You know, there comes a point in any confrontation where if it gets physical, you’re done for. However, much as I would have dearly loved to karate chop Caroline in the pearls, there was no way I was going down that road.
‘Don’t do that,’ I said coldly, looking down at her hand on my arm, at which point, somewhat to my surprise, she removed it. But she hadn’t finished.
‘I’ll have you know we’re getting married, Luc and me,’ she said.
Luc and me? Surely that should have been ‘Luc and I?’ I nearly corrected the woman, only saving myself at the last second. You could imagine the fallout. It would have been Luc’s fault. His mania for proper English had infected me.
‘Is that so?’ I said diffidently.
‘Yes, it is so, or at least it was until you stuck your oar in. Not that you matter. But I know your game. From the moment you arrived, you’ve been trying to get your little feet under the table.’
‘Actually, I’ve got quite big feet.’
‘Oh, fuck you!’ she shrieked in my face and took a step towards me. For one hideous moment, I thought she was actually going to hit me. But maybe assault was a bit too far for Caroline, even in meltdown. ‘You and your stupid jokes,’ she drawled, her voice dripping with scorn. ‘Do you know something? That’s precisely what everybody thinks you are – a joke. You’re a fucking joke!’
In silence, I steadily regarded her. There were a number of things I could have said but there wasn’t any point. We’d reached the end of the line. Oddly, however,Caroline seemed to appreciate this herself, as, with a final obscenity screamed in my face, she turned on her heel and stalked out of the hall, slamming the front door so violently behind her that the entry phone emitted its last squeak in this life and fell off the wall. My legs suddenly feeling a bit wobbly, I staggered over to the staircase and, clutching the banister for support, lowered myself slowly down to sit on the bottom step.
God, what an appalling woman. Even if I could not bring myself to take her seriously, I winced at the thought of the shameful little scene that had just passed. She was lying, of course. I could scarcely credit Luc even knew her, let alone believe that he had asked her to marry him. Jules had been right all along. Caroline was a piece of work. And I’d actually been idiotic enough to defend the woman! Breathing deeply in and out, I fixed my thoughts on Luc to dispel the ugliness. And that’s when from nowhere, unbidden, unwanted, like a false note in a delightful arpeggio, a seed of doubt took root in my mind.
What if she was telling the truth?
Jules had told me Caroline and Luc were engaged. If he was right about her being a piece of work, why should he not be right about them getting married? Jules had no axe to grind, nothing to gain by lying. What if it was Luc who was lying, lying to me the way Giancarlo had lied, lying by omission?
I sat very still on the cold marble step, carefully thinking over the night I had just spent with Luc. It wasn’t simply that the sex had been good. Sex had been good with Giancarlo, amazing even. Yet, back then, after we had been together for a while, I had begun tonotice something oddly detached about Giancarlo’s love-making. It was almost as though he was giving himself marks out of ten for performance. Oh, he was enjoying himself all right, but he wasn’t makinglove. He was going through the motions in order to observe the effect. Luc wasn’t like that. Luc had made love tome. Luc had been eager, passionate, tender, but actually a bit clumsy, as if he were out of practice. We both had been. It had made us giggle. But was that precisely the point? Had it all been only for a laugh? Yeah, a quick bit of how’s-your-father with Alix the demon cook is the best joke. What was it Tom had called me? Fancy-pants Cradock. Even Tom found me a clown.
Scrabbling in my shirt breast pocket, I pulled out the note Luc had left me that morning. I had kept it there as… as what? A souvenir? A talisman? On the creased piece of paper, I read the words again, the last words, the postscript written in capital letters:DON’T GET SERIOUS!I had taken them to refer to my guilt-ridden wailing when Luc told me that Tom had been killed. I had said that it was high time I stopped playing the fool. What if instead Luc had meant those words to be taken literally? He had meant, okay, Alix, so we’ve been to bed together, but don’t you go getting the wrong idea. It was merely a hook-up, a one-night stand, a casual screw that was never for one moment intended to be serious.
I could not bear it. I could not face Luc. I could not bear to see the contempt in his eyes when he saw that it had meant so much more to me. Because I would not be able to dissemble. I would not be able to pretend it was only a fuck between friends. There was only onealternative.
I had to leave there and then.
I called a taxi to go to the station using the number on the card Luc had given me that first morning at the Villa Matisse. It seemed a lifetime ago. Typically, the taxi arrived within minutes, the way they always do when you’re not in a particular hurry. If you are, they take centuries. But I was in a particular hurry, wasn’t I? I had to be gone before Luc returned. Scooping together all my belongings, I shoved them anyhow into my suitcase and charged downstairs. On the table in the kitchen I left the remainder of the euros Luc had given me with the Villa Matisse entrance key card, debating briefly whether to leave a note. But there was no point. Luc wouldn’t care that I had gone, and I was never coming back. For me, the Villa Matisse was done, over, finished forever.
The taxi driver turned out to be very friendly, the chatty sort. Typical again how you always get one like that when the last thing you want to do is talk. He was English as well, which meant I couldn’t feign ignorance of French. His wife was French, he told me,une Niçoise. He had met her when he had come on holiday to Nice. He knew the Villa Matisse well; he knew Luc very well. They often went out for a drink together. Had I known Luc long? Oh, I was working for him? That was nice. Luc was a nice guy, a good man. Everybody liked Luc.
He chattered on, asking me this and that, apparently oblivious to my strangled responses. I was finding it difficult to speak, my voice blocked by a lump in my throat so huge it was threatening to choke me. And an insidiouslittle whisper in the back of my mind kept distracting me, warning me that I was leaving behind something vitally important, cutting off an essential part of myself which, like an amputated limb, would continue to hurt long after its excision.
‘Which train are you catching?’ the taxi driver then asked, quite reasonably, because who goes to a station without knowing which train they are intending to catch? Did I know? I wasn’t quite sure. But before I could even attempt a reply, however, he suddenly reached forwards and turned up the volume on his car radio. It had been playing faintly in the background.
‘Oh, sorry!’ he cried. ‘But this is good; this is the best.’ And immediately filling the car came the sublime, soaring notes of Jennifer Rush singing ‘The Power of Love’.
The lump in my throat fractured, breaking into a thousand million pieces as I started to weep.
We arrived at the station. Somehow I got out; somehow I paid, blinded by the torrent of tears now coursing down my face.
‘Hey, are you okay, love?’ the taxi driver asked, peering at me in concern.
The announcement board said that the slow train to Milan standing at Quai 4 would be departing in ten minutes. I sat down on a bench. It was cold on the platform. The sun had gone in, and a chilly wind sprung up. Unzipping my case a little, I stuck my hand inside, ferreting around for my jacket. But I’d packed in such a panic that the contents were all over the place. The case felt oddly empty. And then I realised why. My washing was still in the machine at theVilla Matisse. I had one of my sudden mental visions, this time of Caroline in the years to come, presiding over the Villa Matisse dinner table, telling witty little anecdotes to the company at large. ‘Do you know, my poor husband, Luc, once employed a temporary cook? A simply frightful woman. Hardly had to do a thing yet cleared off without a word leaving her knickers in the washing machine.’
I shivered. Might as well get on the train. Hoisting my suitcase up the steps, I was about to heave myself on board when somebody grabbed me from behind and spun me round.
‘Alix! What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
Freeing myself, I looked at who it was. It was Luc. ‘I’m catching the slow train to Milan.’
‘So I see, but why?’
‘There isn’t a fast one until tomorrow.’
