Chapter 27
CARLY
The number of readers left on the café terrace has dwindled to the last few.
Mum and Elsa are deep in conversation with Ginny and Marleen, Joe and Daisy are still clubbing, Frank has taken a taxi back to the hotel, Chris Rose has disappeared, and Flynn is nowhere to be seen.
It’s only Nicolas and me who remain, him scribbling notes at a café table, me packing the last of the books into boxes, my mind full of Flynn and his girlfriend, Georgia, my heart full of guilt and anger.
‘How’s the review coming along?’ I ask, sealing the last box, hoping some time with Nicolas might take my mind off Flynn.
‘I think it will be good, there is much to write about,’ he says, adding a few final thoughts to the page then furtively closing his notebook. ‘Now, let’s have some supper.’
‘It’s ten-thirty at night!’
Nicolas laughs and leans back, placing an arm along the back of the bench seating. He pats the seat cushion and beckons me to join him. ‘Carly,’ he smiles, ‘you’re in Paris.’
‘True,’ I say, sitting next to him on the banquette.
Once he’s ordered a warm goat’s cheese salad for me and a beef tartare for himself, he fixes me with his beautiful blue-green eyes which glimmer in the softly lit terrace. ‘How was your day?’
‘Like a year in a day,’ I reply, finding it hard to believe that this morning I was exploring the bookshops of Covent Garden and have since been to Shakespeare and Company and the Eiffel Tower.
‘You need to slow down,’ he says, offering me a Gauloise, which I decline. He lights one for himself, leans his head back and blows the smoke away from me, high into the night air.
‘Maybe,’ I say, aware of my inability to sit still. Mum says I’ve always been that way since I was a toddler, a ‘born fidget’, as she’d say or, as I say, ‘like mother like daughter’.
‘The Italians have a saying, dolce far niente.’
‘Which means?’ I ask, liking the way it sounds rolling off his tongue.
‘The sweetness of doing nothing – or Art de Vivre – enjoying simple pleasures.’
‘That’s not such a thing in Scotland,’ I laugh.
‘But it’s important, no? To appreciate the present. When we do, we have less stress, and more creativity.’
‘You should tell my mum that; she makes me look like a laid-back snail.’
‘Maybe that’s where she’s going wrong,’ he says, blowing more smoke, his mouth a little tighter this time. I figure he’s referring to the writer’s block I told him about in London. ‘Relaxation is key to a good life.’
‘I guess,’ I say. Nicolas’s life philosophy reminds me of Ben, who had been almost everything on my list: literary, confident, good-looking, romantic, but I’d ended our brief relationship because he was too laid-back.
‘His stillness might complement your hyperactivity,’ Jude had said, uncharacteristically annoyed by my decision.
‘Maybe I should give it a try,’ I say, trying to follow both Jude’s and Nicolas’s advice: to sit back and enjoy this moment.
Nicolas blows three smoke rings and leans back on the bench. ‘Tell me,’ he says, after we’ve sat quietly, comfortably, for a time. ‘What is it you want in this moment?’
‘Right here, right now?’ I ask, a bit perplexed by the question.
‘Yes, right here, right now.’ He lays down his cigarette.
I think for a time. None of the things I’ve been chasing seem important in this moment. I’m not worrying about Flynn or Mum. I’m content right here. ‘Nothing, I suppose.’
‘Nothing?’ he asks, turning to face me, his eyes on mine.
‘Well,’ I say, a little nervous bubble rising in my stomach. I tell myself not to bolt. To let him in. ‘Maybe something . . .’
His look flickers to my mouth.
‘Maybe something . . .’ he repeats, drawing closer.
Just as Nicolas is leaning in, my eye is caught by Flynn, arriving at the terrace entrance. I’m conscious that I left him standing earlier and I offer a wave, but he doesn’t respond. He paces as he stares at his phone, shoulders tense, brow furrowed. Nicolas stubs out his cigarette.
‘You must excuse me,’ he says, his demeanour tightening. He tucks his notebook under his arm then walks towards Flynn, tugging at the cuffs of his black shirt as he does.
I watch as the two men greet each other, Nicolas a few inches taller, Flynn several inches broader. Flynn gestures for them to move further away, putting them just out of earshot.
It’s hard for me to see exactly what’s going on as Nicolas’s height obscures much of Flynn, but at one point Flynn gestures towards Mum, followed by Nicolas raising his hands as if in surrender.
In the exchange that follows, Flynn runs his hands through his hair and paces up and down, while Nicolas remains steady and cool.
And then, in an act I really don’t understand, Flynn reaches for the notebook under Nicolas’s arm.
Nicolas is quick to remove it and raise it above his head while Flynn tries desperately to reach it.
They are like two schoolboys grappling over a toy in a playground – it would be funny if it weren’t so heated.
‘What’s going on?’ asks Mum, coming over to join me.
‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ I say, as I watch Flynn storm off and Nicolas head into the café.
Mum sits opposite me, watches me in the way she does when she’s trying to figure out what I’m thinking.
‘Is there something between you and Flynn?’
‘No,’ I answer, way too defensively.
‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I just thought there was something, that you might be keen on him, or him on you.’
‘Mum, leave it, there’s nothing.’
‘Fine, fine,’ she says, fiddling with a fork, and I know she’s trying to figure out whether to tell me something. Eventually she says, ‘I’m meeting Alistair this evening.’
She leaves the statement hanging.
‘Why?’ I ask petulantly, knowing my attitude is raining on her parade, but unwilling or unable to change it.
‘Because why not? No harm in revisiting the past for an hour or two.’
I raise an eyebrow. ‘Does Dad know?’
She shakes her head, twiddles a coaster.
I want to tell her it’s a bad idea, that she’s living in her imagination, not reality, but then I figure, Dad’s keeping a secret from her, maybe it’s OK for her to have one too. Who am I to know what works in a marriage and what doesn’t? I can barely kiss a man without shoving him away.
‘Well, it’s on you,’ I shrug, getting up, keen to get out of here. ‘But I’m telling you, Mum – no good can come from fanning old flames.’