Wish You Were Here (26 page)

‘The thing is, Max, you felt I got away from you. And I'm not saying I felt I'd had a lucky escape – I loved you very much at the time – but I married the right man. And I knew that the moment I walked down the aisle with him. I haven't spent the last nineteen years with you burning a hole in my heart, full of what ifs.'

He met my gaze. I held it steady. Max nodded slowly. ‘Whereas I have. James is a lucky man.'

I swallowed. ‘Not really. I'm a shrew. And a nag. And I'm preachy and full of ridiculous neuroses. I drive my family mad. And I haven't aged particularly well. I've put on too much weight and my chin is a bit droopy. That surely helps, Max?'

He
laughed. ‘No question.'

‘But it's true, isn't it?' I insisted.

‘You mean, have I enshrined something – someone – in my heart who doesn't exist? Is it a relief to see her for what she really is, all these years later?'

‘Yes. I mean, come on.' I rolled my eyes expressively. Almost held up my bingo wings. Not quite.

‘You never were an oil painting, Flossie.'

I threw my head back and laughed. ‘Thanks!'

‘But not every man goes for arm candy.'

‘No, but many men are distracted by it. And I think I'd have spent my life looking over my shoulder if I'd married you, Max, something I've never done with James. Women …' I didn't say – like Mimi – didn't want to dredge that up ‘will always home in on you.'

He played with his spoon. ‘I'm not asking for violins to be played, but it can be a curse, sometimes. For a man. Not to be taken seriously.'

Good looks, he meant. I thought about it. About people like Robert Redford and George Clooney, wanting to be famous for directing rather than acting.

‘Nah.' I shook my head. ‘Sorry. Given the choice, you'd never give it back. Never look any other way.'

He smiled. Very attractively. Eyes creasing with laughter lines – he, of course, had aged terrifically. ‘Maybe not.'

The waiter came to take our empty plates and shells. Provided finger bowls, which we used. Asked if we'd like more wine. I declined. He left us alone. Max's eyes met mine. Held them.

‘So that's a no, then, Flora?'

I smiled sadly. ‘It's a no, Max.'

‘Not
even a moment's hesitation.'

‘Not even a heartbeat. But I'm very flattered. On the other hand, you didn't leave Mimi for me. You didn't break out of a long, comfortable marriage out of passion for Flora Murray-Brown. You broke out for Camille. Then, when you realized she was shallow, you thought – shit, now I'm single. Hm, I wonder how old Flora's doing? Always liked her. Got a bit of depth. Ooh, look, here's her sister-in-law. Might ease in there, tag along on their family holiday, see if there's still a spark. Oh hello, yes, still fancy her. Even if she hasn't aged brilliantly. And although Mimi says she'd have me back, she's going to be bloody furious. I could have a fresh start with Flora. She's a laugh. We've always got on. Let's face it, we were engaged, should have been married. And she knows me very well. There'd be so much I wouldn't have to explain. We could have fun for the next few years together; maybe not get married, just see how it goes. And I feel like a change.'

I looked at him steadily. He held my eyes and, this time, didn't try a grin.

‘We're all fallible, Flossie,' he said softly at last. ‘All human. And maybe you're right. Maybe that encapsulates it. But is it so terrible?'

‘No,' I said slowly, ‘it's not terrible. It's reasonable, at our age. And realistic. But don't dress it up as something else. As a grand passion. You know very well that if we ran away together – which there isn't the slightest chance of our doing – we'd still end up getting on each other's nerves. Cracks would appear, as they have with you and Mimi – me and James, for Christ's sake. Nobody's perfect. There are no fairy-tale endings. You just have to keep buggering on.'

He
nodded. ‘You're right. You are preachy.'

‘Which you'd forgotten. See? And, after a bit, it would irritate you. Drive you mad. Ask James. My daughters. They'll tell you. Go back to Mimi, Max. And give her my love.'

His eyes widened at this. ‘She feels that she shat on you from a very great height.'

‘Did it bother her?'

‘Of course. She's not a bitch. She was just …' He shrugged.

‘Overtaken by something more important than our friendship. I know.'

I did know. Mimi and I had been friends. Shared a flat. And I'd forgiven her years ago because, in a way, she'd delivered me to James.

‘I'm going to preach again.'

‘Jesus wept.' Max put his head in his hands.

‘Sometimes the hardest route is the most worthwhile.'

‘Wait. Hang on.' He folded his napkin lengthwise. Leaned across and put it round my neck, like a dog collar. ‘Go on.'

I pulled it off. ‘I mean it, Max. You're scared of going back to Mimi because she's a strong woman and you know she's not going to be pathetically grateful to have her man back and give you a hero's welcome.'

‘I'm not saying she'd make me pay …'

‘No, because, as you say, she's not a bitch. But you're going to have to put your back into it, not just swan in being suave and charming, and that makes you nervous. But it'll be worth it.'

