The Road to Zoe

by Alexander, Nick

  ‘Wow!’ I say when she finally finishes. ‘Who knew?’

  Whatever the biological reasoning, her eagerness suits me just fine. I love mussels and chips and discover that I like all-you-can-eat mussels in Roquefort sauce even more.

  While we wait for our dessert – profiteroles for me and a not-entirely-vegan tarte Tatin for Jess – I research Zoe’s supposed address. It quickly becomes apparent that while there is a regular bus service from Nice to Villeneuve-Loubet, the bus goes nowhere near where Zoe lives. The directions given by Google Maps end with the salutary phrase: ‘Walk four miles to destination.’

  Jess points out that, as with past attempts at finding Zoe, we may well get redirected on further, and as the idea of trying to pursue her via little-understood French public transport seems worse than the effort of renting a car, this is what we decide to do.

  So the next morning, after another leisurely breakfast of coffee and croissants in what is already becoming ‘our’ bar, we ask our waiter, Monsieur hoodie, for advice.

  He directs us to a nearby agency at the port, but when we get there the cheapest deal on offer is a shocking ninety-five euros per day for a Renault Clio. Jess is eager for us to take it, but I convince her to wait.

  We descend to the dockside and, our legs dangling over the edge, I hunt on a comparison site for a cheaper deal. This turns out to be one of my better ideas, because I manage to book an identical Renault Clio for two days for the exact same price that we were going to pay for one. It’s not until I’ve finished the booking process that I realise that I’ve actually booked it from the same agency we’ve just visited.

  An hour later, feeling rather embarrassed, and also feeling some embarrassment about the fact that I’m embarrassed – what Jess would no doubt call suffering over my suffering – I return to the agency and sheepishly give the same clerk our booking reference. Whether he doesn’t remember us, which seems unlikely, or whether he simply pretends not to remember us in order to save everyone embarrassment, I’m grateful for his discretion.

  ‘He’ll probably say you scratched it when you bring it back so he can charge you a thousand euros,’ Jessica says, once we’re seated in the car. ‘Serve you right as well, you tight-arse,’ she adds with a giggle.

  As I turn the key to start the engine, I exhale sharply through pursed lips, an expression of the stress I’m feeling.

  ‘You OK?’ Jess asks as she buckles her seatbelt.

  ‘Yep. I’ve never driven a left-hand drive before, that’s all,’ I explain. ‘I just tried to reach for the handbrake in the seat pocket.’

  ‘I’ve driven one,’ Jess informs me proudly. ‘I drove almost a thousand ks in Spain a few summers ago. D’you want to swap seats?’

  I sigh with relief. ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Yeah, actually, that would be great. If you’re sure?’

  The route, dictated by Mister Google, takes us through town then along the broad palm-tree-lined Promenade des Anglais and on, out of town on the autoroute. Jess takes it all in her stride, from the frantic traffic in the town centre to going the wrong way around roundabouts, to negotiating the péage on the motorway. I’m pretty awestruck by how capable and relaxed she is about it all, chatting happily as she drives. ‘Now, this is where we should have rented an open-top,’ she tells me. ‘I wonder how much extra it would have been?’

  ‘I’m guessing a bit more than a fiver,’ I say.

  Half an hour later, and with less than a minute to go until we reach our final destination, we find ourselves in the middle of a long stretch of A-road cutting through dense woodlands, and for a moment I fear it’s going to be a repeat of Scotland – that Google has led us to the middle of nowhere. But then Jess nods at a roadside hoarding and says, ‘Le Sourire. It’s a bloody campsite, Jude!’

  ‘Shit,’ I comment. ‘That’s not good.’

  ‘Why not?’ Jess asks.

  ‘Well, if it’s a campsite, she’s almost certainly moved on by now.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Jess says, pointing. ‘They have mobile homes. Maybe she lives in one of those.’

  I turn to look at the multiple rows of identical mobile homes we’re driving past, partly hidden behind a row of trees. ‘What do they call them in the States again?’ I say. ‘The people who live in mobile homes?’

  ‘Trailer trash?’ Jessica says.

  ‘Yeah, that’s it.’

  ‘God, you’re so judgemental!’ she laughs.

  ‘I’m not,’ I say. ‘I was only joking. Plus, you said it, not me.’

