A French Wedding (26 page)

‘You look at me. You look at me!' His mouth is close enough for Max to feel the spray of spit on his cheek.

‘You think you are better than me, Max. But you're not.'

Max keeps moving. Pigeons on rooftops in sentry lines. Their feathers the same colour as the sky. Their eyes looking on.

‘We're the same. Makes you sick don't it?'

Max flinches but doesn't turn around.
The buildings of the estate loom as he leaves, mute and pitiless. They don't care that
Max is going and will never be back. Everyone goes.

‘We're the same, Max!'

Someone at Max's feet. Max can only make out a dark lump, a shadow.

‘Christ, Max. There's beer everywhere.'

‘Rosie?'

He can hear her moving and breathing heavily, on hands and knees. Then he feels his shoes coming off. She lifts his legs and turns him so he is lying, instead of sitting.

‘I'm alright …' he slurs.

He feels his wet socks being peeled from his feet. Then the window lock, squeaking closed. A blanket floats above him for a moment as if in slow motion. Like a cloud, like something from his childhood he cannot place. Then it falls down onto him. Rosie pulls it down over his bare feet, tucks it around him.

‘Rosie?'

She sighs. ‘Goodnight Max.'

He grabs her wrist before she goes. It's so small; his fingers go all the way around.

‘Rosie?' His music has been turned off. Paris is shut out. It's cool and dark and quiet now. Quiet like a weight.

‘Rosie? I did the wrong things.'

Rosie doesn't move. Max lets go of her wrist and his arm flops like a doll's. Sadness fills him up, like water in a glass. The dark, the quiet, the loneliness and the mistakes, as real and cold as liquid.

‘I know,' Rosie murmurs.

Monday –
lundi

Chapter 20

Rosie

R
osie watches the city wake up, dusty-eyed and lumbering. Watches Parisians who seem not to have slept at all, in shoes with high heels that have become uncomfortable and dresses that need regular pulling down
.
Others
walk with one foot still in dreams, heads down and rubbing eyes. The garbage collectors, brightly clad, call to one another. Women take out small dogs for a morning piss as men smoking cigarettes stare at joggers. Rosie strokes the string of the window blind with her fingertips and watches. The rest of them are asleep. Her husband, who moved quickly and unconsciously into the space she vacated when it was still dark, Beth and Eddie with the door left ajar, Beth's head on
E
ddie's
chest, Sophie curled neatly on a couch. Max, on his back, head lolling, snoring lightly, blanket not reaching his feet. Sleeping like that, Max reminds Rosie too much of one of her sons and the thought makes her sad. Sweet now, while he is in slumber, but she worries what will become of him when he wakes. He is
still
a boy, when the world demands an adult. Rosie looks back out at the street. There is part of her that expects to see Juliette, part of her that hopes to see Juliette. She has become a kind of ballast these last few days. Instead, a blonde woman in red coat looks up at her and Rosie almost waves. It is no
one she knows.

Rosie unlatches one of the windows and pushes it open. She can hear traffic in the distance, though she cannot see any. It is more of a blur of noise, a thrum, than a proper sense, a rush which gives the impression of cars and taxis, the digestive-like rumbles of Metro trains, conversation and industry.
Le Marais
is still relatively sleepy but soon the shutters will be rolled up on the shop fronts and shutters opened on cafés.

‘How long have you known?'

Rosie turns to see Helen. Her hair is askew and pyjamas creased.

‘About Nina?' Rosie asks.

Helen perches on the radiator under the window. She has a cigarette packet in her hand. She taps out a smoke and lights it. She nods.

‘A while,' Rosie admits. ‘She made me promise I wouldn't tell anyone.'

Helen inhales. She blows the smoke, slowly, out the open window. The scent wafts back towards Rosie. She no longer knows anyone who smokes. Not a single person on her street, in her group of friends, any of the members of the PTA. Rosie's father had smoked; the fragrance makes her feel nostalgic. It reminds her of summer evenings with him in the garden, leaning on a spade, lighting a smoke while proudly surveying his dahlias. Helen looks to the floor. ‘I wish she had told me.'

‘We see one another more, that's all.'

‘Maybe. You're so close. I miss that.'

