How could she have forgotten all of that?
“But it has been a happy life. Full of happy things. It has. I just wish I had appreciated it more at the time…”
Richard pulled her tufted head into his shoulder, and she smelled a scent she hadn’t smelled in years.
“Shhh, my love. Shhh,” he said, stroking her scalp, and she realized then what he was really saying, and that it was good-bye, and she pressed her cheek against his, already marked with five o’clock shadow, and they stayed that way until the crewmen started to come up with apologetic looks on their faces. Anna was staring at them, she realized, with a worried look on her face too, but that didn’t really matter now, and she clasped Richard’s hand very tightly and said she would see him soon, and he grimaced and didn’t reply. And one of the nice young sailors helped push out the chair down the ramp, and Anna pulled the wheely suitcase behind them. She tried to turn her head but her neck was so stiff, and the sun was so bright she didn’t think she could have looked into the dark of the great ship at any rate, and she knew Richard. He wouldn’t have waited; he wasn’t that kind of man. And then they were being whisked through passport control, and Anna had taken control of the wheelchair, and there were two figures waiting, right at the edge of the dock house, and her heart started to pound faster than she knew her oncologist would have liked.
- - -
Claire was quite wrong about Richard. He stayed watching until they were two invisible dots disappearing behind the barbed wire gates of the ferry terminal. He watched as all the happy, burned holidaymakers filed back onto the ferry. He watched as they cast the lines and the great ship revved itself up again, and he stayed watching up on deck as the coast of France retreated farther and farther behind him into the darkness of the oncoming night.
Then he drove home through the rainy night, arrived in at two o’clock in the morning, smiled when he saw the roast beef and mustard sandwiches Anne-Marie had made and left out for him, then sat in his front room and got drunk for one of the very few times in his life.
At first, Claire thought with a terrible start that Thierry was standing right in front of her. He was exactly the same; the thick curly hair, the twinkling eyes. No mustache though, but…
Then she realized that this must be Laurent, whom Anna had told her about. He was incredibly attractive. She wanted to look at Anna and see her face, but she knew, she knew…she must look at the person sitting straight opposite her. She focused.
She tried not to wince. It was Thierry, of course it was, but he looked…he looked so unwell. She knew this was ironic under the circumstances, but even so. His face was gray. He had an oxygen cylinder set up nearby. His skin looked rumpled and ill-fitting, a result of massive recent weight loss.
But the mustache was still there, and under the heavy brows, his black eyes were the same…
He gazed and gazed at her for a long time, equally, Claire realized with a sinking heart, horrified at what they had both become. Was forty years really so much? Reaching out, she clasped Anna’s hand, hard.
All of a sudden, Thierry burst out laughing. In that instant, Claire saw immediately the flashing eyes, the infectious noise of it, and smiled too. It was impossible not to.
“Look at us!” he shouted. “Look at us! We are the very last donkeys in the knacker yard, Claire! The worst!”
With great difficulty, and his son giving him his arm with a dubious-looking expression, he stood up on slightly wobbly legs. He was wearing, Claire noticed, smart pale linen trousers and a light pink shirt. Always stylish.
Not to be outdone, she gave Anna her arm and wobbled to her feet. She went to him, and he took her in his arms.
“My little bird,” he exclaimed, “you are even smaller than you were!”
“You aren’t,” said Claire, her voice muffled in his shirt. He started to feel a bit wobbly so they drew back a little. Suddenly Claire felt the pressure on her arm relieved a little. She turned to see Anna rush toward Laurent, throw her arms around his neck, and kiss him.
Thierry looked at her, raising the eyebrow she knew so well.
“Aha, life goes on,” he said in his booming voice, and Claire was so startled and pleased she laughed and sat down in her chair with a thump.
- - -
I couldn’t help it. Not when I saw him. I thought he was being petulant with his father, difficult. I had underestimated him, not understanding that of course he would do it, could change and shift all his plans, deal with Alice—God, Alice, I would worry about her later—and the fearsome French doctors. And his father. It was basically a kidnap. I was truly overwhelmed. And emotional too, I told myself afterward. I couldn’t even believe Richard and Claire had bothered getting divorced. If I had a nice-looking decent man who looked after me like that…well, I didn’t, so there was no point in thinking like that.
Apart from that, Laurent’s handsome face, that full, biteable mouth, that mop of curly hair; I had to own up to myself. He wasn’t Sami’s little concept of a fling. He wasn’t a holiday romance, a story to laugh about with Cath down at Faces. He gave me a look, a half-smile that said, as clear as a letter would have done, that he was sorry, and that this was his make-up offering…and in that instant, in the sunshine, I forgot all about Claire and Thierry, forgot all about anything except how much I wanted to kiss him.
When I finally came to my senses and stood back, pink and a little breathless, he gave me that broad smile.
“Well,” he said, “I am pleased to see you too.”
Then I cuddled Thierry and told him to cover his neck in the sun and asked him how it was to see Claire again, and he beamed and said she is still beautiful. Claire blushed like a girl and said no, she wasn’t, and Thierry said well, she was doing better than him, and Claire laughed and said, yes, yes she was. I asked Thierry if Laurent had kidnapped him, and he sniffed and said yes and that we must stay out of the way of the police, and Laurent looked a bit awkward.
Then I suggested if we were going to get back to Paris tonight, we would probably have to get a move on—the sun was setting—but Thierry pshawed that idea and said, well of course, we had to eat first, and he knew just the place, and I laughed that both Thierry and Laurent were utterly horrified at the idea of missing dinner.
Calais wasn’t very glamorous, full of hypermarkets selling cheap cigarettes and booze and travelers’ hotels that offered cheap weekly rates, but Laurent took over the wheel of the white Le Chapeau Chocolat van and put Thierry and Claire carefully on the front bench seat (I rode perched in the back) and spun us off the autoroute and into a network of country roads and flat green fields till we arrived at a tiny farmhouse that barely seemed to be a restaurant at all.