His girlfriend #2
And like that, the moment is diffused, because neither of them will look a fool on Seb’s account, not here in this room in front of everyone.
He and Noémie will speak about this on the train back to London.
One glance at Seb’s face would tell you that he knows this.
For now, the group fractures. Seb looks towards the children, seems to prefer the prospect of conversation with toddlers.
Clara heads towards the bathroom, and Maisie, who has just revealed that she’s pregnant again, who is only just starting to show, peels off from a group on the other side of the room to follow her.
Noémie needs a stiffer drink, so she goes to the bar.
She passes Clara and Maisie on the way, hears them speaking quickly, in hushed tones.
‘When you told me he was coming, you didn’t tell me about—’
‘I didn’t know he was bringing her,’ Maisie says. ‘I swear.’
The door swings shut behind them. Noémie makes it a double.
Across the room, in the kids’ corner, Finn and Nora have been sizing each other up, exchanging toys, waddling around one another in circles.
Finn says something to Nora, and then Nora is looking around the room, realising her mother is gone, and panic flashes over her face.
Then Seb arrives, sitting surprisingly delicately in a child’s chair far too small for him.
He says something to Finn, ruffles the boy’s hair, gives him a hug.
Finn runs to find his father. Only when Finn is gone does Seb make a funny face, and the girl seems to appreciate this, a private joke, the conspiratorial nature of the gesture.
She warms to him, climbs carefully on to a tiny chair of her own.
The sight of it is ludicrous, one of those optical illusions at a museum that plays with perspective to make neighbours seem outsized.
The girl so small and slight, her tiny knees knocked together, her hands crossed in her lap like a little old woman.
And Seb so cartoonishly large, his long legs bunched up and buckled beneath their black jeans, a half-drunk pint of Guinness in one fist. Seb stares off across the room.
He says something, though Noémie is too far away to hear what.
The girl says nothing. He says something else, and the girl responds this time, kicking her legs in front of her, staring at her shoes.
They talk in this manner for a minute or so.
Then Maisie and Clara come back through the doors, and the girl runs to her mother, and Seb stays sitting in his tiny chair for quite a long time.
Later, when the sun has begun to set and the candles on the cake have been blown out, while Noémie is making dutiful conversation with Seb’s parents, she sees him follow Clara out to the corridor.
Noémie excuses herself under the pretence of wanting a cigarette, stands silently in the shadows and listens to what her partner does not want her to hear.
‘You didn’t tell me you have a girlfriend.’
They’ve stepped outside, into the evening. Seb is still silent.
‘No, right,’ Clara continues. ‘Why would you?’
‘I should have told her,’ Seb says. ‘About you.’
‘Might have been smart.’
A long silence. Noémie wonders what passed between them. How much of it is still out there, waiting to pass.
‘Forty,’ Seb says. She can hear that he’s lit a cigarette. ‘Did you celebrate?’
‘Are you asking if I had a party and didn’t invite you?’ Clara says. After a moment, she modifies her tone. ‘My party days are over,’ she says. ‘And Nora’s haven’t started yet.’
‘She’s doing well in there.’
Clara doesn’t seem to know how to respond to this. Noémie can hear in Seb’s voice that he’s had more to drink than she realised. He wouldn’t be speaking like this, without lubrication.
‘I’m sorry about your mum,’ he says. ‘Augie told me. I should have messaged.’
Clara’s voice becomes brittle, bound to snap. ‘Why would you?’ she says. ‘We’d broken up.’
Noémie feels something in her palm. She looks down, realises that she’s crushed her own unlit cigarette.
She grinds the tobacco into powder between her fingers.
On the other side of the threshold, her boyfriend and his ex stand in silence.
You’d only know that they were there from the crackling embers, the occasional long exhale.
‘When do you leave?’ Clara says.
‘A couple of months.’
‘What will you do there?’
‘I don’t know,’ Seb says. ‘I need to change something. I need to do something. Ever since—’ He breathes out slowly. ‘I’ve spent the last five years wandering around, wondering what it’s all for. Sometimes I think I’ve spent my whole life like that.’
Clara says nothing. It’s unlike Seb, to fill the silence.
‘I was thinking about what you said,’ he says. ‘About not forgiving me.’ Another pause. ‘I wanted to know what for.’
Clara snorts. ‘You want specifics?’
‘Well, you did something specific,’ he says. ‘When I said I don’t forgive you, you knew what I was talking about.’
Clara sighs. ‘I don’t forgive you for what you said, when you left. And what you did before that. How you acted, on set. How you were with me. How you made me feel, for the longest time.’
‘I suppose I could say the same to you.’
Clara continues as if she hasn’t heard him.
‘Mostly, I don’t forgive you for leaving.
’ Her voice turns, suddenly, tearful. ‘And I know that it’s not my right, because of what I did.
But I needed you more than ever, and you left, and then you never came back.
’ She sniffs, tries her best to compose herself. ‘And now you’re leaving again.’
Seb has finished his cigarette. Noémie hears the sound of his boot grinding against the pavement, and she realises that she’s biting back tears herself. The worst thing isn’t that Clara wants to ask him to stay. It’s that Seb wants her to ask, too.
‘I regret it,’ Seb says, into the silence.
‘What?’
‘What I said,’ he says. ‘Before I left the chateau.’
Clara’s response comes a moment late. ‘You said you wished you’d never met me.’
‘It’s how I felt,’ he says. ‘At the time.’
‘And you said I’d be a terrible mother.’
A long silence.
‘I didn’t mean it,’ Seb says, after a while. ‘I didn’t know.’ A pause. ‘I couldn’t have.’
‘No,’ she says. ‘Neither of us could.’