Rosie pauses and takes the cigarette from Helen's fingers. Helen stares as Rosie breathes in a cautious puff. The sensation of it moving down her throat and filling her lungs is wild. She had forgotten how it felt. All of a sudden she recalls being fourteen years old and huddled under a kitchen table with Mary Roberts, her high school friend, passing a stolen smoke between them. Giggling and coughing and feeling like the rock stars they idolised so much. Women who wore their eyeliner thick and played guitars and shook shaggy heads over microphones.

‘I should come back more,' Helen says.

‘You have a life in New York. We understand that.'

Helen frowns. She retrieves the cigarette and inhales deeply. They both look out the window, following the trail of smoke Helen puffs out into the city.

Rosie and Hugo had come to Paris on their honeymoon; they left the day after the wedding. Rosie still remembers the thrill of packing her bag several days before. Folding her clothes into neat squares – the new underwear, the carefully chosen dresses and shoes. The night before the wedding Nina had slept with Rosie at her parents' house, staying on a mattress on Rosie's bedroom floor. Sophie had been tiny then but Nina left her to be bottlefed by Lars, allowing Rosie all the quiet, devoted attention a bride deserves; helping her with her veil, fluffing her train, fetching water and listening to last minute worries and nerves. Observing, patiently, the packed suitcase for Paris that Rosie couldn't help but proudly show her. She took big sunglasses that made her feel like Audrey Hepburn and books she didn't read but sat with, opened, looking out over tiny coffee cups in streetside cafés, Hugo next to her. Rosie fancied she looked like a local, fantasised about the top-floor Parisian apartment she and Hugo resided in, with their perfectly turned out children wearing navy coats and shiny patent leather shoes. In reality Rosie and Hugo had stayed in a room barely big enough for the bed and a bathroom down the hall they had to share with two other guests. The room window didn't open properly and it had been summer, claustrophobically hot. But back then, they had fewer worries and a greater share of possibilities. There was no mortgage, no house, no children, no surgical practice to maintain or golf days to attend, no children's homework or secretarial duties for respective playcentres, parent-teacher associations and scouts groups.

Helen passes Rosie the cigarette. She hesitates before accepting.

‘Besides, you have Max.' Rosie says.

Helen licks her lips. ‘We don't see each other often.'

‘But when you do …'

‘Yes.'

‘You've always been so bonded with one another. Even though you're so different.'

Rosie thinks of Hugo. The life he has come from, compared to hers. Their worlds have always been so different. The noise, laughter and chaos in her family home compared to his. His parents' home was so quiet you could hear the clocks ticking. When they had come to Paris, Rosie had wanted to shop and kiss in gardens while Hugo had insisted on visiting museums, one after the other, striding quickly through the hot streets. He had read medical textbooks in those cafés where Rosie wore her Hepburn glasses and dreamed of other lives.

‘We're not so different,' Helen murmurs. They both look towards Max then, still sprawled out on the couch, his clothes and shoes and socks in a neat pile that Rosie made last night. It was his words that had Rosie sitting on the edge of the bed as her husband slept. His words that had kept her awake till the light changed and she'd left Hugo's side to stare out at the street and wait for the morning to come.

I did the wrong things.

I did the wrong things.

His voice had been echoing around her head for hours now.

‘Did you ever think about what it would be like, to be together?' she asks Helen carefully.

Helen sucks on the cigarette and nods. ‘Of course. I still do.'

‘And?'

‘And I still don't know.'

Helen tips her head as she stares at Max's figure, one leg out of the covers, one leg dropped to the floor, mouth open. ‘This long and I still don't know. Thought I'd have it worked out by now.'

Rosie gives a small, wry laugh. ‘Join the club,' she murmurs.

‘How did you know?' Helen asks.

‘With Hugo? I didn't.'

‘You must have thought you did.'

‘Oh yeah, I thought I did,' Rosie replies. Her wedding day had been beautiful. Not a drop of rain, just endless blue sky. Her mother with tears in her eyes that she dabbed at with a lace hanky. Even her brothers were suddenly awkward with her, as though she was a perfect, china doll, not the little sister they had pushed and shoved around since as long as she could remember. Rosie's father, walking her down the aisle so seriously, worried he might get it wrong, might trip. Everything just perfect, like a film.

‘Your wedding was gorgeous,' Helen says, as though reading her mind. ‘Remember us all at the reception? Dancing? You and me and Nina, all the boys, our arms around each other? What a riot. I remember thinking we should have more weddings if they were all going to be like that.'

