The Road to Zoe

by Alexander, Nick

  We drive on in silence for almost ten minutes before Jess speaks again.

  ‘Would you rather I didn’t come?’ she asks. ‘Would you rather just drop me off? I mean, we could do that instead of picking up my passport, you know.’

  I think about this for a moment and it does make me feel less panicky. Then again, when I picture myself in Nice on my own, the idea strikes me as thoroughly miserable.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jess,’ I say. ‘I don’t know. It’s really not your fault. But I don’t know.’

  ‘God,’ Jess says. ‘OK. Wow!’

  ‘And now you’re pissed off with me,’ I say.

  ‘I just paid two hundred and thirty quid for a flight,’ she says. ‘So, yeah, I’m a tad pissed off.’

  ‘I’m not saying you shouldn’t come. I’m not saying you can’t.’

  ‘Oh, well, thanks,’ she says.

  ‘I just don’t know,’ I tell her, my voice breaking a little. ‘I’m having a bit of trouble breathing. I think I might be having a panic attack.’

  ‘It’s hard,’ Jess says. ‘To help you, I mean. Because I’m, you know, involved. I need to avoid taking it personally, but that’s not easy.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

  Jess sighs deeply and then we drive on in silence for a few more minutes.

  ‘Do you want The Speech?’ she finally asks.

  ‘The Speech?’

  ‘Yeah. The Speech. It might help. Then again, it might just annoy you.’

  ‘Try it,’ I say. ‘I like your speeches.’

  ‘OK, so you’re free,’ she says. ‘You know that, right?’

  ‘Yes, I’m aware that I’m free,’ I say flatly.

  ‘We’re not married. We’re not tied together by any kind of contract. And you don’t have to take me to Nice with you, or take me anywhere with you, ever again, in fact.’

  ‘I’m not . . .’

  ‘Don’t interrupt The Speech,’ Jess says.

  ‘No, sorry.’

  ‘I like being with you. I like your company. You make me laugh. And most of the time I think you’re interesting and fun to be with. Actually, and I know you’re not comfortable with this word, but actually, I love you. I do. But you know there are people on this planet I love or have loved who I don’t see any more, right? So it’s not obligatory that we continue to hang out. Loving you doesn’t give me any rights, and I know that.’

  ‘OK,’ I say, doubtfully.

  ‘So instead of getting into a blind panic, just decide if you want to fly to Nice with me this evening, or if you don’t. If you don’t, it would be . . . classy, let’s say . . . if you reimbursed me for the flight. But we’re just two human beings here. Two human beings with free will. And we can decide we want to bump along together for a bit more, for a day or a week or a year, or whatever. Or we can decide that we don’t want to do that.

  ‘Unfortunately, in these things, the “no”s kind of have it. So while we’d both need to decide to continue, only one of us needs to decide that it ends. But that’s just the way life is.’

  ‘Right,’ I say. ‘That’s a good speech and I—’

  ‘What I’m saying, I suppose,’ Jess says, interrupting me, ‘is that, well, I already said it, you’re free. We can choose different paths at any moment. So we can go to Nice and split up when we get back. Or you can drop me off now and never see me again. Or we can, you know, continue to bump along together. I know which one I want, but if we don’t agree, that doesn’t count for anything. So it’s up to you. Speech over.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘That’s . . . helpful.’ And it’s true. I’m feeling a little less trapped. Because I’m not trapped here at all, am I? No, I’m really not.

  ‘So?’ she asks me, ten minutes later. ‘I don’t mean to pressure you, honey, but some feedback would be good. I kind of need to know if I’m being dropped off or nipping indoors for my passport. We’re almost there.’

  ‘Passport,’ I say. It’s strange, because the word just pops out without me thinking, as if it’s come from some deeper place, somewhere that’s before, or maybe beyond thought. Like a reflex, perhaps.

  ‘Passport,’ Jess repeats. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Totally,’ I tell her, managing to smile for the first time in four hours. ‘I’m also totally sure that I’m crazy.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jess says. ‘Yeah, I worked that bit out for myself.’

  The pilot says that Paris can be seen from the right-hand-side windows, but unfortunately I’m on the left, trapped beside a sleeping Jessica and the seven-foot guy crammed into the aisle seat.