The waiter brought the bill. Max paid in silence and I
watched him: loving him, in a way. Not like James, but just in an incredibly fond, ‘What a shame I don't see you any more, I was extremely close to you' sort of way. And if he really searched his heart, I think that was actually the way he felt about me. He'd deny it, but I'd say it was so.

We walked to the car in silence. He had his arm draped around my shoulders, and that felt entirely right. We got in and he started the engine. The car bumped slowly back down the goat track, then navigated the zigzag lane through the pines, before we sped back along the coast road. The forested hills were to our left this time, the glittering expanse of water to our right, the sun beating down. When we stopped at some lights I could see he was deep in thought: it was almost as if I weren't in the car any more. I took a strand of hair from my mouth.

‘What are you going to do about Sally?'

He turned. ‘Hm? Oh, you don't need to worry about Sally. You'll be surprised to hear she wanted even less from this relationship than I did. No strings. I should think she'll be glad to see the back of me.'

I recalled her skipping gaily off to the pool with her book and her oily hair. For a day, I'd thought; but perhaps Max was right. Perhaps she didn't want anything. We'd all just assumed she did. But Sally didn't subscribe to that Darwinian instinct to settle eventually on one person. Like Rachel, she preferred her own company, but she was less straightforward about it: dressed it up differently. Assumed a more elaborate disguise, a camouflage of constant chirruping, in order to appear – well, like everyone else.

‘I'll
ring her this evening. Tell her I've got held up with work in Cannes and won't be returning. Then I'll have dinner with her when she gets back. She won't mind a bit.'

No. She probably wouldn't. Might even be relieved. She was a strange one, Sally. The only person she'd possibly ever been close to, outside of the family, had been Donaldson, but although my girls had wondered about that, Rachel and I had always thought no. No, this wouldn't shatter Sally.

We drew up at the airport right outside the Departure doors, Max ignoring the drop-off zone. He got out and went round to take my bag out of the boot. When he came back we stood facing each other: no embarrassment, just smiling. He opened his arms and I walked into them. He hugged me and I laid my cheek on his shirt, still smiling. When we drew back, he looked quizzical.

‘By the way, did you ever contact your father again?'

My mouth dried. I retreated quickly into myself, behind my eyes. Closed the shutters. An angry horn blared loudly, a taxi driver behind us, outraged at Max's audacious parking. He was shaking a Gallic fist and shouting, leaning almost out of his window in rage. Max threw up his hands in response and a furious exchange broke out between the two men, with absolutely no serious intent on either side. Max came back to me. Grinned.

‘Better go.'

‘Yes.'

He held me again. ‘Take care of yourself,' he whispered.

‘And you.' I whispered back. ‘Great care.'

Then he turned and went.

I joined the easyJet check-in queue for the second time that day. It snaked for miles and, on another day, at another time, I'd have found an official, asked questions, demanded answers – been embarrassing, my daughters would say: ‘doing a Mum'. Right now, though, I just took it on the chin. I was feeling numb, so standing in a daze in a queue of complete strangers, thoughts chasing around my head, suited me. I welcomed the complete inertia in my body to counteract my very fast brain.

The man in front of me turned and gave a wry smile. ‘Not much we can do about it, is there?'

I gazed at him. Middle-aged, nice, open face, balding. Actually, there was.

‘Excuse me,' I muttered, sort of to him but also to the young chap behind me, who was weighed down with an assortment of backpacks and was blocking the way. I muscled past and through the throng, in the direction of the main concourse. Then I span around, looking for signs. Ah. That way. Down the escalator I went, following directions to the station. In the end, I had to get a taxi across town, as the station was not situated within the airport, it transpired, and then, when I reached it, I spent ages trying to work out a French timetable. In the end, I gave up. I explained my destination to the girl at the window, through the grille, and was told that ‘
Bien sûr
', it was indeed
possible to get a train, or at least in that direction. There was one to Grasse in half an hour, but from there I would have to get a taxi, or a bus. No trains. ‘
C'est difficile
.' Lots of shrugging. It was not an accessible place. I'd manage, though, I decided, bag clutched on my knees half an hour later, as the train, with surprising punctuality, departed.

The journey was beautiful. If I'd had a mind to appreciate it, I'd have experienced the route swooping up over mountains dense with pine and then dropping down dramatically through tunnels to emerge into fabulous countryside. Even in my dry-mouthed, shallow-breathed state, I sensed the drama of my surroundings. After the Massif Central came hilltop villages, old men staring at the train as if they'd never seen one before as they herded sheep or goats. After an hour or so, we trundled into Grasse and I realized I hadn't released my grip on the handle of my bag the entire journey. My hands were white. I flexed them gingerly. As I got off the train I tested my knees, too, stiff from holding the exact same position, a heavy bag resting on them.

