Chapter 6
6
Dear Addy,
I’m not sure whether you’re receiving these emails. Please could you at least confirm that you’re OK?
I didn’t mean to be harsh with you when I last wrote, but I am so worried about you! And I know this isn’t what Mum would have wanted. She’d have hated things to come out this way – and for you to just disappear the way you have. You know that, really.
None of us wanted to hurt you – if anything, the opposite! I understand that you feel we kept something important from you, but maybe look at it a different way. We were protecting you. Or at least we thought we were.
Please reply. And please consider coming back. We’ve got a lot to talk about! And it’s better in person.
Kev x
Adeline clicked the tiny cross in the corner of the screen and the email disappeared, replaced with an online order form. Breathing deeply, she stood up, smoothed down the front of her trousers and picked up a pile of books. It was mid-morning, mid-week – her second in St Vianne – and until a moment ago she’d been thinking just how settled and at home she already felt. The staff in the patisserie now smiled and asked how her job was going when she went to buy croissants – something that Lili was now developing a taste for; she’d begun to rearrange the furniture in their tiny house, and had found a set of voiles in a cupboard to hang at her bedroom window. Lili seemed utterly beguiled by her teacher and prattled on about her non-stop.
Things still felt new; she was daunted at times, still found that not all the customers were happy to see her when Monique stepped out and she manned the shop alone. But each day she felt the momentum of settling into place and that she was making progress.
Kevin’s email had been sent a few days ago – but she only had Internet access in the shop and hadn’t felt inclined to check until now: something that would have felt impossible back home. She resolved to travel to Avignon to sort out a new mobile phone soon. But there was no great hurry.
It had been curiosity that had led her to check – and perhaps a little flicker of homesickness, or guilt or whatever it was that fluttered in her chest from time to time. Once she’d seen that he’d written again, she’d been unable to stop herself clicking and reading.
Scanning the stands of books, searching for the H, she shelved a small volume of poems, then moved to the table to arrange the rest of the new stock. Keeping herself distracted, moving, was the solution.
It was quiet in the shop this morning, typically. A light drizzle saturated the stone walkway outside, runnels of moisture ran down the outside awning and dripped onto the window. She could see the grey world outside in a kind of shimmering semi-focus, her vision impaired by water collected on the glass and tumbling from the expressionless sky. One or two locals had braved it to the patisserie, umbrellas held aloft, hoods pulled up; but it seemed nobody was in the mood for buying books this morning.
Most days, the shop had a steady stream of people coming through its door, whether to chat with Monique, to browse the shelves, to pass the remaining ten minutes before the cafe opened, or to seek advice on literature. Adeline’s French was already close to fluent, but she had enjoyed challenging herself with new topics, finding the words coming more easily every day.
Yet today of course, when she needed a distraction, the shop was silent. Outside was silent. Her work was nearly done and there were no diversions. Kevin was there, in her inbox, refusing to be ignored just as he had been when they were growing up.
Her fingers itched to reply to him. To tell him that he had no idea what he was talking about. How could he? He’d been in on it from the start. And if she hadn’t discovered it for herself, would they ever have told her?
Would he understand that every memory she had now of them as a family was tarnished, touched by the knowledge that the world she’d experienced hadn’t been an honest one? That the people with their arms around her, watching her blow out birthday candles, pulling crackers with her at Christmas; the people who’d stood proudly by her hospital bed holding Lili and smiling with what had seemed like genuine affection and pride had all been lying to her for her entire life?
Worst of all, perhaps she’d never be able to explain adequately the fact that when she’d found out the truth, quite by accident, there was a part of her beyond the devastation of the moment that had been relieved. Relieved that the tiny part of her that had felt uneasy, different, her whole life hadn’t been a flaw in her own character – a tendency towards anxious thinking – but her own sixth sense that something wasn’t quite right.
She’d try. She’d write an email and at least try to explain, she thought suddenly, determinedly. She turned to cross the shop floor, to reboot the rather outdated computer tucked away on a table at the side of the counter. But as she did so, her hip hit the side of a display table, the corner sticking painfully into her thigh.
She swore, loudly, the expletive feeling completely out of place in the quiet, quaint shop. The table wobbled and several books fell to the floor. As she bent to pick them up, her leg still throbbing, Adeline felt the tears finally escape and pool hotly in her eyes.
Shit . She wiped them away as best she could with her sleeve, returned the books to their table and stumbled to the counter, slipping into the chair and trying as best she could to get herself back together. That was the problem with holding it all in; once there was a breach in her defences, it was hard to find the strength to push her emotions back.
She was not a crier. Had never been. Preferred to solve problems rather than wallow in them. She steadied herself. This was not the time nor the place. But at least the shop was empty.
