A Hidden Life (34 page)

‘I do like him,' Lou said at last. ‘Not sure if he likes me.'

‘You're sure to find out in Paris. It's such a romantic city …'

‘It was meant to be you, Mum. You and Dad. I'm so sorry … it's my fault you two aren't going, isn't it? The moment I said I was going, he put your trip off, didn't he?'

Phyl smiled. ‘It doesn't matter. We'll get there. Your father's always happy to have any excuse for not going somewhere. You know him. And we could never go midweek.'

‘Cheaper to do that, and Harry can suit himself when he shows up at the office.'

‘Then it's very sensible of you to go now.'

Lou laughed. ‘The two of you are totally transparent, you know. You only had to hear the word “Harry” and you're happy for me to go instead of you. You'd love it if I settled down with him, wouldn't you? Or anyone really.'

Phyl frowned. ‘You make it sound so … so unfeeling. It's not that, Lou. We want you to be happy, that's all. It'd be so good for Poppy, too, to have a dad. As long as he's a good man, of course.'

‘Harry's good. He's lovely.'

‘Lou? You sound – you sound quite keen. Are you keen?'

‘I've got to go soon, Mum. You have a good time, you two, okay?'

‘Right. Okay. And we will. Poppy and I will be fine. Please don't worry.'

‘Of course I shan't. I did tell her this morning that Granny would be picking her up. She understood, I think, but it might be a bit of a shock when she sees you at first. I gave her a special goodbye hug but I'm not sure she knew how special it was. Or why, for that matter.'

‘Never mind, I'll cheer her up if she starts to miss you. And I'll tell her exactly where you are and what you're doing. She understands a surprising amount. You'd be amazed! And you'll be back almost before she notices you're gone.'

‘Yes, I know. It's getting late, Mum. Gotta go. Thanks so much for agreeing to do this for me. I couldn't manage without you, you know.' Lou got up and went to put her coat on. Phyl followed her to the door. She hadn't said how keen she was on Harry. She'd avoided the question. There wasn't any point pursuing the issue, so she hugged her daughter and said, ‘You have a good time, darling. Don't worry about anything.'

She watched Lou pulling the suitcase along the corridor to the lift. As the silver doors slid shut, she leaned forward a little and called out, ‘I am, Mum. I really am. Quite keen, I mean.'

Phyl smiled to herself as she went back into the flat. Maybe, she thought. Maybe this Harry was the one, the person who'd bring Lou back to what she used to be like before she met Ray.

‘D'you mind, Lou? Trains always have this effect on me. Even Eurostar. My eyelids close. I don't want to be rude or anything.'

‘It's fine, Harry. You go to sleep. I'll wake you before we get to Paris. Poppy was up for a bit in the night, so I might have a nap myself.'

‘Great,' he said and leaned back in his seat. He was fast asleep within minutes and Lou was further from napping than she'd ever been in her life. She stared at him, sitting opposite her across one of the tables, and felt a little dizzy when she thought of what might be going to happen. They were staying at a hotel together. She didn't
intend actually to initiate anything herself, but maybe he'd manage, under the influence of the famous Parisian romance-in-the-air thing (which Lou didn't totally believe in) at least to get as far as a proper kiss. She stared at Harry's mouth and began to imagine what kissing him properly would be like. The sensations that this line of thought were arousing in her convinced her that her days of being horrified by the very idea of sex were over. That on its own was something to celebrate. I'm over Ray, she told herself. I must be. I can think of him without cringing; without fear.

‘I can book us rooms on the internet,' she'd said in the office last Tuesday, casual and nonchalant on the outside and embarrassed and a little jittery on the inside. This was her first time at Cinnamon Hill since Harry's return. ‘Just for one night. We can go on Wednesday morning and come back on Thursday night. There's a special midweek deal, I think.'

‘Yeah, great – that's a brilliant idea, Lou. I actually have to see someone over there and we can combine it with a bit of sightseeing and so forth.'

‘I have to go and visit my great-aunt, though. Great-great-aunt, I mean. That's really why I'm going.'

