Chapter 12
12
Deva could have stayed in the square for the rest of the day, taking photos, darting from one important address to the next, spitting out one fact more fascinating than the next: ‘Did you know that Chanel was a Leo and she placed a lot of importance on astrology, tarot cards and her lucky number, five? Her gravestone features five lion heads carved into white stone.’
But Lucie finally had to round him up, as the prospect of straying into a third hour of car parking at €25 an hour was not appealing. Especially after the damage done to her budget by the coffee and sparkling water at the café on this very elite pavement.
When they were finally back in the car, out of the city streets and back on the Périphérique, it was as if the entire car population of Paris, or maybe the entire north of France, had descended. Bumper to tail as far as the eye could see.
‘What’s happened?’ Zoe asked. ‘Is it rush hour?’
But this seemed unlikely as it was only 2.30p.m.
‘Maybe it’s something to do with the holiday,’ Deva offered from the back seat.
‘What holiday?’ Lucie wondered.
‘It’s July fourteenth today – it’s a big celebration of the French revolution… I heard this tourist talking about it,’ Deva explained.
Lucie could have kicked herself. ‘Oh God! Of course, July fourteenth is Bastille Day. It’s a national holiday. I’m surprised the Chanel store was open. So, good grief, we’re completely stuck in the holiday exodus on Bastille Day. What is the satnav telling us?’ Her eyes went to the screen. ‘Any shortcut suggestions? How long till we get to our village?’
‘Looks like five and a half hours,’ Zoe groaned, ‘with an hour and a half spent covering the next ten miles or so.’
‘Thank goodness you went to the bathroom recently,’ Lucie offered.
‘OK, no one is allowed to mention bathrooms, toilets or anything to do with weeing or water because it will just set me off.’
‘How about a blast of Abba to raise the spirits?’ Deva offered.
‘Maybe later,’ Lucie suggested. ‘I’m not sure that’s quite the soothing traffic jam music I need right now.’ She had enjoyed the detour into Paris, but now she wasn’t convinced it was worth sitting in an extra hour or two of traffic.
‘You just let me know what you want and when you need it. I am your in-car DJ for today. You gave me Chanel, Aunt Lucie, I can give you whatever sounds you want for the ride.’ With that, he slipped his headphones on, checking out of the conversation and leaving Lucie and Zoe to choose silence or chat in the front seat.
The traffic crawled, the bright sun beat down on the car, the tarmacked road, the glinting metal vehicles around them. Lucie had the aircon on low, so as not to make the Jag gulp down any more fuel than was necessary, and she checked all the dials over again. The petrol gauge showed the tank was half full, the oil was fine, and the temperature gauges showed the car was running a little hot, but that was to be expected. It was about twenty-seven degrees out there, maybe more.
Zoe’s phone buzzed and she pulled it out of her bag. She read the message, typed a reply at speed and then, buzz, another reply arrived. This went on for several moments. Buzz, type, send, buzz, and repeat. Finally, she sighed and tossed the phone back into her bag.
‘Rafi?’ Lucie asked, keeping her voice the bright side of neutral, wondering if she could open up a conversation about this man without igniting another burst of Zoe’s anger.
‘Yes, Rafi,’ Zoe said.
‘I’d love you to tell me a bit about him…’ Lucie ventured carefully. ‘I hardly know anything. And I know that’s because I’ve not really given you the chance to tell me,’ she added quickly.
Zoe looked at her mother and Lucie could see the expression of caution on her face.
‘I don’t want to give you any ammunition,’ Zoe said. ‘I don’t enjoy disagreeing with you about him.’
‘Look, I am sorry if I’ve got it all wrong and upset you. Really, Zoe, I am sorry,’ Lucie said, hoping that a full, hands-up apology might go some way to smoothing out things between them. ‘If you’ve picked him, he must have a lot going for him. I know you. You’re very special and I hope that means he’s very special too.’
‘He is special…’ Zoe began. ‘But he’s complicated.’
If Lucie wanted to sigh, she held it in because sighing would make Zoe clam up just when she might be ready to tell her mother a bit more.
‘OK… let me try to explain,’ Zoe began. ‘Rafi is the same age as me. Very tall, dark and handsome, very… I don’t want to use the word “shy”. I prefer private, or quiet. It takes a long time to get to know him. But when you do, you’re allowed into this whole fascinating world that no one else knows about.’ Zoe glanced at her mum and Lucie smiled to encourage her. ‘And I like that because… well, if you want to be Freudian, I suppose he’s very different to Dad,’ Zoe went on. ‘Dad is open and loud and out there and everyone knows all about Dad. Rafi is quiet and sensitive and it’s all going on in the interior. He likes to think and read and go for long walks.’
