Chapter 22
Twenty-two
The return journey to Paris was much more peaceful than the journey from it.
No rush to the airport. No private jet. No desperate checking the clock or nervous wait, just the train moving smoothly and calmly through the countryside, and the four of them—Romy beside Alex, Audrey beside Isabelle—facing each other across the table between the paired seats.
Carlos had stayed behind in Toulouse, for he still had work to do, but he might rejoin them in Paris in a day or two, he said.
They had all known his words were mainly directed at Isabelle, and she’d mumbled something about being there for a while yet, so he could come when he liked.
Now that the hecticness of the day had finally died down, Isabelle looked exhausted, and Audrey was not surprised when she closed her eyes and settled back against the seat.
Opposite, Romy and Alex were conferring in low voices, but Audrey gazed out of the window, taking in the evening scenes outside that, at times, smudged by the train’s gathering speed, looked like impressionist paintings close up.
Stone villages surrounded by green fields dotted with red poppies, church spires and castle towers, sweeps of woodland in full leaf and the curves of streams gave way to red-tiled huddles of town houses and tall city buildings, noisy station platforms and lines of cars waiting at level crossings, only for them to give way to more countryside scenes, cows knee-deep in pasture, neat rows of fruit-laden trees in orchards, children playing on little paths, waving to the train as it sped by, and then back to the sprawl of the towns.
Audrey was thinking about many things. About the events of the day, about what they’d learned, about the unfinished conversation between herself and Alex in the Tuileries, a conversation that she knew without a shadow of a doubt had to be taken up again, and very soon.
But right now, her mind filled with something else—elation and a sense of rightness of the sort she occasionally experienced when something she’d been working on had unexpectedly revealed its secret heart, and she’d known exactly how she must proceed.
In the early days, she’d dashed off pieces, hardly thinking about structure or concept, but that changed as she started having work accepted in bigger publications.
Her voice didn’t change, but her process did, becoming more careful, more controlled.
Mostly, her work now was about painstaking research, checking and rechecking, meticulous fact-gathering and reflection to reveal the central theme, before sitting down to write, then redraft, redraft again, polish and burnish a piece, which would seem effortlessly natural.
Occasionally, it was different, and in the midst of the effort would come a flash so bright it lit up everything else.
This feeling now was like that, only greater, because she knew she had the key to her book.
The events of the past few days had crystallised it in her mind.
She looked away from the window, back towards her companions.
Romy and Alex had their eyes closed, too.
She did not feel in the least bit tired, quite the opposite, but she did feel a bit hungry; that hurried quiche in Toulouse hadn’t filled much of a hole and they wouldn’t be in Paris till late.
She slid carefully past Isabelle, who grunted in her sleep but didn’t wake up, eased herself out into the aisle and headed towards the onboard bar.
She was consulting the menu when a voice behind her said, ‘Apparently the recipe for the shell pasta with ham and cheese was created by a famous chef.’ She turned to see Alex smiling at her.
‘Ha,’ she said, in the same light tone, ‘I’ll bet, nursery food tricked up, that’s what it will be! I better go for the lentil salad instead.’
He wrinkled his nose. ‘I’d go for the burger. It’s got a white wine and onion sauce.’
‘Trust the French,’ said Audrey, ‘but I think I’ve changed my mind. I’ll just have a beer and nuts. You?’
‘Good idea,’ he said, ‘even if it seems they don’t have any Belgian beer.’
‘Shameful.’ She felt the elation bubble up in her again. This time because they were talking so naturally, so lightly, and her heart was not hurting just looking at him; it was steady in her chest, perfectly content.
The beer and nuts came and Alex and Audrey stood at the bar talking about what had happened in Toulouse, till he said abruptly, ‘We never finished our conversation, did we?’
‘No,’ she said, her throat tightening.
‘Do you—do you want to continue it?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘Absolutely.’
He cleared his throat ‘Well, Valentine and I … we were high school sweethearts and both our parents were keen on us getting engaged and we didn’t think it was a bad idea either.
’ Audrey stared at him, but didn’t speak, her heart no longer quiet, but starting to flutter instead.
‘But when we were apart—she in Heidelberg, me in Paris—it was soon clear that we didn’t really miss each other.
But I couldn’t bring myself to tell my family and … ’
His voice trailed off, but Audrey thought she could guess the rest. ‘Okay, so you were young. But you weren’t a child,’ she said, harshly. ‘You could have told them. What could have possibly happened if you had?’
He didn’t answer at first and instead drained the last of his beer, then gestured for them to go out into the corridor.
‘Our engagement wasn’t just personal. It was a match made in financial heaven.
Not just the joining of two families, but of two prestigious companies.