  Jessica’s head is resting on my shoulder. We’re both utterly exhausted after what has to have been one of the longest, most tiring days I can remember. But we made it. Somehow, we made it from Scotland to Gatwick, via London.

  A surge of warmth washes over me as I think about Jessica. She’s amazing. She really is. The way she stays ‘up’ and enthusiastic about everything . . . The way she remains calm in the face of adversity – the way she copes with my damned moods. I honestly don’t know how she does it. I’m one incredibly lucky guy.

  It has not gone unnoticed that my emotions are all over the place. And how is that possible? How can I swing from being desperate to escape her presence to this warm feeling of respect and desire? I suppose that there’s a word that englobes respect and desire, and that word is probably ‘love’. Perhaps it’s time that I managed to say it.

  But then wouldn’t that imply some kind of commitment? And if so, is that the reason it’s so hard for me to say it?

  I think about Mum saying it to Scott. It used to make me feel embarrassed, the way she said it all the time. And look where that got her. I bet she feels really stupid about it now.

  The drinks trolley arrives, whereupon Jess wakes up. We order beers to wash down our rather dry WHSmith’s sandwiches and, by the time the wrappers have been cleared away, we’re descending towards Nice, the lights of the coast sparkling beyond the windows.

  ‘You OK?’ Jess asks, as they dim the cabin lights for landing.

  ‘I am!’ I tell her. ‘I’m fine!’

  ‘Good,’ she says. ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘I’m really sorry about before,’ I tell her. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’

  ‘I think I do,’ Jess says.

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Well, you lost your dad and your new dad and then your sister, and all in the space of, what? A few years? Maybe that was more traumatic than you like to think.’

  By the time we find the correct street within the maze that is the old town, it’s almost eleven o’clock. We wander up and down trying to find number twenty-two, but the numbers seem to jump from eighteen straight to twenty-six. It’s incredibly frustrating.

  ‘I’m just so tired,’ Jess moans. ‘I’m so tired that, if we don’t find it soon, I might cry.’

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘It’s a nightmare.’

  We ask for help in a Portuguese restaurant. The waiter, who thankfully speaks English, is busy stacking tables.

  ‘This is twenty-four,’ he tells us. He leads us back out to the middle of the street and points. ‘So I think it has got to be this one.’

  The ground floor is taken up by an ice-cream vendor and I wonder who on earth buys ice cream on a cold January night.

  It’s then that I see it, half-hidden behind the chill cabinet: a tiny, half-width door. There’s no house number above it, but there is a numerical key pad, so I cross and type in the code we were given. To our relief the little door opens, revealing the steepest staircase I have ever seen.

  On the third floor, Jess types the second code we were given, and we’re in.

  We dump our bags on the orange sofa, and while I open the window and peer out at the street below, Jess heads through to the bedroom. ‘Oh, shit!’ she says.

  I cross the lounge and join her in the doorway. ‘Something wrong?’ I ask.

  ‘The be-ed’s no-ot ma-ade,’ she says, her voice wobblin
g with fake trauma.

  ‘They’ve left sheets, though,’ I say, lifting the pile from the chest of drawers. ‘Look.’

  ‘I know,’ Jess whines. ‘But I’m so-oh tired, Jude, I could die. I might actually be dying right now. I might die before I get the quilt cover on.’

  ‘Would you like me to make the bed, sweetheart?’ I ask, grinning. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Oh, would you?’ Jess asks, as if the thought had never occurred to her. ‘Oh, that would be amazing, Jude.’

  ‘Of course,’ I tell her, even though struggling with quilt covers is one of my least favourite things. ‘Go and sit down.’

  ‘No, I’m showering,’ Jess says. ‘But if you could have that bed made by the time I get out, then I promise I’ll love you for ever.’

  The next morning, I wake up to the chiming of a distant church bell. Jess is still sleeping beside me, so I lie there for a moment slowly isolating all the different sounds. A seagull is squawking somewhere and I can hear a market trader shrieking like a fishwife, but can’t hear what she’s saying. It actually takes me a few seconds to realise that this is because she’s shrieking in French – I’d actually forgotten that we’ve changed countries here. There’s a regular whizzing, grinding noise coming from somewhere, too, plus a baseline hubbub of voices drifting from the street below.

