It is a conversation that we can’t carry on in the dark. After her initial mumbled and, to her credit, straightforward yes, there are too many questions to ask, too many plans and promises to undertake; it needs light to take away the fear. I click the bedside lamp on with my thumb.
Questions tumble through my mind; I’m not sure which should be the first. I go for the obvious.
“How pregnant? How many weeks?”
She just shrugs. She’s sitting on the bed, wearing tartan pajama shorts and a pink vest with hearts on it. She doesn’t look like a round picture of pregnancy, but there is just a thickening, a convex band around her midriff. She could still zip up a pair of very small jeans.
I’m making us a cup of tea, trying to balance the kettle and the cups on the awkwardly sized tray that the hotel has provided to keep everything off the polished wood.
“How long do you think?” I don’t want to have to spell it out; I have no desire to ask her graphic questions about when and with whom.
“It was snowing. I was at a party and I walked there in my boots because I’d get wet feet.” She doesn’t look at me, instead she swings her long legs back onto the duvet and lies down facing the ceiling.
I stir the tea, pretend to be busy. Instinctively I know she does not want eye contact for this conversation.
“Nad, it can’t have snowed since . . . when? March?”
I look back at her. What I used to think of as her angry face is set firm. I know now that it is her most hurt face, the mask she uses to cover her vulnerability. A single tear rolls down across her cheek and into her hair. “Yes, it snowed in March,” she says, and knits her fingers together over her face. “On March fourteenth.”
I’m trying to do the math. It is the end of September. Tomorrow is officially October. I sit down hard on the end of the bed. “Are you sure?”
“My friend Laura’s party.” She turns onto her front, her face in the pillow. “I remember it well.”
“Have you seen a doctor?”
“No.” Her voice is muffled as she presses her face into the pillow. “I’m trying not to think about it. It’s worked so far.”
I reach behind me and close my fingers gently around her ankle. It is small and bony, the leg of a child. “I think that gives you about two months to go.”
She doesn’t answer.
“And then there’ll be a whole other person on the planet. A new human.” I don’t know if I’m helping her, it’s just what I think. “What a wonder.”
“I thought you’d be angry.”
“Why?”
“I thought everyone would be angry.”
I’m surprised, shocked. I’m a little scared for her. I’m scared for myself when I think about getting her home. Then I remember that she got here on her own; she was very nearly as pregnant then as she is now.
“Does anyone know?”
She sits up again. “No.”
“Not even Harriet?”
“Definitely not Harriet,” she says, and I remember the diary, remember Charlie. Now is not the time to bring it up.
“What about school?”
“I don’t go to school, remember?”
Maybe Nadia is not as unprepared as I think she is. “What about your symphony?”
“This is my symphony,” she says. And I believe her.
* * *
It is three o’clock in the morning when I wander down to the reception. I ask them if the bar is open and the man behind the desk says that, yes, of course, he can open it. I thank him and order a red wine.
I sink into a huge armchair in the bar. The skin is tight across my forehead and I am wired with thoughts. I ask myself briefly whether all of life is like this and I simply haven’t seen it through the filter of David. It can’t be. Perhaps David and being with him protected me from this frenetic activity. Perhaps when you open your life to other people this is the chaos that overwhelms it.
I have come down here to open the box that David has left. The bar is silent. The receptionist has gone to get it from the safe for me; he has not even questioned the situation. He must deal with craziness all the time.
When he comes back with the box, I have drunk more than half the wine and eaten all of the small fish-shaped crackers he brought with it. I ask him for another glass and he goes to fetch it without comment.
The box is on the table in front of me. The neat, blue box brings back so many memories. It means holidays and celebrations, it means secrets and surprises. Once or twice, in ideas that wash across my mind like waves of a winter sea, it means Christmases alone with my phone faceup on the table, watching its screen for a flash or waiting for a call.
I pull one corner of the ribbon. The waiter comes back with my wine and a small plate of bruschetta. I’m grateful for the bread; I am hungry. I eat the three pieces of bruschetta before I pull the rest of the ribbon; it gives the man time to go back behind his desk. Whatever is in this box is private, that’s why I’m sitting here alone in the middle of the night.
I lift the lid of the box.
Inside there is a smaller box, squat and square, and two envelopes. Both envelopes have Grace written on them in those suave, sloping black letters, the calm of his handwriting, the familiarity of his habits.
The top envelope, the smaller of the two, has 2 written neatly in the top right-hand corner. I shuffle through. The other envelope says 1. The ring box, and it is—without doubt—a ring box, no matter what might turn out to be in it, says 3.
The first envelope contains a single first-class train ticket from Ashford to Paris. It is dated for next Friday. The 7 of October. I am being summoned to Paris.
I have missed Paris.
In the corner of the thick velum envelope is a pair of keys; I have to shake them out. They are the keys to David’s apartment, one to the outside door and one to the intimacy of the apartment itself. In eight years, I never had a set of these keys.
I take another drink before I open the second envelope.