The taxi was sick-making. The car was old and very proximate to the ground. None too clean either, and the driver smoked continuously. I opened the back window and gulped down air, hoping I wasn't going to throw up, but relieved, in a way, to have something else to concentrate on. We lurched on for miles, swinging around bends without slowing down, me being thrown around in the back. As we drew closer, finding the chateau seemed to be entirely my responsibility, despite my giving the driver the address. Lots of raised hands – both of them off the wheel at the same time – as I directed him into another wrong
turn, and another. Plenty of ‘
Merde!
' and murderous glances at the meter, which I'm sure he was not disappointed to see rocketing but wanted me to be aware of, aware that this was all my fault, in case I quibbled, no doubt. Finally, he flung me around yet another hairpin bend, but this time on to a dusty lane I recognized.

‘
Alors – ici!
' I told him, leaning forwards. ‘
Au bout de cette voie – là-bas!
'

‘
Ah, oui
,' he muttered, as if he'd known all along. I got the distinct impression we'd been carefully circumnavigating the house for some time.

‘
Ici – ce côté de la porte
,' I told him firmly and, obediently, he stopped short of the gates.

I paid him, practically all the money I had, then waited a moment for him to go. I inhaled great mouthfuls of fresh air. Before turning around, I composed myself a moment, in the dust the taxi had left in its speeding wake, which hung, suspended, then I turned and walked through the tall iron gates to the chateau with my old blue bag. I felt a bit like Maria returning to the abbey. Or had she been fleeing from it? I could never remember. Was always in too much of a drunken haze on Christmas Day, just about coming round for ‘Edelweiss'.

As I passed the lodge cottage perched at the end of the drive, I saw Michel and Thérèse bent double in their vegetable garden. They straightened up when they saw me, yellow corncobs in their hands, staring as I went by in that blatant, French way. I didn't greet them, and they didn't acknowledge me either. Agathe was with them, a basket full of tomatoes over her arm as she shaded her eyes to watch. On I strode, feeling, not like Maria now, more like
Clint. Yes, in some spaghetti western: a gun on each hip, ready to shoot from both. I hesitated, though, when I got to the front door, flung wide, as usual, to reveal the ubiquitous tangle of flip-flops, paperbacks, sun cream and hats strewn on the hall table and the floor. Should I go inside and upstairs to my room to ponder what to do next? Let people find me? Spread the word themselves? Or should I go round the back, brazen as you like, to encounter them all on the terrace or under the trees, announcing, quite simply, that I'd had a change of heart and wasn't going home at all, and did anyone know what was for supper?

Upstairs to my room.

I crept up the stone staircase, feeling a bit foolish now. It had seemed so right at the airport. Also on the train. Less so in the car. And now … I wasn't sure I could pull it off. I left the bedroom door ajar so that I might be seen or heard. Sat down on the bed. But nothing happened for a long time. I could hear voices below on the terrace. I coughed. Coughed again. Still nothing. Finally, I opened the shutters, which had been shut against the heat of the day, with a bit of a bang. Silence below. Then murmurings. At last, footsteps on the stairs, and Tara came in, eyes as wide as when I'd left her, still in her pink bikini.

‘Mum! What are you doing back?'

‘I had a change of heart, darling.' I bustled around the room being busy, unpacking my bag, which I'd deliberately left full to give me something to do, popping creams back in the bathroom, nightie under my pillow. ‘Decided I could say everything I wanted to say to Maria on the phone and that it was pointless going all the way back just to have a conversation.'

‘Right.'
She looked stunned. ‘But what about doing it in person, all that “much better face to face” stuff?'

I felt weary already. Had I said that? I could never remember my own web of lies.

‘Well, yes, of course. Ordinarily, that would be the way forward but, you see, there was a baggage handlers' strike and I wouldn't have got a flight until the early hours. I didn't fancy a night on the airport floor.'

‘Oh God, no.' Tara and Amelia had passed swiftly through the age of finding it fun to sleep on the floor of a soggy marquee after a party; indeed, my elder daughter had been known to book herself into a B&B after an eighteenth in deepest Wiltshire. Why hadn't I thought of that earlier? The truth?

‘So will you go back tomorrow?'

‘No, I think not. I shall ring Maria now. Tell her my position.'

‘Which is?'

‘Well, I'll … give it some thought.'

‘Presumably you've been thinking of nothing else!'

‘Yes, but –'

‘Blimey – what are you doing back?' Rarely have I been so pleased to see Amelia.

‘Baggage handlers' strike,' I told her.

‘And she's changed her mind about the face-to-face bit,' put in Tara.

‘Well, as I say, I can do it on the phone.'

‘Oh, right. What about the sustained attack with Lizzie? “Girl power”?' Amelia raised her eyebrows.