  ‘Well, I know where I’d rather be,’ Jess says. ‘Bristol Filwood or the south of France. Let me see . . .’ She indicates, swings into the wide driveway of Camping Le Sourire, then pulls to a halt on the crunchy gravel of the deserted visitors’ car park.

  The sky is still deepest blue but it’s considerably cooler here, away from the coast, and as we step out of the car and walk towards the campsite office, I shiver.

  The office is closed and locked up, so we venture further into the campsite. It’s pretty quiet, which I suppose is no surprise. We are in January, after all.

  We amble past empty, scrubby camping spaces and locked-up mobile homes until we see the first signs of life: two small children playing unaccompanied in a kids’ area. We start to head towards them but I spot an elderly man walking his aged poodle in the distance, along the river’s edge, so we divert towards him instead.

  ‘Bonjour,’ Jessica says as we approach. ‘Parlez-vous anglais?’

  The man glances at us and, after replying with a simple shake of the head, he returns his attention to his dog.

  ‘Habla español, maybe?’ Jessica asks, smiling hopefully.

  ‘Non, français,’ the man replies.

  ‘Le owner?’ I attempt, in what I’m certain must be abysmal Franglais. ‘De camping?’

  The man confirms my fears by pulling a horrific grimace. One would think, from his expression, that I have farted rather than attempted, albeit pitifully, to communicate with him.

  ‘Où est le proprietario?’ Jessica asks, tentatively. To me, as an aside, she says, ‘That’s what “owner” is in Spanish, anyway.’

  The man shrugs and urges his dog onwards, and I grasp that it’s not that he doesn’t understand; he just doesn’t want to talk to us.

  ‘Come on,’ Jess says, pulling at my sleeve. ‘Let’s see if the kids are more responsive.’

  We return to the play area to find that the boy has vanished. Only the little girl remains, sitting on a swing, kicking forlornly at the gravel.

  ‘Bonjour,’ Jess says, crouching down in front of her.

  The girl, who must be about seven, replies in machine-gun-speed French. All I catch is the word frère. From her expression, I gather her brother isn’t her favourite person right now.

  Jess shoots me a sideways grimace. ‘God, they speak so fast. I didn’t catch a word of that,’ she says.

  ‘Perhaps she’s speaking a foreign language?’ I offer, sarcastically.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jess says. ‘Thanks for that.’

  ‘Vous êtes anglais?’ the little girl asks.

  ‘Oui, anglais,’ Jess says.

  ‘Hello,’ she says, in almost perfect English. ‘How are you?’

  Jess laughs. ‘I’m fine, thank you,’ she says. ‘Can you tell me where your mummy is? Or your daddy?’

  The little girl pulls a face and shrugs. Her grasp of our language clearly ends at ‘How are you?’

  ‘Mama?’ Jessica says. ‘Papa?’

  The little girl points at one of the mobile homes in the distance. ‘À la maison,’ she says.

  ‘Merci!’ Jessica tells her, straightening. ‘Au revoir.’

  But as we begin to walk away, the little girl jumps up and runs to Jessica’s side. She takes her hand and walks along beside us until we reach her trailer, where she shouts, ‘Maman? Maman!’

  A woman in her thirties with long, lank hair and unfashionable oversized glasses appears in the doorway. ‘Oui?’ she says, then, �
�Oh!’

  The same boy as before now shoots out past his mother’s legs, shrieking. He chases his sister, who runs off around the corner, out of sight.

  ‘Bonjour?’ the woman asks, sounding cautious.

  ‘Bonjour,’ Jessica says, flashing her broadest smile. ‘Parlez-vous anglais?’

  ‘Un peu,’ the woman says. ‘Not so good. I . . . forget.’ She waves over her shoulder to indicate that she hasn’t used it for a long time.

  ‘We’re looking for the owner,’ Jess says. ‘Le proprietario? Of the campsite?’

  ‘Le proprio?’ the woman says. ‘Il n’est pas là. ’E is not ’ere.’

  ‘Um . . . later perhaps?’ Jess says. ‘Plus tardes?’

  The woman shakes her head. ‘Is winter,’ she says. ‘Camping is closed.’ She pronounces closed ‘clo-zed’.

  ‘We’re actually looking for Zoe Fuller,’ I explain, speaking slowly in the hope she’ll understand. ‘Do you know her? Does she live here?’