She paused thoughtfully, then said, ‘And my daily life is so loud and busy and full-on that I enjoy being calm when I’m with him. We can be quiet together and I can recover from everything I have to go through. It’s hard, Mum,’ she said, looking over at Lucie again and catching her eye. ‘It’s hard to be with people and their families when they are really ill, or when they die… Sometimes it can feel as if we did everything we could, but it wasn’t enough.’
Lucie reached over and took hold of her daughter’s hand.
She didn’t say anything. What could she say? She wondered if she’d been too wrapped up in her own problems to support Zoe as best she could.
She knew Zoe worked too hard on an understaffed ward. Some days when Lucie called her, Zoe’s face was marked with the mask she’d worn for so many hours.
A fragment of one conversation came back to Lucie. Zoe, staring at the screen and telling her in an exhausted but still proud voice, ‘We’re fighting a losing battle out here. We are doing everything we can and I’m so proud of everyone I work with, Mum, but it’s a battlefield in there.’
‘I don’t think I have been there for you as much as I should have been,’ Lucie said now. ‘I’ve been very caught up in the businesses going down, the divorce and now Dad being ill.’
Zoe shrugged. ‘You’ve had a tough time… I can hardly blame you.’
‘But I’ll do better,’ Lucie said, ‘going forward.’
The car nosed forward.
‘Tell me more about Rafi… if you want to,’ Lucie said.
‘His family is from Iran. He’s been in the UK, in London, since he was three. But there’s trauma when a family uproots like that. No grandparents, no aunties and uncles around to support you; you become very isolated. If you met him, you’d think classic computer nerd… Doesn’t want to talk much, just wants to get back to the screen. But it’s more than that… His whole world is on the other side of that screen. His people, his landscapes, his stories. All the things we get from family and friends and connections in the real world, he has had to find it through that screen.’
Zoe smiled then added, ‘I like being the person who can bring him out of that. So we talk together and cook food and clean his flat, do some DIY, enjoy time outdoors. I like to take him away from the imaginary world and out into real life.
‘When we go out of the flat,’ Zoe went on, ‘I think he must have low-level agoraphobia, because he wants to wear a hat or a hood and a certain jacket to kind of protect himself against the outside world. And, believe me, I already know what you’re thinking…’
‘Do you?’ Lucie asked. ‘You’d hate it if I said that to you.’
‘Yes, but you’re thinking, hasn’t Zoe got enough people to take care of in her life? She works in intensive care, she’s about to have a baby, maybe she doesn’t need a precious sensitive soul who needs her to look after him as well. You were thinking that, weren’t you?’
‘Maybe…’ Lucie admitted guiltily. ‘Well, something along those lines. Yes, I’m worried for you, is that so wrong? Having a baby is not as easy as it looks on Instagram, Zoe. It’s hard. It changes your life. Having a baby in London, when you’re working as a nurse and your partner has… issues…’
‘Mum…’ Zoe warned.
But it was true. It did sound like Zoe would be looking after this fragile man just as much as she’d be looking after her baby.
‘It’s going to be really hard, but I want to help you as much as I can,’ Lucie said.
‘I just wanted to tell you, and please listen,’ Zoe went on, ‘that Rafi does look after me. He does really care and I’m sure he’s going to be a very good dad. And I didn’t want you to meet him until I could explain all of this.’
‘Why won’t he buy a home with you? Why won’t he move in?’ Lucie asked, knowing it was blunt, knowing she sounded exasperated, but still having to ask these questions anyway.
‘I’m trying to work through that,’ Zoe said calmly, but Lucie could hear the undertow of anger. ‘It’s almost as if he can’t seem to imagine it. He can’t imagine leaving his flat. He can’t picture how we could make a new home ours together. Make it the way we want it. He’ll say things like, “I don’t like this kitchen” and not seem to get that we can change it, change everything to the way we want it to be.’
None of this was reassuring to Lucie. But she could at least appreciate that Zoe was very committed to Rafi. What she needed was some sign that Rafi felt the same way about Zoe.
‘Do you think you’ll persuade him to move?’ Lucie asked.
‘Well… it’s baby steps, Mum, baby steps.’