‘She'd have to have spent the night at the airport,' Tara said helpfully.

‘Oh,
gross.'

They watched me bustling around for a bit then turned to go, satisfied – or bored, perhaps – just as the boys appeared in the corridor. Their eyes were large as they peered over their girlfriends' heads at this strange woman, totally unlike their own mothers – I'd met neither, but the spectre of Rory's plagued me constantly – who boomeranged back and forth on a family holiday. The girls tactfully turned them around, and I sat down wearily on the bed, rubbing my aching brow with my fingertips. I listened to them amble downstairs. Knew they'd eventually spread the word, but knew it could also be a while, so dull and inconsequential was I, only really useful as a provider of food or fresh laundry, and since that wasn't necessary with Thérèse to do it, of no real consequence at all. They wouldn't rush to find their father.

I lay down on the bed to wait. Sat up, almost immediately. Swung my legs round and braced myself as his familiar footsteps sounded up the stairs. For the first time in my life, I felt scared. I remembered his fury on the way to Seillans. His taut, white face. But as he came into the room and shut the door behind him, I knew. Five hours alone had cooled his temper, just as it had mine the day before. He was no longer ablaze. On fire. That sort of combustion and momentum cannot be maintained unless you're a certain type of person, and James wasn't.

‘What happened?'

There was a baggage handlers' strike. I could have gone much later tonight, but I changed my mind.'

‘Oh?'

‘Yes, I've had a long time to think about it. Also, Max
was at the airport, James. Waiting for me, I think. Well, yes, he was. I was so furious with you for sending me home, I had lunch with him. After all, I had five hours to kill.'

James didn't say anything. A muscle went in his cheek, though, as he stared down at me.

‘And I knew I no longer had any feelings for him, which was why it was all right to go, and I don't know if you'll understand that, but I'm telling you anyway. It's the truth. We had lunch in a very beautiful place overlooking the bay, with delicious wine and seafood, and he's terribly attractive, and I felt absolutely nothing, except an old bond of friendship and familiarity and a wish that we'd remained friends.'

‘Bully for you. How nice of you to come all the way back to share that with me.'

‘The point is, James, I never did feel anything. It was just a silly, drunken, summer-holiday indiscretion. I haven't been hankering away all these years for Max.'

‘Again, my thanks to you for clarifying that.'

‘But that's not what I came back to tell you.'

He stared at me. Didn't speak.

‘I came back to tell you that – that –' Unaccountably, my knees began to shake. Physically tremble as I sat there. I put my hands on them. Began to feel tears sting behind my eyes, streaming down my face. A lack of air.

‘I came back to tell you about my father.' I felt the air rush out of my lungs as if from a vortex. ‘I've known all these years, but I've blocked it. I've blanked it.'

And then I broke down. Dissolved. I felt James sit beside me. He didn't say anything. Didn't put his arm around me, not that I was expecting it. I wasn't going for
the sympathy vote here, that hadn't even occurred to me. I knew it wouldn't occur to James either. I just knew I couldn't keep it in any longer and that there was only one person I could share it with. I sobbed quite loudly and violently, and he got up and shut the windows. The shutters, too, plunging the room into deep gloom. Then he sat down again.

‘Years ago,' I blurted out, quite loudly, ‘Max and I went looking for him.'

‘I know. You told me.'

‘But I didn't tell you we found him.'

‘No.'

‘Because – well, you see –'

‘You don't have to tell me.'

‘I do,' I said fiercely.

‘Right.'

I gulped. ‘We tracked him down through his sister, in Brighton. Max and I went through Mum's things one day, in her bedroom, when she was out with Neville at the races, like a couple of budding detectives. We thought we were so clever. We found letters. Not from him, but from this sister, referring to someone called Tom, who was so sorry. And this sister – Sonia, she was called – was wondering if there was anything she could do. Max and I knew it was my father; we were convinced. Mum had clearly been left in the lurch with a baby and, for some reason, had never breathed a word. We got the train down to Brighton, to Sonia. She was still living with her parents, a mean-looking, closed-up couple. Sonia was better. The house was horrible, though, James, almost a slum. Max and I were horrified.' I took a deep breath. ‘It turned out
Tom was in prison. For drugs. Not just possession, for supplying. Young people. But also for conning old ladies out of their savings to buy the drugs. He'd become notorious in Brighton. When her parents finally left the room, Sonia showed us the newspaper clippings. The trial. My mother beside him, looking shocked. So young. A baby – me – in her arms. He was very good-looking. Chiselled features, wavy, dark hair. He'd hit one of these old ladies, one of the ones he preyed on, and she hadn't died but was very shaken up. This was all reported as the trial went on. After that, Mum wasn't by his side any more with me in her arms. There was a picture of the old lady in her hospital bed, with black eyes, bruises.'