Chapter Eight
If this were a movie, I’d spend an inordinate amount of time transforming into my best and most beautiful self before I met the man who left me broken-hearted on the edge of a cliff twenty years ago.
I’d do my hair. I’d have a smoky eye. There’d be a cocktail dress involved, possibly an off-the-shoulder one. I’d be Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, Belle in that gold ball gown. I’d burst out of my room to a catchy and uplifting soundtrack, ready to take on the world.
Unfortunately, it’s been some decades since I had any sort of sense that I could take on the world. And I haven’t brought a cocktail dress with me. I’m also late.
I’d felt drained this afternoon when I arrived back at my hotel – exhausted by so much feeling.
I’d taken my pills and lay down for a short second, except the short second became several hours, and now I have no time.
Not having enough time is a founding principle of my being.
When I die, they’ll cut me open and it’ll be there, I’m sure, etched on my heart, ‘She didn’t have enough time. ’
I quickly change into a crumpled black dress with little embroidered strawberries all over it. It’s cute, one of my favourites, and I’m wearing it for Paris, not Emmett, an essential point of clarity. I tie my hair up, brush my teeth, throw on my boots, and I’m good to go.
I’m panicked. My hands are shaking a little, as I fiddle with the key to the room.
It’s a heavy metal thing, which I appreciate, but it makes a loud clang when I drop it on the floor.
I hate feeling like this. I’ve spent a great deal of time cultivating zero feeling, zero emotion, and I’ve become very good at it, thank you very much.
Paris, with its paintings and catacombs and Emmett, has robbed me of all my chill.
‘Bon soir!’ the receptionist calls.
‘Bon soir,’ I say back. ‘Have a nice evening.’
‘And you!’ She waves.
I’m hustling out of the hotel doors, ready to rock and roll with my headphones and Google Maps.
It says that it’s a twenty-minute walk, and I am not a woman known for beating Google Maps.
Still, I set off at a pace, missing almost all of Paris on an evening to stare at the little blue dot of myself as it moves slowly along the street.
I have a sense that, around me, the streets are swarming.
In Bamburgh, it’s quiet on an evening, like the village sleeps at night.
In Paris, the opposite seems to be true.
There are even more people outside, I’m sure of it.
I’d stop and take it in if I could. But I’m already late, and I don’t want to think about how I’ll feel if Emmett has already left by the time I get there.
I scuttle onwards, ignoring the tightening feeling in my chest. I stop and wheeze for a moment, gasping for breath on a street corner, embodying the antithesis of Paris chic.
‘I’m fine!’ I call to a worried passerby. It must be bad.
I’m thirty minutes late by the time I get to the restaurant, defeated again by Google Maps.
It looks… fancy. One of those restaurants that just has a name.
Maison, as opposed to any sort of indication as to what they might serve.
I start trying to rub off the mascara that’s migrated under my eyes.
There is literal heat coming off my face, but the restaurant looks dim.
Hopefully, some darkness will serve to neutralise all the red.
I don’t give myself time to back out before pushing the doors open.
But even with zero thinking time, I’m struck by just how weird it is to be here, meeting Emmett.
Emmett and I never existed in any place other than Northumberland at any time other than summer.
How can it be that we’re here, in Paris, in autumn?
It’s like the axis of the world has tilted ever so slightly.
And we are here, in this place, at this time.
Because Emmett is sitting at the bar. A waiter takes my shacket, but I hardly notice him.
I’m drawn to Emmett, I barely see anything but him, and for a fraction of a second, he doesn’t see me.
I’ve always been drawn to him, I think, as I make my way towards the bar, music from a pianist tinkling away in the background.
It’s dangerous and powerful all at once, knowing how drawn to him I’ve always been.
But while in the past my love for Emmett excited me, thrilled me and lit me up with purpose, now the thought of all that emotion terrifies me. He might have had good reason, but still, he took my love and marred it, and oh fuck, what am I doing here? I should leave, right, right now.
‘Luna.’ Emmett spots me and smiles the smallest of smiles.
I’m frozen, two feet away from him. He looks delicious.
It’s a messed-up, toxic thought to be having, but objectively, it’s the truth.
He’s expensive and delicious, and I want to run my hands up his chest and over his shoulders.
Wind them up into his hair. It’s shorter than it used to be, but still curly.
Even my fingers are moving, twitching to get to him.
‘You came,’ he says.
‘I came.’ I slide onto the stool next to him.
