“No,” he said quietly. “No. Don’t tell him anything at all.”
I looked straight at him, wondering what these two larger-than-life personalities could possibly have fallen out about that was this bad.
“Come in and see me,” I said, a bit tipsy, not quite realizing what I was saying. Then I stopped horrified.
“I don’t mean like that,” I said. “I mean, come by to see me and you can see your dad. But not like that.”
He smiled, put out a calloused hand, and suddenly, out of the blue, touched my cheek. I flushed a fiery red.
“Ah, not like that, huh?”
I reminded myself about Frédéric and that this was what French men were like. Incorrigible flirts. Ridiculously flirtatious. Cor, they were good at it though. I resisted a sudden strong temptation to reach out and touch his stubbled chin, his thick curly hair.
“Laurent! Laurent! More crepes! Encore!”
The girls were calling for him from the other side of the boat, the torches still burning high. I checked my watch. It was late; I was up early. Someone moored the boat to give me time to get off, and a party of people dressed as Harlequins to get on.
He smiled, as if he knew exactly what was going through my mind, gave me a quick kiss on either cheek—perfectly normal here, I knew, absolutely standard French behavior, brothers did it to one another, so there was no reason for it to set my cheeks flaming so, or for me to catch the slightly burned sugar smell that came off his warm skin—and vanished back into the crowd, as I, with a mix of relief and regret, found my own way across the gangplank and back to the safe ground of the Île de la Cité—no long walk home for me, lost in the big city. I knew the way. The lights and the fire and the laughter and music from the barge lit up the river all the way home.
I didn’t mention the previous evening when Thierry marched in the next day. It was barely eight o’clock and I was sweeping up the husks when I heard the ting of the front doorbell. Frédéric and Benoît looked at me, confused. They had been playing the radio loudly. French pop music was, I discovered, very much an acquired taste. Frédéric immediately turned it down and called out, “Bonjour.”
But standing in the doorway, without Alice or any bluster from yesterday or any of the constant motion I’m used to, was Thierry, his large bulk outlined in the still hazy light from the front door, his normal broad grin completely absent.
“Anna,” he said. “Come, walk with me.”
- - -
I did as he said. It was going to be a beautiful day, but there was still a hint of dawn chilliness in the air. There were many fewer tourists about this time in the morning; it was mostly just shop keepers, the rattling of grates, the sluicing of dirty water in the mop buckets going down the drains, everywhere the scent of coffee and fresh baking.
“Let us walk,” he repeated, without saying anything else. I glanced at him quickly, wondering if his knees were up to it. He didn’t look like he took any exercise at all. He saw me glancing and smiled, though less ebulliently than usual.
“I used to love to walk,” he said. “I used to walk everywhere. It was my favorite thing to do. Look!”
He took me down the cobbled lane that led to Île Saint-Louis and then across the beautiful Pont de Sully, which is lined with the padlocks of lovers. People just leave them there, to signify their love, and the authorities let them stay. They’re beautiful. A bateau mouche wended lazily down the river, and a large flock of seagulls took off just in front of us. Ahead was the somber, riveting wall of the old Bastille.
“Paris changes too much,” he said, even though I was thinking absolutely the opposite, pointing out a huge field of banners over on the Left Bank. “Look, they are having a festival,” he said. “Food from all around the world.”
“Why don’t we take a stall,” I said, not thinking about it.
He looked at me. “Because we do not need to! We are far too good,” he said.
“All right,” I said. “It was just an idea.”
“Does Chanel take a stall at a market? Does Christian Dior?”
I didn’t point out that you could find these brands all over the world, but decided to change the subject.
“Why don’t you walk so much anymore?”
“Because I am busy, because Alice does not like to walk; she thinks it is vulgar.”
“How is walking vulgar?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.
“Well, because you cannot wear beautiful shoes, and you look like you cannot afford a car.”
I thought that was possibly the stupidest thing I had ever heard in my life, but I’d already insulted him once this morning, so I decided to keep it to myself.
“I like it,” I ventured instead. “It’s a good way to see a place.”
“It is!” agreed Thierry fervently. We’d reached the other side of the bridge; the morning rush-hour traffic was inelegantly struggling for places on the roundabout, but we ignored them all. He turned and gestured back at what I’d already come to think of as my home; the Île de la Cité, the square familiar towers of Notre Dame Cathedral visible through the gaps.
“Look at it! A perfect tiny city-state in miniature. Everything you could possibly want is there.”
Except a supermarket that opens at lunchtime, I thought but didn’t say.
“You could live on that island forever and never leave. People did. It was the first inhabited area of Paris. Right in the heart of the world.”
I smiled at his absolute certainty that where he was was the heart of the world. He moved surprisingly swiftly for such a large man.
He looked at me.
“I got another letter from Claire.”
There wasn’t any point in prevaricating.
“She is very unwell,” he said.
“She is,” I said. I felt immediately guilty. Sami had the oldest laptop in the world and sometimes we could hook on to our neighbor’s Wi-Fi, but I hadn’t kept in touch anything like as much as I should have. She didn’t have a lot to occupy her days; a bit of gossip would have come in very handy. Later she told me she was thrilled I was too busy and happy to write, just as her own mum had been, so convincingly I almost believed her. I called Mum and Dad every Sunday and told them about new things I’d tried and new food and they tried to sound interested, but I don’t think they were really. They told me about the dog (barbed wire in paw) and Joe (new building apprenticeship, fat girlfriend). And Cath texted from time to time. But my new life felt so immersive. I vowed at the very least to be better at talking to Claire.