French Kissing

by Catherine Sanderson

  ‘You don’t need to apologize, Sophie,’ I said with a half-smile, almost enjoying the mental image I’d conjured up of Albane opening the front door, wearing Nico’s bathrobe, and Sophie’s flabbergasted expression. ‘I know you didn’t mean any harm …’

  ‘Well, I won’t be interfering in future, I promise,’ Sophie replied. ‘But I would like to see more of you and Lila. She and Lucas play well together, and he asks about her a lot.’

  ‘I’d like that too,’ I said, handing her a beer and taking a sip of my own. ‘And I know what to do if you step out of line,’ I added. ‘I’ll start humming the tune from “It’s a Small World” …’

  I rose extra early the next morning, making up my bed with clean sheets and giving the floors a quick once-over with the vacuum cleaner. After work, Lila and I would be going to Gare du Nord to meet Mum from the Eurostar and escort her home for her first visit since we’d moved here, almost a year ago. Ever since Mum had announced her intention to come over – even if it was for a ridiculously short visit – I’d been pushing her impending stay to the back of my mind. It was the evenings I was apprehensive about. Tomorrow I’d be out at work and Mum would spend some quality time with her granddaughter. But once Lila was tucked up in bed, what then? I was dreading the inevitable questions about Nico, about my personal life, about Rendez-vous. What a shame Dad couldn’t have come too, I thought to myself as I surveyed my living room, trying to imagine how it would look through Mum’s critical eyes. His presence had a welcome soothing effect on me.

  ‘We’ll be going to meet Grandma at the railway station after the Centre de Loisirs,’ I reminded Lila as I pulled a polo-necked jumper over her head, tickling her tummy while she held her arms aloft and eliciting a full-bodied giggle. ‘Are you excited about seeing her? You’ll be able to show her all around the neighbourhood, and help her out if she needs to speak some French …’ Lila clapped her hands in glee. First Disneyland, now Grandma coming to stay: life as a four-year-old didn’t get much more exciting than this. But a moment later, a cloud passed across her face and she paused, mid-clap, to give me a serious look.

  ‘You’re not going to shout at Grandma, are you, Mummy?’ she said in a bossy voice. ‘Because it’s not nice when you do that.’

  ‘Oh honey,’ I said, running a hand through her hair, dismayed that not only had Lila overheard our Christmas fireworks, she’d committed them to memory. ‘You don’t need to worry about that! Remember, Grandma is my mummy and I’m her little girl. So sometimes we argue – just like me and you – but it doesn’t mean we don’t love each other …’

  Lila’s words echoed in my ears all the way from the Centre de Loisirs to the métro. So, when I opened my newspaper and folded it back to the classifieds page, it was a relief to see a new Transports amoureux entry. Translating it would help take my mind off whatever the evening held in store.

  ‘Film muet inachévé,’ it began, which struck me as a wonderfully poetic way of describing an emotionally charged encounter during which no actual words had been exchanged. Translated into English, the full entry read: ‘Unfinished silent film. You: salt-and-pepper hair, brown eyes; me: redhead, blue eyes. Leaving métro line 5 at République at 7.11 p.m., we both tried to catch one another’s eye to share one last smile. To write the next scene, call me.’

  The mention of greying hair and brown eyes summoned up a fleeting memory of Matthias and, when my phone vibrated in my pocket to signal the arrival of a text message a few seconds later, I was thoroughly spooked: it was almost as though I’d summoned him forth. ‘Sally. Envie de te voir – M,’ his message read, succinct as a Transports amoureux entry. As I stared, nonplussed, at the screen, I had a sudden flashback to Sunday evening and began to blush. My skin remembered Matthias’s lips grazing my collarbone then moving lower, lower, until they reached my right breast, his tongue teasing my erect nipple. Shivering involuntarily, I closed my eyes and experimented with cutting Matthias from the sequence and pasting in Jérémy in his place instead. If only the text message had been signed with a ‘J’ instead of an ‘M’.

  I hadn’t even begun thinking about formulating a response when a second message arrived, diluting the forcefulness of the first. ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to sound like I was giving you orders. Would just very much like to see you again – M.’

