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“It can be.”
“But not all the time, non?” Florian’s gentle tone matched his peaceful aura.
“Unfortunately, not. On the whole, synaesthesia is not distressing, but my mother had a more severe variant, and I inherited it.”
Any moment now, he was going to conclude I was several sandwiches short of a picnic. This conversation was only a hop, skip, and a jump away from ‘I see dead people’.
“And is this… synaesthesia…” he stumbled a little over the unfamiliar word, “why you’ve been ill?”
His curious green eyes latched onto mine. It was a natural conclusion to jump to, otherwise, why would I be disclosing it? I didn’t to most people, which begged the question why I had now. On account of the silver probably. Silver spoke to me in a way I’d never been able to fathom, except that some colours were feel-good and some… less so.
“No,” I answered. “But it didn’t help. I think I… ah …ignored the signs that I was overworking—I do that far too much. My friend and business partner, Marcus, is the flair while I’m heavy on the detail. We’re a good team—a big team now.”
“Did your mother’s synaesthesia have an impact on her own death?”
Almost as the words were out of his mouth he was apologising. “I’m so sorry, that is an exceptionally personal question. I shouldn’t have asked.”
I sipped at my rosé. “I don’t mind you asking. And, yes, it did. Actually…” I felt myself colouring, “the therapists said talking was good for me. In the aftermath, most people found it easier to avoid me than to ask about her.”
I recalled the doting mother and her son from a few days ago, as they listened to Florian. So happy, so bloody normal. Bittersweet buttery yellow memories, some too raw to handle, jostled in my head. “She… my mother was exceedingly clever. Gifted, probably. A professor of physics, she was head of a research department at one of the big London universities. Sometimes, I think her brain overwhelmed her, and that’s when the colours—her synaesthesia—became a problem.”
“For you too, yes? When things overwhelm you?”
“Yes, I… I…”
My words dried in my throat and I swallowed around unexpected unshed tears as I studied the tabletop, composing myself.
“Charles? Are you okay?”
Forcing myself to look up, I met his anxious gaze. “Yes, sorry. What I was going to say is that I… I worry I’m going to end up the same way. That I’ll kill myself too, at some point.”
Christ, I didn’t recall even verbalising that to the therapists, although I imagined they’d worked it out for themselves. But just because it was pretty bloody obvious didn’t mean I had an easy time pushing the sentences out.
My green rippled a little, as if threatened by the buttery yellow nudging at its edges. The last time I’d seen my mother, we’d visited the Tate Modern together. Not arm in arm, like the mother and her much younger son from the salt marsh, but together. My mother had been amused by the mushroom-like aerobes floating above our heads, saying they weren’t proper art, and I’d tried to explain that art was more than paintings hanging in rectangular wooden frames, that it could be found all around us. That modern artists were challenging our perceptions, stoking our own creativity, asking us to think in different ways. Ever the scientist, she’d still been dubious and declared the colourful pictures swirling around inside her own head were much better than some of the rubbish people paid to see here. So we’d cut short the gallery trip and headed to lunch. A lunch very much abbreviated after a phone call from Marcus with an urgent business matter, not knowing as I waved her off, still with the phone clamped to my ear, we’d stood in front of our last painting together.
A hand snaked across the table, bringing me back to the present, and warm fingers tangled with mine. Florian’s silver laced itself through the green filling my head. I returned his gaze to find him staring at me thoughtfully, chewing on his bottom lip.
“Mon dieu, you poor, poor man,” he said. “I’m so sorry all that happened to you.”
Conversation lightened after that. I mean, it couldn’t have plummeted deeper. Perhaps out of politeness, Florian was making himself see the evening through. Nevertheless, he declined my offer of going our separate ways, so after finishing our drinks, we walked the short distance back to the house he shared with his grandfather; a couple of tiny fisherman’s cottages knocked together to make a marginally less tiny one. The dark and cool interior smelled of old wood, garlic, and ground coffee, moored in the passage of time. Soothing soft beiges drifted across my vision. The furniture was plain, worn, and homely, the kitchen basic and well-used. I liked it.
Florian’s papi shuffled in. “Finally, Florian,” he grumbled. “My belly thinks my throat’s been cut. And what are you all dressed up for? Are we entertaining Napoleon tonight?”
I stifled a smirk as Florian groaned. “Papi, this is a friend of mine, Charles. I invited him over for dinner. Remember?”
There was no flash of recognition across the old man’s face as we shook hands. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Gilberte.” He squinted at me. “But everyone calls me Papi. Is that accent Belgian? Should Florian have prepared mayonnaise and frites?”
Even I knew how much the French loved to take the piss out of their Belgian neighbours. And it seemed my accent still required some work.
“Non, Papi, relax. He’s English.”
I wasn’t convinced that made things any better. Florian shooed him out. “Go back to your television programme. I’ll call you when it’s ready.”
Chopping something green, Florian instructed me to pour a couple of glasses of boxed local red. Already, my head buzzed from my confession and the rosé on an empty stomach, but what the hell? I was out socialising. Marcus would approve, although he would turn his nose up at the wine—CardBordeaux he called it; these days we only ever drank the best stuff.
“Papi didn’t recognise you, did he?”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so. But he seems happy enough.”
