The Next Best Thing (10 page)

The steps of the French Institute were wide and grandiose, backed by a vast Art Deco window with square panes of pale green light. After the film, Jane made her way down the
staircase, looking at the young man sitting behind the curved reception desk. With his earnest spectacles and cropped hair, he was so authentically New Wave, he could have stepped straight out of
Godard’s 1950s Paris.

Jane looked away and realised that the vision in her left eye had become out of focus. Damn it, she had lost a lens. It happened quite often, and was not a big deal. It just meant you had to
freeze and very slowly inspect every inch of your clothes and the floor around you. She stood still on the step, and waited for everyone to walk past her so she could take her time and search for
it properly. It wouldn’t take long, there hadn’t been many takers for the lunchtime screening.

After running her fingertips over her face and body, she carefully crouched down and began combing the surface of the step she was standing on, then the one below.

‘Can I help you?’

She became aware of a pair of stout black brogues coming to rest a few inches away from her face. She was no expert on men’s shoes, but these looked the sort that came with a thirty-year
guarantee. Above them rose a pair of socks decorated with red and green diamonds. She looked up further and saw they belonged to a large man with kind eyes wearing a blue pinstripe suit. A pair of
red braces nudged out over one of those stripey shirts with a plain white collar that had just become fashionable again, though he clearly didn’t know that. He looked like the last person
you’d expect to run into at an art-house movie. And he had stopped for the sole purpose of helping her. It had been so long since anyone had unexpectedly offered to do something nice for her,
that Jane felt at a loss.

‘Thank you, yes,’ she said, ‘I’ve lost a contact lens.’

‘Bloody nuisance, aren’t they? I’m always losing mine.’ He lowered himself beside her and ran a hand across the step with surprising finesse. She noticed he wore big
cufflinks, another hangover from the yuppie Eighties, and that his tie was decorated with miniature stags’ heads.

‘I can’t see it,’ he said, ‘but in my experience they don’t usually get as far as the floor. Let me check your face.’

Still crouching beside her, he put his hands on either side of her head and stared intently, clinically into her eyes. His fingers felt warm and comforting as they pressed against her
temples.

‘Look up . . . now look down. Now try looking to one side.’ Jane followed his directions, rolling her eyes like a mad woman being exorcised.

‘You don’t look like someone who wears lenses,’ she said, treating him to a view of the whites of her eyes as she swivelled the pupils up into her skull.

‘How do you mean?’

‘You don’t look vain enough.’

He laughed. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment, though I probably shouldn’t. and we were reading
Lord of the Flies
at school. I got fed up with being called Piggy, after
the one who broke his glasses. You know how cruel kids can be.’

‘Yes. I got mine because everyone said I looked like Olive from
On The Buses.’

‘Hang on, I can sec it. Right down in the corner. Just hold it there and I’ll see if I can nudge it out.’ He applied the lightest flick with his little finger, and the lense
dropped out into his palm.

Jane looked down at it, a fragile semicircle of grey plastic lying in his steady open hand. She licked her finger and picked it up, slotting it hack into her eye.

They got up and faced each other. He stood head and shoulders above her, but Jane thought the Piggy label was unfair. He was big-boned, that was all, which people sometimes used as a euphemism
for fat, but in his case it meant just that. Big-boned, with sandy hair and those kind brown eyes.

‘Well, that was all a bit
Brief Encounter,
wasn’t it?’ she said breezily. ‘Or should I say
Brève Rencontre,
as we’re in the French
Institute?’

‘You speak French?’

‘Yes, it’s my job. I’m a translator.’

‘I see.’

He looked genuinely interested. Surely he should be moving on now, he must have a job to go to, dressed like that. You wouldn’t bother to put on red braces just to sit in a darkened
cinema.

He made no attempt to leave, so Jane felt obliged to carry on talking.

‘Do you often go to the cinema? During the day, I mean. On your own?’

Why was she trying to make out he was some kind of pervert? He was only doing the same as her.

‘Never.’ He shook his head. ‘But I had a lunch cancelled and I suddenly just fancied it.
A Bout de Souffle
is one of my favourite Godards.’

