“Yup,” I said. “Then it finishes. They made me walk a lot as well.”
“What happened?” said Thierry.
“Same as what happened to you,” I said. “Just a thing.”
He liked this and nodded his head. “Just a thing.”
“Yes.”
“And then you got over it.”
I considered it. “Mostly,” I said. “You’re not quite the same afterward. But mostly.”
He nodded at this. “If I do the walking.”
“Yes. If you do the walking.”
He sighed. “But, you know,” he said, “I have already lost fifteen pounds.”
“Good,” I said.
He nodded. “Well,” he said, smiling, “I want to look good when I see Claire.”
“Tell me about Claire,” I said. But at that moment, the door burst open and Alice marched in, holding a very small coffee and a copy of Paris Match. She was wearing an immaculate navy jacket, teamed with a red printed scarf and very skinny white trousers. She looked like she was entering a “Who’s the Frenchiest” competition.
When she saw me sitting on the bed, she pulled up short. Oh, for Christ’s sake, I wanted to say (in English). No, I am not trying to get off with your morbidly obese sixty-year-old husband who’s in the hospital after suffering a severe heart attack, okay?
“Oh, Anna,” she said in a way in which one might (and indeed, in Paris, often did) say “Oh, dog poo on the streets.”
“Hi Alice,” I said. “I just came up to see how Thierry was doing.”
“Why?” she said.
I didn’t know the answer to that without betraying Claire.
“Frédéric and Benoît want to know,” I said. “Frédéric’s scared of hospitals.”
She sneered at this. “Well, tell them he’s on the mend. How are sales? I hope you’re not hanging back.”
“Let me try what you’re doing,” said Thierry.
“Best not,” I said. “Plus, you’re on a no-chocolate diet.”
I still wasn’t entirely sure he wouldn’t throw back the blankets and march down to the shop in horror once he tasted what was up.
They both looked at me.
“I’d better get back,” I said, feeling awkward.
“Yes, do,” said Alice, fussing around Thierry’s bed. Thierry looked at me with a comical look of mute understanding, and I realized that saying the Claire word in front of Alice was as much of a non-non as I’d expected it to be.
I picked up my bag and headed for the door. Just as I did so, I heard Thierry say, “No news from Laurent?”
“Oh, no,” said Alice.
I stopped short. Did Thierry not know that Laurent had been by his bedside night after night? That he hadn’t slept in days? That he’d left his job to come down to the shop to help me out? He must do.
“Of course he’s been here,” I said before I left the room. Alice turned on me, her eyes blazing as Thierry sat bolt upright.
“Oui?”
“Anna, a word,” said Alice in English. She followed me outside.
“Have you no compassion?” she said. “How dare you interfere in my family? Laurent hasn’t been back since Thierry regained consciousness, and God knows when we’ll see him. Don’t be so cruel as to tell a sick man that he can’t see his son. Much better if it’s just done and dusted and they’re kept apart.”
This seemed to me that it was becoming a bit of a thing, Thierry not seeing the people that he loved.
“I’ll tell Laurent to come back,” I said boldly.
“You can tell him what you like, it won’t work,” said Alice. “I think, personally, if you want to hang on to this job, that you keep your nose out of our business. I mean that in a friendly way.”
Alice didn’t mean anything in a friendly way.
“I’ll go,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll tell Thierry you made a mistake. Thank you for coming to the hospital; I doubt it will be necessary again.”
She turned and closed the door on me. I looked down the endless corridor and wondered, not for the first time, if perhaps, at thirty, I just hadn’t actually grown up yet, that there was a whole adult world out there I just couldn’t make heads nor tails of and that was that. Damn confusing to me though.
- - -
Wednesday was early closing and I got a chance to go home. For once, amazingly, the flat was empty. Sami had a big opening night of La Bohème coming up, and I’d promised to go, although I wasn’t sure I’d get on with opera. It was a bit highfalutin for me. I liked Coldplay.
I made my way up the stairwell, humming. Perhaps a little nap, then I would log on and see if I could trace a route for Claire. She had asked me outright in the last conversation and I’d agreed. I would go home, see everyone, and fetch her back. This bit about her wanting to come by ferry didn’t help; going from London by train would be about a million times more convenient than getting her to Dover, but we’d work something out.
- - -
“Mum, you have to see it just isn’t fair. It’s just not right.”
Claire looked out of her window again. The nurse had just changed her dressing and given her a mild sedative while she did it, so everything kind of gently washed over her head. Ricky Jr. was talking to her—he was so handsome, she thought. It was amazing she and Richard had turned out such nice children after all.
“We can’t take the time off—Ian either, but it’s not even that. We wouldn’t. It’s not right. A journey like this—next year, maybe. Eighteen months. When you’re strong enough and well enough. Sitting on a cross-channel ferry in your condition, it’s just ridiculous. We couldn’t insure you to go, for starters.”
Ricky worked in insurance, which Richard had thought was a brilliant thing, and even though he’d gotten wonderful exam results and gone to a good university and married a lovely girl and been, his entire life, nothing but a credit to them, Claire had privately occasionally found a bit of a shame. She adored her sons completely, but they were so very like their father. She would have perhaps enjoyed a mercurial, ambitious, annoying daughter to fight and spar and bond with, or an odd, intense, clever son who ended up at CERN or designing bizarre things for the Internet or joined a band and disappeared for months at a time. Ian was a solicitor, and a good one. They were such good men, pillars of their community. In a way, it was a shame when they were born that the Reverend had taken relatively little interest in them; he would have been proud of them. They were both very, very sensible.