Chapter 9
Florian is an island; he is perched on a bar stool on the veranda of Fromages et Vins looking intently at his phone. He has changed out of his workwear, keeping the jeans but swapping the café’s top for a thick flannel over-shirt in a burnt-orange plaid.
My resounding and limited memory of Florian was that he had always been slightly scruffy.
No matter what the occasion, there would be holes in his jumpers, scuffs on his trousers and paint smears on most of the cuffs of his jackets.
He’s tidier now, like he has thought about what clothes he’s thrown on.
The most notable change, however, is his hair.
It’s shorter, loosely tousled with some wax that makes it darker than I remember.
It had been shoulder length the last time I saw him.
He had tied it into a scruffy bun for the funeral which he let down for the pathetic excuse of a wake that I was far too anesthetised by Valium and whisky to take much of a part in.
He looks younger, his face only shadowed by a couple of creases here and there, the kind that make a man look distinguished, not haggard.
The three years have been kinder to him than they have to me.
‘Hello.’ I approach carefully but he still jolts and then lets out an awkward laugh. ‘Not expecting me or…’ I trail off as he slips from the stool and greets me, quickly pressing his lips to my cheeks.
‘I guess I just thought you wouldn’t come.’ He shrugs, his English word perfect, only the faint echo of an accent.
‘I thought about it.’ I pull myself up onto the bar stool facing him. ‘But I figured that we were going to see each other again at some point.’
He assesses me and then nods. ‘That’s why I thought this would be good. And I also thought that somewhere new might be less…’ He searches for the right word.
‘Triggering?’ He weighs it up, whether it truly does fit, and when he tries it on his lips he nods.
‘Yes. Triggering.’
He calls over the waitress and a young woman comes over.
She smiles at him, a hand on his shoulder, and she looks nervously at me with the same appraising look that Florian had given me moments before.
I know they have been talking about me. Probably placing bets on whether I would turn up, giving her a one-sided version of our limited familial interactions.
‘Would you like a drink?’ she asks. It feels impolite to ask for a vodka so I gesture to the carafe of wine on another table. ‘Red, please.’
‘Two glasses.’ Florian chips in.
‘Sure.’ She smiles sweetly and heads back into the bar.
The terrace is lit with festoon bulbs and patio heaters and I think I have been concentrating so hard on what I’m going to say, on trying to puzzle out what’s happening, that I haven’t really taken in the fact it’s almost warm.
The waitress brings out the wine immediately, catching Florian’s eye as she places the glasses on the table and sweeps back away.
‘You two a thing?’ I ask as I pour out a glass that is so large the carafe is now only half full. We both know why we’re here, but it is a subject that I will need to be tipsy to broach and so a conversation about Florian’s love life is a much more interesting appetiser.
He shrugs, taking the carafe off me and pouring himself a glass that is equally as big. ‘Not really.’
We descend into an awkward silence, both gulping back our wine and refilling our glasses quickly.
‘Thank you for bringing my shopping back,’ I start. Archie had told me to make sure I wasn’t starting the conversation on the attack. He said that he imagined I could be quite wounding when I went into things with an attitude. I felt strangely proud of that.
‘You’re welcome.’ He doesn’t look at me as he says it.
‘You owe me a bottle of wine though.’
He looks up then, his neck whipping straight, his eyes bright and fixed on me. ‘I gave you a better bottle.’
‘I don’t need my shopping delivered with suggestions.’
‘You’re telling me you didn’t enjoy the replacement?’ He already knows my answer. He knows it would be near impossible to not enjoy the bottle that did arrive in the bag.
‘I—’ I stumble for the right words but give up and just shrug. ‘I want my bottle back.’
‘Fine.’ He drums his fingers on the table. ‘I will get you another shit bottle.’ There is an irritating smile at the corner of his mouth. I didn’t come to entertain him. There is another awkward beat in the conversation and I watch as the attempt at a smile flattens, turns into a thin-lipped line.
‘You thought I was him, didn’t you?’ He doesn’t look me in the eye when he says it but his face is pained. He knows my answer before I say it. I think he has been thinking about it since I ran off.
I brush a hair from my eyes and tuck it behind my ear, thinking about yesterday, how in a moment I had managed to convince myself that I had run into my dead husband.
