The Fall-Out

Chapter 30

THIRTY

In the end, it was almost a week before Rowan and I were able to get away. I had to square my last-minute trip with Patch – no easy task, because it meant him spending an entire weekend looking after the children – and Rowan had to arrange the Friday and Monday off work.

But eventually, on a Friday evening, she and I stepped off the Eurostar at Gare du Nord. Of course, I couldn’t help being reminded of our previous trip to visit Zara, but this was different in so many ways. There was no Kate, Abbie or Matt. There’d be no Patch meeting us there. There was no giddy, festive atmosphere or cans of gin and tonic on the train. I had no excited butterflies in my stomach, only a hollow apprehensiveness at the knowledge that I was going to see Zara, fear at how she might react to seeing me, and a complete blank when it came to what I was going to say to her.

It didn’t help that Rowan’s attempts to contact Zara on social media, email and phone had all been unsuccessful, and thinking of the possibility that I might never get the chance to make things right made my confidence in my plan evaporate and be replaced with cold dread.

At least the frosty atmosphere there’d been between Rowan and me seemed to have thawed now that we were united in a common goal.

‘Chin up, Nome,’ Rowan said. ‘We’ve got this. Let’s find our hotel, check in, get something to eat and make a plan.’

Her brisk efficiency reassured me, and we did as she suggested. The hotel Rowan had booked was tucked away on a cobblestone street in the Marais and was basic but pleasant, with a twin room – we weren’t here to live it up, as Rowan had pointed out. But once we’d dropped off our bags and headed out into the street, I felt the magic of the city captivating me as it had the first time. It was early summer now. The trees lining the boulevards were in full leaf, shading the pavements as if we were walking beneath giant green parasols. The evening was warm and there was a gentle breeze disarranging the chic bobs of the women who crowded the pavement with their well-cut, neutral-coloured clothes, their high heels and their expensive handbags. We walked past magnificent stone mansions where it was impossible not to imagine living as a seventeenth-century aristocrat, through an elegant garden square with a vast fountain at its centre and down to the river, sparkling in the setting sun.

Everyone seemed to be smiling; it felt like a city where you could fall in love. I remembered the last time we had come here, and the desperate yearning I’d felt for Patch, the agony of love I’d believed would never be reciprocated. I imagined coming here with him again, leaving the children with my parents, strolling hand-in-hand with him through the streets, eating croissants at a pavement café, returning home in the evening tipsy from rosé and having sex with the curtains blowing into the room from our balcony, like a second honeymoon.

Actually, I realised, coming here with Rowan was something not unlike a honeymoon, and almost more important. It felt like a chance to heal the fractures in our friendship, to begin to make things right between us and somehow recover from the damage that had been done by Zara’s return, and my actions in the past.

When we’d met at St Pancras station, our conversation had been – not cold, but kind of formal, limited to our travel arrangements and the plans we’d made for our children to be looked after while we were away. But now, glancing sideways at Rowan, I could see a lightness in her step, a smile on her face when the breeze blew back her hair.

‘It’s got you, hasn’t it?’ Rowan asked, and I realised she was looking sideways at me too.

‘What has?’

‘Paris, dimwit.’

I laughed. ‘Yup, you’ve got me bang to rights. And don’t pretend it’s not got to you, too.’

‘Course it has. Paris and – being here with you, Nome. It’s nice.’

I grinned, my heart lifting. ‘Yeah, it’s all right, isn’t it?’

‘So, food. This place looks decent, if you’re happy with cassoulet or something? When there’s just a short menu like this it generally means they do it perfectly.’

I looked through the window at the paper-covered tablecloths where studenty-looking couples sat drinking red wine, their faces illuminated by candlelight. I was starving, I realised.

‘Works for me.’

‘So,’ Rowan said, once we were seated and smearing salty butter thickly on to slices of baguette. ‘We need a plan.’

‘Did you try calling the hospital?’ I’d vaguely suggested this when we spoke the previous day.

Rowan shook her head. ‘I tried googling, but I could tell straight away I was on a hiding to nothing. There are loads of different ones and I can’t tell from Zara’s Facebook posts which one she’s in. Same with Dr Hubert – there seem to be about three gynaecologists called that in Paris and even if I got the right one, there’s no way he’d tell me anything. They’re even hotter on data protection here than in the UK.’