  So as not to wake Jessica, I lever myself gently from the bed, then pad through to the lounge. Sunlight is leaking through the slatted wooden shutters, casting patterns across the floor, and when I open the windows and shutters to lean out, an irresistible whiff of coffee hits my nostrils.

  I lean on the window ledge and watch French shoppers as they negotiate the narrow street. I spot the coffee shop two doors up, and understand that the whizzing noise is almost certainly their coffee grinder. I see the queue for the butcher’s shuffle one forward, and watch a man with a huge bunch of flowers trying to make his way through the queue.

  A hand caresses my shoulder, making me jump. I turn to see Jess smiling sleepily at me. ‘Bonjour!’ she says. ‘This is nice.’ She leans beside me and looks out.

  ‘I was just wondering when it stopped being like this back home,’ I say. ‘You know, the butcher, the florist’s, the coffee shop . . . When did everything end up in Tesco’s?’

  ‘The butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker,’ Jess says, through a yawn.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘There are still places like this,’ Jess says. ‘Notting Hill’s a bit like this on a summer’s day. So’s Camden. But they tend to be the expensive hipster areas, not your average town centre. God, is that coffee I can smell?’

  ‘There’s a shop there,’ I say, pointing. ‘They grind it. Actually, it smells like they roast it, too.’

  Jess leans out further and turns her face skyward. ‘Blue sky!’ she says. ‘Look at that!’

  ‘Do you want me to go and buy coffee?’ I ask. ‘There’s instant in the cupboard, but I think I fancy some proper stuff. Or do you want to go out and get brekky?’

  ‘Would you mind?’ Jess asks. ‘It’s just that I’m not really capable of doing anything until I’ve had caffeine.’

  ‘Sure,’ I say, straightening. ‘I’ll just nip . . .’

  ‘Stop!’ Jess says, turning from the window now to face me and raising one hand. ‘I’ve changed my mind. I want coffee in the sunshine. I want to be waited on by a waiter in a white shirt and a waistcoat. Plus, they’ll have croissants, won’t they? Proper French croissants.’

  We drink blow-your-head-off espressos and eat rich, buttery croissants in a café in nearby Place Garibaldi. The waiter is wearing a hoodie, but other than that, Jess declares that it’s perfect.

  We order a second round of coffees and while we’re waiting for them to arrive – and for some reason, they take quite a while – we watch the Sunday-morning crowds going about their business: people leaving Monoprix weighed down with carrier bags, others nibbling the end of a baguette as they return from the bakery.

  Though the air temperature in the shade is still in single figures, here, in the sunshine, it’s gorgeous.

  ‘People must be happier here, don’t you think?’ Jess says.

  ‘Than where?’

  ‘Than at home,’ she says. ‘I mean, just visualise your average Sunday here. Get up. Have coffee and croissants in the sunshine with friends. Wander down to the beach. It’s got to be better than Tesco’s, Starbucks and the Underground, right? That’s got to make people feel happier.’

  ‘It should do,’ I say. ‘But according to a thing I read last week, the happiest place in the world is Denmark.’

  ‘Denmark?’ Jess says, wrinkling her nose. ‘But it’s cold there.’

  I nod. ‘Even colder than at home.’

  ‘They’ve got Danish pastries, I suppose,’ Jess says. ‘That probably helps.’

  ‘And beer,’ I say. ‘Carlsberg is Danish, so . . .’

  ‘Beer and pastries,’ Jess says. ‘Hmm, I still think I’d be happier here.’

  After breakfast, we meander through the pedestrian streets of the old town. The buildings are all painted in reds and ochres with green or blue shutters. To my eye, the town looks more Italian than French, and after fiddling on her phone, Jess informs me that the town was Italian, more or less, until 1860.

  ‘What do you mean, more or less?’ I ask her.

  ‘It’s complicated,’ she says. ‘Something about Piedmont. You’ll have to look it up yourself if you want a proper answer.’

  We pass a fish market where I discover that the voice I could hear from our apartment was that of a fishwife, and then at the other side of the old town we discover a huge vegetable market as well. On reaching the famous Promenade des Anglais, we cross the road and descend to the beach, where we skim pebbles on the surface of the outrageously turquoise-coloured sea. Afterwards, we stumble across the pebbles for ten minutes before propping ourselves up in the sunshine against a wall.