Jane couldn’t help smiling at the idea of this ungainly Englishman being a disciple of the French New Wave. He was about as Continental as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

‘Me too,’ she said.

There was a moment’s pause, then they both began speaking at the same time.

‘Well, thanks for your help . . .’

‘I don’t suppose you’d like to . . .’

They both stopped and laughed. This was ludicrous, they were like tongue-tied teenagers.

‘I was going to suggest that we might . . . have a coffee,’ said Rupert. ‘To celebrate the lens and its nondisappearance.’

If she said no, that would be that. He would never see her again and life would go on as usual, he’d go back to his computer and Richard’s booming voice across the room. You
couldn’t go organising your life around chance encounters, pretending it was like the movies. He had Lydia, after all, and this woman was nothing special anyway, you might even say she was
rather plain. He almost hoped she’d say no.

‘All right,’ she said.

It was only because he had been kind to her. Considerate, nice manners, something Will couldn’t always be relied on for. It wasn’t that she fancied him or anything, good God, hardly!
Definitely not her type, in fact about as far as you could get from her type. Those awful socks, and the soul-destroying pinstripe suit with the maroon tie, like a caricature city gent, it was a
miracle he wasn’t wearing a bowler hat. What on earth had made her agree? She had to pick up Liberty from school, too. Still, a quick coffee wouldn’t do any harm, would it?

They left the French Institute and crossed Harrington Gardens to walk down Bute Street, a narrow road that pretended it was in Paris, with its French bookshop and patisserie and a café
where Jane said they served the best cappuccinos. Le Raison d’Etre, it was called, and Rupert wondered aloud as they went in whether they would have to take part in the kind of
‘café philo’ discussion that the French were so keen on.

‘I hope not,’ laughed Jane, though she thought it might be less embarrassing to have an impersonal debate on a finer point of philosophy than to make small talk with this man whose
name she didn’t even know. What if she bumped into a friend, how on earth would she introduce him? As ‘Piggy’? Fancy him telling her that, it hardly cast him in a flattering
light, but ex-public schoolboys were all like that in her experience. So hung up on their formative years in prep school that they clung to their nicknames. They didn’t seem to move on, like
normal people.

He pulled out a chair for her and they ordered two regular cappuccinos. Jane realised she hadn’t told him her name. ‘I’m Jane by the way,’ she said.

Plain Jane, he thought. Which she was, sort of, or maybe hers was simply a cleaner, less-made-up look. She didn’t look as well groomed as Lydia, with her freckly face, regular, well-spaced
features and medium colouring. But when he looked at her he felt uneasy and his throat was dry.

He coughed. ‘Your jacket reminds me of the tablecloth on the kitchen table of my house in France ‘

Jane pulled at her sleeve dismissively. ‘Why, this old thing?’ she said, in a Southern Belle voice, ‘I’ve had this since gingham was in fashion last time round.
Where’s your house?’

‘Near Marseille.’

‘How lovely. Do you love it?’

‘I do.’

They remained silent, contemplating how much he loved his house in France.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said eventually, ‘that was a very pretentious thing to say, about my tablecloth. It’s just that it really did remind me.’

‘It’s OK.’

She smiled at him. Her smile was nice; open, a bit shy. He smiled back at her.

‘I wish I was there now, actually,’ he said. ‘I was just thinking about it before I went to sec that film.’

‘I’d love to live in France,’ said Jane. ‘Or Spain. Or deep in the English countryside. I’m afraid I’m one of those tragic Londoners who dreams constantly of
escape. My partn— some people think it’s pitiful, like going after some kind of never-never land. What do you think?’

I think you’re beautiful.

‘I think . . . It’s nice to have both. If you can. But it’s not essential. Home is where the heart is. And other cliches.’

He lightened up. ‘So, tell me about being a translator. It sounds very glamorous. Are you one of those people who sit around talking into headphones at international summits? In those
conference rooms that look like space labs?’

‘No, you’re thinking of interpreters. I’m just a nerdy anorak who works at home on my computer. At the moment I’m translating a book about French bridges for an American
publisher. I’m just on the chapter about the Pont de Normandie.’

