‘It’s okay, I’m guessing it wasn’t your fault.’ I let out a little snort. ‘Sometimes I say I’m divorced. It’s easier.’
She looks at me differently now, but not in a way I’m used to. She looks strangely proud. ‘Has it been long?’
‘Three years, almost four.’
She looks up at me, chewing what’s left in her mouth, her fork balanced in a knotty hand. ‘I bet it feels like no time at all.’ It isn’t something I’ve heard before in the multitude of pointless things people say. It is the comment of someone who knows loss. Who has been told ‘time heals all wounds’ and has also wanted to stab them with a fork in response.
‘No. It feels like yesterday.’
‘And you lived here? Together?’
‘Yes. It’s where we met. He ran L’Avenir.’ I gesture in the general direction of the café. I used to love telling people that, back when Ettie was alive. It cemented the fact that I was more than just a tourist.
‘The one in the square?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘Life can be so bloody relentless, can’t it.’ She shakes her head. ‘You miss him.’
‘Lots.’
‘And your loose ends?’
‘A book, about him, well more about losing him really.’
‘Ah, a writer.’ She smiles widely. ‘I thought there was something about you I liked.’ I feel in that moment that I have been brought into her confidence and it is glorious.
The waiter brings out coffee and madeleines to finish and we smoke another cigarette whilst sitting in a comfortable silence, watching people come and go, the traders hauling their wares back to the vans on the outskirts of the walls.
And then I see him.
A figure walks past, quickly, his phone pressed to his ear so it’s difficult to make him out entirely but just the way his body moves takes the air from my lungs. He’s in the café’s rust-red t-shirt showing the same lean, muscular arms, with the same long slender frame. Just as I think he’ll turn his head, look me directly in the eye, he pivots and jogs down a side street away from me.
‘Ava?’ The American pulls me out of my trance.
‘Did you see—’ I can feel my breath come back, pulling at my lungs, thin and clawing. I feel like I’m drowning.
‘Ava, you don’t look well.’
‘I need to go.’ I pick up my things. A cup falls off the table and shatters by my feet. I don’t even have time to apologise. It is like some force is in control of my body, moving it of its own free will. I break into a jog, down the same cut through, my eyes desperately trying to make out the ghost that had just appeared in the middle of the street.
I had of course imagined the possibility. What if it was all some ruse to dump me? An exit strategy. I think I could understand that eventually. It made more sense than all of that life suddenly being extinguished overnight.
The alley reaches a fork, and I see the flash of red at the end of a passage on the left and follow. My jog has turned into a clumsy run, my trainers occasionally catching on an uneven bit of stone, but I am determined to catch up with him.
The passage widens. There are voices now, a large cacophony of lunchtime chatter, as I am catapulted into the square and this time I don’t care that I’m here, this time there is no creeping dread and fear of bursting into tears.
I start pirouetting, my head a lighthouse, searching the crowd for any sign of him. I think of the shirt he was wearing, the very basic uniform of the café that Ettie insisted we wore.
People move out of my way instinctively; I must look mad. I see the parasols, smell the cigars and the coffee, it hasn’t changed at all. Of course he’s still here, he never died. I must have hit my head, imagined the last three years. He’s going to see me and wonder what on earth all the fuss is about.
I reach the terrace. There are a few occupied tables, mostly it’s empty. Behind the archway of the stone cloister there is the familiar sight of the coffee machine obstructing the bar, the shelves of glasses, thetvblaring out some horse racing. I look for him behind the counter, but I can only make out a woman. And then there he is, I can feel him behind me, footsteps and then a hard, and very real, hand on my shoulder.
Chapter 7
Ithrow my armsaround him. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time but almost immediately I realise my mistake.
It’s the smell that I notice first; it isn’t unpleasant, woodsmoke and coffee, so close to Ettie but not the same. Then I realise that the body isn’t quite right, too tall, too lean. I can feel his bones beneath the crushing weight of my arms. The horror begins to dawn on me that the rigid body currently in my strangle-hold is not my Ettie.