Like it had been for the marriage of my older brother, Didier, Romy’s father, who’d married the right sort of girl. ’
She gave an involuntary shiver as a sense of unreality invaded her.
What he was describing sounded like something out of an episode of Succession, but she knew it happened in real life too.
In fact, she remembered that back when they were together, he’d never spoken of his parents, and she’d assumed they were estranged.
But clearly they had a real hold over him.
She hadn’t known anything about his family back then, it was only much later she’d looked them up.
‘But surely, even if your family was like that, you didn’t have to accept it. ’
His mouth twisted in an unamused smile. ‘No. You’re right. I shouldn’t have accepted it. But I did. I could say it was because I was so young and because I’d been under my family’s thumb all my life, and that’s true … but it’s also no real excuse.’
‘Maybe not an excuse,’ Audrey said, gently, ‘but an explanation … I never had a family like yours, so I can’t know what it must have been like for you.’
‘Oh, Audrey,’ he said, his eyes never leaving her face.
‘I so wish I …’ He paused. ‘You said to me this morning about you being like a holiday for me, and I think now that you were right. With you, I was in another place, a beautiful place where I was loved for myself, where I could give love in return, freely, joyfully, not because it was expected from me, not because it was my duty.’
He said the last words in such a desolate tone that she found herself reaching a hand towards him, almost without meaning to, touching his hand briefly before removing it, confused and on the verge of tears.
‘I—in a way it was like that for me too,’ she managed to say.
‘Not because anyone would have stopped me from loving you, but because with you, everything was touched with a light I’d never seen before, and nothing else mattered. ’
They looked at each other for a long moment, before he said, with an effort, ‘I was going to end it with Valentine. Then my mother became gravely ill. The day I told you about the engagement, she’d been on the phone to me. She made me promise, on her life …’
Audrey searched his face. There was no doubt. He was telling the truth. A surge of feeling rose into her throat. ‘But you didn’t honour that promise in the end, did you? You never married Valentine.’
‘No. I broke my promise. Like I broke what we’—he looked at her—‘what we had.’
She exhaled. ‘And your mother?’
‘She recovered,’ Alex said, levelly. ‘But she didn’t forgive me.
Not just for Valentine, but because at the same time I walked away from the family, from the business, from everything.
My parents said I was a coward.’ He looked directly at her, his eyes shadowed with pain. ‘Which was one hundred per cent true.’
‘Oh, Alex,’ Audrey said, softly. ‘You weren’t the only coward.’ She gulped, thinking of what she’d done that terrible day. How she’d cried out, How could you? and I never want to see you again, before taking to her heels. ‘I ran. I just ran. I didn’t give you any time to even begin to explain.’
‘Don’t, Audrey,’ he said, low, but almost fiercely. ‘You weren’t to blame for any of this. You never were.’
This time, when she reached for his hand, she didn’t remove it. And he grasped her hand as if he might never let it go. They stayed like that for what seemed like a long while, before dropping their hands. ‘Alex,’ she said a little shakily, ‘there’s something I have to tell you—I’m—’
‘You’re engaged,’ he finished for her. ‘It’s okay, Audrey. I know. I read about it when I was … um’—a faint ghost of a smile—‘googling you. I’m glad for you. He sounds like a fine man.’
‘Yes.’ This time the tears really did start in her eyes, and she blinked them away. There was a desolation in her heart that she understood all too well. Too late. It was too late. If only … if only …
Some people appeared in the corridor just then and moved past them with a curious glance and a murmured ‘Bonjour’, and Audrey knew it was time.
Not just time to go back to their seats and the others, but time for closure—the closure she’d craved for so long.
It was time to draw a line under what had happened all those years ago and to move on, finally unburdened.
That was what she had wanted, after all.
And it was the rational thing, the right thing. So why did it feel so wrong?
She knew why. Because it was wrong. Before she could take fright at what was in her mind, she said quickly, ‘We haven’t finished, Alex—talking, I mean. We can’t just leave it at that, a few words in a train bar. Can we?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re right. We can’t.’ Something leaped into his eyes then that made her own eyes sting again, though not with tears this time. He went on, ‘And besides, I am far too curious about your Fontaine mystery to just wait in the audience for the solution to be revealed.’
She felt a tingle like bubbles of champagne in her veins. ‘You certainly were on stage today, weren’t you! I suppose you got a taste for it.’
‘I suppose I did,’ he said, with the same incredulous lightness she knew was in her own voice.
‘Well, it seems you are part of the team now,’ she said, with a smile.
And, as they made their way back to their seats, for the first time in many long and careful years, she felt no need to examine or second-guess her own emotions.