‘Better safe than sorry.’
Chapter 15
Whilst he clatters awayin the kitchen, I launch myself onto a sofa that almost swallows me in its softness and take in the details. There are things everywhere but there is some organisation to the chaos, and it feels like everything here has been chosen carefully for its usefulness first and its appearance second.
There’s another sketchpad on the table already open onto a page with a half-drunk cup of herbal tea next to it; this was what I had interrupted with my phone call. I know I shouldn’t but I can’t help myself: I swipe away the charcoal and pencil shavings to reveal a perfect replica of the cairn from yesterday with two sets of disembodied hands hovering nearby. The breath catches in my throat, knowing that he’s been thinking about it too, drawing it out whilst I’ve been writing it down. It’s the first time I’ve felt sane in the last twenty-four hours.
‘It’s not much but I need to do a shop,’ Florian announces, and I am grateful for the warning so I can sit back, occupy my attention by pretending to look at the pictures on the wall instead. He places a large board of bread, cheese and figs in front of me and then he roots in his pocket and pulls out a corkscrew from his keys, uncorking one bottle of red wine and passing me a large glass. Then he sees the sketchbook. He clears his throat before hurriedly tidying it away into a drawer. ‘Told you you’ll have to excuse the mess,’ he adds with an awkward chuckle.
‘It’s not messy at all,’ I lie, the image of the cairn and my hands,ourhands, stuck on a loop in my head. ‘Thanks for the food,’ I add, reaching immediately for a large chunk of bread and starting to pull it apart, grateful for something to do with my hands.
We fall into an uncomfortable silence and it’s strange because not once since the day that I ran into him have we struggled to find something to say to each other.
He turns and adds a log to the fire, spending too much time poking at it until I can hear it start to roar back to life. I turn my attention to his décor choices. Archie’s flat looked like it was something out of the development brochure and I’m pretty sure that he walked into it one day fully furnished and said he would take the lot. The paintings on the wall were therefore modern, bland and either graffiti or pop-culture based: it was a step up from a replica Banksy poster in a teenage boy’s bedroom but I knew they were there because there should be something on the walls rather than because he actually liked them. Here, in Florian’s house, there is less refinement; the walls are covered with mismatched picture frames nailed up in no particular order with layers of dust gathering on the mounts. There’s no attempt at unification: postcards are placed next to polaroids, next to pictures of statues, letters, oil paintings, a couple of life drawings, a concert poster. And then something catches me off guard: two little boys with toothless grins stare at me in black and white. They’re both shirtless with skinny chests, one slightly taller than the other, both grinning with dimples in their cheeks, sea-soaked curls and freckled faces.
I get up, take my glass of wine and get closer, take them in.
‘We were cute, weren’t we?’ Florian says, standing next to me. The smoke from the fire is pressed into his shirt, his closeness brings me back to yesterday, the feeling of his breath on my neck.
‘Dangerously cute,’ I agree quickly and return to the safety of the sofa. ‘I’ve only ever seen a handful of pictures of him as a kid.’
‘That’s because there aren’t many. Difficult to take pictures of your kids when you aren’t even in the same country,’ he shrugs. ‘The au-pair took that one on the beach at Île de Ré.’
‘Do you have any others? Of Ettie?’ I ask.
‘Erm, a couple, sure.’ He heads over to the bookshelf and pulls out a dusty little album and passes it over. He watches me take in the pages: the christening pictures where even Madame Grenaud looks happy, the obligatory bath photos, the first day of school, a couple of birthdays, Ettie looking older and older in each one, more like the man I eventually met until there aren’t any more. None of the café, none of the occasional Christmas, none of the wedding – none of us at all. I don’t know why I’m disappointed, I wasn’t expecting there to be; but there’s a finality in it now. There won’t be any more pictures of him.
‘I feel like I never took enough,’ I say sadly, setting the album aside and replacing it with another hunk of bread. ‘After seven years of being together you kind of stop thinking you need to capture every moment. The last one I have of us both was a whole year before he died.’ I watch Florian stiffen, his hands folding up to his chest. He is looking at me carefully, eyes narrowing, and then something breaks: he unfolds, marches over to the fireplace and grabs a tattered old book from the mantlepiece. I watch as he pulls something out of the cover. He doesn’t look at it, instead he slumps himself into the chair next to me and passes it over into my hands.
I stare at the two brothers, older in this picture. It’s lovely at first, seeing them again, grinning almost identically to the way they had done in the old picture on the wall but with more lines and stubble on their faces. Then I notice something that makes everything inside me feel heavy because in this picture, Ettie is wearing a jumper I bought him the Christmas before he died, after he had told me he wanted nothing more to do with Florian.
I look up at Florian who can’t quite meet my eye.
‘The other day at the café when you said that I hadn’t seen Ettie for months before he died, well that wasn’t entirely true.’
‘But…’ I start, but my head feels foggy. I don’t know where to begin, how to unravel it all. ‘I need more wine.’ I reach for the bottle but Florian already has it in his hands and he is pouring us both large glasses.
‘I had no idea you didn’t know until the other day. I thought he might have said something.’
‘Why didn’t he tell me? Why lie?’
‘I don’t know, Ava.’
‘But the money—’ It slips out.
‘What money?’
‘The night he took you back to Bordeaux, he took the money out, gave it to you?’
‘No he didn’t.’ Florian looks mildly horrified. ‘Ava, Ettie never drove me back to Bordeaux. He took me to rehab.’
‘Rehab?’ I try the word on my tongue.
‘Yes.’ He looks similarly uncomfortable at the mention of the word. ‘Ettie was the reason I got clean. After I turned up at your door, we spoke. You’d gone to bed and Ettie found me crying on the balcony. I knew things were bad, but I don’t think I realised how bad until I saw the life that you guys were living and it felt so far out of my reach, that kind of safe normality, and it all hit me. Ettie listened, listened as I poured my heart out, and then the next morning he told me to get in the car. He drove me here.’ He points to the picture on my lap. ‘The place I went to was expensive. He paid for it, but it was always a loan. He told me that the next summer I was going to work for him at the café, do a season to pay you both back.’
‘But why didn’t he tell me?’ My voice comes out strained. ‘Why let me believe that you’d taken the money to… carry on?’
‘I don’t know.’ He shakes his head. ‘I guess that maybe he didn’t want to get his hopes up.’ Florian sighs. ‘I’d gone sober before, failed miserably, and each time it got worse. Maybe he was waiting to see if it really worked. Giving your money away for his brother to go to rehab is one thing; for it to fail is another.’
