Later, when the sun has begun to set and the candles on the cake have been blown out, while Noémie is making dutiful conversation with Seb’s parents, she sees him follow Clara out to the corridor. Noémie excuses herself under the pretence of wanting a cigarette, stands silently in the shadows and listens to what her partner does not want her to hear.
‘You didn’t tell me you have a girlfriend.’
They’ve stepped outside, into the evening. Seb is still silent.
‘No, right,’ Clara continues. ‘Why would you?’
‘I should have told her,’ Seb says. ‘About you.’
‘Might have been smart.’
A long silence. Noémie wonders what passed between them. How much of it is still out there, waiting to pass.
‘Forty,’ Seb says. She can hear that he’s lit a cigarette. ‘Did you celebrate?’
‘Are you asking if I had a party and didn’t invite you?’ Clara says. After a moment, she modifies her tone. ‘My party days are over,’ she says. ‘And Nora’s haven’t started yet.’
‘She’s doing well in there.’
Clara doesn’t seem to know how to respond to this. Noémie can hear in Seb’s voice that he’s had more to drink than she realised. He wouldn’t be speaking like this, without lubrication.
‘I’m sorry about your mum,’ he says. ‘Augie told me. I should have messaged.’
Clara’s voice becomes brittle, bound to snap. ‘Why would you?’ she says. ‘We’d broken up.’
Noémie feels something in her palm. She looks down, realises that she’s crushed her own unlit cigarette. She grinds the tobacco into powder between her fingers. On the other side of the threshold, her boyfriend and his ex stand in silence. You’d only know that they were there from the crackling embers, the occasional long exhale.
‘When do you leave?’ Clara says.
‘A couple of months.’
‘What will you do there?’
‘I don’t know,’ Seb says. ‘I need to change something. I need to do something. Ever since—’ He breathes out slowly. ‘I’ve spent the last five years wandering around, wondering what it’s all for. Sometimes I think I’ve spent my whole life like that.’
Clara says nothing. It’s unlike Seb, to fill the silence.
‘I was thinking about what you said,’ he says. ‘About not forgiving me.’ Another pause. ‘I wanted to know what for.’
Clara snorts. ‘You want specifics?’
‘Well, you did something specific,’ he says. ‘When I said I don’t forgive you, you knew what I was talking about.’
Clara sighs. ‘I don’t forgive you for what you said, when you left. And what you did before that. How you acted, on set. How you were with me. How you made me feel, for the longest time.’
‘I suppose I could say the same to you.’
Clara continues as if she hasn’t heard him. ‘Mostly, I don’t forgive you for leaving.’ Her voice turns, suddenly, tearful. ‘And I know that it’s not my right, because of what I did. But I needed you more than ever, and you left, and then you never came back.’ She sniffs, tries her best to compose herself. ‘And now you’re leaving again.’
Seb has finished his cigarette. Noémie hears the sound of his boot grinding against the pavement, and she realises that she’s biting back tears herself. The worst thing isn’t that Clara wants to ask him to stay. It’s that Seb wants her to ask, too.
‘I regret it,’ Seb says, into the silence.
‘What?’
‘What I said,’ he says. ‘Before I left the chateau.’
Clara’s response comes a moment late. ‘You said you wished you’d never met me.’
