Jo was slightly disconcerted by the fact that she did not mind Hugh’s regular absences at all. He was away for at least half of every week, and although she would never have told him, she enjoyed not having to worry about another adult. She and Olly had their routine down to a fine art. The nanny would arrive at eight, Jo left for work at ten past, and arrived at the gallery between nine and nine fifteen. This gave her enough time to catch up on urgent paperwork before her two employees arrived at nine forty-five and the gallery opened at ten.
When Hugh was around, she found him in the shower at her allocated time, and ended up drying her hair after Jenny had arrived. Then her whole day was out of sync. She did miss him at weekends, but even then, she and Olly enjoyed the intimacy of their lazy mornings. They ate their toast together, cuddled on the sofa, watching Dick and Dom. It was cosy and it still felt slightly naughty.
Jo frowned as she poured Hugh and herself a large glass each of Cloudy Bay. She reminded herself that she did love having him around, when he was around. He had worked away for years, but she still looked forward to his return. A friend whose husband worked in New York for three weeks every month had told her that he often took her by surprise by coming home. He didn’t turn up out of the blue; she just forgot to expect him. She had told this to Jo conspiratorially, expecting her to make the same confession. She hadn’t been able to. She spoke to Hugh every day, she knew when to expect the sound of his key in the door. She was pleased to see him. She really was.
And when he was home, she could relax. She had trusted Hugh implicitly, until recently. Now, as she put the wine back in the fridge, she tried to remember when, exactly, she had started to suspect that something was awry. Eighteen months ago, she thought. Little things did not make sense. She tried not to think about it, as a rule. She loved him, and he adored her. They had been married for eight years and she couldn’t imagine being without him. Everyone had been surprised when she married him. He had not been smooth or suave, but he had been real. They had thought he wasn’t her type, but he was. Something about him had immediately made her feel comfortable. She could say anything to him, do anything with him.
He had been in Paris for a whole week, and she had missed him. She wondered why, exactly, he had needed to be in Paris for a whole week. Whether he had been alone in Paris, all week.
She and Oliver coped remarkably well without him.
It must be the case, she thought, that their relationship simply worked better that way. They were both capable, both strong and independent, and they trusted each other. People sometimes mistook them for brother and sister, not just because they were both tall and fair, but because they had been together so long they had a common set of mannerisms, a full complement of catchphrases. They were each other’s other halves.
She held out a glass, and Hugh took it.
‘Cheers,’ he said. ‘I missed you.’
She clinked her glass against his. They were drinking from the enormous glasses that Hugh’s brother Peter had given them for Christmas. He had always complained that their wine glasses were too small. In fact Jo had liked the old ones, which had, she felt, implied a pleasing degree of moderation and maturity. Still, these new ones were fabulous. They were also deceptive.
‘I did an experiment with these glasses while you were away,’ she told Hugh. ‘They take a third of a bottle each.’
Hugh smirked at her. ‘Sounds like a good experiment.’
‘Your brother’s trying to get us drunk.’
‘He’s a pisshead. He wants to bring everyone else down to his level.’ Hugh put his glass down on the table and produced two carrier bags. ‘Here you are, Olly,’ he said, handing one over. ‘One for you and one for Mummy.’
Oliver reached straight into his bag and produced a toy aeroplane. ‘A plane!’ he exclaimed. ‘I wanted an orange one,’ he added, frowning at his father.
‘I know you did,’ Hugh admitted. ‘They didn’t have an orange one. They only had blue ones.’
‘And blue ones are very nice,’ said Jo. ‘Olly, what do you say to Daddy?’
‘Fanks, Dad,’ said Olly, who was already flying his plane around the room.
‘Hey,’ Hugh remarked to Jo. ‘I had a dream last night that we were having dinner with Bill and Hillary Clinton.’
She looked at him and roared with laughter. ‘You had a dream that Bill Clinton was coming on to me, you mean, don’t you?’
‘Maybe.’
‘You’re obsessed with that man’s sex life, Hugh. I will never shag Bill Clinton, OK? I never would. I’m sure he’s very adept, but not my type.’ Jo peered inside her bag and sighed. ‘And Hugh,’ she added. ‘For Christ’s sake. Stop buying me perfume. I’ve got stacks of the stuff and I only wear Calvin Klein. What would I want with J-Lo? Am I that vulgar? Stop spending your money on it. I know you only get it because it’s in the airport shop.’
