Chapter 28
FRAN
‘How are you?’ Alistair asks on my arrival at the Moulin Rouge. He kisses me on the cheek, causing my heart to flutter.
‘Good,’ I reply, keeping my maelstrom of emotions to myself: my nerves and disbelief, the niggle of guilt that’s been rising and falling all evening, the excitement. ‘You?’
‘Never better,’ he smiles, his eyes shining, just as I remembered them. ‘Shall we go in?’
I follow Alistair through the entrance hall and into the spectacle of the theatre. We’re seated at a table for two, under a canopy of striped fabric, overlooking the stage and the tables in the stalls, which are gradually filling.
‘This place really sizzles,’ I say, once we’ve both absorbed the glamour and sheer theatricality of the surroundings.
‘I wanted to come here with you that night, but it was late, as I remember.’
‘The middle of the night, I think,’ I say, drifting back to the memory of us strolling after our kiss. I look up to find Alistair’s eyes fixed on mine, and I smile with a light laugh.
‘What?’ he asks coyly, hooking his arm round his chair and leaning back.
‘What a twenty-four hours we had,’ I explain, laughing at the sheer extravagance of it.
‘I can still remember the first time I laid eyes on you at Notre-Dame. It took all my courage to talk to you. I knew if I didn’t, I’d regret it for the rest of my life.’
‘I never knew that,’ I say, just as a waiter brings us both a glass of champagne.
‘My heart was thumping so hard I thought it might burst out of my chest.’
‘You hid it well,’ I say, scanning him now, wondering what emotions lie beneath the poised exterior.
He takes a long mouthful of champagne. ‘I’ve always been insecure.’
‘Really,’ I laugh, surprised. ‘I don’t remember you being that way.’
‘You’ve forgotten.’
I shake my head, not certain what he’s referring to.
‘You said it yourself, in that club we went to – “People who like esoteric music like it to feel different or special, to feel less insecure.”’
I nod, remembering that I’d wanted to ask more at that point in our conversation but had felt it might lie outside our rule of ‘no identifying features’.
I’d wondered then, and after turning down his advances, if his wanderlust was due to fleeing something or someone, if underneath it all he was secretly broken.
‘Is that why you were in Paris?’
‘I suppose. My father had had an affair with one of his life models. My mother was out of her mind from the betrayal – neurotic, demanding, insecurity personified. I suppose I was escaping, searching for something of my own. When I saw you . . . I knew I had to grab the moment.’
I sip my champagne, my eyes still on his. ‘Do you remember the bikes we found?’
Alistair thinks for a moment, his eyes lighting up when he finds the memory. ‘I’d forgotten about that!’
‘You forgot?! I spent days on my return fretting about those bikes, wondering if they’d been abandoned or not, and what inconvenience we might have caused through our impulsiveness.’
‘Did we head to the Louvre on the bikes?’
I nod. ‘And then the Jardin des Tuileries.’
‘That’s right,’ he nods, leaning in. ‘I wanted to kiss you there.’
‘I remember,’ I say, recalling the look of intensity he wore under the tree in the moonlight, not dissimilar from how he’s looking at me now. ‘It frightened me.’
‘Frightened?’
‘Well, you know, I wasn’t ready for so much passion, I just wanted to have fun.’
‘It was a bit later that we found the club,’ he goes on.
‘With the dreadful singer!’ I laugh.
‘I liked her!’
‘I remember! And then Sacré Coeur . . .’ I say, the mood shifting, and not just because the house lights have just been dimmed.
‘Unforgettable.’
‘Mmm,’ I answer. The words I’m thinking – life-altering – feel too strong to say.
‘I know this might sound strange,’ says Alistair over the excited chatter of the audience, the show about to begin. ‘But would you like to get out of here? Maybe walk, the way we did then?’
‘I would like that,’ I answer, and we head outside where Alistair helps me with my jacket.
‘Tell me something about how life was for you, after we parted,’ he says, as we stroll past the restaurants along the boulevard.
I tell him about returning to London, then having to leave my job to head home to Edinburgh to care for Mum. ‘And you?’
‘I travelled, worked as a photojournalist as I planned.’ He puts his hands in his coat pockets. ‘When did you start writing?’
‘Good question,’ I say, as we turn into a side street, quieter than the hubbub of the boulevard. ‘When I was pregnant with Carly, I suppose.’
He doesn’t speak for a moment, lost in thought.
‘When did you meet your husband?’ he asks, his voice thinner.
‘Around six months after we met,’ I say, almost wincing, aware how soon it sounds. I notice Alistair’s stare is now fixed straight ahead. ‘What is this place?’ I ask when we arrive at two large, ornate green gates.
