“You don’t want to know.”
He turns around and narrows his eyes.
I grin at him. I’m sure as hell not repeatingthatconversation. I veer off topic.
“Now that I know you trained an Olympic bronze medalist, I’m a bit scared about going kayaking with you.”
He laughs. “Like you weren’t scared before.”
I lean against the door frame. “Raphaël said that you’d asked him for a lift.”
He considers me for a moment. “I wasn’t sure if you could get time off work.”
“Jackson’s pretty flexible. When were you thinking?”
“I could go Thursday if you like.”
“That would be great.”
“Lunch?” he asks, throwing down his rag.
“Good plan.”
We pick up our cleaning supplies and go downstairs to a much brighter kitchen.
Countertops next, I determine. Or maybe cobwebs. There are a bunch drifting down from the ceiling in silvery-white strands.
“How did you end up training Eve?” I ask as I follow him outside and onto a track that was probably carved out of the long grass by wild animals. “Sorry, I don’t mean to pry,” I add when he doesn’t immediately answer.
“I don’t mind,” he replies as we walk along the rough path. “When Eve got her diagnosis, Lise was very upset.” We reach the bank and I help him to lay out a rug on the hard, baked ground under a willow tree. “Obviously, I have experience with ALS so she and I talked about it a lot. When Eve said she wanted to compete in the Paralympics, I offered to help because…” He shrugs and sits down. “Because I knew I could.”
He seems older today. He’s twenty-seven, but sometimes with the games he plays he appears much younger. It’s as though hehasn’t fully grown up. Maybe losing his mum when he was barely eighteen stopped a part of him in its tracks.
“How long were you together? Like,togethertogether.”
“Just over a year. She broke it off two years ago when she went home.”
“To Scotland?”
He nods. “She wanted to be with her parents at the end.”
My heart squeezes at the thought of someone so young succumbing to such a horrific disease. His mother was far too young too.
It occurs to me that Eve might have ended it when she left France because she wanted to spare Étienne after what he’d been through with his mother.
I wonder what he was like as a boyfriend. I’ve been trying not to dwell on Lise’s words, but it’s difficult to forget:I’ve never seen anyone fall that hard or that fast.
He unpacks the picnic: bread, butter, cheese, and honey, plus apple juice and crisps.
“All we’re missing is strawberries,” I say with amusement.
“There are probably some still growing around the side of the house.”
“I don’t have the energy to wade through all that grass.”
He looks over at the house and frowns. “I need to borrow a strimmer.”
“Next time?”
