We both stiffen as if reeling from an attack. ‘Why not?’ Florian challenges her.
Madame Grenaud shrugs. ‘She’s not Catholic.’
‘Neither are half the tourists in there now.’
‘Ava can wait here.’ Madame Grenaud gestures to a bench by the grave. ‘We won’t be long.’
‘Are you serious? She…’ Florian’s voice rises, his body growing taller, stiffer. A few faces from the ramparts above turn to us.
‘It’s fine,’ I say quickly, my hand reaching for his arm, steadying him. ‘You go. I won’t know what to do in there anyway,’ I shrug, shooting him a pleading glance.
He wavers for a moment before relenting. There will be no winners today.
‘We’ll be quick,’ he promises and then makes his way back out of the graveyard towards the doors to the Basilica.
I scuff my feet into the shingle, moving pieces backwards and forwards until there is nothing but chalky ground beneath my trainer. A pigeon flies in, lands a few metres from my feet and pecks at something that my unintentional landscaping has brought to the surface.
I watch it for a moment, the only living company in this place, until it too gets bored of me and scuttles away in a clumsy flapping of wings.
I take a step towards the grave, my hands wavering on top of the stone until I give in, press my palms down onto the smooth top and feel something in my body unravel.
I look at the carved tribute of a face that now feels like it’s fading from my memory.
‘Hey.’ My voice is shaky, holding on for dear life. There’s a silence. Of course there’s a fucking silence.
‘So, it’s been a while.’ I keep going. ‘Sorry about that, you know what I’m like when it comes to running away from my problems. Not that you’re a problem, apart from – well the dying bit. I don’t know if you can hear me… I don’t think that you can which is another reason why I feel so fucking stupid, talking to a bit of sodding rock.
‘I… I… really miss you, Etienne. I think I just need to say that, to admit it. That every day I wake up and for a fragment of a millisecond I think you’re there. Everything would be easier, my life would be easier, your family’s life would be easier, if you had just stuck around a bit longer.
‘I don’t know how much you know, if you are some sentient being just flapping around the place then – well then I guess you kind of don’t need some announcement about just how dramatic I have managed to make things. I don’t know how you’d feel about the whole thing. I know you were a bit of a hedonist in your life, but I’m not sure your liberal attitude to love extended as far as your brother.
‘I think if you knew this version of him there would have been more dinners, more fun, more family. And I know it hurts him that you never saw him like this. I guess in some way he’s making it up to me instead.
‘I love you, Ettie. I still love you. I thought it might fade or change or lessen but it doesn’t, there’s just more space in me now. And I think that space is for him. With Florian. If that’s cool with you of course, and if it isn’t then like send me a sign or something and I’ll back off or better yet, maybe resurrect yourself and tell me in person?
‘I…’ The rawness starts to catch in my throat, everything becoming tighter. ‘I’m always going to love you, Ettie, I just think that you need to know that… God!’ I wipe the tears from my eyes, the roaring ache relaxing as I take a deep sobbing breath. ‘I’m going to go now.’ I step back, take my hands off the slab, break the connection.
There is a clarity, a relief that radiates through me, a release of something that had been gripping me so tightly and for so long I had forgotten that it was there at all.
I cry some more and then remember Florian’s instruction. I reach for Ettie, turn over the frame in my hands to see the back and then let out a manic cackle that I have to put great effort into suppressing. My French might not be perfect but I can translate this.
La famille avant tout:Family over everything.
There is still no sign of my two companions when I exit the graveyard, so instead I amble around the ramparts, the grotto where prayers have been inserted into cracks into the rocks. A statue of the Virgin Mary stands sentinel, her hands in prayer, and a couple of tourists linger at her feet.
I find a bench that looks over the valley, sit down, reach into my bag and grab my notebook. For the first time since I opened this thing and started my random narratives I think about what I’m saying. I structure my sentences carefully, pause to select my words. It’s slow at first, like running after a six-month hiatus, but after the first paragraph it starts to come back to me until I am sprinting through the page, a clarity descending that is both so alien and so fucking euphoric I think I might even be smiling as I write it.
I write three pages in ten minutes until I add the final full stop. And for the first time in months, I know that what’s written down is good. That I have my ending.
‘Hey.’ Florian thumps his body onto the bench next to me. He lets out a long sigh and his limbs slacken.
‘How was it?’ I dare to ask, although I feel like I am already anticipating his answer.
‘She made me do confession,’ he hisses.
‘Confession? The whole wooden box and priest and sin thing?’
‘Yes.’
