I hung up my new dress on the outside of my wardrobe door. I placed my new shoes under it, and stood back to admire the ensemble. Matt might have taken Alice to the toy shop. But the shops were shut now. And if Matt was trying so hard to win us back, he would have left me a note. I went downstairs two steps at a time, and looked on the dining table, the kitchen worktops, and the coffee table in the sitting room. There was nothing.
They had probably gone out visiting. Matt would have wanted to see Andy. I dialled their number. I would pop over to Aurillon, if they were there, and maybe we would all stay for lunch.
Andy answered.
‘Hello, Andy,’ I said expectantly.
‘Emma! All set for this evening?’
‘Are they there?’
‘Who?’
‘Clearly not. I’ll call you back.’
I had a creeping feeling of dread. Matt had lied to me so much that I could not believe anything he said now. He had probably been lying today. What if he’d had a completely different reason for coming back to France? What if he had come to take Alice away?
I felt sick as I began searching for evidence.
Alice’s clothes were still in place. Her passport was still there. Her coat and her hat were missing. Whatever he had done with her, I was glad about that. At least she was warm. My big umbrella was missing too.
He could not have taken her out of the country without a passport, unless he had magicked up another one from somewhere. I told myself I was being silly. Then I told myself that anything was possible. Matt was desperate to be a full-time father. I had seen it in his eyes. And desperate people were capable of many things. Matt, in particular, was capable of anything.
They could be at Bordeaux. They could be waiting to board the lunchtime flight to Gatwick. I went cold. He could not have taken her. I had never done anything bad to him, and no court in the world would give him custody.
I felt stupid for imagining that our relationship could ever have worked. He had never wanted it. He had lied to me again. He had taken our daughter.
The idea of living without her took hold of me. It was impossible. Alice was my life, my world, the reason I was functioning. My duty was to cherish her, and she had gone. This was punishment for the way I had rejected her in the autumn. I had always known that punishment would come one day.
I picked up the phone and dialled.
‘Coco? Emma. Have you seen them?’ I remembered that Coco was French and asked again, in French, ‘Have you seen Alice and Matt?’
‘Alice and Matt?’
‘Are you busy? Can you go to the cafés and look for them?’
‘Of course, but—’
I didn’t explain. I hung up, and opened my phone book, and dialled again.
A woman answered. ‘Hello?’
‘Is Pete there?’ I asked abruptly.
‘Well, hello to you, too,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Who should I say is calling?’
‘Emma.’
‘
The
Emma? I’m honoured.’
‘Oh shut up,’ I told her. ‘I need Pete.’
‘I’m sure the feeling’s mutual.’ I heard the phone being put down, and some scuffling at the other end. Then Pete came on.
‘Emma?’ he asked cautiously. ‘Emma, were you just rude to my girlfriend?’ He sounded impressed.
‘Mmm. Where’s Matt? Hugh? Whoever he is. Where has your brother gone with my daughter? I went out and left her with him and when I came back . . .’ I heard my voice rising, felt hysteria threatening. I filled my lungs with air, exhaled from the diaphragm, and enunciated the words as calmly as I could. ‘When I came back he had taken her away.’
Pete was silent for a couple of minutes. ‘Last time I saw Hugh was yesterday,’ he said. ‘He said he was away for the weekend. He didn’t say where. I didn’t know he was heading to France.’
‘He asked me to have him back.’
‘And you said . . . ?’
‘I didn’t give him an answer.’
‘And he’s gone walkabout?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll call his mobile. You home? I’ll ring you back.’
I sat and stared at the phone. The house was silent. I picked up the cordless phone and held it in my hand, waiting for it to ring. I wanted to call Bella but I needed to wait for Pete to ring back first. I tried to fill my mind with trivia. I wondered what Pete’s girlfriend was like. I wondered whether she knew that he had once slashed his wrists in front of me. She must have had an idea that he had feelings for me, or she wouldn’t have been so affronted. He had only called me once since I had rashly agreed to let his parents meet Alice. I was glad. I could never love Pete. I didn’t like him, either. Everything about him was repulsive. I wanted Alice to know her grandparents, but I could not imagine the couple that had produced a bigamist and an obsessive. I planned to keep them at arm’s length, whatever happened.
The ring shattered the stillness. I snatched up the phone.