‘So plan B – we go to her apartment. She must have been discharged by now. Unless…’

We looked at each other in silence over the flickering candle flame. We didn’t need to say the words – Unless something went wrong with the surgery. Unless it was even more serious than she thought. Unless something went wrong and she…

‘We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it,’ Rowan said firmly. ‘I’m sure she’s fine. I bet this Hubert guy’s whipped out more uteruses than you’ve had hot dinners.’

‘And speaking of which…’

A waiter had appeared with our food, chunky white china plates piled high with glorious smelling beans and sausage, a green salad glistening with oil and another basket of bread. He filled our wine glasses from the carafe on the table and smiled at Rowan the way men always smiled at Rowan.

We ate and drank in silence for a while, then I said, ‘Do we even know where she lives?’

‘She used to have a flat in Canal Saint-Martin – hipster as hell, like you’d expect. I remember her saying she shared with another girl – a model. But I don’t know if she’s still there, or even what her name was.’

‘I remember her mentioning it. Danielle? Something like that.’

‘Yeah, we could start by having a look on Facebook and working our way through all the Danielles in Paris.’

‘Or maybe not.’ I sighed. ‘So hitting Danielle up on social media and telling her we’ve come to visit Zara looks like a non-starter. It was ages ago, anyway. Zara’s moved all over the place since then.’

‘I mean, we could just go there,’ Rowan suggested. ‘She might have left a forwarding address.’

‘You mean, like, now?’

Rowan glanced at her watch. ‘It’s gone nine thirty. I reckon we should sleep on it and try Danielle in the morning.’

Relief washed over me. One night wasn’t much of a reprieve, but it was a reprieve all the same. We paid for our meal and walked back to the hotel through the buzzing Friday-night streets. Back in our room, I FaceTimed Patch, heard to my relief that the children were safe in bed, then fell into bed myself and – to my surprise – slept dreamlessly all night.

The next day was glorious – sunny and fresh, the air sparkling and the scent of coffee and croissants drifting out from the pavement cafés. Rowan and I picked one of them for breakfast, and she perused her phone while we ate.

‘I reckon I’ll be able to find the place,’ she said. ‘One good thing about being an estate agent is it gives you a killer memory for where houses are. And if Gabrielle – that’s her name, not Danielle at all, I remembered at like five a.m. – if she’s not there, we can leave our numbers with the concierge or someone and ask her to ring us.’

‘And if Gabrielle doesn’t live there any more, we can come up with a plan B,’ I said, thinking, Or give up the whole idea and go home.

But the prospect of there being a concierge – an anonymous taker of messages rather than an old friend of Zara’s to whom we’d have explain everything – emboldened me. We finished our coffee and I followed Rowan to the Metro station, on to one line and then on to another, and then out again into a pretty neighbourhood with tidy terraced houses lining the banks of a slow-flowing canal.

I hurried to match Rowan’s long stride as she strode confidently past a little parade of shops, away from the meandering water of the canal, and into a maze of narrow cobbled streets. Occasionally she’d stop, frowning, consulting her phone then apparently her own memory before backtracking and turning off again.

At last, she stopped. ‘I’m pretty sure this is the place. Rue de l’église, number fifteen. I can’t for the life of me remember the apartment number, though.’

We stood there in the sunshine for a moment, looking up at a series of tiny wrought-iron balconies, many with geraniums spilling from window boxes or pots of herbs spreading their leaves in the morning sun. The impetus that had carried me so far abruptly faded away.

What were we doing here? The idea that I’d somehow be vindicated by catching Zara out in a lie seemed absurd now that the prospect of it happening was real. And, of course, if I was wrong and it turned out Zara’s illness was not a fabrication – well, I’d feel every bit as terrible as I deserved to.

On the wall outside the building was a panel of bells next to a metal fretwork security gate. We stood for a moment, looking at them.

‘I don’t think this is—’ I began.

‘Shall we—’ Rowan said at the same time.

‘Look, I really don’t think this is a good idea, Ro.’ I grabbed her arm and pulled her back from the entrance.

‘What? Why not? We can’t have come all this way for nothing.’

‘She’s not here,’ I gabbled desperately. ‘Even if this Dan— Gabrielle still lives here, what are the chances of her knowing where Zara is? We shouldn’t have come.’

Rowan looked at me, her face softening. ‘Hey, Nome. I get it. It’s scary. I’m scared too. But what’s the worst that can happen?’

There were so many possible worsts, I couldn’t find the words to tell her which I was dreading the most. Dragging in a lungful of the fresh morning air, I looked up at the facade of the building, as if the clashing red and magenta flowers or the faint scent of basil would give me courage. And then I froze.