‘Sure. That's perfect. It must be quite a thing for you, meeting up with her after knowing nothing about her. Amazing, really, that you ever found one another. You see her, I'll see my chap and we'll meet for all the fun things. Tell me how much my room is after you've booked.'

He'd assumed that they weren't sharing a room. Well, fair enough, Lou thought. He could hardly assume anything else, not on the basis of where they were at the moment. Where was that? Lou wasn't sure. Harry liked her. He'd kissed her affectionately (though not, it had to be said, passionately) a couple of times. They'd been out to a few meals and then he'd gone off to the USA. Now he was back (and she wasn't about to forget all those emails, which she still treasured) and they were going to Paris. Together. No way he'd agree to that if he wasn't at least a little bit interested.

Harry's head had fallen to one side and Lou was filled with much the same sort of feeling she had when she looked at Poppy sleeping: a tenderness, a wish to protect, a longing to hold him close. How mad
was that? She closed her eyes and tried to think of something else. Mme Franchard. Ciaran Donnelly. The screenplay. Nothing seemed to work. Her thoughts kept returning to the hotel she'd found on the internet and a half-formed dream of her and Harry miraculously not in the two separate single rooms she'd booked but together in a bedroom that owed more to Baz Luhrmann's
Moulin Rouge
than the reality she knew was waiting for them.

‘Sweetie, don't confuse me with facts!' Ellie rolled her eyes at Justin in an exaggerated gesture that annoyed Nessa. Her mother was a show-off and though this was okay most of the time – quite amusing indeed – in the present circumstances, it wasn't exactly the right reaction. They'd been invited to a restaurant famous throughout the South East for its inflated prices and as far as Nessa was concerned they'd have been better off in the local Indian or Chinese. All the food that had arrived on the table was so beautifully presented and displayed that it seemed churlish to complain about the size of the portions, or point out that the pasta was seriously undercooked. She'd have sent it back in the blink of an eye, but it was Justin's treat and it looked – well, she didn't want to live up to her brother's view of her as someone who was never happy with anything. So she cut and chewed her way through something that couldn't have been in boiling water for more than five minutes and tried to concentrate on what Justin had brought them here to celebrate.

That, too, sickened her a little. Three million pounds, give or take. It made her queasy to imagine it (she saw it in her imagination as bundles of notes, lined up on shelves, hundreds of them, stretching up and up, as far as she could see) and as for knowing it was sitting in Justin's bank account – well! She'd sort of got over the idea that he owed her anything. Mickey had been pointing out that she didn't have a leg to stand on as far as that was concerned and when she was with Mickey, Nessa was able to believe this and not fret about it. The truth was that when she was with Mickey, she was the only thing of any importance. Nessa was now so in love that for two pins she'd have stolen a bit of the limelight from Justin and told him and Ellie all about it. At the very back of her mind, in a place so hidden that she
only allowed herself to think about it when she was entirely alone and uninterrupted, was the dream of a civil partnership between the two of them. It had crept up on her slowly, this thought, but now that she'd allowed herself to think about it, she found herself returning to it over and over again. Nessa wasn't worried about what anyone else's opinion was of this plan, but she didn't want even to mention it to Mickey till her divorce from Gareth was done and dusted. Once that was over, once she was certain of the custody terms for Tamsin, she'd announce their engagement.

Her wedding to Gareth had been straight out of the magazines. She'd wanted the whole caboodle then, the knock ‘em dead dress, the take-out-a-second-mortgage venue and menu combo and the trad honeymoon in the South of France in a hotel that hadn't, in her opinion, come up to scratch. It had been fun at the time, and she'd been the one who'd organized everything, because Ellie was in Argentina or somewhere and Phyl wasn't a person you'd want to put in charge of anything that required flair. And of course – this struck her as quite symbolic and appropriate now – that was how she met Mickey and became friendly with her. Mickey had been in charge of the flowers because in those days she worked with the real thing for a posh florist in Brighton. Nessa tried to imagine how different her life would have been if she'd ordered her roses from some other place, and couldn't. She had trouble picturing a life without Mickey in it and that was true, she reflected, almost from the moment they'd met and had nothing to do with this latest discovery of her – Nessa still found it awkward to think, much less say aloud – her lesbian tendencies. When she and Mickey married, it would be entirely on their own, with Tamsin the only other person there. She would be a bridesmaid and already Nessa was thinking of what would look best on her pretty daughter. She didn't want to invite anyone else. She didn't want canapés, fancy clothes, a big shiny car – she wanted simply to be with her beloved somewhere far away – America, the Caribbean, Italy – almost anywhere where they could be sure of being on their own in a marvellous hotel with a swimming-pool. Five star. No expense spared.

