‘I see…’
‘And then we had the delightful task of walking back to the flat where Archie had pretty much become Poirot and called us out over a card game, shouted a bit and then stormed out. His flight took off an hour ago.’
‘And Florian?’
The look of devastation that involuntarily appears on my face says more than words ever can.
‘The book?’ she frowns.
‘What?’
‘Did he find out about your book?’
‘No.’ I swallow hard. ‘We never got close to that.’ My throat becomes taut. ‘I… I told him that it would never work and that we should maybe just stay out of each other’s way for a bit.’
‘Well, what did you do that for?’ She almost slams her hands on the table and once again we have become the main entertainment of the small restaurant.
‘Because it’s mad. It’s totally, unbelievably mad to think that anything could happen. He’s my husband’s brother! I mean surely there’s some rule somewhere that says it can’t happen, and even if there isn’t, I’m damn sure that morally it’s wrong.’
‘Who says?’
‘Every fibre in my body.’
She dabs her lips with her napkin and then leans back in her chair taking me in. ‘Can I tell you something?’ she says after a minute.
‘Of course.’
‘Did you know that I once was entwined in my own little love triangle?’
I try not to let my head get too carried away in the imagery. ‘You were?’
‘Well don’t look so surprised, sweetie, I’ll have you know I was a catch in my day.’ I sit back, skewer a tomato into my mouth.
‘Who were the eligible bachelors then?’
‘Wallace – he was a property lawyer in New York, fairly handsome but very straight-laced, the kind of man that the 1960s sort of ignored. And there was Jack – we had been friends since school, he owned land in Maine, it’s all vineyards now, made a buck or two I can tell you that now.’
‘Which one did you pick?’
‘Wait a minute now, there was another name in the mix.’
I raise my eyebrows, play with the stem of my glass. ‘You really were a catch.’
She ignores my disbelief, trades it instead for more details. ‘There was a French art student who was staying at Jack’s parents’ house you see, had been there for a few months and well, let’s say I was a fan of their work. We had a lot of fun, I learned a bit of French and tried to paint but I was next to useless. We had eight weeks together until I had to make a decision, whether I stayed over in the States, married Wallace or Jack, or whether I ran away to Paris and said goodbye to the life I had spent twenty-four years living.’
‘And you chosethe artist?’ I roll my eyes.
‘I chose Jack,’ she says quietly and a little too quickly.
‘What, why?’
‘Because I was a smart girl too, Ava. I looked at my life, realised how lucky I was, looked at how much I had to lose, at how my family would never speak to me again, how much harder I would make my life if I went with the choice my heart wanted me to make. I was too smart for my own good. I married Jack.’
‘Were you happy?’
‘Mostly.’ She swirls something in her drink. ‘He was a good man, we rubbed along just fine, better than a lot of our friends, probably because we never bothered to complicate our friendship with silly things like passion.’
The conversation has drifted into unfamiliar territory for us. I am used to being the centre of the inquisition; it was a comfortable space for us, her squeezing out my feelings, meeting each one with a quick quip or incredulous eyebrow, but this is deeper, realer, and I realise that she isn’t somebody who opens up her own life as quickly as I open up mine.
