“We’re off to our big adventure. Aunt Athena says she can’t wait to see us,” Nadia said, feeling liberated to finally be free of Nicolas lurking around them like a ghost. He had looked miserable when he left them the day before, and she didn’t want to think about it. This was her time with the girls, and she didn’t want anything to spoil it.
“I can’t wait to see Aunt Athena’s dogs,” Laure said happily. “I love Hugo…and Juanita and Chiquita, and Stanley.” She went down the list of dogs, while Sylvie sent another text to her father and told him how much she wished he was there with them. He responded immediately.
“Me too.” He had told her he had to get back to work on his new book. Sylvie thought it was too bad that he couldn’t take a vacation with them, but at least they’d had the Bastille Day weekend with him. It had been perfect, from her point of view, with her mother and father together. They were both nervous and in bad moods lately, but probably things would be better when they got back. She hoped so anyway. She had asked her father about it, and he had promised they would never get divorced. And she knew he never lied to them.
* * *
—
“You look incredible,” Nicolas said, standing in the doorway of their bedroom in the rented house in Ramatuelle. It was tropical and luxurious, with lovely gardens and an enormous pool. Pascale was wearing the white lace dress she had bought for the interview. You could see her belly clearly through it. She was wearing her bikini bottom but not the top under it. Her breasts were huge and full from the pregnancy. Her arms and legs were slim, her face was lovelier than ever, and her long white-blond curls looked like a halo that framed her face, with the rest of her hair piled on her head. She looked more womanly and less like a young girl with her pregnant belly, and she was every bit as sexy as he said, definitely not like a madonna, as she stretched her long legs out on a chaise longue under a large beach umbrella next to the pool. A waiter with a starched white jacket who had come with the house served her a tall glass of lemonade. There was a splash of gin in it, which Nicolas didn’t know.
He was wearing shorts, Hermès sandals, and a white linen shirt. They looked like some kind of ad for yacht owners, or people who had tons of money. They appeared to have it all. Nicolas was less nervous than he’d been the day before, when he’d arrived, and had settled down. Pascale had sensed his dark mood as soon as he walked in, had lured him into bed, and cheered him up considerably. He said she had magic powers over him. She bewitched him.
A few minutes after Pascale installed herself on the chaise longue, the house man escorted two people out to the pool, a small woman in jeans and a T-shirt, with dark hair in a braid down her back, holding a large notebook, and a man also wearing jeans, but with a Mexican embroidered shirt. They were the writer and photographer who had come to do the article. They were young and looked somewhat awestruck in the presence of such luxury and beauty, and two very famous people. Nicolas stood up and shook hands with them, and Pascale remained reclining, not wanting to disturb her “look.” She was wearing high-heeled white sandals, which laced up her legs to the knee, and were very sexy too. She was so appealing and sensual one almost forgot she was pregnant. She wasn’t ready to be the poster child for motherhood yet. There was a white Hermès Birkin bag on the ground next to her, which Nicolas had bought her.
Nicolas asked if they’d eaten and offered them lunch as soon as they arrived. They said they’d eaten at the Gorilla Bar in Saint-Tropez, and weren’t hungry. But they both accepted wine, and the photographer set up his cameras while Barbara Jaffe, the writer they’d flown out from New York, sat down and chatted informally with them. Pascale was playing the star, which Nicolas didn’t mind. It suited her, and kept the attention off him. He didn’t want to be the focus of the interview and wasn’t planning to stay long.
The photographer suggested a few casual photographs before they started, and Nicolas sat on the arm of her chair, feeling awkward at first, and then slowly relaxed as Pascale leaned toward him. They stood up near the pool then, and the photographer positioned her so they got a good view of her profile to show off the baby. Then in a more relaxed moment between shots, she sat on Nicolas’s lap while they were laughing, and kissed him. It was a perfect moment of tenderness and humor, and the photographer snapped it instantly, knowing the shot was pure gold. Then the interview began.
Barbara had a full list of questions in her notebook, about how and where they had met, what they had thought when they first laid eyes on each other, was it love at first sight? What had it been like working on the film together? How had their relationship developed? How did they like to spend their time? Where were they living? How did they envision their life together now as parents? She asked about their views of the future and how their relationship would affect their work. She wanted to know if they planned to work together again and how they thought the baby would impact their careers, and their life together. It was the full-court press about everything people wanted to know, both their fans and their detractors. And the answers the writer culled from them were everything Nicolas hadn’t wanted to tell them and promised himself he wouldn’t, but she was artful and adept and got what she wanted, although most of it wasn’t true. Pascale was much more relaxed than he was, and willing to tell Barbara anything. Nicolas was less accustomed to giving interviews, which he seldom did. Barbara never asked him directly about Nadia and their marriage, but her existence was implied in several of the questions.
Nicolas successfully deflected some of it, and whenever he did, Pascale leapt into the breach and supplied everything they wanted to know. Nicolas cringed a few times as he listened, and tried to temper what she said, but Pascale would not be curbed. She wasn’t afraid to voice her opinion that she thought marriage was a ridiculous, antiquated tradition, which no longer served any purpose in today’s fast-moving, ever-changing world. She said that people needed to be free in order to grow, and no relationship was meant to last forever. That was a fairy tale, not reality. She said she thought that having babies was a natural part of life, and you didn’t have to be married or even be with the same partner to give a child a happy life. She used the example of native tribes in different cultures where the tribe raised the child, and not the mother or father. She said she’d been raised by her grandmother when her mother was working, and she had benefited from it. And their child was going to spend time with her mother when she was busy. Her answer inspired Barbara to ask her if she intended to bring up her baby and care for it herself at all.
“I hope not,” she said, laughing, and explained that she was going to leave him with her mother most of the time, while she pursued her career. She said she was too young to be tied down changing diapers, and Barbara asked Nicolas how he felt about that. He said, in his charming French accent, that Pascale’s point of view was very different from his. He said he had grown up with a traditional mother and father and a stable family life. He mentioned too that he had two daughters who were also being brought up in his more traditional style.