  ‘Not sure yet when I’ll next be free, but will be in touch – S,’ I replied, effectively putting the whole question of what, if anything, to do about Matthias on hold. It was untrue. I knew precisely when I’d be available, as Nico had offered to take Lila on Saturday night to compensate for the previous weekend’s upheaval. But I’d earmarked Saturday evening for Jérémy, and I wasn’t ready to give up on him yet. Okay, so he hadn’t been in touch, but it had only been three days since I’d seen him last.

  Tuesday’s lessons would have been uneventful if it hadn’t been for my two o’clock session with Robert Cazenove. I’d promised Delphine I wouldn’t let on that I was aware of their liaison, but it was much more difficult to behave naturally than I’d anticipated, knowing what I now knew. Robert seemed to be making an extra effort with his appearance for Delphine’s sake: he was preceded by a potent smell of aftershave, and there was something different about his hair too. They made a handsome couple, I decided, narrowing my eyes and grafting an image of my favourite pupil on to his arm as he crossed the room. There couldn’t be many men in the city who wouldn’t be dwarfed by Delphine in heels, but fortunately she’d found an unusually tall specimen.

  When Robert pulled out the seat opposite mine, I suppressed the impulse to beam at him, shuffling my papers instead and looking down at the table. I was pathetically grateful when he opened his mouth and made a series of genuinely irritating mistakes a few seconds later. No one who murdered my mother tongue with such aplomb deserved any form of special treatment. I reverted to no-nonsense teacher mode in no time at all.

  After lessons were over, I rushed back to Belleville to collect Lila and we made our way to Gare du Nord, arriving only seconds before Mum’s train eased itself into the station.

  ‘There she is!’ I said to Lila with forced cheerfulness, as soon as I caught sight of Mum’s familiar figure wheeling a compact suitcase, scouring the sea of waiting faces as she advanced towards the end of the platform. Seeing her out of her comfort zone, far from the familiarity of her own home, I was surprised by how much older she looked, all of a sudden, and how much less self-assured. Perhaps seeing each other on my territory for a change would do our relationship good, I reasoned. It couldn’t hurt to shake things up a little.

  Mum began to look a lot more like herself once she was seated on my sofa with a cup of tea in her hand. ‘I’m afraid the milk’s only UHT,’ I apologized, returning to the kitchen and poking around in the freezer for something for Lila’s dinner. Lila had done a great job of monopolizing Mum’s attention from the moment she’d arrived, regaling her grandma with endless stories about her trip to Disneyland, but she’d fallen silent now, her batteries beginning to go flat.

  ‘The new Saint Pancras terminal was lovely,’ Mum remarked, ignoring my comment about the milk, although I saw her grimace when she took her first sip of tea. ‘It was just a pity that, by the time I got out of the tunnel, it was dark at the other side, so I didn’t get to see much of France.’

  ‘And how do you like our new place?’ I said, doing my best to make my question sound casual. Turning my back on her, I set three fish fingers under the grill.

  ‘Well … Obviously it feels small, compared to what you were sharing with Nico before …’ I could hear that Mum was choosing her words carefully, which was most unusual. ‘But you’ve managed to get it looking cosy,’ she continued, ‘and you’ve made a lovely job of Lila’s room.’ Lila was sitting by her side on the sofa and poring over the pages of a new Charlie and Lola book Mum had produced from the front pocket of her suitcase, along with gifts of Cheddar cheese and Branston pickle. But at the mention of her name, she looked up at her grandma and smiled.


  ‘My mummy did paint my room all on her own, Grandma,’ she said proudly. ‘I know, because she still has some splodges of purple paint on her jeans!’

  Once Lila’s light was out and her door positioned just so, I poured two glasses of Côtes du Rhône and popped the lasagne I’d prepared the night before into the oven. There was nothing for it now but to take a seat on the sofa by Mum’s side and try to make small talk. Switching on the eight o’clock news with Claire Chazal wasn’t an option: Mum wouldn’t understand a single word.

  ‘So, how’s Dad?’ I said, choosing the safest subject I could think of. ‘Still looking forward to retirement?’