‘Ro. Shit. Look up there.’

Rowan looked. ‘What? The cat? Cute.’

Between the metal railings of the balcony above us, a pair of green eyes was looking curiously down at us. The cat’s fur was dark brown and glossy, mottled with spots like a miniature leopard’s. The sun glinted off its whiskers. Its long tail was tucked around its haunches.

‘That’s not just some random cat. That’s Zara’s cat.’

‘Are you sure?’

I realised Rowan was just as nervous as I was. ‘Positive.’

‘She must be here, then.’

‘We’ll have to ring and see if someone will let us in.’

But before we could, there was a click and the security gate swung open. A woman stepped out, very tall and rail-thin, wearing faded jeans with a white shirt half-tucked into them. Holding on to her hands were two little girls, one a bit older than Meredith and the other a bit younger, immaculately dressed in little velvet frocks, the older one’s navy blue and the younger one’s yellow.

The woman said something to her children, smiling down at them. Then her eyes settled on us and she stopped. ‘ Puis-je vous aider? ’

Rowan spoke to her in French, a short stream of words of which I could only recognise ‘Gabrielle’, ‘Zara’ and ‘Londres’.

The woman’s face broke into a tentative smile, which vanished almost as soon as it had appeared and was replaced by puzzlement. She replied, at more length than Rowan had, but I understood almost nothing apart from a gesture up to the balcony from which the cat was still watching us, and an annoyed click of her tongue.

Rowan looked mystified and spoke again – ‘Zara’, ‘Facebook’, ‘ h?pital ’.

The woman shook her head and launched into another stream of French, too rapid for me to make out any words. Rowan answered briefly, and a couple more short exchanges followed, the woman looking more and more confused and Rowan more embarrassed.

At last, Rowan fished in her bag for a notebook and pen, wrote her name and mine and our phone numbers on one of the pages, ripped it out and handed it to the woman.

‘ Alors ,’ she said. ‘ Au revoir, Gabrielle. Désolée de vous déranger. ’

‘ De rien ,’ said Gabrielle. Taking her daughters’ hands again, she walked away, giving us one last puzzled, slightly annoyed glance over her shoulder.

‘Come on,’ Rowan said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

‘What’s happened? What did she say? Is Zara…?’

‘Zara’s fine. Come on.’

Rowan almost ran back along the street the way we’d come, in the opposite direction to which Gabrielle had been headed. She didn’t stop until we reached the canal. She sat down on a wrought-iron bench and I flopped down next to her, dabbing beads of sweat from my forehead.

‘That,’ Rowan said, ‘was the most bizarre conversation I’ve ever had in my life.’

‘Tell me. I don’t understand.’

‘Zara’s not there.’ Rowan turned to face me, looking utterly perplexed. ‘She was staying with Gabrielle for a bit, but she’s not any more. She left her cat behind and Gabrielle’s not best pleased about it.’

‘So where is she now?’ I pressed. I was almost sure I knew which way this was going to go, but not quite sure enough.

‘Gabrielle doesn’t know. Sounds like she did Zara a favour and she feels taken advantage of. She had no idea about all the Facebook stuff – her husband’s something in politics so she doesn’t do social media.’

‘So she never saw Zara’s posts about having cancer? But she had her to stay anyway?’

Rowan nodded. ‘She said Zara was in hospital for a minor procedure a couple of weeks back and she couldn’t go to a hotel because of the cat.’

‘A minor procedure?’ Relief flooded me. ‘So not cancer?’

‘Not cancer at all. Nome, I don’t get it. I genuinely have no fucking idea what’s going on here. But I think you do, and I feel like I’m being taken for a mug here.’

I took a deep breath and reached for Rowan’s hand. ‘I’m sorry, Ro. I kind of brought you out here under false pretences. I thought – I doubted that what Zara was saying about having cancer was true. I know that sounds terrible but… after everything we know about her… I just had this feeling it might all be made up.’

‘But everything – the photos in the hospital?—’

‘I know. That’s why I doubted myself. And genuinely, hand on heart, if I’d been wrong, I’d have apologised to her and I’d have meant every word of it.’

‘But you weren’t wrong.’ Rowan’s eyes were bright with tears. ‘I was wrong. We were wrong. We believed Zara. And I behaved horribly to you, Nome.’

I shook my head. ‘It doesn’t matter. That one thing – the thing about Patch and me – that was true. I didn’t know it at the time but it was. And when I said I wanted to apologise to her for that, I meant it – and I still do.’

