I nodded frantically, desperate to make it up to him. He glanced behind him. For the first time, I didn’t see Alice there.
“How is…” He went quiet, his natural exuberance suddenly seeming a little stifled. “How is Claire?”
I carried on polishing so he didn’t have to see my face. I knew it would betray the worst. When I had been at home, the recipient of the best physio and rehab the National Health Service had to offer, Claire had had an argument with her oncologist. She had told him she wanted an end point for chemo, after which she didn’t want to do it anymore. He had gotten very cross with her and reminded her she wasn’t that old. She had been very sharp with him, then so crotchety when I saw her that I had suggested immediately I shouldn’t go to Paris, and it’s the only time I saw her get even a little cross with me. She had said what was the point of anything if I couldn’t even do that, and she was going to be absolutely fine, if only to spite her bloody oncologist.
I shrugged.
“She’s…she’s been better,” I said.
“And she is, what…your aunt?”
“No, no. She was my teacher.”
“Your teacher?” He beamed suddenly, surprise on his face. “What did she teach?”
“Well, French, of course,” I said.
He snorted. “Ha. Well, you can tell her from me you have the accent. Terrible, terrible accent.”
He laughed at my expression. “I’m teasing you. It’s a joke. Your French is very good.”
I sniffed. I’d thought I had done very well actually, considering I’d never visited the bloody country before.
“Very well,” he said again, obviously sorry he’d hurt my feelings. “Tell me more about Claire. All I got was her letter.”
“Well, we were in the hospital together,” I said. “So we kind of became friends. She’s the one who told me to get away. Well, forced me actually,” I said, remembering. “She made me do it.”
“Good for her,” said Thierry. “And is she…she has a husband, a family?”
I shook my head. “No. She’s divorced.”
Instantly I saw in his eyes a sadness—and something else too, perhaps.
“Truly? Oh, but she was a beautiful girl. A beautiful, beautiful girl.”
I agreed; in our little town, before she got ill, she had shined like a star.
Thierry shook his head. “But she will recover, non? She is not old. Oh, well, we are all old,” he grumbled to himself. “But she…she was so beautiful.”
“Who was so beautiful?” came Alice’s perfect vowels, her accent retaining a tiny hint of the aristocratic English it must have been once.
“No one, no one, darling,” said Thierry, turning around and pasting his beaming jolly grin back on his face. “Let us leave. Do we have a quiet evening?”
Alice looked at me with her eyes narrowed. Then said, “Yes, darling. We must drop in to the François’s cocktail party; they are expecting you. And the ambassador’s. It is all business.”
“It is all ridiculously tedious,” said Thierry, grumbling. “People are no fun anymore. In the old days, it was all wonderful and we could dance and smoke, and now it is just everyone standing and looking worried and muttering about money, money, money.”
“Well, if you didn’t eat and drink so much, you might enjoy it more.”
“Non, I have to eat and drink to enjoy it at all.”
They headed off into the evening twilight. Frédéric had zoomed off on his scooter; Benoît was waiting for me to finish, tapping his heavy keys in his hand but not saying a word. I smiled at him in a jolly fashion as I left, but he did not return it.
“Bye then!” I said cheerily in English, but he didn’t turn around.
I was still weary—and a bit shell-shocked. Practicing with Claire was one thing; doing nothing but speak French all day long was a bit horrific and exhausting and had done nothing but prove to me how terrible my French was. I clambered up the stairs. My missing toes were tugging painfully at me. This drove me crazy. Honestly, when I had all my toes, I swear I couldn’t tell them apart. Now I’d lost a couple, it was all I could think about. My missing toes acted as a bellwether, telling me when I was a bit tired or run down or doing too much—all of which I could have predicted would happen today—then suddenly I would feel them there. Darr said, the first time I displayed my hideous foot, Oh, you hardly notice, but I did. All the time.
No more sandals in the summer; no more lovely pedicures for when you go on holiday and get your feet all lovely and brown and the pink reflects off the tan, and you feel lovely and summery for long after the end of the trip. Now I was stuck in great, big, clumpy, ugly shoes all the time—high heels were kind of difficult too, because anything pointed at the toe twisted my other toes very painfully, and my podiatrist had told me to steer well clear. She’d also told me not to worry about it, hardly anybody walked up and down a beach counting other people’s toes, and plenty of people had six to a foot and no one ever noticed and other things like that, and I had smiled and pretended to agree with her and nod, all the while vowing never to show off my foot ever again.
How I would manage if I ever met someone, I put to the back of my mind. I was too busy focusing on convalescence and trying to figure out how to survive for the rest of my life with the only half-decent employer in the district no longer in need of my services and my settlement money running down. Anyway. No one would get to see my deformity, and that was the end of it. Which meant I couldn’t mention it, at risk of turning into a freak show right away. My brothers had been fascinated with what exactly had happened to them—had they been thrown into a bin? Could I keep them in a jar? Had they been set on fire? (They had been set on fire, thrown in the incinerator when I was too poorly for them to risk reattachment. I had lied and told them they were keeping them to clone another one of me.)
I limped up the stairs, then perked up as Sami stood there, waving a green bottle at me. He was wearing a multicolored silk bathrobe that was far too short for him. I tried not to look upward as I ascended the stairs.
“Alors!” he shouted. “The evening is beginning.”
“Not for me,” I said quickly. “I’m exhausted.”
Sami looked hurt.