Chapter 22
FRAN
I left Ginny in the queue for Notre-Dame and hailed a taxi to Sacré Coeur, assuming that when I got there, I’d find Elsa in an obvious spot, waiting for me. But on arrival there is no sign of Elsa, and a message I send to ask where she is replies cryptically, Let instinct guide you.
Climbing the broad, shallow steps that lead to the basilica, I’m transported back to walking them with Alistair. It was the first time we’d held hands, him twirling me like Cinderella. I remember that rather than feeling awkward or new, it felt as if we’d been holding hands our entire lives.
We abandon the bikes and walk for miles from the Pompidou, through the centre of the city which throws up endless surprises: palaces, picturesque squares, late-night cafés, and characterful locals.
‘How about a drink?’ Alistair asks, when we happen upon a basement club in the heart of Montmartre.
‘Sure,’ I answer, and we head down into a tiny bar, thick with the smell of smoke and red wine. A woman sings folk songs and plays the guitar in one corner.
‘Her songs shoot straight to my heart,’ he says, once we’re seated in the corner, speaking directly into my ear.
‘I’m not getting it as much,’ I say, sipping my wine, glad for the seat and a drink if nothing else, and he laughs.
‘You’re a popularist,’ he says, into my ear again.
I smile wryly, knowing he means it as a gentle jibe.
‘Things are popular for good reason,’ I say, the side of my face almost touching his, my body alight at how good it feels to be so close to him. ‘People who like esoteric music,’ I mock softly, ‘like it to feel different or special, to feel less insecure.’
He beckons a waiter, asks for a plate of steak frites. When they arrive, Alistair tucks into the meat, and I the salty chips. A meal for one, made perfect for two.
As we sit, our bodies leaning closer and closer until we’re propped up against one another, I think of all the questions I want to ask that might lie beyond ‘no identifying features’: What made you want to become a photographer? Why is your trip one-way? Who have you left behind?
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Alistair says when the songstress has finished her set, and we leave, the fresh night air clean and cool on my face.
After we’ve walked a few streets and turned a corner, we see Sacré Coeur, illuminated against the dark sky.
Finding an unlocked gate, we follow the curve of the path to the main stairs.
‘It’s so beautiful,’ I say, stopping to absorb the moment, the two of us alone in this sacred space.
‘Just like you,’ he smiles, and he reaches out to hold my hand. ‘Ready?’
‘Yes,’ I say, and we begin the ascent.
Halfway up he pauses, holds my hand aloft, and I twirl, like Cinderella to his Prince Charming, hoping the spell won’t break come morning.
‘Look at this,’ I say, when we reach the top – a gold-bordered, laminated bookmark, lying on the ground.
‘Finders keepers,’ he says, and we both admire it for a moment before I tuck it into the pages of Notre-Dame and join him at the stone balustrades, looking out over the city.
‘Heaven,’ I say on an outward breath, not believing my luck, standing hand in hand with this man.
‘Nothing sweeter,’ he says, turning to me.
He places a hand gently on the back of my neck, draws my body close to his and kisses me under the Parisian moon.
My feet carry me forward, just as at the Pompidou, onward and upward towards the church which looks ghostly against the dark sky, wispy clouds floating over the moon. And then, on my arrival, my heart freezes as I make sense of what I’m seeing in front of me.
There, leaning against the stone balustrade where Alistair and I first kissed, looking out over Montmartre, is a man my heart knows instantly but my mind takes time to register.
In his hand is the small cream bookmark with a golden border I’d found thirty years ago.
I’d placed it between the pages of Notre-Dame and forgotten all about it until now.
‘Alistair?’ I say, my heart beating heavily and not because of the climb.
He turns towards me, three decades older but somehow looking exactly as he did the morning we parted at the Gare de l’Est. His face, etched with wrinkles of time and confusion, slowly breaks into a bewildered smile.
‘Fran?’ he utters, the word barely forming.
‘Yes,’ I answer, stuck to the spot where I stand.
He steps towards me and gently raises a hand to my face, familiarising himself with the lines that weren’t there thirty years ago.
‘My God,’ he sighs deeply, wrapping himself around me, and I squeeze him back, completely dumbstruck.
‘I don’t understand,’ he says when he pulls away, his eyes dazed.
‘Nor I,’ I say, feeling utterly disorientated, uncertain if I’m in the past or now or some other dimension altogether. ‘How did you . . .?’ I point to the bookmark in his hand.
‘It was in the book of an elderly woman I met earlier this evening.’
It occurs to me that this must have been Elsa, but with Notre-Dame still in my handbag, I can’t fathom how she came to have it.
‘Should we sit?’ I gesture to the steps, not entirely sure what the right thing to do is in a situation like this.
‘What brings you to Paris?’ he asks, once we’re settled, both of us just staring at each other, me trying to reconcile how he looks now with how he looked then, he probably doing the same.
I look out over the city at night, the Eiffel Tower sparkling like a diamond pendant.
‘I’m here on a work thing,’ I say, still too bamboozled to go into the details. ‘How about you?’
‘I’m here with my son,’ he answers.
Staring out over the Paris skyline, I wonder about his life and the mother of his child.
My thoughts and words still paralysed, I reach into my handbag and pull out The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. ‘Do you remember this?’
‘You were reading it when we first met, outside Notre-Dame,’ he says, touching the cover.
‘I found mementos from our trip inside it,’ I continue, an image of Quasimodo clinging to Esmeralda’s body flashing into my mind. We lay out the bookmark, the Pompidou ticket and finally the postcard.
He takes the postcard from me, turns it over and over, thumbing the empty space where my address should be.
‘I kept them all,’ he says, a faraway look in his eye.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The book, the postcard, all of them.’ He looks at me sadly. ‘I kept them as tokens of you.’
‘You’ve had the book all these years?’ I ask, trying to join the dots but failing.
‘Until last week when my wife told me she’d had a clear-out, that our son had taken my books to a second-hand bookshop.’
‘My bookshop,’ I whisper, the picture rapidly developing.
‘Hendersons in Edinburgh?’
I nod.
‘That’s where Flynn told me he dropped them, but when I went in to retrieve Notre-Dame, the owner searched everywhere and said he didn’t have it.’
‘Because I had it,’ I say, gazing at it in my hand, only registering now that Flynn is Alistair’s son, that Flynn is the reason the book ended up in the shop and that I am now here in Paris. ‘The man you spoke to is my husband, Robin.’
I nod quietly, inching a little further along the step, away from Alistair.
‘Thank God Flynn went there,’ says Alistair.
My mind returns to the conversation round Elsa’s kitchen table about whether finding the book was either fate or serendipity.
‘If he hadn’t chosen your bookshop,’ Alistair continues, ‘I wouldn’t be sitting here now.’
I cast him a ‘how so?’ look.
‘I found one of Flynn’s flyers in the shop with your picture on it,’ he explains. ‘Your husband told me the train had already left, but Flynn said I could join the trip in London.’
‘Do you live in Edinburgh?’
‘I’m split between there and my flat in the capital,’ he taps the postcard lightly in his hand. ‘Have been for twenty-five years. My wife and I moved to Edinburgh a few years after we adopted Flynn, he was five years old at the time. Edinburgh seemed a nicer place to raise a child than London.’
Something stops me from telling him I’d been to the flat, that I’d actively sought him out. And all these years he’s been living beside me.
‘Meant to be,’ I whisper, aware of the vast place of worship behind us, wondering what God or the gods are trying to tell me.