Would you like me to organize an interview?
Kind regards,
Hina Alvi
Recruitment Consultant
* * *
Laughter is universal. To understand laughter, you do not need to be multilingual. Half an hour I was waiting at the bus stop, bus after bus passing by without Calais on the front of it, or anywhere I had even heard of, actually, and eventually, after thirty minutes of countless buses and countless passengers filing off and on, I got onto the next bus I could see, and told the driver in the best French I could muster that I needed to get to Calais.
He laughed. For ages. As if he was auditioning for a rerecording of The Laughing Policeman. “It does not exist,” he told me from under his thick black mustache. “No more.”
“But I—I looked on Google,” I said pathetically, and he lifted his chubby hands at his side, as if to say, “What do you want me to do, lady?”
“It is old,” he grumbled. “Last December, service stop. No more. You get taxi to Boulogne, and then bus. Or train. But…” He tapped the glass face of his watch and shrugged. “No time.”
I panicked then; stood flapping for a moment, face dewy with sweat, before realizing a busload of people were staring at me as if they’d all quite like to disembowel me. I got off and watched defeatedly as the doors slammed, and the bus whirred away.
It’s never happened before, Lucas letting me down for a lift to the port. Didn’t want to wake you, Em, but I’ve had to come into work, his text said. I read it through bleary eyes, having just woken. Fucking Frederic AGAIN. Guy’s a prick. You’ll have to make your own way to Calais. Is that okay? I’ve left a taxi card in the kitchen next to the coffee machine. They’re local. Reliable. So so sorry to do this. Text me!!!
And although it’s nothing, really—it’s work, it can’t be helped—I still had to graft hard at ignoring the swirling in my stomach when I read his text. The churn that said, Everything is changing now he’s engaged, Emmie. He doesn’t even have time to take you to your ferry, like he always has.
It was a good ten minutes before I admitted defeat on the side of the road and trudged back to the Moreaus’ under the blistering sun, where now I find the side gate to the back garden wide open. I can hear the distant sound of Eliot sawing and a radio blasting, and I wish there was a way I could call that taxi number and pay whatever the fare is, make it so I don’t have to see Eliot’s smug “I told you so” face. He stayed the night, after the dessert party, without Cold Ana, thankfully. Eliot is a carpenter. A cabinetmaker, actually, something he corrected me on every time, back then, when he was working as an apprentice for a local furniture designer. And he’s working at the house today, making a start on a decked bandstand for Amanda and Jean’s garden. We barely spoke as we drank coffee on the patio this morning, and he’d simply looked up as I’d left for the bus stop, pulling down his dust mask just in time to tell me that he didn’t think any sort of bus service existed anymore.
“There’s a bus in fifteen minutes, actually,” I’d announced proudly as I passed him in the garden, sunglasses on, my case in hand.
“You’re sure?” he’d asked.
“Yup,” I’d sung. “Good old Google; a fine invention.” And Eliot had shrugged and said, “Cool. See you later, then.”
Now Eliot looks up at me, unsurprised, as I slump down onto a deck chair on the Moreaus’ lawn. He pauses, saw in hand, then straightens. I can hardly breathe with the heat, but Eliot looks completely at ease, in nothing but a pair of jeans, his chest golden, dots of sawdust clinging to the hair on his forearms. He pulls the mask down and looks at me.
“No buses,” I pant, cheeks pounding with sunburn. “Old service.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I think I did say.”
I nod breathlessly. It’s eighty-seven degrees today here in Le Touquet, and the air is stifling and thick. There is not a wisp of breeze to be found. I feel like I’m suffocating.
“You need a lift to the station,” says Eliot, swiping a forearm across his forehead.
I hesitate, fan my face pointlessly. “Yes.”
“No worries. What time’s your ferry?”
“Three?”
He looks at a thick brown leather watch at his wrist. “Right. I’ll finish up here and then we can jump in the van. Good?”
I nod, feel something like shame prickle up my back. Maybe it’s being unable to afford the taxi. Maybe it’s at having to rely on Eliot. “Yeah,” I say. “Thanks, Eliot.”
He shrugs, stretches the mask back over his face, and continues sawing.
* * *
“So, Lucas left getting to the station to you,” Eliot says, adjusting his backward red baseball cap, tufts of dark hair sprigging from the sides.
“It wouldn’t have been an issue had the buses been running.”
Eliot drops a hand to his lap, the other holding the steering wheel. “Lucas drops everything for that boss. Whatshisname. Dude with the eyebrows.”
“Frederic.”
Eliot nods. “That’s it.”
“Well, he left me details of a taxi service and texted me to—”
“And why didn’t you get a taxi?”
I look over at him. He says nothing more, just looks at me, then back at the road, and lifts his shoulders as if to say, “Well?”
“You, um, said you didn’t mind—”
“I don’t,” he jumps in. “Not at all, actually. It was just a question.” He laughs and holds a hand to his chest as if in surrender.
“Right,” I say, and Eliot reaches to turn up the radio louder than it was.
The van rattles as it turns a corner, and the smell of creosote and the sweetness of wood reminds me of when I’d first begun visiting Lucas and the Moreaus. The way Eliot would come in from work at his apprenticeship, hair full of dust, smudges of varnish on his T-shirt, and smile a hello before going upstairs and joining us for dinner, hair wet, and freshly showered.
“Nice wheels,” Lucas would laugh, gesturing to the truck on the gravel drive through the dining room window, and Eliot would say, “Least I’ve got wheels, dude.”
“Least I don’t sound like a rag-and-bone man.” Lucas would grin back, nudging me, and Eliot would lean in across the table and say, “Ask Luke about his wheels, Emmie. His little BMX out front. How far’s he going to take you on that, eh?”
I’d giggle behind my glass and Jean would look sternly over his spectacles. “Stop now, boys. Eat your mother’s dinner, will you, please. And Emmie, don’t engage them.”
I loved those evenings around the table. It felt like being part of a family. The sort of families I’d see through windows around dinner tables or in front of televisions when I’d walk home in the dark in the winter, the edges steamed up with cooking. How easy my life would be, I’d think, if Amanda was my mum, and Jean was my dad. If this was what I came home to, every day.
“Sorry,” says Eliot now, over the music. “Didn’t mean to pry. You can get to the station however you like. Taxi, dragon, hang gliding.” He looks over at me and smirks. “Bloke with a van…”