Chapter 14
UNFORTUNATELY , LEONARD ’ S PROPOSAL DIDN ’ T go as planned.
First of all, he found the noise in the dining room off-putting. Tina and Liz were on their second bottle of wine by the time the bream was served, and when one of them wasn’t screeching, the other was honking with laughter. He was trying to concentrate, hoping for the perfect moment to ask Chloe to marry him, but he might as well have proposed in a zoo.
Secondly, in the brief few minutes between the starter and the main course when Chloe went to the toilet, he’d asked the waitress with orange hair if she could put the ring in Chloe’s dessert to surprise her. But the waitress hadn’t seemed to understand and then Chloe returned, so the ring box remained lodged in his pocket.
Thirdly, when Leonard finally decided it was simpler to get down on one knee after dessert, there’d been an alarming ripping noise. Leonard was a chunky man who never skipped leg day in the gym, and as he’d lowered his right knee to the carpet, the seat of his trousers had ripped to reveal his white underpants.
Still, when he’d finally got the words out, Chloe squealed almost as loudly as Tina and Liz, said yes, then promptly burst into tears, which caused one strip of false eyelashes to fall onto her plate. Liz bought another bottle of Champagne for them to celebrate, and then another which they insisted Jamie and Maggie join them for, and the result was that everybody at Le Figuier – guests and staff – had become extremely drunk (although Audrey had gone home after the chocolate tart was served).
Eventually, just before midnight, the guests staggered up to bed and Jamie and Maggie returned to the kitchen to clear up, while drinking a bottle of rosé, before Jamie had suggested they go down to the cellar for something else.
It was located under the kitchen, down a steep ladder, and still surprisingly well-stocked: racks of white wine and the spirits on one side, opposite racks of red, with the silver and gold foils of the Champagne bottles sticking out at the end. Maggie had spent some time in the past week inspecting the labels on these bottles, holding them underneath the bare bulb overhead, hearing the echo of lessons Phil had given her years earlier. ‘White with fish, Mags, although I sometimes serve my bouillabaisse with a nice bouncy Fleurie.’ Wine the colour of golden syrup in smaller bottles went with pudding and cheese. Champagne, Phil was fond of saying, could be drunk at any time of day. ‘Especially breakfast. Delicious at breakfast.’
‘This looks verrrry nice,’ Jamie slurred, pulling a dusty bottle of Calvados from one rack in the damp, dark space, swaying while trying to read the label. ‘It’s old. Like, nearly forty years old.’
‘Ancient,’ joked Maggie. ‘And go on then.’
‘But can we stay in here because …’ Jamie paused to hiccup and squint at the open hatch above them, revealing a rectangle of twinkling night sky, ‘I’m never getting up that ladder again.’
Maggie didn’t fancy climbing the ladder either. She was quite impressed they’d got down it, to be honest.
Their backs to the wall, they slid to the musty floor and Jamie took a slug of Calvados, before holding up the bottle. ‘I wonder what Frenchman first looked at an apple and thought, “I could get pissed off that”?’
‘Or woman.’
‘Or woman,’ Jamie agreed.
‘Probably a man. Hand it over.’ She took a mouthful and winced, before wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘But you can see why it was used as an antiseptic in the war.’
‘What war?’
Her head swung sideways and she tried to focus on Jamie’s face. ‘Uhhhhh … one of the wars? Phil used to talk about it. She used to joke that it was ironic that it helped soldiers in the war who’d lost legs when it helped her become leg- less . She made these baked apples with it, covered with Chantilly cream. The guests would groan when she carried them through.’
Jamie took back the bottle. ‘I wish I’d met her.’
‘Me too. God …’ Maggie sighed, leaning her head back against the wall, ‘I miss her.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘S’all right, just wish I’d come out here sooner.’
‘Shoulda, woulda, coulda.’ Jamie took another mouthful of the Calvados and smacked his lips. ‘I think it’s making my mouth numb.’
‘Probably.’
‘Can I make an …’ He stopped and frowned. ‘One of those things that you make?’
‘Point?’ suggested Maggie.
‘Observation!’ said Jamie, pleased to have remembered the right word.
She nodded.
‘Since I got here.’ He stopped again and looked confused. ‘When was that? When did I get here?’
Maggie took the bottle back from him. ‘This morning.’
‘Only this morning?’ Jamie frowned. ‘Really?’
‘Yep.’ She tipped the bottle back then made a retching noise.
‘OK, then, since this morning … Are you sure it was this morning?’
‘Yes!’
‘Weird. But OK, if you say so. Since then, you seem better.’
She turned to look at him, eyes drawn together. ‘Whatdyoumean?’ ‘You seem happier out here.’
‘Happier?’
‘OK, your auntie’s died, and you didn’t say goodbye, and it’s all very tragic …’
‘Jamie …’
‘But you still seem more, I dunno, carefree out here than I’ve seen you for ages at home. Sort of, lighter.’