‘Le Cimetière de Montmartre,’ he says, trying the gates, and to my amazement, one opens despite the late hour.
‘Is it OK to go in?’ I whisper.
‘Why not? It’s not as if we’re disturbing anyone!’ he jokes, and I laugh nervously.
Alistair turns on his phone torch as we pass under a huge bridge, the occasional car rumbling overhead. We pass large tombs on either side, before reaching a small planted roundabout, then strolling beyond it along a wide, paved avenue of graves.
‘How did you meet your husband?’ he asks.
I tell him the story of our meeting and a little of how life has been.
‘What about you?’
His gaze falls to the path. In the dark I can’t read his expression.
‘It’s not been great,’ he says eventually.
‘How come?’
He shrugs. ‘Sometimes I wonder if my wife was just a distraction. Someone who, momentarily, took my mind away from you. I’m not sure she ever truly loved me, or I her.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I murmur, not sure what else to say.
‘For decades I’ve buried myself in work, travelling as frequently as possible, and drinking to numb the lack of true connection between us. Work, drink, repeat.’
‘A cycle that only exacerbates the problem,’ I say, suspecting that his rejection causes hers.
He shrugs. ‘One day you turn around to discover you’re strangers. And the life that had started out as an adventure has turned into little more than a series of commitments.’
I give the thought some space, and loop round on to another path, my mind flitting to Robin.
‘Don’t you ever wonder how life might have been if we’d kept in touch?’ he asks. ‘If you’d sent me your address like you said you would?’
I think of Robin, his own discontent, so stifled by responsibility and wondering how life might have been without me. And here I am with Alistair, who’s wondering how life might have been with me.
‘I’ve a feeling the broad strokes wouldn’t be so different,’ I answer hesitantly. ‘We’d have had a child, we’d have jobs, we’d need to make ends meet.’ I look at the graves around us. ‘It’s part of life, no?’
‘Is it? Or is there another way? One that offers more freedom from responsibility, that doesn’t involve being part of the system.’
‘I don’t know,’ I sigh wearily. ‘Don’t all creatures have systems of some kind?
Isn’t it just that ours is more complicated?
I think as a whole we’re guilty of lacking gratitude, of always wanting something else, and losing sight of the fact that responsibility is part of the fundamentals of life: to care and protect and provide.
Life might be simpler without commitment, but happier? I don’t think so.’
Alistair doesn’t answer.
We walk the small lanes of the graveyard in quiet contemplation.
‘Why did you put the postcard in the book, instead of sending it with your address?’ he asks, when we stop to examine a life-size bronze sculpture. For a moment I can’t answer, my mind awash with the memory . . .
‘Here’s my address,’ says Alistair, handing me a postcard of the Moulin Rouge, the blue ink of his pen still wet. ‘Take it home, then post it to me with your address on it.’
‘Why don’t I give it to you now?’ I ask, thinking we could simply tear the postcard in half.
He smiles, wraps a loose hair round my ear. ‘It’s more romantic to have to wait.’
I take the card from him and remove The Hunchback of Notre-Dame from my bag. Squatting next to the train, I scribble an inscription on the title page then deftly, not fully understanding why, slip the postcard behind the dust jacket without him seeing.
‘Take this as a reminder of our time together,’ I say, handing the book to him, and he tucks it into his backpack.
‘Won’t you come with me?’ he asks, his deep chestnut eyes pleading with mine.
‘I can’t, I have to get back to Edinburgh,’ I let slip, though every inch of me is torn between more time with the man I’ve just spent twenty-four blissful hours with in Paris, and returning to Mum.
He places his hand gently on my cheek and kisses me as if to memorise my soul.
‘Go,’ I say, the final whistle blowing, and I watch, doubting my decisions, as he runs down the platform and out of my life.
‘Au revoir, Fran,’ he calls, jumping through the train door just before it slides closed.
I explain about not wanting to complicate Mum’s care with a long-distance relationship, that still to this day I feel certain I made the right choice. ‘But I recognised long ago that in doing so I possibly altered the course of both our lives.’
‘Yes, you did,’ he says, his tone shifting. ‘I had no control over that.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I reply, the words sincere, but aware they make little difference.
‘You were everything to me,’ he begins, his voice hardening. ‘For years I thought it was me, that I wasn’t good enough, that I deserved to be rejected. The conflict that’s caused . . .’
He trails off; the faint scent of alcohol on his breath sits like a cloud between us.
‘But maybe it was meant to be,’ he reflects after a while. ‘Maybe life was meant to be difficult without you, so that I’d feel truly alive when I saw you again.’