Out of My Depth (3 page)

She smiled and reached for the biscuits. She had never shared that story with Patrick, and she never planned to. As far as he knew, he was her first, her last, her only.

Tough little Suzii had been a godsend in that harsh environment. She was streetwise, probably because of growing up in London, and she had taken no crap from anybody. She had not let Amanda or Izzy be picked on, either (Tamsin was able to look after herself).

Isabelle had always been the glamorous one among the four of them. She was a Pre-Raphaelite painting brought to life. She drifted around in long skirts and flowery blouses, teamed with Doc Marten boots. Her hair was long and auburn, and her skin was clear and creamy She was always on her way to orchestra practice, with her clarinet, trailing a crowd of hangers-on from the music department in her wake.

Izzy was far too sensible to diet. She had never understood Amanda and Suzii’s shared obsession with junk food. She would stop eating when she felt full, and she would usually turn down chocolate on the grounds that she ‘didn’t really like it’. She was always being asked out, and she had an impressive, but not sluttish, turnover of boyfriends. She had conducted a leisurely search for her Prince Charming, and, as Amanda recalled, had enjoyed herself immensely along the way. Looking back, Amanda wondered why she had never hated Izzy. It had never occurred to her, before.

Izzy was a dreamer. Amanda was forever laughing at her for doodling wedding dresses in her notebooks, usually accompanied by a hypothetical married name. ‘Isabelle James,’ she would write. ‘Isabelle Williams. Isabelle Jenkins.’ She would scribble them, sometimes. ‘I’m practising signing cheques,’ she explained.

Amanda tried to imagine Izzy now. She was married, of course. That had been a foregone conclusion. Amanda and Patrick had been to her wedding to Martin, a tall and handsome charmer quite a bit older than Izzy. Izzy had been breathtaking in her wedding dress. Amanda tried to imagine them now, a devoted married couple. She hoped the institution of marriage was more fulfilling for Isabelle than it currently was for her. Isabelle was bound to have some children by now. She pictured a brace of mini Isabelles, with flowing hair and Monsoon dresses. Izzy would have given them romantic names. Raffaella and India. Something along those lines.

She looked at the invitation again. It was going to be interesting to catch up.

The name ‘Tamsin’ ambushed her, circumventing her attempts to ignore it. Tamsin lived on the other side of the world. She wouldn’t come. Susie was only inviting her for show.

Tamsin had been thin, angular, and opinionated. Amanda had liked her, but had always been wary of her, even back then. She knew that she and Tamsin were at opposite ends of the group of friends. Amanda was close to Suzii, who was friends with Izzy, who was best mates with Tamsin. Amanda and Tamsin had never been as close as all the rest of them. Sometimes she would try to persuade Tamsin to dye her mousy hair, or to have it cut into some sort of style, but Tamsin just laughed. Tamsin had always been different and Amanda, who had never been interested in politics, and who could never make herself care as much as she should have about apartheid and starving babies, tended to edge away from her.

That was then. Now she had the urge not to edge away so much as to run as fast as she could in the opposite direction. But Tamsin was as far away as could be, and that was as it should be.

Amanda allowed herself to remember Mrs Grey, Tamsin’s mother, for an instant. Mrs Grey had been as easygoing as her daughter was difficult. She had always worn an amused little half smile. She had been most people’s favourite teacher. Tamsin had never known whether she was more mortified that her mother was the careers adviser and French teacher, or because her mother had better social skills than she did.

Amanda knew that she had been wildly jealous of Tamsin, and that nothing would ever have made her say so. Tamsin had been blessed with the gift of not caring in the least what anyone thought of her. She was unashamedly aloof from the rest of the girls at school, engaging them only to argue about politics. She used to dress in embroidered skirts with little mirrors on them, and grey men’s macs she picked up at the indoor market. She and Izzy would laugh as they hypothesised about the guy who had died in the mac, the pervert who stood on street corners feeling his balls through his pocket.

Of course Tamsin would decline Susie’s invitation. Amanda decided she might as well finish the biscuits before going to the gym.