‘Lighter?’ Maggie put a hand on her stomach as if to check her weight. In the past few days, while cooking for the guests, she’d also eaten as if on holiday: croissants and baguettes and thick slices of ham and wedges of Brie and quiche and a frangipane tart she’d made for tea for the Bancrofts one afternoon when she couldn’t face going over Phil’s paperwork.
‘I don’t mean physically. It’s just like it suits you out here. You seem …’ Jamie paused, hesitant about what he was about to say. ‘You seem more like you. More chill.’
Maggie frowned at her knees. She definitely felt sad being in France without Phil, but she’d also found the past few days enjoyable. She was cooking again, she was busy, she was thinking about deliveries and check-in times and what wines to serve with dinner. The hotel was chaos, but happy chaos. Unlike at home, where a more depressing chaos existed: the fridge was full of hormones, her bedside table was piled with packets of sterilized needles, and the yellow bedroom at the top of the house was full of baby furniture she didn’t want to think about. But in the past week, for the first time in years, her first thought on waking up hadn’t been whether or not she was pregnant.
‘Yeah,’ she said slowly. ‘I feel more normal, although that could be the hormones wearing off. But I don’t get it.’
‘Don’t get what?’
‘I can’t tell why I’m so frustrated in London. Like, is it trying to get pregnant, over and over, or is it my marriage? Or is it both? Or is it me sitting at home all day, not working, not doing anything?’ She held up her hand and started ticking off her fingers. ‘It’s like, in London, I’ve done everything right: I got a job, and then I met someone, and then we got married, and now we have a house together.’
‘Okayyyyyy,’ said Jamie, before hiccupping.
‘And children, maybe, one day, if …’
‘Mags,’ Jamie said gently, ‘what you getting at?’
‘They’re all the right things. You know, the right things to do. Job, house, partner, croissants from the bakery on the corner and the papers on Sunday. They’re right ,’ she emphasized, her eyes wide, looking at him as if she was trying to explain something in a foreign language.
‘Says who?’
‘Says … says … says everyone!’
‘I don’t.’
‘I know you don’t. That’s why I love you. You’re different. But … Oh, I can’t explain it properly, too pissed. Give me the bottle. What I’m saying is, I feel like I’ve done all the right things, so I don’t understand why everything doesn’t feel right.’ She took another slug and swallowed. ‘But it’s what Phil told me would happen.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘She said, the last time I saw her, she said I was doing the wrong thing, making the wrong choice. That’s why I didn’t speak to her again. But I think maybe I did,’ Maggie said sadly. ‘Maybe I did make all the wrong choices. But you don’t know that until it’s too late, do you? You don’t know decisions are wrong until you can see them behind you. I used to be so excited about everything, really, and now I don’t have that. I don’t have that same sense of possibility, you know? Life felt so big when I was younger and now it feels small. But does everyone feel like that?’
‘Oh, Mags,’ said Jamie, sliding an arm around her shoulders. ‘It’s one of the great mysteries, why none of us can be happy with our lot. Well, that and why butter has to be so delicious and yet make us so fat. But I don’t think there are wrong decisions. I think we make decisions that feel right at the time, and if it turns out they weren’t very good decisions, well, we work it out later by making other ones. Calling things right or wrong, it’s too binary. Life’s murkier than that.’
‘I am happy here though,’ she murmured, dropping her head to his shoulder. She was starting to feel sleepy; her body heavy and dulled; her thoughts not making total sense. Why was Jamie going on about butter? ‘I do feel more like me. It’s kind of like I can hear my younger self again, like I can feel her, in here.’ She raised a hand and pressed it to her chest. ‘Does that sound mad?’
‘Babe, we’ve drunk fifty-three bottles of wine and almost half a bottle of Calvados. Everything sounds mad. But I’m glad that you feel better.’ Jamie tightened his arm around her shoulders and kissed her head.
‘You all right though?’
‘All right?’
She looked up at him. ‘After Ben?’
He smiled. ‘Yeah. Hunky-dory. And I’ve moved on, anyway.’
‘What? To who?’
‘That waiter in the bar. Lovely eyes. He gave me a look earlier that suggested I may stand a chance but he’ll never text me afterwards. Perfect.’
‘Holiday romance,’ mumbled Maggie, her head back on his shoulder.
‘Exactly,’ Jamie said happily. ‘Because that’s the thing, Mags, none of us have to stay in the same place forever.’
‘Mmmm?’
Jamie considered whether to press the point. In the past four years, it was as if he’d watched his best friend shrink. In her efforts to get pregnant, Maggie had given up her restaurant, given up going out, given up spontaneously texting him and suggesting dinner somewhere new, given up certain foods, given up certain drinks, given up almost everything when, from Jamie’s perspective, it didn’t look as if Mungo had given up very much himself. Certainly not his rounds on the golf course. But when he heard a tiny snore from his shoulder, he decided that was a conversation for another day.
‘Mags,’ he whispered. ‘Mags?’
‘Mmmmm?’
‘One final question.’
‘What?’ she asked, opening her eyes and looking up blearily.
Jamie nodded at the ladder. ‘How the fuck are we going to get up that?’