  ‘It’s so warm,’ Jess says. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘I’m actually too hot,’ I agree, wriggling out of my jacket.

  ‘So what next, Sherlock?’ Jess asks me.

  ‘Sherlock?’ I repeat. ‘Yesterday I was Bond.’

  ‘Well, if we’re looking for Zoe . . .’ Jess says, ‘Sherlock might be more efficient. Or Holmes. Are we still going to look for her?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I say. ‘We need to work out how to get there and everything. She’s actually in a different town, isn’t she? But we’ve got four more nights here, so we don’t have to do anything today if we don’t want to.’

  ‘No,’ Jess says. ‘No, we can just hang out in the sunshine if you want.’

  ‘I’m a bit knackered,’ I admit. ‘I could do with a day to just chill.’

  ‘That sounds good to me,’ Jess says. ‘This was a good idea, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It was,’ I agree, closing my eyes to the warmth of the sunshine. ‘I’m going to be skint for months to pay for it all, but at least I’ll be skint with a suntan.’

  ‘I did offer to pay for your flight,’ Jess reminds me.

  ‘I’m joking, Jess,’ I say, sliding one arm around her shoulder. ‘But seriously? Yes, definitely. It was the best idea you’ve ever had.’

  We spend a relaxed day exploring Nice, and I have to say I end up liking the place. It’s a pretty, well-kept town, peppered with parks and fountains and cute cafés. The seafront, which is stunning, is omnipresent, and what with the unexpectedly warm sunshine – it feels almost like a British summer day – I quickly come to feel like I’m on a proper holiday.

  At lunchtime, with an eye on our spending, we buy sandwiches and cans of drink, which we consume on the beach. The pebbles are pretty uncomfortable, plus, they leave white chalk stains on our clothes; but the sun, hitting us both from the sky and, indirectly, from the surface of the sea, feels gorgeous, and as we sit, and then lie there side by side, I can sense all the January tension in my muscles dissipate.

  By four-thirty, we’re ba
ck in our apartment feeling sleepy.

  Leaving Jess zapping through French TV channels, I head to the bathroom. The sight of my reflection in the bathroom mirror provokes a sharp intake of breath, because in the space of a few hours I have dramatically changed colour.

  I wash my face in cold water, which actually seems to make the redness deepen, and then step back out into the lounge. I almost ask Jessica if she, too, gets darker in the sunshine, but I think better of it. The answer is almost certainly yes, plus, it’s probably something I should know without asking. ‘I think I need to buy sunscreen,’ I say instead.

  Jess, who’s stretched out on the sofa watching a game show, says, ‘Yeah, I was thinking the same thing,’ which kind of answers my unspoken question.

  ‘I’m turning into a lobster,’ I say, as I lift her legs and slide in beside her on the sofa.

  She glances sideways at me and says, ‘God! You are! I didn’t notice before. You definitely need some sunblock, otherwise tomorrow you’re going to end up in A&E.’

  ‘Not sure about A&E,’ I say. ‘But, yeah.’

  ‘Not a problem I have,’ she says, returning her attention to the TV screen. ‘But it’s still really bad for my skin.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I say. ‘We can pick some up tomorrow morn—’

  ‘Shhh!’ Jess says, raising a finger to silence me.

  ‘Why? You don’t speak French, do you?’ I ask.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘Of course I don’t. Which is why I need to concentrate!’

  That evening, we walk back to the seafront before heading west towards the port. We stop in a tiny brasserie and drink surprisingly expensive beers, then wander on past the super-yachts and fishing boats and on round to the far side of the port.

  One of the restaurants is advertising Moules frites à volonté, which Jess excitedly informs me means ‘mussels and chips, as much as you can eat’.

  I’m surprised by her excitement because, as far as I know, mussels and vegans don’t mix. But Jess explains to me, at rather more length than I really need, how various philosophers and biologists have considered the issue and how, because mussels have no brain and because, as far as anyone can tell, they don’t have any capacity for pain either, they’re considered the highest life form one can ethically eat.