  ‘Oh, you know. Same old, same old,’ said Mum with a shrug. ‘I think he was going to take himself off to the pub tonight for his dinner. You know how helpless he is in the kitchen. Can’t even boil an egg …’ She took a long sip of her wine and I braced myself, sensing she was about to say something important. ‘It was your Dad that insisted I come over to see you,’ she said slowly, looking me in the eye. ‘He said I needed to see things here for myself if I was to have any hope of understanding what your life is like now.’

  I said nothing at first, digesting this interesting new piece of information. So this visit was Dad’s doing. What else had he said? I wondered. It struck me, all of a sudden, that I had little idea of how the land lay between Mum and Dad when I wasn’t around.

  ‘I can’t believe it’s coming up to a year since I moved out …’ I replied when I’d pulled myself together. I was reluctant to mention Nico’s name, given how our last discussion on that thorny subject had ended. ‘I should warn you,’ I added, ‘in case Lila talks to you about it … Albane’s living with him now. I found out – quite by accident – last weekend.’

  By the time I’d finished telling Mum that story, complete with a lengthy tangent to explain why Kate and I had spent the day together, I could smell the béchamel beginning to brown on the top of our lasagne. Mum had been uncharacteristically quiet while I talked, listening intently and giving me the occasional nod. ‘I worry about you, you know, Sally,’ she said now, her eyes looking suspiciously watery. ‘The things I said about you and Nico, about online dating … I suppose I wished that things hadn’t come to that, for all of your sakes. But your dad says I have to remember you’re a sensible girl with her head screwed on right. He says we both know you’ll do what’s best for you and Lila …’ She paused for a moment, as if unsure of what to say next.

  ‘And,’ I prompted her, ‘do you think that Dad might have a point?’ I could see what Mum was doing. It was easier to quote Dad than to pull her own words out of the air. And while this was a step in the right direction, I needed to hear a real apology. Something that didn’t start with the words ‘Your Dad says’.

  Mum nodded, her cheeks colouring. ‘I shouldn’t have said what I did at Christmas,’ she said quietly. ‘It came out all wrong, as usual, and I can see why it upset you. You’ve got enough on your plate, without me making things even harder.’

  I don’t think I fully realized how much Mum’s attitude these past few months had preyed on my mind until her apology hung in the air between us. Whenever I’d felt vulnerable and less than proud of my actions – after the New Year’s Eve party, for example, or my disastrous one-night stand with Rob – her words had come back to haunt me with a vengeance, eating away, insidiously, at my certitudes. Now, hearing her say she was sorry, hearing her say she’d been wrong, I felt a huge weight lifting. What a relief to have Mum on my side, back where she belonged.

  ‘I have to hand it to Dad,’ I said, blinking back the tears welling up in my eyes. ‘It was an inspired idea, suggesting that you come over. I can’t help thinking he knows the two of us far better than we know ourselves.’ The oven bell rang and I jumped to my feet, glad of the interruption, dabbing my eyes covertly with a tea towel while my back was turned.

  ‘I tell you what,’ I added, setting the lasagne dish down on the dining table and beckoning Mum over. ‘When we’ve finished dinner, maybe I’ll even show you this evil dating site of mine …’

  24

  I ran into Anna early the next morning quite by chance, catching sight of a streak of vivid blue out of the corner of my eye as the métro doors sprung open and I stepped out on to the platform of Pyramides station. I called out to her, stopping her in her tracks, and before we hurried off to begin our respective lessons – mine at a bank on avenue de l’Opéra and hers inside the glass building in the middle of place du Marché Saint Honoré – we had enough time to knock back bitter espressos, standing at the counter of a nearby bar.

  When Anna let slip that she and Ryan were meeting for dinner after work, I felt a familiar twinge of jealousy. I fought valiantly to maintain a poker face, but Anna’s discomfort over her slip-up was clear: she couldn’t change the subject quickly enough. This seemed to confirm what I’d long suspected. I was gradually being relegated to the sidelines, while the pair of them made their own plans, assuming I’d be tied up, and no longer even bothering to extend an invitation to me.