As if malevolent fate had read her mind, at that moment the shop door tinkled its warning and Monique returned, flapping her umbrella outside before propping it in the doorway on the mat to dry. Her neat, red raincoat was covered with droplets; the back of her hair slightly damp where the wind had blown moisture under the umbrella.
She turned, and Adeline stood up, smiling widely. ‘ Bonjour !’ she said, in what she hoped was an upbeat tone. ‘Hope you didn’t get too wet.’
Monique turned towards her, smiling, but one glance at her employee’s face had her forehead crinkling with concern. ‘But Adeline, you have been crying?’
Adeline shook her head dismissively. ‘It’s nothing. Just feeling a bit emotional, is all.’
Monique walked towards her, brow still furrowed. ‘But it is not nothing,’ she said. ‘We do not cry for nothing usually.’
‘I just read an email from home.’ Adeline shrugged.
‘And it upset you? It is bad news?’
‘No, nothing like that. Just…’ She opened her mouth to lie – trying to find a plausible excuse for her tears. That she missed her brother, perhaps. It wasn’t completely untrue, after all. That she was a little homesick? Also a little bit true, at times. But Monique was closer now, her eyes seeming to burn right into Adeline, and she felt suddenly that there was no point in trying to hide – because Monique would know. She could read people; she was reading her.
Adeline took a big, shuddering breath. ‘My brother, Kevin, wrote to me. He’s not happy about me being here.’
‘But why?’
‘Oh, he’s just worried about me. He knows… well, when I decided to come, I was upset. With him. With my whole family really, only he’s the only one who’s still here. My parents… Dad died years ago when I was small and my mum died recently. So it’s just him.’
Monique nodded towards the stool and Adeline sat on it; she realised she was shaking.
‘And he thinks you are running away?’
‘Maybe.’
‘And are you? ’
Adeline smiled through the tears. ‘Maybe. A little.’
Monique nodded. ‘It was a big argument?’ she probed.
Adeline shook her head. ‘Not an argument, as such. More…’ She wondered how much she should say, how much she was ready to say. ‘I found something. In my mother’s things. And I realised that my parents had been keeping a secret from me, my whole life. Mum isn’t here, I can’t ask her about it. But I asked Kevin – my brother. And I could hear it!’ Her voice became slightly hoarse. ‘I could hear in his voice that he already knew. That I’d been the only one in the dark!’
Monique’s hand reached out, touched her shoulder. ‘That must have been very difficult,’ she said. ‘And this is why you came?’
Adeline shook her head, both smiling and crying. ‘It’s why I left. But not why I chose to come here. Living in France, really immersing myself, is something I’ve always wanted to do. I just never had a reason before. I never… And when I saw the advert, it was like fate, I…’ She let her sentence trail off.
Monique was nodding. ‘Well, I am not glad that this happened to you. But I am glad that you came here.’ She paused a little, her eyes clouding slightly. ‘And I want to let you know that I understand, perhaps, what you have gone through with your family. Because of my mother.’
‘She lied to you?’
‘ Non , she did not lie. But I know what it is like when someone you trust, you love, who is meant to love you too, does something terrible. Something that makes you feel broken,’ she tapped her chest briefly. ‘I know it can make you feel very alone.’
Adeline nodded. ‘And you couldn’t forgive your mother?’
One short shake of the head. ‘ Non , never. One day I will tell you everything and you will understand. And this broke things between my sister and me, too – she couldn’t stand the way I was treating our mother; forced me to choose.’
‘That’s awful.’
Monique shrugged. ‘It is life.’
There was a brief ebb in the conversation, then, ‘What about Kevin?’ Adeline asked.
‘What about him?’
‘Do you think I should forgive him?’
Monique’s mouth flickered towards a smile. ‘Only you know that. But I would say it depends what he did, exactly, and why. And who for. It seems that he loves you, that he is worried.’ She shrugged. ‘That is something.’
‘Yes.’
It was. And he’d done what he’d done for their mother; had been a child when he’d made his promise. Would she have been any different in his situation?
She wiped her hands across her cheeks, drying any stray tears. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
Monique smiled, stood back from the counter where she’d been leaning, looking at Adeline intently. ‘I have just the thing,’ she said. She walked to one of the corner shelves, mouthing words silently to herself as her finger traced the writers’ names. At last, she stopped and gently pulled out a thin volume. ‘This… If you have time, I think it would be good for you to read.’
Adeline drew the book to her, curiously. It was a small volume, thin with an orange cover. She read the title: The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson . She looked up, a question on her face.
‘Read it, when you can. When you want. You will see,’ Monique said.
‘To… to fix me?’ she asked. Suddenly, forcefully, she wanted to believe that it was possible for a book to do this, for Monique to know exactly the remedy she needed.
‘To speak to you.’
‘I…’
The bell tinkled and suddenly there were three others in the shop bringing with them a flood of reality that tore her away from her problems for an instant. Adeline tucked the book out of sight; she’d look at it properly later.