They fell into silence again, because Lucie didn’t want to risk another row or outburst. But still, as the traffic finally began to ease and the road opened up so they could begin to cover the distance between Paris and the village where they were stopping for the night, she couldn’t help thinking that her daughter needed a grown up, a partner, not another fragile and sensitive soul to look after as she entered this very challenging new phase of her life.
She could have done medicine. She could have married another doctor, Lucie couldn’t help thinking. Instead, what is she getting into? Some strange, troubled guy with commitment issues, and scraping together to buy a flat in a dodgy part of town…
Her thoughts tossed on round her head for mile after mile.
Soon there was another stop at a service station, for coffees, water and toilet breaks. It was not long after 4.30p.m., so the fiercest heat of the day had passed and now that they were up on higher ground, there even seemed to be something of a breeze.
‘Welcome to the Massif Central,’ Deva told them as they walked back towards the car, taking in the bare, rocky, mountainous landscape around them, still warm and shimmering in the late heat of the afternoon.
‘I feel a Chanel fact coming on,’ Zoe teased.
‘Oh, of course, this is where she was from. “The volcano from the Auvergne”, one of her friends nicknamed her, saying her hair and her eyebrows were as black as lava and her character was as hard as the impervious rock.’
‘I like that,’ Lucie told him, wondering if there were any geological features she could be named after… craggy old rock of ages, maybe, Vesuvius of repressed fury, more like.
‘According to my phone,’ Deva continued, ‘we have about one and a half more hours on the road before we get to the village. Shall I be DJ? Play some music to keep us all going?’
‘Go for it,’ Zoe encouraged him. ‘Hit us with your playlist.’
So, as they settled into their seats, Deva brought a small speaker out of his rucksack, hooked his phone up to it and then started to fill the car with a bouncy, lively mix of show tunes, Abba, high energy dance music… Anything to make the long miles on the smooth, much quieter road through the mountains go by more quickly.
And finally, as the sky began to take on a more twilight-ish cast, the satnav was guiding them off the main road and towards a village of pale yellow limestone houses perched higher on the hillside above them.
‘Oh good grief,’ Lucie complained as the road became narrower and more twisty, and she had to slow down considerably. ‘If I’d known it would take another twenty minutes to get there from the main road, I would have picked somewhere else. It looked as if it was just five minutes off the route.’
Although, thinking back, had they even passed anywhere else for the last twenty minutes or so?
‘It looks very pretty,’ Zoe assured her, before adding with a wink, ‘Did you pick it so you could show off on your Insta feed?’
‘Oh, ha ha.’
‘I’m sure it will be worth it once we get there,’ Zoe added. ‘I am so tired and hungry and in need of a wee. All the wants, all at once.’
Another ten minutes later, they were driving into the small high street of an old-fashioned French mountain town. It seemed bustling, with lots of people out and about, and red, white and blue bunting fluttering over the streets.
‘Second on the left,’ Lucie instructed, glancing at the satnav.
The turning brought them into a narrow, shaded street, then there was one more turn before they came to a small car park and what looked like the back entrance of the hotel she had booked.
‘Here we are, I think,’ Lucie told them.
‘Brilliant,’ Deva declared. He turned off the music and the car fell silent, which, after more than an hour of blasting music, felt a little strange.
‘Oh my goodness.’ Lucie leaned back in her warm and sticky seat and felt a wave of relief. ‘Well done, everyone. I can’t believe we’ve made it all this way. And it’s been fun, most of the time.’
‘Yeah,’ Zoe agreed. ‘I hope the loo is very nearby.’
‘I hope the beds are comfy… and they better have wine,’ Lucie added.
All the bags were emptied from the car. And was Lucie imagining it, or was there one more bag than she remembered? She was sure Deva had arrived at her dad’s with just one pull-along bag. Now he had the pull-along and a duffle bag as well as his rucksack.
But never mind. The three of them hustled through the door and along the corridor to the reception area.
There they were met by an effusive Frenchman who took Lucie’s name and then checked everyone’s passports with something of a flourish.
‘Welcome to my hotel,’ he told them cheerfully. ‘Your wish is my command, as they say.’
‘We’ve had a very long day of driving,’ Lucie told him. ‘I think we’d all just like something to eat and then a long sleep.’
It was disconcerting to get a loud laugh in response to this.
‘What’s wrong?’ Lucie asked.
‘Dinner, no problem, but sleep?’ he asked with a surprised expression. ‘It is Bastille Day. There is a big party in the town all night long. We thought you come here for the celebrations!’