  ‘Or Nick?’ Jessica offers in response to the woman’s blank expression. ‘Zoe’s partner, Nick.’

  At this her features light up. ‘Ahh !’ she says. ‘Nick et Zoé! Oui, bien sûr.’

  My stomach lurches at this development. My heart rate speeds up noticeably.

  She points over at the rows of mobile homes in the distance. ‘Numéro vingt-six ou vingt-sept, je crois. Tweenty-seex or tweenty-sefan.’

  ‘They’re here?’ I ask. ‘Really?’

  ‘Non, pas maintenant,’ the woman says, speaking slowly.

  ‘Sorry, they’re not here?’ I say, feeling nauseous.

  ‘Ils sont au travail,’ she says.

  ‘Oh, they’re at work?’ Jessica translates.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she says. ‘Work. Zoe ’ere at eighteen. Nick maybe eighteen, eighteen and a ’alf.’

  ‘Six, six-thirty,’ Jess says. ‘Right. And, um, do you know where she works? Où Zoe travaille? Is it near here?’

  ‘Not near, no,’ the woman says. ‘Is a shop making sandwich. In Sophia Antipolis.’

  ‘A sandwich shop, sorry, where?’ Jess says. ‘Sophie . . .?’

  ‘So-phi-a An-ti-po-lis,’ the woman repeats. ‘It’s town. Maybe ten kilometre from ’ere.’

  ‘And the name of the shop?’ Jess asks. ‘Do you know that?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the woman replies. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Le nom,’ Jessica says, eliciting another frown.

  ‘Snackway?’ I offer. ‘McDonalds? Burger King? Um, Prêt à Manger?’

  ‘Ahh, OK,’ the woman says. ‘Sorry, no. I don’t know this. It’s not such a big one, I think. Not a . . . chaîne . . . Small shop maybe.’

  ‘Right,’ I say. ‘Got it! Thank you.’

  ‘Best is come back eighteen and a ’alf.’

  We thank her for her help then wave goodbye and return to the car.

  ‘So what now, Sherlock?’ Jess asks. ‘Come back at eighteen and a half, or go looking for Sofia Loren?’

  I shrug and pull my phone out. ‘Let’s see if I can find any sandwich shops,’ I say. My voice must have come out a little brittle because Jess puts one hand on my thigh and asks if I’m OK.

  I nod and swallow with difficulty. ‘I’m just a bit . . . you know . . .’ I say.

  ‘Nervous?’ Jess asks.

  ‘Um, no,’ I say. I find myself unexpectedly struggling against tears. ‘It’s just, well . . . She’s not dead, is she?’

  ‘No,’ Jess says, softly. ‘No, she really isn’t.’

  Sophia Antipolis is only twenty minutes away and as we have no other real plans for the day, we decide that we might as well visit the three sandwich shops listed by Google. The drive takes us further north, past pretty villages and around the edges of a massive golf course before heading back south once again.

  Sophia Antipolis, it transpires, is a massive science park set in rolling hills and woodlands. It’s laid out around a seemingly endless series of roundabouts which are so closely packed that half the time the GPS doesn’t have time to react between one roundabout and the next; so on a couple of occasions we end up taking the wrong exit and have to double back.

  Eventually we arrive in Place Joseph Bermond, a modern reimagining of a village centre, where the first of the shops is listed. It’s a weekday lunchtime and we’re bang in the middle of a science park, so finding a parking space turns out to be impossible.

  After a few laps past the Purple Sandwicherie, Jess pulls into a loading bay. ‘Go check it out,’ she says. ‘If she’s there, I’ll look for somewhere to park.’

  As I walk the fifty yards back to the shop, I try to imagine finding Zoe behind the counter. Having not seen her for seven years, I struggle to imagine her face and even wonder if I’d still recognise her. Above all, I wonder what I might say. Beyond, ‘Hi, Zoe,’ my mind’s a blank.

  Le Purple occupies a small shop front with a chill cabinet and seating for twelve on the pavement outside. There are two people working behind the counter; they look like man and wife. I pretend to look at the contents of the chill cabinet before smiling and walking away.

  Next door and opposite are large brasseries and, though I peer in just in case, I’m really not getting my hopes up. The woman in the campsite had been pretty specific, after all. Zoe works in a sandwich shop, she had said, not a brasserie.

