Chapter 23 #2
‘Surely not, he’ll want to hang on to it,’ Mickael said.
‘Maybe I should send my big brother to sort him out. He’s built like a boxer and would put the fear of God into him.
’ At this, Romy made a protesting sound.
‘Don’t worry, I’m joking,’ he went on. ‘But listen, if you need any help with working out a way, I’m here. ’
‘Thanks, Mickael. I really appreciate it.’ She hesitated.
‘There is something else … I’ve been thinking about the copies of Fontaine’s sketches, and what we’d do if we actually found them, but also if we didn’t—and then an idea came to me.
I haven’t said anything to the others about it yet …
I wanted to run it past you first. Of course, you might say it’s a crazy notion, but … ’
‘Come on, Romy,’ he said, the laughter still in his voice. ‘Are you going to keep me guessing till midnight?’
She took a deep breath. ‘Well, it might sound weird or arrogant, but I thought—what if I try to create a dress in homage to Elisabeth Fontaine?’ She hurried on before he could interject.
‘I mean, I’ve read Alice’s descriptions of that first collection and they are amazing—and I’ll look at that even more closely and do extra research—but I could create something that won’t try to reimagine the lost gown, but will honour the memory of its creator.
’ She went on, unnerved by his silence. ‘And maybe I could make it to fit in with when Isabelle is able to reveal the existence of the letter, or when Audrey launches her book, or whatever—I mean, it’s all going to take a long time and it might not work at all and the others might hate the idea but …
’ She trailed off, thinking miserably that the idea seemed ludicrous spoken out loud, a massive overreach.
She was about to say, ‘No, forget it, it’s a bad idea,’ when Mickael said, ‘Oh Romy, that’s absolutely brilliant.
Absolutely wonderful. Yes, yes, you must do it! ’
‘Really? You really think so? You don’t think I’m deluded?’ Her spirits soared again, because he sounded completely sincere, and even more than that, excited.
‘Certainly not! You are inspired, amazing! It’s wonderful. A genius idea. And if I can help in any way, please say so.’
Romy smiled to herself. ‘I’m telling you right now that I will need help. And I was thinking that I know a brilliant pattern-maker who might be interested in assisting, if he’s not too terribly busy …’
Mickael laughed. ‘Busy? Me? Never, I’m a man of leisure. Count me in, Romy. Count me in.’
After a plateful of raclette—a concoction of cheese, potatoes and bacon—in a neighbourhood bistro, Audrey had gone back to the hotel, taken a screenshot of a page from Alice’s notebook, which included a vivid sketch of Mariette Fabre surrounded by bolts of cloth, and sent it to her phone.
She would get it printed tomorrow morning and give it to Patricia Landry.
Then she crawled into bed, the excitement of the day’s events finally ebbing away and leaving her feeling utterly exhausted.
She fell asleep almost immediately but woke abruptly in the middle of the night with her stomach churning erratically, like a misfiring washing machine.
That raclette she’d gobbled down had come back to haunt her, and she lay there hoping it would settle down.
When it didn’t, she got up and poured herself a glass of milk from the fridge.
Drinking milk slowly had always been her mother’s counterintuitive yet surprisingly effective remedy for heartburn, and as the cold liquid trickled down her throat, she began to feel better.
Afterwards, stomach calmed, she sat for a while, staring into the dimness, wondering if Alex was awake too.
She felt a heat rise unstoppably through her body as images flooded through her, memories from long ago and memories from earlier that day.
She knew then that in the past twenty years she hadn’t felt anything like this.
Sure, before James she had been with other men, and it had been fine, but her body, her mind, her heart just hadn’t reacted to any of them in the same way as to Alex—she couldn’t hide that from herself now.
She groaned in frustration, knowing she didn’t feel like that with James either; she never had, even at the beginning.
But then she hadn’t wanted to feel like that again, had she?
And now, she didn’t want to hurt James—correction, she really didn’t want to hurt him.
But she couldn’t leave things as they were.
No matter what happened with Alex, even if nothing happened, she knew now that she didn’t want to go ahead with the wedding.
She didn’t want to marry James. Something deep inside her had known this ages ago, niggling at her that she’d made a mistake accepting his proposal, that theirs was not the kind of relationship that could satisfy her long term.
The feelings didn’t run deep enough or strong enough.
At times, it had been more like a convenience, like having a permanent ‘plus one’ on tap for social occasions, without running the risk of having to share your most intimate emotions.