Paris

March

I loved to get a fix of shops and cars and apartment blocks and people from time to time. As soon as I set foot in Paris or London, I sparked up. I felt parts of me coming to life, parts that I had not realised were dormant. Country life was good. It was what I needed, to get my work done. But the city made me feel whole.

It was, I decided, as I took the steps up from the Metro at rue du Bac, because I had grown up in London. Until I was fourteen, when my father’s job whisked us to Cardiff, I had never contemplated anywhere but London. It had never occurred to me that anybody might want to live anywhere else. And even now, there was something about the city-any city, the bigger the better — that made me feel I had come home. In fact, I had never said it to anyone, but I was often happiest when I was in my little flat in London. There, I could wander from bedroom to tiny kitchen to minuscule bathroom to sitting room, without feeling guilty about dusty neglected rooms waiting to be inhabited. I was glad we were in the countryside, but as the months and years went by, I felt more and more certain that we were not there for ever.

Paris in the spring was a cliché, but it had become one for a reason. The spring air smelt of bread and exhaust and budding leaves. The people were as good-looking and well-dressed as anybody would expect. There was a warm breeze. I took off my cardigan and slung it over my handbag. I was here for a few days, shopping for art supplies at Sennelier’s, going to a few meetings at the gallery, and hoping to carve out an hour or two somewhere to start assembling my summer wardrobe. The summer visitor season was about to start, back at home. We were booked up with guests for most of the summer, and I was itching to socialise. Roman managed our winter social life, and he enjoyed it a lot more than I did. I could never find the confidence to say what I wanted to say, in French. It was a huge failing on my part. I was forever catching up with conversations just as they moved on.

The reunion was working out exactly as I had hoped. Izzy and Amanda had replied to my invitation straightaway, enthusiastically. I was itching to see them both again, to catch up. There had been nothing from Tamsin. I knew it would take a while for the letter to reach Australia, but it had been two months now, and I could safely assume she wasn’t coming. Nobody in their right mind would fly round the world for two nights. I felt hugely relieved. It would be odd to see my friends. We had not so much drifted apart as agreed, without ever talking about it, to drop each other. It had seemed the only thing to do, but now we were thirty-two, and it was time.

Three hours before my train home to Dax, I rushed into the gallery and flung my things down.

‘Hi,’ I said, speaking English and, for once, not caring.

‘Susanna,’ said Marc, with a sunny smile. He went into French. ‘You look tired. Sit down. Coffee?’

I nodded. ‘Mmm, coffee. Yes please.’

‘Everything’s great, as ever,’ he said. ‘Selling faster than you can supply them. And there’s a couple more commissions. Remember a guy you did a painting for in January? With a woman in it?’ I nodded. It had been a rush to finish that one in time. ‘Well, he liked it so much that he wants you to do something else for him. With his wife in it, again.’

‘Great. When and what?’

‘He’ll call you himself, if that’s OK. He’s got your studio number from last time. That all right?’

‘Of course. His wife liked the present, then?’

‘I guess.’ Marc disappeared to find the coffee, and I leaned back in my designer chair, which was less than comfortable, and looked at the walls. They were not, naturally, my exclusive domain, but I was happy to see a lot of my work up there. They displayed them perfectly here. The walls were almost aggressively white, and they set off my blue skies and turquoise seas to perfection.

My mobile rang. I looked around, but Marc was still off making coffee, and the place was deserted. I answered the phone, turning towards the wall, and speaking quietly. I hated ostentatious mobile use.

‘Hello?’ I said.

There was a crackle. Then the line calmed down. ‘Hello?’ It was a woman. I recognised her voice instantly, but I pretended not to, because I didn’t want it to be her. ‘Hello?’ she said, again. ‘Is that Susie?’

‘Yes it is,’ I answered crisply.

‘Hi! Susie, it’s Tamsin. Calling from Australia!’

