‘Yeah…’ I nod, a little too enthusiastically. ‘Yeah you’re probably right.’ I step away and try to ignore how cold my body feels without his closeness there, how that chaste forehead kiss now feels like a brand. ‘I should go home.’ My voice cracks with false civility, trying far too hard to turn myself into the cool girl who won’t be re-running this moment in my mind thousands of times before I eventually can go to sleep. I push some hair behind my ears and turn towards the door of the workshop.
He doesn’t stop me.
Chapter 16
‘What are you doingthis weekend?’ I ask Archie, stirring my tea a little too vigorously so that it slops over the side of the rim and splatters the cover of the diary on the coffee table. When I got home and started writing, the words wouldn’t come, like I couldn’t actually formulate the sentence ‘I kissed Florian’, so I skirted around them, lying to the only thing that I have sworn total fidelity to until I had drained one of the remaining bottles of red in the apartment and finally gained the courage to admit to it. And then, in a drunken haze, I kept writing until I admitted something so concerning that I had slammed the diary shut and promised to never reread it.
I root around for a tea-towel to dry the worst of the spillage off.
‘What – the weekend in three days?’
‘Yes.’
‘Erm, nothing much… why?’ He sounds concerned, drawing it out. I can’t tell him the truth, can’t let him know that last night I tried to snog my brother-in-law and I’m now looking for any excuse to not have to face that fact. After I had made the largest fuck up of the millennium I left, walked the two kilometres in the cold and dark as some kind of atonement. I would have taken self-flagellation over re-running every detail, groaning at the embarrassment, wondering why I appear to be set on permanent self-destruct mode.
‘Come over.’
‘To France?’
I pause. ‘Yes.’
‘Are you feeling okay, Avie?’ I’m not a fan of this new nickname; it’s pretty useless. It doesn’t shorten my name, just changes it. I think it’s meant to be a joke but I never pulled him up on it before, and to do so now would make it ‘a thing’.
‘I’m fine, just think it would be nice; the weather’s meant to be good, hot even.’
‘Well, I do have some days in lieu? I could see if I could use them up? It’s quiet at the minute. Could put a couple of days either side – long weekend?’ I register the fact that he is framing everything as a question, his voice lilting at the end, ready for me to pounce on him, to tell him no, that he’s got the wrong end of the stick.
‘So, you could maybe come Friday? That would be amazing!’ Three days. He could be here in three days. That means I only need to get through the next 72 hours and then there would be a distraction, someone else I could focus on.
‘It would?’ He sounds sceptical.
I sit on the corner of the sofa, one hand clinging on to the tea, the other on the phone. ‘Yeah, of course it would.’
‘Yeah, I mean— I just thought—’
‘Thought what?’
‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll text my boss and if it’s all cool, I’ll book a flight for later. You have a car there, don’t you, so you can pick me up?’
I think of the silver Fiat probably on the back of some tow-truck on its way back to the airport by now to be inspected. ‘Oh erm, no… long story – no car at the moment.’ I hope he doesn’t ask anything more. ‘There’s a taxi company, I’ll get one to pick you up.’
‘Okay. Wow, not what I thought this call was going to be about.’
‘What did you think it was going to be about?’
‘I don’t know, more gossip about Florian I guess.’ My stomach twists at his name. I see his grin, his body sitting on the counter, his look of total disappointment when I kissed him, the fact I will never be able to take it back.
‘Oh no, same old on that front, haven’t seen him since we last spoke.’ It’s worrying how quickly the lies come.
‘Okay, well maybe I can meet him when I’m there?’
‘Yeah maybe!’ I don’t push the subject.
Archie eventually hangs up after once again asking whether I was being serious. As soon as his voice disappears, the regret kicks in, the kind that slaps you immediately after you make a bad decision. He sounded so shocked, that even though I had worked hard to build up this wall that made boundaries clear and uncrossable, here I was opening a door, letting him in and the possibility of more. I try the radio, let it buzz into existence until it crackles out its latest rendition of a new Europop hit. I try to start prepping something for dinner but keep having to triple check every detail on the recipe because as soon as I look away from my phone, I forget. After my second attempt at caramelising onions begins to char, I throw it away, pan and all.
Even though the thought of running into Florian is sickening, I need air. I need to do something other than sit and marinate in the shame, so I grab my jacket and head out onto the street. I skirt the edge of town, just to make sure I don’t see him, and eventually wind my way towards the hotel.
‘Hi.’ I smile at the receptionist who barely glances in my direction. ‘I’m looking for someone… a resident.’