The husband I watched being lowered into the ground.
‘You know, it’s funny. I never thought you two looked alike before.
I don’t even think you do now but… I don’t know. ’
‘We’re more alike than strangers.’
‘I think perhaps I saw what I wanted to see.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he says sadly.
‘For what? It’s not your fault I thought you were him.’
‘I don’t know…’ He pauses, shrugs and then he points briefly to my cheeks. ‘Your face – when you realised – I just feel like I need to apologise for it.’
I can’t help but soften, feel that heavy pang in my chest that makes me want to reach out, touch his shoulder, tell him that it’s okay, he doesn’t need to be sorry.
It’s instinctive; I don’t like making people feel bad.
But he isn’t just anyone, this is the person who had made Ettie’s life so much harder than it needed to be.
The thought grounds me again, the memories pull me back into the anger.
I take a breath, bring my eyes up to his, without the emotion this time.
‘I didn’t think you’d be back in Monpazier.’
‘Why not? I grew up here?’ he says sharply, matching me.
‘Yeah,’ I smirk. ‘And left as soon as you could.’
He looks stung by the comment. I’m glad. ‘It’s complicated.’ He shrugs. ‘After he died, I just wanted to be back here.’
‘Go on then. You said you wanted to explain, that there were things I needed to hear…’
‘I thought maybe we could be a few more glasses deep before—’ he starts but runs out of steam when he sees my clearly unimpressed face.
He takes a breath, looks briefly towards the direction of the café and then when he looks back, his eyes lock on to mine.
‘I’m clean, Ava. That’s probably the first thing I should say, the reason I needed to see you. ’
‘Congratulations,’ I say flatly.
‘It’s been three years… and a bit,’ he adds.
‘And when I got clean I realised that I needed a fresh start somewhere different. I tried Paris for a bit – that’s where I was when Ettie died – but it was too busy, too many distractions.
I came back for the funeral and something clicked.
I liked it here, it reminded me of him.’
An involuntary scoff forces itself out of me.
Florian ignores it. ‘I know that you never exactly saw the best version of me, but we were close once, before you were on the scene, before I went to Bordeaux. I had always imagined we would be close again, that we could start afresh when I – well when I sorted myself out.’
‘So, you were clean before he died?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then why didn’t you see us? Why didn’t you see him? He took you back to Bordeaux and you never phoned or called or came over. He never saw you again.’
Florian leans over the table towards me, his hands interlocked in front of him as if in prayer. ‘He never told you?’ he asks quietly, seriously.
‘Told me what?’
He waits a second, reading me, trying to ascertain something that I don’t quite understand. He shrugs and then relaxes, his hands releasing and floating into the air. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
I want to push him, because it clearly does matter. I have spent a lot of time trying to understand the meanings between the words that people say. I know that what people really want to say gets lost in silence.
‘I stayed with Mum for two months and that was as torturous as you can probably imagine. I worked here for a bit, did the odd shift and ran into Thibot, you know, the owner of the café,’ he fills in, in case I may have forgotten.
‘He saw I was back, needed some help, offered me a job. Everything kind of fitted into place.’
I take a large swig of my wine. ‘So you run it?’
‘No, I just do a few shifts a week. It pays the bills when the commissions are slow.’
I can feel a sentimentality pull at me, memories of a few of the paintings we had scattered around the apartment, the ones in Madame Grenaud’s house on the rare occasion we visited.
I may not like the man, but there was no denying that he was talented.
I think that’s what made it all so much harder for Ettie, the fact that there Florian was, young and healthy and talented and willing to squander it away for the promise of a good time. ‘You’re still painting?’
He plays with a napkin on a table, folding the corners methodically. ‘Sometimes, but I sculpt now.’
‘Sculpt?’
‘Yes, stone mostly, wood sometimes too.’
‘I didn’t realise people still did that.’
‘Well, I mean it’s not a lucrative career.’ He smiles, it’s a nice smile, one that you can’t help but find slightly endearing.
‘Why?’
‘Why do I do it, or why is it not a lucrative career?’
‘Why sculpting?’
‘It’s slower. I need things that take more time, I guess. Keeps me…’ I can see him weigh up his words carefully, ‘distracted.’