The letter is handwritten, elegantly set out, as if David has counted the number of words that will fit on a page and made sure it starts at the top and ends at the bottom. I knew from the moment the box arrived that I would read this. The rational parts of me say that I am reading this because I want him to say sorry. I want him to apologize for all the years that he gambled with my future, to take back all the pain and the twisting.
The other parts of me, the parts that pull—physically and without negotiation—they want him to plead with me, to need me, to beg for me.
Dear Grace,
There are no words to unravel the terrible mess I’ve made. I have lost the thing I valued most in the world. And Grace, over the last months, I have lost a lot. There is one thing that burns, one thing that keeps me awake at night. I have lost you.
I didn’t imagine that life without you would feel like this. I was a fool.
I can’t begin to tell you how horrible it’s been and I don’t want to. You know everything I’ve done. There’s no need to write the things that torture me during the day and haunt me at night. You know what I did, and there are no excuses. It is all over. I have learnt the humblest of lessons in the hardest way.
I have told my children about every mistake I have made. I have, for the first time in my life, been honest with everyone. I have been seeing a counselor and he has helped me take responsibility for the way I behave and the way I’ve treated everyone I love—not just you.
Please, Gracie, if you can bear it, come to Paris. My children will arrive on Saturday, 8 October, for the night. I would love you to meet them. I would love to introduce you to them and to our future.
I am so, so sorry. Please find it in your heart to forgive me.
I love you, Grace. Just you. I always have, I always will.
David
I open the second box, just as I was always going to from the second I saw the dark-blue wrapping and the palest gold ribbon, from the moment I knew he was back.
Inside the box i
s a ring. It is, unequivocally, an engagement ring. It is a white-gold band with a single round diamond fixed to it with the tiniest of clawed clasps. The front of the diamond is cut so beautifully that even the dim lights of the bar bounce off it at every angle.
I stretch out the third finger of my left hand and ease the ring on. It settles between the bony joints of my finger, bright against my tanned skin.
It is a perfect fit.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Paris is, as my late father used to say, where I left it. The city doesn’t know that anything has changed. In the same way it always has, this city accepts me just the way I am. In return, I love it back.
This week has brought the first cooler breeze of autumn. It is my favorite season. I love the elegance of it, the falling leaves, the signs that everything will be bare and ready for a fresh start. Autumn convinces me that there will be new growth, that there will be spring. It reaffirms my faith in time and order.
I walk the short distance from Gare du Nord to Gare de l’Est. It is enough to remind me that I am here, that Paris is different from my home. This city sings and buzzes and is alive. I listen to the voices as I pass people in the street and try to process the impenetrable chatter.
I wonder how long I would have to live in Paris before I could talk like them, until I could swap casual stories like a native. It would take a lifetime; I am not a natural linguist. I wonder, not for the first time, whether David’s children’s English is accented.
At Gare de l’Est I run down the steps into the Metro. I know the underground system of Paris just as well as I know the Tube in London, possibly a little better.
The train is not busy. My favorite journeys are always those where someone gets on with an accordion or starts a singsong with a prerecorded backing track. I have never lost the touristy pleasure in carriage buskers. Those things, to me, are quintessentially Paris.
Some things have become homogenous over the years; the smell of candied peanuts that once used to pinpoint my location exactly, is something I’ve found in recent years in London, in New York: the tendrils of this city curling out to grow in other hearts.
I get out of the Metro at École Militaire. No other city has this depth of architecture, this history so plain to see, so obvious on every street corner. This place exists in the imagination of the world, in films and books, in poems and songs. It does that for good reason.
I love this walk, everything about it. I love the gritty sand surface of the paths through the Champ de Mars, I love the Peace Memorial and its etched glass panels; most of all, I love the way the Eiffel Tower looms over everything, reducing us all to the specks of dust we are, making us as tiny and uniform as ants. There’s no avoiding the history of Paris; nothing disguises or hides it and nothing tries to. Behind me, the walls of the École Militaire are peppered with bullet holes from wars, from practices, from executions, and yet now, in our relative peacetime, it seems so calm and innocuous. Napoleon studied in that building as a boy soldier. He walked in long black boots along the same paths that I’m scuffing my feet upon now. It never fails to amaze me or to put me in my place.
When I told Mr. Williams about Nadia, he didn’t flinch. His exact words were, “Well, she’ll have to paint up the guest room; it’s a little dull for a baby.”
“Aren’t you worried about her being in your house? On her own with a baby?” I had asked him. We were sitting outside the railway station at Cremona. Mr. Williams was on his way to his new life. He had one single leather suitcase beside him.
“Girls with far less about them than that one have done it, dear.”
I nodded. “Humans, we’re a rum lot. I just hope she manages.”
He smiled at me. “You worry too much. She’s done very well so far, all by herself.”
“Her parents are going to be livid.” I was thinking out loud.
“Not for too long, in my experience.” He leant back on the bench and let the sunshine light up his face. “What is the phrase? Babies bring their own love. I’m sure it’s so, dear.”
Shota was even calmer, more bemused than anything else. “I don’t know where these girls put them,” he said.
I’d asked him to meet for a drink before I went. We were sitting outside the bar I’d first seen him at.