Hugh looked at her anxiously. ‘Sorry. I thought one was expected to buy one’s wife perfume at duty free. Clinton does, I’m sure. Chocolates better?’
Olly looked up from his elaborate aeroplane game. ‘Chocolate?’ he echoed, hopefully.
Jo smiled. ‘Chocolates would be better. Nothing would be fine. And whatever Clinton does to make his wife happy, he does it because he’s always got something to hide.’
Hugh nodded and kicked his shoes into the corner. ‘I won’t get you anything then,’ he said lightly. ‘It’s nice to be back.’
It was pitch black and extraordinarily cold when I went to bed. I could hear the noises of the night outside. Owls screeched. Trees rustled in the wind. Creatures I could not imagine made other-worldly sounds. The building creaked and a shutter blew back and forth, crashing into the front of the house. For a moment I considered going outside to fasten it closed, but the idea was unbearable.
I was used to sleeping alone, since Matt had always travelled with his work. I was used to sharing a bed with Alice, from time to time. I was not, however, accustomed to sleeping on a blow-up bed in a foreign country, particularly not while trying to compute the fact that I was at ‘home’. I could not close my mind. Sleep seemed further away than it had ever seemed before.
It was one in the morning. I was dreading the day ahead. I wanted to keep the doors locked, the shutters closed, until Wednesday. I wanted to hide away with Alice and do nothing. Alice, of course, was two. She did not countenance the concept of inactivity. We had immense amounts to do. I did not want to do any of it. I cringed at the thought of going into St Paul, the local town five minutes’ drive away, because I knew that everybody would look on me as a strange foreigner, an interloper. I did not know anybody and I could not bear the idea of being the object of scrutiny. I lay in our bare sitting room, watching the embers of the fire glowing gently in the blackness, and repeated my mantra under my breath.
‘I want to go home,’ I murmured to myself. ‘I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home.’ I must have drifted off to sleep muttering this phrase, and I woke up, at half past four, still whispering it. This project was far too big for me. Matt was only going to be with me for half of the time. I had to be able to live here on my own.
I ran through the tasks I needed to accomplish later that day. I needed to buy a cheap, second-hand car. A Renault, Citroën or Peugeot. For now I was driving a hire car, at vast expense, because Matt had taken our English car to the airport. I needed to go to the school and explain who we were, and ask whether they were willing and able to take in a displaced English toddler and teach her French. I needed to find the local supermarket and do a proper shop, not just a bitty one. The electricity was working now, but the heating was not. I thought the fuel tank was empty. I needed to call the people to sort it out, but first I needed to find a way of making myself intelligible on the phone. Someone had rung up the previous day and I had been unable to understand a word he was saying. Matt and Alice had been out looking for swings and slides and other children. I’d had no idea what to do. I was mortified. I ended up gently placing the receiver down on the floor and walking away from it, blinking back tears of frustration. Half an hour later, I went back to it. It was emitting a shrill shriek. I hung it up.
I was going to have to conquer my stultifying reluctance and do all these things. I knew I had no other option.
Part of me wanted to become a two-year-old again, to stamp my feet and refuse to do anything. I don’t want to do it. So I won’t do it. That was how it worked for Alice. I longed to pack a bag and take her home. But I couldn’t.
I dozed and fretted for hours, then fell into a deep sleep at around half past six. Suddenly Alice pulled my nose with one hand and flung the other arm round my neck.
‘Mummy, I’m awake,’ she announced unnecessarily.
I was heavy and uncoordinated. I removed her fingers from my nostrils and closed my eyes again, but Alice put a finger on each eyelid and pulled them open.
‘Me too,’ I told her, reluctantly.
‘Please fetch mine milk. Read a book with me. Where’s Daddy? I want Daddy.’
