That Claire had gone, and the one who remained looked even younger than before; pale and fragile, trying to keep warm against the darkening evenings, trudging through Kidinsborough like a ghost.
Her friends and contemporaries were living it up: sneaking into bars, drinking cider at parties around each other’s houses, snogging and more down by the canal. Claire sat in her room and wrote in her diary. She slipped out one morning and found, right at the back of the tiny tobacconists, the same brand of Gauloises in the bright blue packet that Thierry smoked. Nauseous and faintly horrified, she went into the wood and lit one. The very smell made her burst into tears again, but she found herself coming back again and again to smoke them, in the cold and the wind.
Later Claire thought that, had it not been the seventies, she would probably have been picked up by the school guidance counselor, or indeed at home. It wasn’t exactly unusual she learned, after many years as a teacher, to meet a depressed teen. Normally it was just a phase, home problems and the inability to realize that everyone else felt as nervous and awkward in their adolescent skin and sexuality as they did. She was always patient and kind with these kids, their sleeves too long for their hands, clutching at the ends, their infuriatingly mumbled responses. She knew what they were going through and how important it felt to them. She also knew the importance of not letting them pull it down. The biggest failures of her academic career were never kids failing academically, but emotionally.
As it was, everyone just left her to get on with it, and the gray wet world and her sense of being separated from it and every one in it by a piece of gauze began to feel normal. Until she met Richard.
For a second the following morning, I awoke without thinking anything, except that I felt refreshed from a good night’s sleep. A bright morning light was streaming in through the French window and throwing panes of bright buttercup yellow across my plain white sheets that had come with an old-fashioned blue comforter rather than a duvet.
Then I remembered, and my heart dropped. Oh God. I jumped out of bed and paced about in a rush, not sure what to do first. Well, I had to talk to Laurent—but, I realized stupidly, I didn’t have his telephone number. Sami might, but Sami never answered his phone—he thought it was bourgeois—so probably not. Okay, first things first. Get dressed. Coffee. I pulled on my dressing gown and stumbled in, nearly tripping over the most beautiful guest, asleep on the sofa, who appeared to be wearing angel wings. I recovered just in time and fixed myself a tiny cup of espresso, loaded with sugar, and took it to drink on the balcony. I was definitely getting used to it.
I looked out onto the early Paris morning. Far away across the river I saw a group of police horses being led out to exercise. A small group of schoolchildren were already huddled at the stop for the bateau mouche. Across the road, a woman was taking in washing that had been hanging outside her window on a pulley. We smiled at each other. It seemed so strange to me that somewhere out there was Thierry, being held together by beeping machines, kept alive by plastic tubes coming in and out of his heart. I wondered if Laurent were still there, holding his hand, his heavy head drooping from exhaustion. I was sure he would be. Alice, on the other hand…I had a feeling I might be seeing Alice today. I groaned and set about the daily lottery of seeing if there was hot water. Then I remembered. I still hadn’t called Claire. I could have kicked myself. I glanced at my watch. It was 5:00 a.m. in the UK. She’d still be asleep, hopefully. I couldn’t disturb her now. I’d call her from the shop.
I had a lukewarm shower, glanced once again at Cupid asleep—Sami often provided random sofas to various young artists—and let myself out quietly. My toes—no, not my toes. I always forgot. The hospital psychologist had said I had to say “the place my toes had been.” Otherwise, I would psychologically not manage to get rid of them—well. That place was aching a little, but it was better than yesterday, which was just as well. I had a feeling I was going to require all my energy today. Nothing could let me down.
- - -
Claire sat by the window, staring out, then down at the telephone, then out again. She didn’t want to do anything else. She had tried to sleep, but it hadn’t come. She had wanted to call Anna, but got too nervous when she picked up the phone. If it was bad news…could it be? What was it? But the tone of Anna’s voice had been so panicky. Maybe she’d just been lost, that must have been it. Lost and worried…but why hadn’t she called back to say she was all right? Why not? Where was she? Claire truly felt she couldn’t bear it if sending Anna to Paris turned out to be the second great mistake of her life. She breathed heavily and looked around for her oxygen cylinder. She could hear Patsy, her daughter-in-law, marching smartly up the path with the wheelie bin. She was a trouper, Patsy, a real life-saver. She couldn’t bear being a drain on her children and their families—or at least, had hoped she wouldn’t be for a good many years yet—but what else could she do? Most of all she couldn’t bear the look on the faces of her grandchildren—Patsy and Ricky had two daughters, Cadence and Codie, and she felt, at fifty-eight, she should be down on her knees playing with them, cutting out paper dollies and dressing up, passing on funny stories and songs, and telling them about their daddy when he was a little boy.
Instead they gazed at her horribly old, gray face and the oxygen machine in utter horror. She didn’t blame them. Then Patsy would crossly nudge them and they would come bearing the drawings they had done for her and a new scarf for her head, but truly they were too young ever to remember her as anything other than old and sick and witchlike, and it broke Claire’s heart.
“Hello, Claire!” said Patsy, opening the door with her own key. “I’ll just put the kettle on. Montserrat’s coming around to give you a bath, isn’t she? Great. Can I do anything for you?”
Claire stared at the phone in her lap. Was there anything to be done now, she wondered.
- - -
Frédéric and Benoît were looking positively mutinous and not even smoking. I raised my eyebrows, then I understood, as I saw the long thin figure of Alice opening the shutters. The boys raised their hands to me and I waved back, shyly. I wasn’t sure if they saw me as the enemy or not.
“How is he?” I said quickly in English to Alice.
She favored me with a sideways glance.
“The same,” she said. “Stable.”