“Marion had a trumpet pupil couple of years ago; same thing. Only she didn’t give eight weeks’ notice.”
“Really?”
“Seriously. Skinny as a bone . . .”
“A rake, Shota.” I remember that, at college, one of the first things I loved about him was the way he said “coming down in cats and dogs” when it rained.
“Still haven’t got it.” He grins and runs his hand through his hair. “Anyway, upshot is—one day she’s having a trumpet lesson, next day she’s having a baby on the bathroom floor.”
“Bloody hell,” I said. “What happened to her?”
“First trumpet in Reykjavik Phil. Just carried on. Plenty of support; Mum helps out, I think.”
I wondered about Nadia, worry about how much support she would have. And then, like a light, like a birth of my own, I remembered that she has me. She supported me when I needed it and I am more than ready to do the same for her. It would be an honor to be part of her little miracle.
“She’ll only be around the corner from me,” I said as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
“There you are, then,” said Shota. He pushed a business card across the table. “I’ve asked her to keep in touch with me; she’s a phenomenal player. I said I’d do some master classes with her when I’m next in the UK. Maybe even more important now.”
I picked the card up but didn’t recognize the name.
“It’s Rob’s,” Shota says. “He’s joining the BBC Phil in January and doesn’t know anyone. He wondered if you’d show him a bit of London. One good turn and all that?”
“Meaning?”
“I’ll give Nadia some help, contacts and so on, if you can look after Rob a bit; introduce him to some people, take him out.”
I said that of course I would. I said, and found I really meant, that any friend of Shota’s was a friend of mine.
“And if you want to know more about the Nikolai thing, all that stuff”—he leant in, his face full of sympathy, and he bit his lip a little—“I can put you in touch with some people who know more about it.” He put his hand over mine. “And the rest of it? Catherine and all that, I just want you to know that I’m so sorry. I’d do anything to change it, put the clock back.”
Shota is a good man and I really felt for him; it was only fair to let him lose this ghost, put it to rest. “Shota, you were a kid. We both were. And kids make mistakes. And you stuck your neck out for me with Nikolai. That still means a lot.” I stood up and kissed him goodbye. “Don’t think about the shit stuff anymore. And I won’t either, OK?”
He hugged me tight. “Fresh start.”
* * *
The crowds aren’t thick at all under the Eiffel Tower. There is the usual queue at the South Pier, but it is nothing like as crowded as it usually is. I’m sure as the day wears on it will start to get busy, but I will be long gone by then, safe across the river.
I walk north towards the Trocadéro and its fountains. I look briefly at my watch to see if I have time to wait for the parade of water, for the sequence to run through. David and I used to watch these fountains in summer when the fine drizzle of spray misted our faces under the parched air. There isn’t time to wait for the fountains, not even for old times’ sake. I’m due at the apartment in a few minutes.
Passy Cemetery is on my left. I think about going in, but instead I follow the brick wall along the edge of the road and let myself into David’s building. He knows what time train he booked for me, so he has a rough idea of when I will arrive. We have both resisted the temptation to text or speak.
I have not seen him since he appeared in Cremona. I have not spoken to him since his words shattered my heart in Paris.
> The brass lock of his front door is from the 1920s; it is as old as the apartment and its frame has been polished gold by hundreds of knuckles as they turn the key.
The French windows at the end of the apartment are open. I can feel the breeze play around my ankles. It is warm in the hallway and music laps gently at the side of my mind. It is Bach, the Cello Suites.
Maybe, I think, heaven looks and feels a little like this.
And then David steps forward from the kitchen doorway. He is wearing a deep-green shirt—the top button open—and wool-cashmere trousers. His feet are bare. He looks as handsome as he ever has; maybe slightly taller, wider. I have imagined him as less, and the picture I keep in my mind’s eye has diminished. Now that I am back, close, beside him, my eyes refresh and correct my memory. He is solid and tall.
He lifts his hands, so slowly, and takes mine in his. He is frightened, I can see, and he trembles slightly.
My lips are dry. I swallow hard and look up at him, at that jaw, his high cheekbones, his perfectly groomed eyebrows.
He turns my hands over in his palms, lifts them to his mouth and softly kisses the backs; one, then the other.
I can smell him, a mix of soap and aftershave, clean smells underplayed with the scent of his skin. I know the smell of him as well as I know myself. I breathe deeply, inhale him. I have missed him like air.
He bends his head and brushes my lips softly with his. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispers.
I cannot trust myself to speak. I squeeze his hands.
He looks down at my fingers. “You’re not wearing the ring.”
I shake my head.
“Did it fit?” he asks.
“It fit perfectly. Thank you.” I drop his hands and reach into my handbag. I take the ring, still in its box, and put it on the side table. “It was a beautiful choice. Perfect.”
The table I’ve put the ring on is antique oak; a reflection of the framed photograph on it shines up at me. I look at the photograph; it is of me. I look around. I am everywhere. There are as many pictures of me as there are of David’s children. We look like a family. The only picture missing is one of us all together.
Goodbye, Paris Page 24