I stood up, drenched with exhaustion. I could not wait to sleep in a real bed, my own bed. ‘I want Daddy, too,’ I agreed wearily. ‘He’s in London, at work. We’ll ring him in a bit, shall we?’ I looked at my watch once again. ‘Christ, Alice, it’s five to seven.’ I managed a small laugh. I hoped my sleep had been deep, because it certainly had not been long. ‘That means it’s five to six where Daddy is. We’ll give him a chance to wake up before we call him.’ I had never envied Matt’s job before. Even though I had yet to work out what a project manager actually did, I would have done anything to have swapped places with him now, to have been slumbering peacefully in a bed in a quiet flat, with clean sheets, central heating, and shops on my doorstep. I was certain I could manage a project or two. My own project was surely more complicated than whatever it was that Matt was working on.
I stumbled into the kitchen, opened a carton of UHT milk, and poured it into Alice’s beaker. I set a pan of water on the stove, yawned, and instructed myself to rally.
The café was a small, busy establishment. The air was thick with smoke, but I refused to allow myself to find this objectionable, because I had known it would be like that before I moved here. I had no right to be sanctimonious. France, I thought, would surely be the very last country to ban smoking. Everyone seemed to have a cigarette in their hand.
The tables were battered, with rickety metal legs and formica tops. Alice and I were sitting opposite each other. She drank apple juice from a small glass bottle, through a straw. I was on my third cup of coffee, and was contemplating a fourth. Gradually, I was beginning to feel human again, if in a slightly jittery way. The table top was covered with croissant crumbs.
Every other customer but one was a man. They sat at the bar and drank what looked like alcohol. Some of it was bright red and I was curious as to what, exactly, it could be. At ten o’clock in the morning, it could not possibly be a liqueur. The men had looked at Alice and me with unabashed curiosity when we came in, and every time anyone new came through the door, he looked at us too. I smiled. After a few seconds’ delay, they would smile back. They said, ‘Bonjour.’ I felt a small but unmistakable glow of satisfaction every time this happened.
Alice was the only child there. This was a huge contrast to the cafés of Brighton, which were jammed with three-wheeler pushchairs and NCT group outings. In Brighton cafés, there were often baby-changing rooms and boxes of toys. I decided that I had to find out, when I dared, where the mothers went. There had to be a child-friendly café somewhere in this town. If I couldn’t find it, I would have to try Villeneuve, the regional centre, which was further away.
I looked at Alice. Her hair was in desperate need of a wash. She was swinging her legs and gazing around. I licked my finger and reached forward to wipe a pain au chocolat smear from her cheek.
‘This is fun, isn’t it?’ I asked her cheerfully, and firmly. She looked at me sceptically. She realised that she was not allowed to say no, so she said nothing. I was relaxed with Alice. If Matt had been there, I would have put on more of a show, but since he wasn’t, I was allowing myself to linger in the café with my daughter, gathering my strength. Soon I would become brisk and businesslike and capable.
‘Do you do this with your mummy?’ Alice asked.
‘You mean Christa?’ I asked her.
‘Christa’s your mummy?’
‘No. Not really. She’s my aunt.’
‘Who’s your mummy is?’
I sighed. ‘I haven’t really got a mummy.’ She frowned and I hesitated. ‘She’s not . . .’ I stopped. I wished I did have memories of sitting in cafés with my mother, but I barely recalled anything about her. I never tried. In fact, I tried not to. ‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘I did not do this with my mummy. So you’re a very lucky girl to be taken out to a café like this. Sit up properly.’
I knew I could switch into capable mode whenever I needed to, with a bit of willpower. People thought that was just the way I was, but it wasn’t. I could project efficiency however I was feeling. Today I was feeling utterly lost, but I knew I was going to rally myself. I would have made a brilliant Girl Guide. I never joined because both my sisters laughed at the idea.
Suddenly, I longed to speak to Bella. I was desperate to hear her voice. Bella was three years older than me and, though she hadn’t realised it, she had been my rock and my idol since I was three. She would laugh at that if I ever told her. When I had gone to live with Christa and Geoff, it had been Bella who looked after me. Christa had no doubt been dealing with her own grief for her sister, plus she had three of her own children, and although she looked after me, was kind to me, and attended to my material needs, it was Bella, aged five, who took over the maternal role. Geoff, I imagine, had done his best, but small children had never been his thing and I had few recollections of him during that period. He was distant with all of us, I thought, until we were old enough to hold a conversation, and then the barriers all seemed to come down. Charlotte was not much older than I was, and Greg had been a baby.