She looks at me for a little too long. ‘It’s going to be a lonely month for you.’
I let out an ugly snort. ‘I’m used to it.’
‘The market is on tomorrow. Come for lunch afterwards. L’Auberge at one-thirty. I’m rather bored of my own company myself.’
‘That’s kind of you, but you really don’t need…’
‘One-thirty.’ She closes down my objection and I nod slowly.
‘Thank you.’
‘I hope you’ll be happy here.’ She smiles. ‘Tying up those loose ends.’
I start to unpack my suitcase in the apartment that suddenly feels all too quiet without another soul in here to make the floorboards creak. My things take up two drawers and three coat hangers.
There is an old cassette radio on the kitchen countertop; it jolts to life in a static crackle. I turn the dial until the music becomes clearer and then adjust the volume until it fills every corner of the apartment. The American had left a bottle of red wine, a baguette and some butter in the fridge. The addition of a cereal bar in my handbag makes it a meal.
I pour myself a glass and collapse onto the sofa and feel everything start to close in. So I do what I have learned to do when I feel like this; I reach into my bag and take out the diary.
I turn to a fresh page, bend the spine some more until it is flat and scrawl out the date. I write Monpazier in the centre and underline it three times. It looks strange now, that word, this place back on the page, like a word that loses its meaning when you say it too many times. I write a simple sentence.
I’m here. Now what the fuck do I do?
And I dry up. There’s no burgeoning feelings that need to be explored, contained and cemented. Just a kind of numbness.
It’s not something I’m used to – the block. When I first started to write about him, in those heady, Valium-laced days after he died, my mum used to have to come in and put me to bed. She would physically take the diary and put it downstairs, tuck me in and turn the lights off, because if she didn’t, she knew that I wouldn’t stop. I would write it down, every little detail from Ettie’s shower routine, to our arguments, to the description of his body in the mortuary, because I felt like if I didn’t, then I would lose it all, forget everything. As long as it was hurting, it bought me closer to him in some way.
The only thing that helped stop the writing addiction had been a comment from my dad, hovering in the doorway of my bedroom, with that wary and concerned look of a parent terrified of his child’s emotions.
‘You’re almost halfway through,’ he said, pointing at the spine. It was a simple thing to say, a half-hearted observation, but as I looked through the pages, the ones heavily lined with writing and the fresh ones yet to be touched, I realised what he was saying. If I kept on going, then in a couple of weeks, even my little coping mechanism would be gone. I cried some more and Dad stepped into the bedroom and hovered again, but this time over me, patting my shoulder. The next day we drove to a tech shop and he bought me a laptop, a proper expensive one, all the bells and whistles. I protested but he insisted – I think he would have bought me a car to try and make me feel just a little bit better at that point.
So it’s hard not to feel the irony that now I’m here, the words stop. A kind of cruel joke that has been played on me before – let’s give it all to Ava, lay it all out in front of her and then when it matters the most, take it all away.
I pull out my phone to try to distract myself from the pressure building in my chest.
I text Sam that the apartment is fine. I tell my parents that I’m alive, arrived and settled – even though the last bit is so far from the truth I’m sure that the lie is blaringly obvious – and then I do the unthinkable.
The phone rings twice before he picks up.
‘Ava?’ Archie’s voice is full of concern.
‘Hi.’
‘Is everything okay?’
There’s a long pause. It is weighted and heavy until I fill it with a whimpering ‘No.’
‘Give me two seconds, Ava.’ Archie’s voice is steady. I can hear him say something to someone on his end of the line. A chair moving. It’s four o’clock on a Monday in London. He’s at work.
‘Shit, I’m sorry… I forgot, I’ll go.’
‘No! It’s fine. It wasn’t important, I’m just heading outside.’
‘God,’ I stammer. ‘I’m such a shit.’
‘Right, I’m here. What’s going on?’
‘Sorry, you just said I could call you and there is literally no one else… and I have no clue what I’m doing here and fuck…’