‘Can’t reach him,’ Pete said. ‘His phone’s off, or he’s out of reception. Now, don’t worry about it. If he did bring Alice back here, we’d send him straight back to you. He won’t get away with it.’
I heard a car door slam outside, so I ran out, and saw Jim approaching with his camera.
‘Bugger,’ I told him. ‘I thought you were Matt.’
‘What?’ asked Pete. The phone was still clamped to my ear.
‘May I?’ Jim asked.
‘Whatever.’ I stood by the gate, looking up and down the road, not caring about the camera. ‘Sorry, Pete, thought they were back,’ I said into the phone. ‘If they don’t turn up soon I’m coming to London.’
‘I’ll meet you at the airport.’
‘Thanks. Keep trying him for me, hey?’
‘Touch base soon.’
I paced around, trying to formulate a plan. I wondered whether Matt had hired a car seat with his car. I hoped so. I told myself that he could not have had a bigger plan, that he must have taken her on impulse. He could not be rushing off, say, to Australia, to start a new life with her. Could he?
I swept some crumbs off the table into my hand, and tipped them into the bin. I bent to pick up a piece of paper from the kitchen floor, to throw it, too, into the bin.
It was an envelope. On the back, a message was scrawled in green felt tip. I recognised Matt’s handwriting. ‘We’ve gone to the pizzeria for lunch. Come and join us if you like. M & A xxx’
I clutched my head. There was no mobile reception inside the pizzeria.
I turned to the camera. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘I feel silly.’ I called Pete, Andy and Coco, and told them that it had been a false alarm. I couldn’t get hold of Coco. I wondered whether she had got as far as the pizzeria yet. Then I leapt in my car, let Jim into the passenger seat, and drove off. I wondered, uneasily, how long it would be before I would trust Matt again.
I stepped out of the cold evening into a warm, bustling dining room which smelt deliciously of good food. A huge fire burned in the enormous stone fireplace. A suckling pig was roasting in front of it. There was a display of fresh vegetables beside the fire which made me think, incongruously, of the Harvest Festival at school, even though it lacked the tins of baked beans and corned beef that had always been the staples of a Harvest Festival in north London.
Alain was sitting at a table in the corner, sipping his drink. He looked relieved when I walked over to him. Wearing my new dress and my high shoes, I walked carefully, aware of my posture. Coco had been right about the way that luxurious underwear would make me feel.
The waiter held my chair out, and I sat down. I managed to co-ordinate my sitting on it with the waiter’s pushing it in, which pleased me.
‘Sorry,’ I told Alain. I had decided to start the evening in English. I was the teacher, so I was allowed to make decisions like that. ‘I’m really late.’ I grimaced. ‘Family problems.’
‘That is nothing,’ he said, gallantly. ‘It’s OK. I am happy you are here.’ He dropped into French. ‘Emma, you look beautiful. I’m proud to be seen with you.’
I grinned at him. His eyes had smile lines around them. He was wearing a well-cut suit without a tie. I felt far more comfortable than I had expected. I had always felt there was something about Alain. ‘Thank you,’ I told him, and looked around, at the other diners. The women were chic in shawls and heels, and the men all looked comfortable, as Alain did, in good suits. ‘This place is wonderful.’
Alain had already ordered me an aperitif; a champagne-based cocktail. I clinked glasses with him and took a sip. It was exquisite. I had come here intending to cut the evening short and get back to Matt. Now I began to revise my plans.
‘My daughter’s father turned up today,’ I told him.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Hence the family problems?’
‘He wants to come back.’
Alain nodded. ‘Of course he does. You told him no.’
‘I very nearly told him yes. At the moment I haven’t told him anything.’
He frowned. ‘This man deceived you? He had a wife and child?’
I sighed. ‘I know.’ I dropped back into English. ‘I’ve just been thinking I’d be better off with the devil I know.’ I looked around me. ‘I don’t want to spoil the evening. This is perfect. I don’t know, Alain. I’m not sure I’m strong enough to resist trying again with Matt. You’re right, I should tell him to bugger off. I should never have let him in the house. I’m sorry. Here we are, out to dinner, and the first thing I talk about is my ex-partner. Not very stylish of me.’
‘
Si, si.
