‘I don’t know…’ He pauses, shrugs and then he points briefly to my cheeks. ‘Your face – when you realised – I just feel like I need to apologise for it.’
I can’t help but soften, feel that heavy pang in my chest that makes me want to reach out, touch his shoulder, tell him that it’s okay, he doesn’t need to be sorry. It’s instinctive; I don’t like making people feel bad. But he isn’t just anyone, this is the person who had made Ettie’s life so much harder than it needed to be. The thought grounds me again, the memories pull me back into the anger. I take a breath, bring my eyes up to his, without the emotion this time.
‘I didn’t think you’d be back in Monpazier.’
‘Why not? I grew up here?’ he says sharply, matching me.
‘Yeah,’ I smirk. ‘And left as soon as you could.’
He looks stung by the comment. I’m glad. ‘It’s complicated.’ He shrugs. ‘After he died, I just wanted to be back here.’
‘Go on then. You said you wanted to explain, that there were things I needed to hear…’
‘I thought maybe we could be a few more glasses deep before—’ he starts but runs out of steam when he sees my clearly unimpressed face. He takes a breath, looks briefly towards the direction of the café and then when he looks back, his eyes lock on to mine. ‘I’m clean, Ava. That’s probably the first thing I should say, the reason I needed to see you.’
‘Congratulations,’ I say flatly.
‘It’s been three years… and a bit,’ he adds. ‘And when I got clean I realised that I needed a fresh start somewhere different. I tried Paris for a bit – that’s where I was when Ettie died – but it was too busy, too many distractions. I came back for the funeral and something clicked. I liked it here, it reminded me of him.’
An involuntary scoff forces itself out of me. Florian ignores it. ‘I know that you never exactly saw the best version of me, but we were close once, before you were on the scene, before I went to Bordeaux. I had always imagined we would be close again, that we could start afresh when I – well when I sorted myself out.’
‘So, you were clean before he died?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then why didn’t you see us? Why didn’t you see him? He took you back to Bordeaux and you never phoned or called or came over. He never saw you again.’
Florian leans over the table towards me, his hands interlocked in front of him as if in prayer. ‘He never told you?’ he asks quietly, seriously.
‘Told me what?’
He waits a second, reading me, trying to ascertain something that I don’t quite understand. He shrugs and then relaxes, his hands releasing and floating into the air. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
I want to push him, because it clearly does matter. I have spent a lot of time trying to understand the meanings between the words that people say. I know that what people really want to say gets lost in silence.
‘I stayed with Mum for two months and that was as torturous as you can probably imagine. I worked here for a bit, did the odd shift and ran into Thibot, you know, the owner of the café,’ he fills in, in case I may have forgotten. ‘He saw I was back, needed some help, offered me a job. Everything kind of fitted into place.’
I take a large swig of my wine. ‘So you run it?’
‘No, I just do a few shifts a week. It pays the bills when the commissions are slow.’
I can feel a sentimentality pull at me, memories of a few of the paintings we had scattered around the apartment, the ones in Madame Grenaud’s house on the rare occasion we visited. I may not like the man, but there was no denying that he was talented. I think that’s what made it all so much harder for Ettie, the fact that there Florian was, young and healthy and talented and willing to squander it away for the promise of a good time. ‘You’re still painting?’
He plays with a napkin on a table, folding the corners methodically. ‘Sometimes, but I sculpt now.’
‘Sculpt?’
‘Yes, stone mostly, wood sometimes too.’
‘I didn’t realise people still did that.’
‘Well, I mean it’s not a lucrative career.’ He smiles, it’s a nice smile, one that you can’t help but find slightly endearing.
‘Why?’
‘Why do I do it, or why is it not a lucrative career?’
‘Why sculpting?’
