Which is a problem. A big one.
Taking a deep breath, he leaves Ari asleep in their bed, stepping into his clothes and heading for the door. He needs to breathe in fresh air — needs to feel the morning sun on his skin. Needs to think and solve the problem that has been hanging over his shoulders since the first time he saw Ari in that airport and decided — against all his better judgement — to pursue her.
He blinks in the morning sunshine, shuffling further into his jacket to keep out the cool morning air. Near their hotel is a river, and he heads towards it on impulse. Before today, neither he nor his mother had ever stepped foot in Rouen.
“Why would I want to go there?” Marnie had asked, genuinely perplexed. “I’ve no interest in seeing the ghosts of the past.”
Rouen should have been strange to Tom, but it wasn’t. For although Marnie had no interest in visiting the town, she still talked about it. The stories she’d been told by her grandparents lived in her heart, and she told Tom about the winding city paths with their cobbled streets, about the imposing gothic churches, and about the cathedral, painted by Claude Monet, no less. Her stories meant that it was no trouble for him to find his way from the Hotel La Reine to the city market, where he sits at a table under an awning, drinking black coffee and casting his eyes over the town that — if not for war and politics — might have been his home.
Not that he wants it, he reminds himself. He’s like Marnie in that respect — happy to let the past die and move on from it. He’s only here in Rouen because Ari wanted to visit, and he’s hoping they can move on again soon. Once the car is repaired, he plans on whisking Ari out of this city and over the border into Germany. He’ll take her to Freiburg, where they can drink beer under the shadow of the Münster and eat noodles in small taverns. Ari can paint landscapes up in the cool shade of the Black Forest, while he sits by her side, happy just to be near her in quiet repose.
If the timing and mood is right, he might even tell her the truth, he decides. He could finally confess to her that he wasn’t the man he claims to be — that he wasn’t really Tom Miller — blackhearted wretch and lost soul, as well as a damned liar — but actually Tom Somerset, still a wretch, still lost, but now and forever a fool for her. He could tell her about the oppressive years of his upbringing, about the heavy weight of family name and heritage upon his shoulders, and about how he finally cracked and rejected it all. He could tell her about his wilderness years travelling the world, living under a pseudonym and searching for his place in it. He could tell her how the boy who once wanted nothing more than to bea pilot like his father turned into the worst kind of trust-fund nepo baby, spending money he hadn’t earned, hiding from the world. He could tell her about the day when he’d seen her by that airport window, lonely and serene, and how he’d been so drawn to her he’d decided, then and there, to claw back a shred of happiness for himself. He’d buried Tom Somerset so deep within himself he thought he’d lost him forever, but Ari had drawn him back up towards the light. Ari had brought him back to himself, he knows. He owes her so much. He owes her everything.
Would Ari still want him though, if he confesses all? Tom worries, staring into the black depths of his coffee. He’s a fool, but also a realist. He knows that in telling Ari all he might lose her forever. But he also knows that he can’t keep her on a lie — that one day she will discover the truth about him and who he really is.
The thought of losing Ari is terrifying, and he runs a hand over his face, rueing the day he’d ever left home and taken on the mantle of Tom Miller.
Abruptly, his phone buzzes in his jacket pocket, and Tom frowns before pulling it out. It was a phone he’d picked up in Norway with a number he’d only ever given to Ari. He only uses it for the internet, photos and maps, and no one should be calling him, especially not at this time in the morning, while he sits in the Rouen marketplace.
“Hello,” he says into the receiver, expecting to hear the crackle of a machine as it begins a sales pitch, or the tinny voice of an agent as they follow a marketing script.
But no.
“Tom,” a voice says, and he stiffens instantly, automatically recognising the fluid voice on the other end of the line.
Corentin.
“How did you get this number?” he automatically returns, and hears a sigh.
“I’ve had people looking for you,” Corentin replies. “Even for the smallest of movements. Quite the traveller these days, aren’t you? I had an alert for this number from a hotel in...” for a moment, Tom hears his brother rustling papers “. . . ah yes, in Switzerland. The number was used at reception as a contact for a traveller named Tom Miller, but paid for from an account registered to a Tom Somerset. It was easy to follow you after that.”
“You don’t need to look for me, I’m not hurting anyone.”
“Aren’t you?” his brother replies, infuriatingly calm as always. “The hotel said you were travelling with a woman.”
“There’s no woman,” Tom says in a panic.
“Okay,” he hears his brother muse. “So, you’re alone?”
“Alone,” he lies once more. “I’m alone.”
“Right. So, where are you now?”
Tom closes his eyes. “You don’t want to know.”
“I really do, Tom. I really do.”
“Rouen.”
For a moment, a stunned silence comes over the line.
Eventually Corentin clears his throat. “Well now, that is a surprise. Rouen. Mom will be thrilled—”
“Don’t tell her,” Tom pleads. “She doesn’t need to know. She doesn’t need to know anything.”
An uneasy quiet follows. “Tom, with all due respect, that’s unfair. You broke Mom’s heart, leaving the way you did. We’ve had nothing on you for a long time. It was only when you got to Iceland that I picked up a trail.”
“How do you know I’ve been to Iceland?” Tom demands.