Rowan covered her face with her hands. ‘It’s all a right mess. The Girlfriends’ Club – things haven’t been the same since she came back and I don’t think they ever will be again.’

‘Come on, Ro. Don’t cry.’ I edged along the bench and put my arms around her. Hugging my friend again was the best feeling ever, even though her shoulders were shaking with sobs. ‘We’ll make it right again. I’m not sure how, but we’ll find a way.’

‘Are you sure?’ She looked up at me. Her face reminded me of Meredith’s when she’d cried after an injection and I’d pointed out to her that it didn’t actually hurt any more.

‘I’m absolutely sure.’ Then I asked, ‘Ro? This minor procedure?’

‘What about it?’

‘What actually was it?’

‘It was removing some haemorrhoids.’

‘What? That woman – Gabrielle – told you that?’

‘She’s French. They don’t get embarrassed by bum stuff.’ She started to giggle, and after a moment I joined her. I wasn’t sure why it was funny, but her laughter was infectious, and soon we were rocking backwards and forwards on the bench like schoolgirls, helpless with mirth, literally crying. When one of us stopped for a moment, we’d catch each other’s eyes and start all over again.

I felt limp with relief, like I’d been hollowed out and there was nothing inside me to support the weight of my body any more. All the guilt I’d been feeling had been washed away, all the fear that Zara might die and we’d have to live, together, with the loss of her the way we were living with Andy’s had evaporated.

The knowledge of what had happened between Zara and Patch was still there, of course, but it felt like a small thing – an insignificant thing, compared to the hugeness of the blame I’d been willing to place on myself and the possibility of losing my closest friends in the world.

I looked at Rowan. The sun was shining on her face and there were tears sparkling on her cheeks.

In a small voice, she said, ‘I’m just so relieved. I feel like the world’s biggest mug for believing her – again – but I don’t actually care.’

‘I’m relieved too.’ I squeezed her hand. Then I looked at her again. ‘There’s something else, isn’t there. That you’re relieved about?’

Rowan nodded slowly. ‘You see, if this wasn’t true, then the other things she said to me aren’t true, either.’

I thought of what Zara had said to me – the seeds of doubt she’d sown in my mind. How her telling me that she’d felt on the sidelines of the group had reminded me of feeling that way, too, making me wonder afresh whether my friends weren’t really my friends at all, and how that knowledge had been eating away at me.

‘What did she say to you?’ I asked.

Rowan blinked back tears. ‘She said – oh God, I don’t know why I even let myself believe it for a second, but I did. She said… she said you’d told her you thought me moving in with Alex would be – you know. Inappropriate. Because of Clara. She said that when she was Clara’s age, her mum had a boyfriend who… you know. Abused her. And that she’d told you about it and you’d said you wondered why I wasn’t concerned about the same thing happening to Clara.’

‘Hold on. Are you saying she said I thought there was something – that Alex?—’

‘I mean, not in so many words. I know it’s not true, of course I do. I know Alex isn’t like that. I mean – ugh! If I had even the tiniest hint of that I’d be calling the police, never mind going out with him and introducing him to my daughter. But the idea that you thought something wasn’t right hurt. It hurt a lot.’

‘Of course it did. Jesus. I can’t imagine how that must have felt. But you know it’s not true, right?’

‘I do now. I always did, really. But she made me doubt myself. Not a lot, but – you know. Enough.’

‘And you’re not doubting yourself any more?’

She shook her head.

‘Thank God for that,’ I said.

‘I’m so sorry, Naomi. I feel terrible. I should have known you’d never have thought that, never mind said it. To Zara, of all people.’

‘I believed stuff she told me, too, you know. In spite of myself.’

‘What stuff?’

I shook my head. Now, sitting in the sunshine with my best friend, it seemed ridiculous. But by saying it, I knew I could reduce its power forever.

‘She made me feel like I was the odd one out, of us. Actually, she told me she’d felt that way, and it reminded me that I used to, as well. But I always thought she was the one who fitted in and I wasn’t. God, it sounds so pathetic when I say in out loud.’

Rowan laughed, but it was a hollow sound, different from the laughter we’d shared earlier.

‘Wow,’ she said. ‘She really knows how to push our buttons.’

‘And I bet that’s not all.’ I stood up, feeling lighter somehow, full of determination. ‘She’ll have said things to Kate, too. And to Abbie.’

‘My God,’ Rowan breathed. ‘Yes. You’re right.’

‘And I’m going to find out what. And I’m going to make things all right between us again.’