What, though, if Mickey didn't want to marry her? No, that thought wasn't for today. Today she had enough to contend with.
Bloody Justin, who didn't know how to stop, who couldn't leave well enough alone. She would have been pleased to put him straight about what her opinion was, but Ellie was in full flow and doing a grand job.

‘I can't understand how you can possibly want more, darling. Even if you put it into an ordinary building society, the interest alone would keep you in luxury. It's an enormous sum and I just think you're being stupid. That's my opinion. Have you sought any professional advice, financial advice, I'm talking about?'

‘You must think I was born yesterday,' Justin said, taking another sip of his wine. This had cost, Nessa noticed,
£50
a bottle, but didn't taste much different from most other wines she'd drunk. Justin went on, ‘I consulted Eremount's most experienced advisers. Don't worry.'

‘They'd hardly be impartial,' Nessa put in. ‘Not if they're trying to part you from nearly three million pounds.'

‘Everyone I've spoken to says it's a marvellous opportunity to invest in something really exciting.' He started all over again, then, describing the unimaginably thrilling portfolio that Eremount had persuaded him was precisely the right home for his massive fortune. Nessa tuned his voice out because nothing bored her more than talk of money. She liked the substance; she liked the work that led to the acquisition of lots of cash but the nitty-gritty of how and why and where and what firms and futures and bonds and hedge-funds and blue chips, etc., it would take to make it bored her to sobs.

‘Anyway …' Justin was about to end his little lecture. Nessa could tell from his voice. He was coming to what he obviously thought of as the flourishing of his trump card, a kind of triumphant climax: ‘Since I put my money in, the shares have gone up more than half a per cent.
Half a per cent
.'

‘Terrific,' said Nessa, suddenly wanting to be out of there. Wanting to go back to Mickey's cottage and have egg and chips for supper. The knowledge that she couldn't, that she wouldn't see Mickey till tomorrow, made her feel both cross and sad. She and Gareth were going to Tamsin's parents' evening. Together. Damn and blast. Never mind, I'll phone her from the car, Nessa thought and listened to her mother, still going on at Justin and making not the slightest
bit of headway. Sod him, she thought. Let him get on with it. I don't care. I don't care about anything except Mickey.

The hotel
(l'Étoile de Montparnasse)
turned out to be just that little bit less glitzy than it appeared on the internet, but hey, Lou thought, I'm not complaining. Her room was on the same corridor as Harry's. It was clean and quite pleasant and even though the towels were a bit on the thin side, you couldn't moan when the view from her third-floor window was a roofscape of Paris. She could see Nôtre Dame and a bridge whose name she didn't know and at night the lights of the city would be spread out for her, and if she wasn't exactly Nicole Kidman, she certainly felt like a more shiny and brightly coloured version of herself.

Harry had gone off almost straight away. He'd knocked on her door and when she answered, he put his head round it, saying: ‘Synchronize watches, chaps. I'll meet you back here at five, okay?'

‘Fine. I'll be here.'

He'd waved cheerily as he said goodbye and Lou had gone out to lunch rather tentatively. She had a
croque-monsieur
and a
citron pressé
in a café near the Métro and gave herself a pat on the back for the enormous range of her French vocabulary and the fact that the waiter didn't bat an eyelid at her accent. She set out for Mme Franchard's flat and when she got there, felt quite proud of having found the place all by herself, and, what's more, not in a taxi but after having braved the Métro system on her own. So far, so good.

She knocked on the dark wooden door of number 4, Rue du Treixel and waited for the elderly Solange to open it. This she did in record time, considering how slowly she moved and on this occasion there was no hesitation. Solange exclaimed loudly at the sight of Lou and even remembered her name.