‘Tamsin!’ I said, hoping I sounded suitably enthused. This was ridiculous. I had got in touch with her, not the other way round. ‘Tamsin, wow. It’s amazing to hear your voice.’ I remembered the last time I had heard her voice, how distant she had sounded, even though she had been right in front of me. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m good,’ she said. She had picked up a slight Australian accent. ‘Susie, I’ve just received your letter. I was in New Zealand for a while. It’s so great to hear from you. Is it too late to say yes?’

‘Of course it isn’t,’ I told her firmly. 'Are you serious? You’re coming all that way?’ I thought about it. ‘Would you like to stay longer?’ I asked politely.

Tamsin laughed. ‘It works out perfectly.’ I still couldn’t believe that this was actually Tamsin, that she still existed, and that I had the gall to speak to her. ‘You know, my dad’s getting remarried? At last. To a lady called Val? She’s a lovely lady. I mean, I’ve only met her a couple of times. But he’s happy. It feels a bit . . . ’ She pulled herself together, audibly. ‘So the thing is, I’m coming over anyway this summer. I’ll fiddle the flights around a little bit. No problem. Are the others coming?’ She laughed. ‘This is going to be so weird.’

‘Mmm. Yes, they are. The four of us will be reunited. How’s Australia, anyway? What do you do?’

‘I run a bar. It’s a bar at night, a café in the day. By the beach? How about you, Susie? What do you do, out there in France?’

Marc appeared, with my coffee. I waved at him, trying to indicate that I would only be a second. He smiled, put my coffee down on the arm of my chair, and wandered away.

‘Erm.’ I had, vainly, assumed that everybody knew I was a painter. I was the most commercial type of painter in the world. I was always finding my stuff on greetings cards. ‘I paint. Pictures. Actually, Tamsin, I’m going to have to go. I’m just at an appointment right now.’

It was getting dark by the time I reached the Gare d’Austerlitz. I pulled my long coat tightly around myself and sought out the platform I needed. I had three bags full of art materials, a few clothes, some shoes, and a good haul of new makeup. The bags were pulling on my shoulders, but I could not find the energy to find a trolley and a euro. I lugged it all to my train, and stowed everything away, and sat by the window to read.

I couldn’t concentrate. There was something magical about sitting on a sparsely populated train, in a Parisian station, waiting to be whisked south to arrive home in the early hours of the morning. Outside the window, the station’s lights were bright, and they made the darkening sky look black by contrast. Paris was sitting out there, under the fat moon. Most of France was about to flash past the window.

I decided to cancel the reunion. It would be rude, but that didn’t matter, because Amanda and Isabelle and Tamsin were no longer a part of my life. If I offended them, it would not change anything.

We had diverged. Isabelle had written an enthusiastic letter in response to my invitation. She lived in Cardiff again now, in Pontcanna, and she was separated from her husband, which was surprising. Now, she was a single mother of a little boy. She had raved about how wonderful it would be to come to France. She said her son had never been on an aeroplane, and that they were both excited. It made me feel uncomfortable, as if Izzy and I had accidentally swapped lives. If, back in our day, the American custom of voting pupils ‘most likely to’ do anything had caught on, Izzy would have been most likely to live in the south of France and be skinny and successful with excellent clothes. I would have been most likely to get knocked up and abandoned and to become wildly excited about the idea of going on an aeroplane.

Amanda had rung me a week or so later, and as soon as I heard her voice, I knew that, like me, she was in two minds. Of course, she couldn’t say anything, but she picked delicately around my motives.

‘Is Tamsin coming?’ she’d asked.

‘I haven’t heard back from her yet.’

‘She’s still in Australia. Mum ran into her dad a while ago and he said she’s still in Sydney’

‘Yes. I invited her but I don’t expect she’ll make it.’

At that, Amanda’s voice lightened audibly. She began to sound like a forceful London mother.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘We would love to come, Patrick and the children and me. Can’t wait, in fact. Can’t wait to see what kind of a place you’ve got for yourself out there. Anyway, Susie, how are you doing? Is there a Mr Susie?’

I laughed. ‘Not tied to me in wedlock. And I’m not sure he’d appreciate the name, but yes, there’s a Mr Susie. He’s half French, half English. His name’s Roman.’