I’m concerned. I like you. Of course I do: you are a beautiful and intelligent woman. And I speak just as a friend, nothing more. And not just as a friend, but as a divorced friend. With the voice of experience. Once a relationship has failed, it’s easy to want to go back to it, but the cruel fact is, it will have failed for a reason, and that reason will reappear. I know. My former wife and I tried to reconcile on three separate occasions, but it was doomed. And in fact, it was worse each time we tried. It hurt just as much each time we failed.’
‘Why did it fail?’
‘Originally? Because she didn’t love me enough. There were many manifestations, but that was the underlying reason. She married me for the wrong reasons, too young.’
‘And did you love her enough?’
‘I think I did.’ He laughed. ‘I don’t any more. I don’t even like her. That, I think, is inevitable when you’ve shared your life with someone. We are forever speaking through clenched teeth in front of the children, in a pretence of civility. And this intrigues me, Emma. This man has treated you worse than any story of any marriage I have ever heard. Mostly, separations don’t happen in black and white, but in this case there is no grey. He was wrong. Your only fault was that you trusted him and so you must have overlooked warning signs. But you’re willing to consider taking him back?’
I looked at Alain, and then up at the waitress, who was young and happy looking, and who was standing a few discreet paces back, ready to take our order.
‘You’re right,’ I told him. ‘I am being a bit hasty. I’ve been lonely. Anyway. Let’s order.’
To my great surprise, I had a wonderful evening. It was a treat to be out in the evening at all, and the restaurant was exquisite. I ate a salad followed by monkfish with vegetables and potato gratin, and finished with a raspberry meringue, and, each time, I finished everything on my plate. Alain and I left the subject of Matt alone, and talked, in both languages, about the differences between France and Britain. I was only just beginning to see how profound these differences were. I knew that I had dismissed the stereotypes, and told myself that everyone was just a person, that nationality didn’t matter. Now, partly as a result of seeing the difference in the way the two countries treated three-year-olds, I was changing my mind again. In nature, we might all be the same, but nurture produced enormous cultural differences.
‘It intrigues me,’ I told him. ‘In Britain, children take packed lunches to school. Alice took a packed lunch to nursery when she was two. So there’s no emphasis on eating good food, no responsibility by the establishment to teach the children about food. It’s just something you get out of the way, just fuel. The nursery would happily feed the children any old crap the parents put in the box. Whereas here, the school canteen provides a three-course meal every lunchtime, heavily subsidised, and Alice has the menu stuck in her school book every single day, and the twice-a-day
goûter
menu stuck in once a month.’
‘Of course she does. Because the French are obsessed with good food. And with eating. You think that’s good?’
‘I think it’s wonderful. It has done wonders for Alice. And shopping at the market and the fishmongers and the butchers means you cook proper food, not just supermarket junk. And I was reading that school vending machines have been refitted to sell apples, not chocolate. It’s brilliant. But I do think France is closed to outside influences. Britain’s the opposite. It’s stuffed with Indian restaurants and sushi bars. In London it seems like every other pub offers Thai food. Because the national cuisine really isn’t that special.’
‘So I have heard.’ He smiled. I smiled back.
‘It’s a cliché to say that French people aren’t fat and Anglo-Saxons are, but it’s true, too. You just don’t see fat people in France like you do in Britain.’
He shook his head. ‘I see plenty of fat people in France.’
‘You don’t. Not compared to Britain. America’s far worse, even. Have you been to America?’
‘No. Perhaps one day. Now I have such a charming English teacher.’
‘Shut up.’
‘But really, I think I’ll go. My children are always telling me to take them to Disneyland. They don’t want to go to Disneyland, Paris. Apparently it has to be Florida.’
I laughed. ‘You will get a massive culture shock if you go to Florida. You should start with New York. You’d love it. There’s no Disneyland.’
‘Perhaps, one day. Maybe you could come with me, one day. Be my translator.’
I smiled at him. ‘Who knows?’
At the end of the meal, we came back to the subject of Matt.
‘But I think I still love him,’ I told him. Then the wine loosened my tongue, and I spoke to him in a way I would never normally have done. ‘I know he messed me around,’ I said, staring at my new friend imploringly, ‘but there’s a part of me that feels that that’s OK. That I wasn’t worth any more. Part of me feels like an unwanted little girl and that if Matt won’t have me back on whatever terms he wants, no one else will.’