‘I didn’t think you would.’
‘Neither did I,’ I admit. ‘But Mae… Plus, I want to hear about the painting.’ Emmett said he knew more about The Edge of Always and I’m greedy for that knowledge.
Something like the shadow of disappointment passes across his face as he tilts his head to the side, just a fraction, before he schools his features into something neutral.
‘Wine?’ he asks.
‘Yes please, just a small red.’
‘Our table should be ready soon.’
I can’t help but laugh.
‘What’s so funny?’ he asks, having a sip of his own wine.
‘It’s just that you’re so… different, from before.’
He smiles at that. I’ve always loved his smile, the way that two of his teeth at the side are slightly twisted. I’m glad he didn’t Invisalign away his special smile. ‘And what about you, aren’t you different from when we were teenagers?’
I laugh again. ‘That it was a long time ago.’ The truth is, I know that I’m different. The me that lived for those summers doesn’t exist anymore, and for so many reasons.
‘Not so long.’ I don’t know if he’s making me feel so off-balance on purpose or if it’s just an accident, but I feel like the whole restaurant is tilting. I’ll be furious if I end up on the floor. Surely then he’d know.
Except a waiter comes to let us know our table is ready, and Emmett is gesturing for me to move. I grab my wine off the bar’s edge and make my way to our table in the corner. I was right; it’s so dark here, but there are candles everywhere. A literal fire hazard.
I sit and try to clear my head. To ground myself.
Except I can’t think of anything to say to Emmett, which is insane. I’ve practised this meeting, many iterations of this meeting, a tragic number of times.
But it’s like my brain is made of candyfloss. It can’t seem to recall any of the things that I wanted, no needed, to say. Oh, but Emmett’s teeth, we have them committed to memory just fine.
It’s strangely intimate sitting here at a little two-person table in the corner with a candle.
I should apologise. For what I did then. That’s what I should do. Except, to bring it up would take us straight back there, to that cliff edge and I’m just not sure that I can.
For want of something to do, I study the menu.
No prices are never a good sign. It’s code for ‘this will cost you a fortune’ and I do my best to decipher the French.
I skip straight over the ‘escargots’ and towards ‘poulet’ with something I think might be mushrooms. It strikes me as the sort of place that would escort me off the premises if I loaded up Google Translate.
‘So, do you come here often?’ I ask Emmett because I can’t think of anything to say, and the silence is thick and stifling.
‘Whenever I’m in Paris. The headquarters of the organisation I work for are based here.’
‘Oh,’ I say, thinking that this meal will be a real test of my mental agility.
Now is not the time for candyfloss brain since I refuse to let on that I’ve been stalking his social media for twenty years.
That’s insanity of the highest order. So I can’t let on that I know he works for Médecins Sans Frontières.
‘How interesting,’ I say instead, still reading the menu.
I have my phone on the table in front of us. It’s really annoying that I can’t turn it off; it lights up constantly.
‘One second,’ I tell him. ‘It’s Mae.’
I send a quick message to her to tell her that I’m fine and I’ll call her after dinner. I feel the eyes of everyone in the restaurant on me as I type, pushing my thumbs to move quicker even though my hands are stupidly stiff.
‘Mae,’ Emmett laughs. ‘Her message was…’ He pauses, possibly sensing that taking the piss out of my sister would not be the best move right now. ‘Long,’ he finishes.
‘I’d never have agreed to come, if she’d told me.’
‘And why is that?’
I shrug. Have a drink. ‘I think the past is just better left in the past.’
‘You say that like it’s an easy thing to do.’
‘Ahem.’
We’re forced to pause while we give our order to a waiter wearing a tuxedo. The process is painful, since I have to point and jab at the menu to order, while Emmett speaks perfect French. The waiter bows to him and leaves.
We don’t go back to talking about why I came, which is good, since it’s difficult to put into words.
Instead, Emmett seems determined to be polite.
He’s pouring me water from a carafe, and telling me that he likes my rings (I’m wearing several).
He’s asking about Mae’s work and the cottage.
He wonders if we’re still in touch with Zadie and Ahmed.
‘Yes, Mae is a baker. She loves it.’ I say. And then, ‘Yes, we see Zadie a lot, Ahmed less so since he moved down South. But I’ve read his books, they’re brilliant.’
‘Yes, me and Mae still have the cottage. We live there the whole time, actually,’ I answer in response to a question of whether we still visit in the summer.