“Do you need anything else?” I ask her, and she shakes her head.
“No, no,” she says, smiling, and I get the impression she wants me out of her space.
I lied to Lucas this morning, telling him I had back-to-back shifts all weekend so wouldn’t be able to talk much. But today is a totally free Sunday. I have no plans, no shifts at work, and as I switch on the radio downstairs in the kitchen and make myself some toast, I think about why. Why didn’t I tell him the truth? Why didn’t I feel I could tell Lucas about Marv? About going there with Eliot? I wash up the plates in the sink and take out the rubbish and recycling. I even run the vacuum around the house and put on a load of my washing—putting two of Louise’s dresses in there with it. For an August afternoon, it’s windy, so I hang it out on the rotary line in the garden and watch it through the window in the conservatory with a smug satisfaction of how quick it’ll dry. I dreamed of having a house with a garden and a washing line when I was a kid. Still do, as simple and as sad as that may sound to some. A string of clothes—large trousers, tiny socks—spelling a family, blowing gently in a breeze.
I polish and clean the windows, and I water the tomato plants, running a finger along the stalk of one, and smelling the deep, viney smell on my fingertips. I wouldn’t usually touch them, Louise’s pride and joy, but the summer sun burning through the windows of the conservatory is drying out the soil. I stand among the books and the plants afterward. I’ve never really been out here. It’s Louise’s room, and as a lodger, I only need to use the bathroom and kitchen. There are hundreds of books out here, and I feel sad that she can no longer read the words. I run a hand along them, stopping when I come to the many weird ornaments between and in front of them, and photos too. Mostly of scenic beaches and mountains, but some of people. Two are black and white. Three are color. And all feature a woman with short, bobbed, shiny hair, standing beside someone who is undoubtedly a young Louise, age twenty-five to thirty, I’d say. In all of them they are smiling, widely, holding on to each other, shrouded in happiness and sunshine. There are yellowing postcards propped against things, too, and ceramic bottles painted in tribal patterns, and plates with country names painted on them by hand. A display of a life lived. Not of a recluse. And I wonder here, among it all, when she stopped taking adventures.
I take tea up to Louise, in between dwindling the day away, sitting in the conservatory in the sunshine and reading the best man book, my legs bent under me, a cup of coffee on the windowsill, but my mind wanders. To Marv. To his face, drained of color. To Eliot. And I can hardly bear it. I’m nauseous when I replay yesterday, when it swirls through my mind, a mess of emotions and memories and shocked faces on doorsteps. I have to state it to myself, to tune it all up, like an old radio. Marv. Marv has been my dad all along. Marv is my father.
At four, I set a tray of biscuits and two satsumas, and two cups of mint tea not just for Louise, but for me. “Good for the stomach,” she always says as she pours it, and today, I could do with something to help settle it. Before I take the tray up, though, I take a book from Louise’s shelf. There is a butterfly breaking out of its cocoon on the cover. I don’t know what it’s about, but it looks dog-eared, read more than once.
She brightens, unmistakably, as I appear in the doorway, looking away from the window she was staring through.
“I’ve brought supplies for you.” I smile, placing the tray across her lap. “And for me too. I thought I could read to you,” I say. “If you’d like.”
Louise’s cheeks flush, her mouth open, as if searching for the right thing to say. “I, uh… I’m sure you have better things to do…”
I shake my head. “I’d love to. This one caught my eye, actually.” And I see the glimmer in her eyes, of excitement at the sight of the book in my hand.
“Ah. Have you read it?”
“No,” I say.
“Do you like love stories?” she asks, and I lower myself to sit at the foot of Louise’s soft, creaking bed.
“I do,” I tell her. “They’re my downfall, actually.”
* * *
WhatsApp from Lucas Moreau:
Hey Em, was thinking…
WhatsApp from Lucas Moreau:
Mum and Dad are away for the next couple of weeks and, not this weekend but next, it’s Marie’s birthday. The bridesmaids and her mum have arranged a thing at her place and Marie would love you there. But I thought we could go to the beach too? Say hi to our spot, have some time together, chill, just us, like old illuminous ketchup times!
WhatsApp from Lucas Moreau:
I’ll even let you choose the movies. (I just ask that it isn’t that fucking Vanilla Ice film.) Let me know.
Marie’s parents’ house is huge. The sort of house painted on the labels of wine bottles. I am greeted by her mother, who is the loveliest and most glamorous woman I have ever seen. She is fanning her face when she answers the door, her blond hair, in Marilyn Monroe–style curls, bounce as she moves.
“Salut!” she says, and I tell her I’m Emmie, Lucas’s friend, and without hesitation, she squeezes me.
“Oh! The best woman,” she says in a posh English accent. “I have heard so much about you from Marie and from Lucas. Please, come, upstairs. You are just in time for nails!”
She leads me up a huge spiral staircase, the carpet springy like sponge cake, and into a room with a baby grand piano and opened double oak doors. There must be ten guests arranged in the room on sofas and armchairs, all female, and three smiling women at their feet and hands, painting and filing and fussing. Everything here is dripping with class and money, and I instantly feel like a stray cat, lost in Buckingham Palace. Marie looks delighted to see me and comes bouncing across the thick beige carpet toward me.
“Darling Emmie!” she says. “Thank you so much for coming. It is so lovely to see you.”
“Happy birthday, Marie. I got you, er… a little something.” I eye the top of the baby grand, lined with square, rope-handled gift bags, designer names on the side of them, and instantly wish I’d left my gift on the backseat of the taxi Lucas put me in. I almost forgot it. The cab driver called me back and handed it to me. A box of handmade vegan bath bombs and a recipe book on avocados.
“Merci, mon amour, you did not need to,” she says, putting my gold-wrapped gift among the towers of gift bags. “And are you okay now? Really?”
I blink. “Um. Yes?”
“Lucas told me all about it,” she says, and I feel all eyes on me—pairs and pairs of strangers’ eyes. “About your mother and the cards that arrived from your father and how you thought he knew nothing of you and… gosh, I was so worried, you seemed so sad on the screen and Lucas said—”
“I’m fine,” I cut in. “It’s all fine. So, are these your friends?”
Every one of Marie’s friends is lovely and welcoming. They smile, break out of their fast, French conversations to talk to me—well, as much as the language barrier allows—and to get me champagne. They keep my glass filled up, pass around the canapés, all colors of the rainbow, and nudge me, smilingly, to tell me I have to take more than one. And after a while, after I switch off from playing a scene in my head of Lucas and Marie over glasses of wine, over an elegant, grown-up dinner, discussing my car crash of a life as if it’s something to be dissected and analyzed, in the style of a book club meeting, I’m having a nice time. I’m having a really nice time here, actually, in this beautiful house, with gorgeous food and crisp, cold champagne. Maybe I needed this. An ocean away from my normal life, from Marv, and the sleepless nights that taunt me at the moment. Pure escapism, that’s what this is; face glowing with the warmth of champagne and laughter, and my hands, like silk now, and glistening with sparkly red polish.