucestershire.
; claire-king.com
@ckingwriter
Acknowledgements
Because of a misunderstanding, Paul Simon’s Penguins provided inadvertent inspiration for the opening and closing paragraphs of this novel.
The wonderful Eas Mor library on the Isle of Arran provided inspiration for later in the story as did ‘Au Comptoir’ in Toulouse. For taking the time to share with me their experiences of life on board l’Yvonnick, thanks to Chloé and Dominique Gérald, and for your welcome on board the Péniche Beatrice, merci Michel et Jean François.
The beautiful sketches of Baptiste’s kingfisher and Chouette’s barn owl at the opening of each chapter are the work of James McCallum and are just as Sophie would have drawn them.
In these pages I have only hinted at the struggles we face and the choices we have to make when someone we love has dementia. For a more explicit account of what it really means to live with Alzheimer’s disease, I recommend Andrea Gillies’ terrific and eye-opening memoir, Keeper.
Most important of all, the shrewd editorial insights and meticulous eye of Helen Garnons-Williams have been instrumental in shaping the way this story was told. Thank you, Helen. Working with you has been both a pleasure and privilege.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Night Rainbow
Also available by Claire King
The Night Rainbow
During one long, hot summer, five-year-old Pea and her little sister Margot play alone in the meadow behind their house, on the edge of a small village in Southern France. Her mother is too sad to take care of them; she left her happiness in the hospital, along with the baby. Pea’s father has died in an accident and Maman, burdened by her double grief and isolated from the village by her Englishness, has retreated to a place where Pea cannot reach her – although she tries desperately to do so.
Then Pea meets Claude, a man who seems to love the meadow as she does and who always has time to play. Pea believes that she and Margot have found a friend, and maybe even a new papa. But why do the villagers view Claude with suspicion? And what secret is he keeping in his strange, empty house?
Elegantly written, haunting and gripping, The Night Rainbow is a novel about innocence and experience, grief and compassion and the dangers of an overactive imagination.
‘Quirky, elegant and sweet: I loved it!’ Joanne Harris
‘At once moving and gripping, elegant and spare, The Night Rainbow is a daring novel about a child faced with the baffling world of adult grief. Claire King nails the voice of the child narrator from the first page; Pea is a heroine you won’t forget’ Maggie O'Farrell
‘Emotional and beautifully written, you’ll be on tenterhooks throughout’ Stylist
Click here to order
First published in Great Britain 2016
This electronic edition published in 2016 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
© by Claire King, 2016
Illustrations by James McCallum, www.jamesmccallum.co.uk
Claire King has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The moral right of the author has been asserted
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4088 6843 0
eISBN 978 1 4088 6844 7
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