“I grew up in Beirut,” Laurent said slowly.
“Ooh no,” I said sympathetically.
“Actually,” he said, rather snippily, “Beirut is a beautiful place. Beaches, skiing, the food…oh, the food.”
I stared ahead and decided to let him do all the talking.
“Dad was stationed there during the conflict. It…life there was very hard.” He lost his thread.
“Your mother?”
He shook his head. “Can you imagine how she was treated when her family found out she was pregnant by a French soldier?”
I shook my head. “No,” I said.
“My grandmother used to steal around. In the middle of the night, you understand? In case anyone saw her? To bring us food.”
“So they didn’t…”
“Did he offer to marry her, you mean?” He shook his head. “Oh no, he had different ideas about this. He even told her about Claire.”
I bit my lip. That seemed so thoughtless, even for him.
“What about when you came along?”
“He sent money,” allowed Laurent. “And when I was seven, he brought us over. He’d met Alice by then.”
“Was she kind to you?”
He snorted. “My mother was far more beautiful than she was. She was insecure from the get-go. Pretended I was some little slum boy who didn’t exist.”
“Why didn’t they have children?” I wondered.
Laurent shrugged. “Because she’s a witch?”
“She’s all right,” I said. I was learning more and more about how difficult it must have been to hold on to this strong-willed, selfish man.
“What was it like?” I asked.
“Paris? Amazing,” said Laurent. “Oh my goodness, it was so clean and airy and cool! The huge houses and the streets…and no one looked twice at my mother, once she took her headscarf off! It was like she was free again, not like Dahiyeh, when everyone knew about her shame.”
“She sounds amazing,” I said.
He nodded sharply. “She was. She did a fucking good job on her own.”
“Did you want to stay?”
“Mum couldn’t. They weren’t married. She couldn’t just settle here. Anyway, even though being at home was pretty horrible, it was still home. Her mum was there.”
“What did you think of Thierry?”
“When he was interested in me, it was great. To be the focus of his attention, you just felt you lit up his world. And he showed me all about his work and I was interested…very interested, you know.”
I nodded.
“So he liked that, so I was his little funny dolly for a while. Then, you know, we’d go back and it was as if he’d forgotten all about us again.”
“He’s not a great letter writer,” I said.
“Men like Thierry…” Laurent said. “They are the sun, yes? Everyone else just has to orbit behind. It is the same with any great chef, with conductors, with great tennis players. They are the light.”
There wasn’t, I thought, any bitterness in his voice. I looked up at him. It was as if he’d seen his father for what he was and accepted it. He caught sight of me.
“Have you been crying?”
I nodded.
“Did I make you cry?”
I nodded again, not trusting myself to speak.
“Oh God,” he said. “I am the worst, most selfish man in the world. I don’t want to be like him, Anna.”
He grabbed me onto his lap and held me, close and tight, my head burrowed in his shoulder.
“I never want to make you cry again,” he whispered in my ear. “Never again.”
“Too late,” I said, making a funny snortling noise and holding on to him like I would never let him go till he was kissing me again. There was a stern knock on the window. Frédéric was looking anxious. Benoît, I was amazed to notice, appeared to be smiling.
“CUSTOMERS!” Frédéric was saying.
“YES!” said Laurent, leaping to his feet. “Let us cook!”
“Hang on,” I said. “Just…your mum.”
“Brain tumor,” said Laurent shortly. “When I was fifteen. Dad paid all the hospital bills. Wanted her to come to Paris, but she didn’t want to intrude. Then he brought me here, got me into an apprenticeship, set me cooking. It’s been all I wanted to do ever since.”
“But not in the way he wanted?”
“No,” said Laurent. “He felt guilty, and I was fifteen and needed someone to blame. He offered to set me up in a house; he never did for Mum. She lived in that crappy apartment block all her life.”
“That’s why you wouldn’t take his money?”
There was a long pause.
“You know,” I said, “I bet you didn’t ruin her life. I bet you made her very happy.”
“That’s what she said,” said Laurent. “Doesn’t stop me hating fucking hospitals though. But I think I’ve just about forgiven Dad.”
He held me by my hips and looked straight at me.
“I don’t know what it is about you, Anna Tron,” he said. “You seem to make me calm and happy when you’re about and miserable when you’re not. I don’t know what that is.”
I fumbled. I was thirty years old and I had said the words, but never in a way that I meant as truly and as sincerely as I did now; not to Darr, God bless his spotty soul.
“It’s because I love you,” I said. I wouldn’t have, normally, said it first, but oh, I was so exhausted, punch-drunk, emotional. And, I realized, I loved him so very terribly much, even when he was petulant, even when he was grumpy, even when he was teasing me. I thought I might very much have been in love with him from the second he’d given me a lift on his scooter.
“Oh,” said Laurent, his mouth opening. “Yes. Yes, that must be it. I must love you. We must be in love. Of course. Of COURSE!” He comically banged his hand on his head. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it.”
And he gathered me up into himself as Frédéric banged “CUSTOMERS!!!” repeatedly on the windows of the greenhouse, and Laurent only stopped kissing me for long enough to shout, “But we are IN LOVE!” back at him.
And then I realized something else. It was like someone turning off a radio I hadn’t even realized was still playing. Suddenly, the itching, the fuss, the pain, the twinges, all the sense in my missing toes that weren’t really there simply vanished. And I felt completely whole.