  So when I called home to check in with Mum and Lila at lunchtime, and Mum made her suggestion, it couldn’t have been more perfectly timed. ‘You know, Sally, I was thinking …’ she said cautiously. ‘I’m not here for long, but while I am, you might as well make use of me as a babysitter. You don’t get out much. Maybe you could go on a date or something? I’m sure it would do you good …’

  ‘You really wouldn’t mind?’ I asked, for the sake of form. ‘You’re here for such a short time …’ But Mum insisted that she didn’t. The official reason was that being with Lila all day was going to tire her out, but I suspected there was more to it than that. We’d managed to get through a whole evening in one another’s company without even the shadow of a disagreement, which had to be some sort of record. Perhaps Mum was worried that if we tried for a repeat performance, we’d be pushing our luck.

  ‘Mum offered to babysit tonight,’ I texted Anna, ‘so maybe I could gatecrash your dinner?’ To take the edge off the word ‘gatecrash’, I added a wink, composed of a semi-colon, a dash and a closing bracket. Within a matter of seconds I’d received two replies: a ‘cool’ from Anna, and a ‘hurrah!’ from Ryan, who had no doubt been brought into the loop by Anna. A quick call home to confirm my plans, and everything was settled. I’d spend an hour or two with Mum and Lila before I met up with my friends, and Mum was more than happy to eat with her granddaughter.

  I arrived at the Café Cannibale first, standing at the corner of the wood-panelled bar and checking my phone to see if I’d overlooked an incoming message from Jérémy while I sipped a glass of white wine and waited for my friends to show up. Ryan arrived ten minutes later, apologizing profusely for his tardiness. We left the bar and took a seat at the table he’d reserved, at the far end of the dimly lit dining room.

  ‘So, Anna tells me you and Eric have been joined at the hip lately,’ I teased. ‘You will invite us to your PACs ceremony, won’t you, Ryan? I wouldn’t miss it for the world …’

  ‘Oh dear God, no!’ Ryan threw up his hands in mock-horror. ‘The man’s a banker and he earns a fortune. There’s no way in the world I’d enter into a civil partnership with him and take joint responsibility for his horrendous tax bill …’ I giggled. Ryan was on flamboyant form. But I’d known him long enough to suspect that, underneath the play-acting and camp, theatrical gestures, his feelings for Eric nonetheless ran deep. ‘Things are going surprisingly well,’ he acknowledged, when I prodded him for more information. ‘In fact, I’d have accepted Eric’s offer to move into his place by now, if it wasn’t for the Clyde conundrum.’

  ‘He asked you to move in?’ This was news to me. I hadn’t realized things were that serious. ‘So what’s the Clyde conundrum? It sounds like a Robert Ludlum novel. Does Eric have allergies? Did he give you an ultimatum? “If you want to be with me, the cat goes”?’

  It was Ryan’s turn to chuckle. ‘Nothing quite so dramatic,’ he said, shaking h
is head. ‘Eric isn’t terribly keen on having a litter tray in his apartment, that’s all. But I’m sure we’ll find a compromise.’ He took a sip of his kir, then started, as though he’d remembered something important he had to tell me. ‘Eric tells me Yves will be back in the Paris office on Friday,’ he murmured. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything from Kate?’

  ‘I knew he was due back soon, but I had no idea it was imminent …’ I wondered whether Kate and Yves were having a huge showdown at that very moment. It had to be make or break time for those two. I hoped Kate would call me the moment there was anything to tell.

  When Anna arrived, a few minutes later, her face was like thunder. ‘Sorry I’m late, you guys,’ she said, stowing her coat next to mine on the shelf which ran along the back wall, glancing at her harried reflection in the mirror just above it, then taking a seat on the red banquette by my side, propping up her chin with her hands. ‘I got caught up on the phone with Tom,’ she explained. ‘We were having another shitty discussion about the divorce. God! I’ll be so glad when all this crap is out of the way. I’m done spending hours in line at the American Embassy waiting for meaningless documents.’

  ‘Someone needs a drink,’ said Ryan, winking at me, and beckoning over the nearest waitress. ‘And we should probably order something to eat, shouldn’t we, ladies? What do you fancy? A cannibal burger? A steak? A platter of charcuterie?’ Once these practical matters had been dispensed with and Anna had a beer in her hand, Ryan turned to me, no doubt hoping to ease the conversation into more light-hearted territory. ‘How about you tell us all about how Rendez-vous has been treating you, Sally? Anything interesting to share?’