She’d tried to ignore it all but could not altogether dismiss it, which was why she’d both sleepwalked through the motions yet procrastinated about setting a wedding date.
But meeting Alex again had acted like a brutal awakening, ripping away the heavy blanket she’d wrapped so tightly around her innermost feelings in order to muffle them into submission, and now they had all been exposed.
She could no longer pretend to herself—not anymore.
She looked at the time. One am here in Paris, so in Victoria it would be nine am.
She composed Kristy’s number and waited.
Two, three, four, five rings, then just as she was about to give up, her friend answered, sounding breathless.
‘Hey, Audrey,’ she said in a rush. ‘I felt the phone buzzing in my pocket but I was chasing a crow out of the chook house. The sly beggar’s been pinching eggs for weeks and we haven’t been able to catch it on the job till now. ’
Audrey smiled, a mental image of her friend confronting the feathered rascal popping into her mind. ‘Did you get rid of it?’
‘Yeah, it took off, but it’ll probably be back once it’s got over the indignity. Anyway, that’s the latest exciting instalment from Chez Us. But why are you calling at what’s got to be crazy o’clock in France right now? What’s happened?’
When Audrey had finished telling her, Kristy blew out a gusty sigh. ‘Wow! That’s full on, Aud. That story about the toxic family, it sounds like something out of that show …’
‘I know,’ Audrey said. ‘Even when we were together I knew there was a big problem with his parents, I just didn’t know what it was. But later I read stuff on the internet about the Valences and their empire which made me almost glad that we’d parted ways.’
It was Kristy’s turn to interrupt. ‘Maybe you should still be glad. You dodged a bullet. And now you’ve had it out with him, you should think of waving goodbye and heading off to the rest of your life, free as a bird.’
Audrey didn’t answer.
‘Oh dear,’ said Kristy. ‘That silence speaks volumes.’ A pause, then she added, ‘I can’t advise you one way or the other on the question of the long-lost love—you’ll have to work it out yourself. But I do know one thing. You can’t marry James.’
Startled by this direct echo of her thoughts, Audrey couldn’t find anything to say, so Kristy went on, sounding uncharacteristically awkward, ‘I never thought he was right for you.’
‘But you never said,’ Audrey protested.
‘Of course I didn’t, you pillock! You were full of James this and James that, so I was hardly going to burst your bubble and tell you I thought he was a self-centred, self-satisfied, self-important son of a—a seacook,’ she finished, triumphantly.
‘Son of a seacook? Haven’t heard that since we read Tintin comics back at school.’ Audrey was smiling despite her dismay at this unexpected revelation.
‘Thought you’d like that,’ said Kristy, cheerfully. ‘And besides, it’s nicely alliterative with the rest and much more fun than coming out with the usual expletive.’
‘Yeah, okay. But come on, Kristy, you’ve only met him once.’ Audrey felt a mix of astonishment that her friend had kept her feelings quiet for so long, and relief that she could be honest with her now.
‘Once seen, never forgotten, and you know me, I can sum people up pretty quickly,’ said Kristy, which was true, because more often than not, she was correct in those lightning summations.
‘Plus the way he proposed to you at that shindig in front of strangers who were in on the whole thing—I thought that was truly weird.’
Audrey winced. ‘They weren’t exactly strangers, they were his colleagues.’
‘Who cares who they were,’ scoffed Kristy.
‘It wasn’t his colleagues or the world he needed to tell first, it was you!
His proposal should have been private, between the two of you.
To do it how he did made it all about him, parading his ego in front of his peers.
So disrespectful. So tone-deaf. So much the opposite of romantic. ’
‘You’re too hard on him, Kristy,’ Audrey protested. ‘He didn’t mean it like that. And I didn’t see it that way.’ No, you just threw a blanket over the truth, her inner voice remarked, dryly.
‘I should hope not,’ said her friend, ‘or you’d be in an even worse way. Look, it’s not that James is a bad guy, but he’s just not right for you. There’s probably someone in the world who won’t be ground to the finest dust by the tedious arrogance of his little ways, but you’re not it. That’s all.’
‘Wow,’ Audrey said, ‘that’s telling me.’
‘Yep. Sorry, Aud. But it had to be said. And I think you know it already. Don’t you?’
Audrey sighed. ‘Yes. I can’t marry him. I know that. But Kris, he has been good to me. I don’t want to hurt him.’