Claire turned to him. She had spent some time living with this, which was why she had spent so much time living in the past.
“Uhm, it’s spread again,” she said quietly, the only sound in the car a slight buzz from Anna’s headphones and the swish-swish of the windscreen wipers.
“It’s the reason my hair’s growing back. I told the boys I’m resting up, but no. There are no plans to continue the chemo.”
Richard took a sharp intake of breath.
“Jesus.”
“I know. You wouldn’t believe the fight I had on my hands to get these.”
She opened her palm to reveal a tiny bottle of diamorphine.
“Shhh,” she said, almost smiling.
“But you seem so…I mean, you’re just yourself, except thinner.”
“I would say my days are better and worse,” said Claire. “At the moment, a little better. I think my body is just so pleased not to have any more chemo. But I don’t know how many good days there will be.”
“How long?”
Claire took on her oncologist’s ponderous tones.
“Well, Mrs. Shawcourt, I wouldn’t say months.”
Richard let a hiss of breath escape through his mouth. Then he said the one word Claire had never heard him say in his entire life.
“Fuck,” he said.
Laurent looked at Anna’s email and ran through it again. This was ridiculous; it didn’t make sense. His dad was only just home, he’d heard through the grapevine, but under strict diet and movement controls for at least another three months. Alice would have absolutely nothing to do with it, that much was sure. And he could hardly do it; even if his father would consent to look at him, he still had work to do, and the logistics were horrible. All for that woman.
Though she was old now, he knew, old and sick. Well, maybe when Anna and that woman got to Paris, he’d try to arrange something. Yes, that would be better.
He thought about Anna. It struck him suddenly as a very “her” thing to do, to go straightaway on this wild goose chase to help out an old lady. She wouldn’t even think twice, the same way she didn’t think twice about staying with his father or trying to make things right in the shop or…
He cursed himself again for freaking about her foot. He’d hurt her feelings, for something she obviously couldn’t help, and he hated doing that. She wasn’t like the tough, hard-edged Parisienne girls he knew—not at all. She wasn’t chic and tough; she didn’t know the right places to go or the right things to wear. She was soft and a bit squishy and…
It came to him in a blinding flash. She knew the right things to do. She just did. And that was what made her different. He didn’t; he was a stupid coward who walked away from things the second they got difficult. He needed her.
Suddenly he wanted Anna back in Paris as much as he had ever wanted anything. He stared at her email again. Tomorrow. She would be here tomorrow. He hit respond then realized that he didn’t know how to say what he wanted to say. He didn’t know what he wanted to say or what he was going to do. He stared at the blank page, then shut down the Internet window and did what he always did when things got on top of him and he started to worry. He went to work.
- - -
I woke up without the faintest idea where I was. It was raining outside. I was stretched out on a backseat so comfortable it felt like a huge leather sofa. I jerked my head up. We were at a gas station. Claire was asleep in the front seat.
Richard came back to the car. His eyes were red and he was rubbing his nose a little and I didn’t want to bother him. Plus, of course, I didn’t know him at all. I shushed him as he glanced at Claire, and he went around to the trunk, pulled out a picnic blanket—of course they were the kind of people who would have picnic blankets—and very, very gently put it around her.
I wondered. I mean, Thierry was great and funny and fun and life-enhancing, but I couldn’t imagine him for a second putting a blanket around Claire like she was made of porcelain. I could imagine him talking about it, and asking someone else to do it, and suggesting it, and making a joke of it. But not calmly and precisely tucking it in, with the utmost respect for her.
Not wanting to make any noise, I smiled at him and he smiled back.
“I got you a sandwich,” he whispered. “I don’t know what you like so I got one of each.”
I grinned. “Lovely! Can I have the ham and tomato?”
He passed it over with a bottle of fizzy water and a bar of Braders chocolate.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know if you ate absolutely loads of the stuff or if you were practically allergic.”
He got in and started the car, again very gently.
“I can probably eat both if you don’t want it.”
“No,” I said, looking carefully at the familiar midbrown wrapper.
The factory had sent me (along with numerous official-looking letters absolving themselves from responsibility) a huge basket full of Braders products while I was in hospital. I couldn’t even look at them now without remembering the fever, the throbbing pain. I hadn’t been able to so much as glance at them in a newsagents ever since.
I picked it up. “I think it’s time,” I said, but Richard was already signaling his way out onto the motorway.
I peeled away a corner and inhaled the smell, carefully and fully, just as Thierry had shown me. Suddenly I was back in the factory with Kyle and Shaz, and punching in, and Easter overtime, and the visit from the Duchess of Cambridge that time everyone else had gotten wildly excited over and had made me feel like an underachieving troll.
But, I suddenly realized with excitement, I could smell more than that. I could take it apart in my head. I could smell the vegetable oil, the tiny note of additives that we covered up with more sugar, the grade of the sugar, the weakness of the cocoa beans. It was rather thrilling to realize that if I wanted, I could probably cook up a batch of this at home. I blinked several times. Frédéric would have hurled it from himself in utter horror like it was a live snake, of that I had no doubt. Instead, I closed my eyes and took a bite.
Here was the weird thing: even though I knew that it was made as cheaply as possible to serve in large quantities, that it wasn’t anything like the high-end, pure product we did at Le Chapeau Chocolat, that it was meant for bland generic tastes, designed to be unchallenging, rather than delicious…it WAS delicious. It melted at exactly the right moment on the tongue; it filled my mouth; it tasted sweet and creamy, even though I knew exactly how much cream was in there (none at all), and it broke off in soft crumbly chunks. It was completely gorgeous. I didn’t know what it would taste like if you hadn’t been born and raised with it, but to me it was good and British and comforting and reassuring, and I wished Richard had brought loads of it to stash under my bed in Paris for when the tasting all got too much.