  As I walk back to the car, I see another tiny shop advertising sandwiches, partly hidden behind some trees. This one wasn’t listed by Google and, when I reach it, it’s the only customer-free commerce in sight. The sandwiches in the window look a few days old, and the owner, a middle-aged woman, glares at me in a most unwelcoming manner as I peer in through the window. Between the wilted sandwiches and her stare, I can understand why the place is empty. I wonder if she’s aware that she’s about to go bust, and why.

  The two remaining addresses are a short drive away in another part of the science park called Garbejaire. It feels a little less swish than the rest of the area; in fact, most of the buildings look like social housing. But again, built on the model of a Mediterranean village and with tree-lined streets and squares, the result is far from unpleasant.

  We park up in a side street and, tilting my phone this way and that as we follow directions, quickly manage to find Snack People. Inside, two men are busy assembling sandwiches for a queue of young people that stretches right out the door. Rap music is playing and both the employees are grooving in time with the music as they serve.

  We walk the streets for about ten minutes as we try to find Sandwich & Co., but in the end we conclude that it has closed and been turned into either a mobile-phone shop or a poodle parlour, forcing me to admit defeat.

  ‘I guess we’ll just have to wait till six-thirty,’ I tell Jess as we start to retrace our steps to the car.

  ‘It certainly looks that way,’ she says. ‘Though I was thinking we should try to be early. We don’t want that woman spoiling the surprise by telling her we’re in town, do we?’

  ‘No, we don’t,’ I agree. ‘Especially as Zoe would probably vanish if she knew.’

  ‘Do you really think she would?’ Jess asks.

  I’m just about to answer when Jess stops walking and points down a side road. ‘Look,’ she says. ‘There’s a Snackway, too.’

  ‘Are you hungry?’ I ask. ‘I am.’

  ‘Not for Snackway,’ Jess says, dismissively. ‘But we should check, shouldn’t we? Just in case.’

  ‘Their tuna wrap is pretty nice, actually,’ I tell her. ‘Plus, I can understand their menu. And they have a vegan option, which, frankly, I don’t think you’ll find anywhere else around here.’

  ‘They do?’

  ‘They do.’

  ‘OK, Snackway it is,’ Jess says. ‘Let’s just give some of our hard-earned cash to another immense American corporation.’

  The side road opens on to another tree-lined square. It’s filled with tables and chairs, and the hubbub produced by the large crowd of almost exclusively student-aged diners r
esonates off the buildings, intensifying the noise level massively.

  Inside Snackway, we place our orders with one of three sandwich guys and shuffle towards the cashier. Because I’m watching our guy like a hawk to make sure he’s understood that he mustn’t put fromage in Jessica’s sandwich, and because the cashier is wearing the obligatory Snackway baseball cap, I don’t see her face immediately.

  But when it’s our turn and she looks up at Jess, I freeze, my mouth open. Sweat prickles on my brow, and I feel weird and floaty and feverish. Tears start to press at the back of my eyeballs, making them feel like they’re bulging with the pressure. A huge lump forms in my throat, making it impossible to swallow.

  Jess, oblivious, attempts to pay with her credit card, but there’s some problem with it, so she asks me if I can pay instead. I’m semi-paralysed, but I take a gulp of air and somehow manage to tremblingly fumble in my pocket for my wallet and then in my wallet for my debit card.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Jess asks, as I hand my card to the girl. ‘Are you shaking? You look really pale.’

  It’s only on hearing us speak English that the cashier finally looks right at me.

  ‘Zoe,’ I croak, tears already running down my cheeks. ‘Hi!’

  Zoe glances from Jessica’s face to my own, her expression rapidly shifting through a whole range of emotions before settling into something approximating shock.

  She opens her mouth to speak once or twice, but then closes it again. Finally she thinks to study the credit card in her hand and, by the time she returns her gaze to me, I can see that she knows she’s not mistaken. ‘Jude!’ she says, shaking her head gently. ‘What the fuck . . . ?’

  I nod slowly and attempt to smile, but I’m pretty sure my expression is all mixed up. A tear slithers down the side of my nose.

  ‘You’re all grown up,’ she says.

  I nod again and shrug.

  Jess, who apparently has been holding her breath, now lets it out in a sharp exhalation. ‘Shit, it’s really you?’ she asks Zoe, then to me, ‘We really found her?’