One Day

‘No, but really drunk. He sounded strange. Perhaps I should go home.’

Callum belts his dressing-gown, walks back into the bedroom and leans at the waist to kiss her bare shoulder.

‘Like I said, I’m sure he’s fine.’ She says nothing, so he sits and kisses her again. ‘Try and forget about it. Have some fun. Do you want another drink?’

‘No.’

‘Do you want to lie down?’

‘No Callum!’ She shakes his arm off her. ‘For Christ’s sake!’

He resists the temptation to say something, turns and walks back to the bathroom to brush his teeth, his hopes for the night evaporating. He has a horrible feeling that she is going to want to talk about things — ‘this isn’t fair, we can’t go on, perhaps I should tell him,’ all that stuff. For crying out loud, he thinks indignantly, I’ve already given the guy a job. Isn’t that enough?

He spits and rinses, returns to the room and flops onto the bed. Reaching for the remote, he flicks angrily through the cable channels while Mrs Sylvie Mayhew sits and looks out the window at the lights along the Thames and wonders what to do about her husband.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN. Jean Seberg

SUNDAY 15 JULY 2001

Belleville, Paris

He was due to arrive on 15th July on the 15.55 from Waterloo.

Emma Morley got to the arrival gate at the Gare du Nord in good time and joined the crowd, the anxious lovers clutching flowers, the bored chauffeurs, sweaty in suits with their handwritten signs. Might it be funny to hold up a sign with Dexter’s name on? she wondered. Perhaps with his name spelt incorrectly? It might make him laugh, she supposed, but was it worth the effort? Besides, the train was pulling in now, the waiting crowd edging towards the gate in anticipation. A long hiatus before the doors hissed open, then the passengers spilled out onto the platform and Emma pressed forward with the friends and families, lovers and chauffeurs, all craning to see the arriving faces.

She set her own face into the appropriate smile. The last time she saw him, things had been said. The last time she saw him, something had happened.

Dexter sat in his seat in the very last carriage of the stationary train and waited for the other passengers to leave. He had no suitcase, just a small overnight bag on the seat next to him. On the table in front of him lay a brightly coloured paperback, on the cover a scratchy cartoon of a girl’s face beneath the title Big Julie Criscoll Versus the Whole Wide World.

He had finished the book just as the train entered the Paris suburbs. It was the first novel he had finished in some months, his sense of mental prowess mitigated by the fact that the book was aimed at eleven-to fourteen- year-olds and contained pictures. Waiting for the carriage to clear, he turned once more to the inside of the back cover and the black and white photograph of the author and looked at it intently, as if committing her face to memory. In an expensive-looking crisp white shirt she sat a little awkwardly on the edge of a bentwood chair, her hand covering her mouth at just the moment that she burst into laughter. He recognised the expression and the gesture too, smiled, and placed the book in his bag, picked it up and joined the last few passengers as they waited to step down onto the platform.

The last time he had seen her, things had been said. Something had happened. What would he tell her? What would she say? Yes or no?

While she waited she played with her hair, willing it to grow longer. Shortly after arriving in Paris, dictionary in hand, she had plucked up the courage to go to a hairdresser — un coiffeur — to have her hair cropped. Though embarrassed to say it out loud, she had wanted to look like Jean Seberg in A Bout de Souffle, because after all if you’re going to be a novelist in Paris you might as well do it properly. Now three weeks later, she no longer wanted to cry when she saw her reflection, but even so her hands kept going to her head as if adjusting a wig. With a conscious effort she turned her attention to the buttons on her brand new dove grey shirt, bought that morning from a shop, no, a boutique, on Rue de Grenelle. Two buttons undone looked too prim, three undone showed cleavage. She unfastened the third button, clicked her tongue and turned her attention back to the passengers. The crowd was thinning out now and she was starting to wonder if he had missed the train when she finally saw him.

He looked broken. Gaunt and tired, his face was shaded with scrappy stubble that didn’t suit him, a prison beard, and she was reminded of the potential for disaster that this visit carried with it. But when he saw her he started to smile and quicken his pace, and she smiled too, then started to feel self-conscious as she waited at the gate wondering what to do with her hands, her eyes. The distance between them seemed immense; smile and stare, smile and stare for fifty metres? Forty-five metres. She looked at the floor, up into the rafters. Forty metres, she looked back at Dexter, back at the floor. Thirty-five metres. .

While covering this vast distance, he was surprised to notice how much she had changed in the eight weeks since he had last seen her, the two months since everything had happened. Her hair had been cut very short, a fringe brushed across her forehead, and she had more colour in her face; the summer face that he remembered. Better dressed too: high shoes, a smart dark skirt, a pale grey shirt unbuttoned a touch too far, showing brown skin and a triangle of dark freckles below her neck. She still didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands or where to look, and he was starting to feel self-conscious too. Ten metres. What would he say, and how would he say it? Was it a yes or no?

He quickened his pace towards her, and then finally they were embracing.

‘You didn’t have to meet me.’

‘Of course I had to meet you. Tourist.’

‘I like this.’ He brushed his thumb across her short fringe. ‘There’s a word for it, isn’t there?’

‘Butch?’

‘Gamine. You look gamine.’

‘Not butch?’

‘Not in the least.’

‘You should have seen it two weeks ago. I looked like a collaborator!’ His face didn’t move. ‘I went to a Parisian hairdresser for the first time. Terrifying! I sat in the chair, thinking Arretez-vous, Arretez- vous! The funny thing is even in Paris they ask you about your holidays. You think they’re going to talk about contemporary dance or can-man-ever-truly-be-free? but it’s “Que faites-vous de beau pour les vacances? Vous sortez ce soir?”’ Still his face was fixed. She was talking too much, trying too hard. Calm down. Don’t riff. Arretez-vous.

His hand touched the short hair at the back of her neck. ‘Well I think it suits you.’

‘Not sure I’ve got the features for it.’

‘Really, you’ve got the features for it.’ He held her at the top of her arms, taking her all in. ‘It’s like there’s a fancy-dress party and you’ve come as Sophisticated Parisienne.’

‘Or a Call Girl.’

‘But a High-Class Call Girl.’

‘Well even better.’ She touched his chin with her knuckle, the stubble there. ‘So what have you come as then?’

‘I’ve come as Fucked-up Suicidal Divorcee.’ The remark was glib and he regretted it immediately. Barely off the platform, and he was spoiling things.

‘Well at least you’re not bitter,’ she said, reaching for the nearest off-the-shelf remark.

‘Do you want me to get back on the train?’

‘Not just yet.’ She took him by the hand. ‘Come on, let’s go, shall we?’

They stepped outside the Gare du Nord into the stifling fume-filled air; a typical Parisian summer day, muggy, with thick grey clouds threatening rain. ‘I thought we’d go for a coffee first, near the canal. It’s a fifteen-minute