Rosie remembers. They'd been dancing in a big crowd and then suddenly it was just them – Rosie, Eddie, Helen, Max, Lars and Nina – like old days. Shutting everyone else out, jumping up and down and laughing so hard their stomachs hurt and Max still trying to hold a beer but spilling it all over Eddie instead and the floor getting sticky and Rosie wondering if her white shoes were dirty and then not caring and wanting to kick them off because they hurt. All of them singing, yelling more like, and Helen kissing her cheek hard and bringing her in close and giggling and getting the words wrong. Hugo had come up and gently extracted Rosie from the circle, reminding her that the car was coming soon and they had to leave, they were bound for Paris in the morning.

‘But there weren't any more,' Rosie says. ‘Weddings.'

‘That's true. First and last. So far.'

‘So far.'

Rosie recalls Helen that night, the firm kiss on her cheek that said how much she loved her, how much Helen loved all of them in that precious circle. Rosie knows that Helen's family life had been nothing like hers. She knows Helen looks invincible from the outside but is fragile on the inside. Rosie had always envied the money that seemed so easily available to Helen, the exotic vacations she took with her father and the
de jour
wife, in places Rosie could only imagine. The gifts of expensive clothes and dinners at The Ivy. None of which Helen seemed to count as special or a big deal. Rosie had once thought that Helen was ungrateful and spoiled. She had been jealous. She understands now that without love it all meant nothing. Smoke and mirrors, charades and lies. Helen never looked happier than when she was with her friends. On seeing Rosie Helen's face always broke into the kind of grin Rosie knows she gives her sons.

‘Hey, I'm sorry Nina didn't tell you about being sick. She has been pretty scared. We miss you, you know.' Rosie reaches out to put her arm around Helen.

Helen frowns, almost cringes, and then leans in. ‘Thanks Rosie. I miss you all too. A lot.'

Rosie wants to say that none of them has it worked out. Not her and Hugo. Eddie. Certainly not Max, he is more of a mess than Rosie anticipated. Lars and Nina and Sophie might come close but they are far from perfect. Rosie thinks of the day ahead, of the smell of hospitals and waiting on hard chairs and trying not to think the worst. Helen finishes her cigarette and stands.

‘I'm going to go back to bed for a while. Are you okay here? By yourself?'

‘I'm okay,' Rosie replies.

Helen bends over to kiss her cheek. ‘Wake me when you're going for breakfast?'

‘I will,' Rosie promises.

Helen takes a few steps before pausing. ‘It feels strange, doesn't it? Without Juliette?'

‘I looked for her on the street. I don't know why. Did Max say something to her? Is she gone for good?'

‘I don't know,' Helen murmurs. ‘Perhaps she is.'

‘I really liked her,' Rosie replies. Helen nods and turns, mumbling ‘Goodnight', though it is morning.

Rosie waits by the window a few more minutes, watching, listening, thoughts turning to soup, eyelids suddenly weighed down. She runs a hand over her face and then rubs her eyes. Sleep pulls at her now. Like one of her boys on the hem of her shirt. It complains at her. She stands and moves towards the room where Hugo sleeps, pausing at a room where the door is open. Nina and Lars are asleep within, one of Lars's arms flung over Nina, Nina on her side with her hands in prayer position, tucked under one cheek. She looks so much younger when she sleeps. They had kept the door open for Sophie, Rosie knows, it is a habit she has never gotten out of either. Hugo always wants the door closed and Rosie craves it open so she can hear cries or odd sounds, even when she is supposed to be sleeping. Rosie tiptoes inside the room and sits on the edge of the mattress. Her breath slows, matching theirs. There is something about the two of them that reminds Rosie of her parents, or the feeling she has being around her parents. Like nothing can go wrong with them present; routines would be followed, baddies vanquished, life would be safe. Rosie feels her whole body growing heavy, her skin, her eyelids. Nina stirs.

‘Rosie?' she asks, opening her eyes to slits. Rosie nods mutely. Nina lifts up the duvet and Rosie slides in beside her. Lars yawns and smacks his lips together.

‘Who is it?'

‘Rosie,' Nina replies drowsily.

Rosie is already slipping into sleep, reality becoming soft and fuzzy.

‘Hey Rosie girl,' Lars mumbles, reaching over Nina to pat her arm.