There, that should put him off. Though strangely enough, he seemed to be gagging for more information. Claimed to have a degree in civil engineering and had a special interest in bridges. She
could just imagine Will rolling his eyes in mock boredom when she told him. If she told him. He might even lie down on the floor and pretend to go to sleep, which was his favourite jokey response
to something he found truly, deeply boring.

But the odd thing was that when she talked to Rupert about bridges, she actually found it interesting. She had got so used to her work being considered unworthy of discussion that she had
forgotten how absorbing a new subject became when you were working on it. You became an overnight expert, until you moved on to the next book.

When they had finished their coffee, Jane saw that she had cut it much too fine for the school run and stood up brusquely, quickly pulling on her coat.

‘I’m sorry, I really must dash,’ she said. ‘Thanks for the coffee and the lens and everything.’

He followed her out onto the pavement. If he didn’t act now, he would never see her again. But what could he do? He couldn’t ask her out or anything. He was engaged to Lydia.

She was running up Bute Street now, on her way to the car park. ‘I quite often go to the Institute on Fridays,’ she called back to him over her shoulder. ‘I’ll definitely
be there next week. Louis Malle.
Au Revoir les Enfants.’

He smiled in relief. Next Friday then. He waved to her, then found himself confronted by an angry waitress. In his confusion he appeared to have done a runner. He tipped her five pounds, and
went off to find a taxi.

Jane switched on the engine of the Vauxhall, willing it to stutter into life. She should be just in time for Liberty. Her new friend from the Institute had no idea she had a
daughter. He knew nothing about her except what she did for a living. And that she liked going alone to the cinema, and would love to leave London if she could. And he would know how it felt to
cradle her head between his hands on the stairs of the French Institute. She was sure he would be there next week, she was ninety-nine per cent sure of that. She didn’t think she would bother
to mention it to Will. They weren’t joined at the hip, after all. They weren’t even married.

Sunday Brunch at the Bluebird Café on the Kings Road was Lydia’s idea, not Rupert’s. He couldn’t understand why brunch had become so fashionable in
England, because to his mind it was an American invention best practised in its country of origin. Brunch was perfect in New York. The city was so ugly that you had to spend all your leisure time
in restaurants. You took refuge from the brown streets by diving into some joint to order sickly combinations of skinny blueberry muffins with bacon and maple syrup and banana smoothies. But in
London, it didn’t really work. It was almost sad to see Brits trying to be like Americans. What happened to a few pints of warm bitter followed by steak and kidney pie? Because brunch was
only lunch by another name and was always served at lunchtime, in spite of its pretensions to be seen as a late breakfast.

Lydia shared none of his reservations. She polished off her eggs Benedict with rocket side-salad and ordered another glass of buck’s fizz, glancing round with satisfaction at the tables
filled with successful people pretending to read the Sunday papers. Obviously, they were only pretending, because everyone knows it is impossible to read a broadsheet newspaper over a small table
laden with glasses and plates, even if the plates did only contain ‘brunch’.

‘Well, this is the life!’ she said brightly, raising her glass to her secret fiance who was sitting across the table, looking stout in a pair of jeans that had a horrid ironed crease
running down the front of the legs. It was the Filipino maid who did them that way, and Rupert couldn’t be bothered to instruct her otherwise.

She lowered her voice and leaned confidentially across to him, to add
sotto voce,
‘Bye-bye Balham, hallo Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea,’ then winked to show Rupert
she was only joking, that of course she would be marrying him even if he lived in Streatham. Though it was a shame he didn’t look more like the Italian at the next table who was right now
giving her a very dirty look indeed beneath his Enrique Iglesias hair. His jeans were half the width of Rupert’s, and seemed to be moulded to his energetic lower body, suggesting that if you
were to remove them, you would be confronted by a fabulous Renaissance statue in rippling hot bronze. For two seconds she met his eyes to acknowledge that they could have great wild sex together,
then she turned her attention back to her boyfriend. The good thing about being thirty-seven was that you were grown up. Ten years ago she might have hopped tables, but now she had clearer
objectives and she was in it for the long term. Rupert stirred two sachets of sugar into his large cappuccino and pulled his navy Guernsey sweater off over his head. He’d had it twenty years
and it didn’t owe him a penny.