‘Do you think she saw anything?’
‘Saw what, Ava? We haven’t done anything.’ He lets go of my hand as we get to the door where Madame Grenaud is waiting to sweep him up under her arm, he turns his head around to me before being swamped by his well-wishers and with a wink he mutters, ‘yet’. My head fills with every delicious detail that I had worked hard on trying to ignore, allowing myself the pleasure of private reruns of how it felt to be touched like that, to want to do nothing so badly as to rip his clothes off that I was blind to my surroundings, dumb to whether we had been five seconds or five minutes.
I lean against a wall, away from where Florian is being shown like a pageant girl to some expensive-looking men in expensive-looking suits. I like looking at him from a slight distance; it’s like I can see him more clearly, the whole picture, not just a fragment of an emotion. I think of Ettie, of how he could never quite give up on his little brother, that he always knew that this version of Florian would be worth sticking around to see. He just couldn’t quite make it to the finish line himself. When another person pats him on the back I decide to head towards the bathroom.
‘Avoiding the crowds?’ I look in the mirror above the sink to see Madame Grenaud watching me from the door of a cubicle. I try to not shrink away from her gaze. Ettie had joked that you had to treat interactions with his mother the same way you would with a black bear: stand tall and don’t run.
‘Something like that.’
‘Me too,’ she shrugs.
‘Why? Your son’s the man of the hour, isn’t that what you want?’
‘Ha.’ She comes to the sink next to me, we continue to catch glances at each other through the mirror as if looking directly at each other might turn us both to stone. ‘People keep talking to me as if I know who he is.’ She rummages into her bag for a lipstick and begins applying it delicately to her lips, pursing and unpursing, letting the vagueness of her comment stick. She always had a quality about her that I imagined some celebrity would have: the ability to say anything, do anything and people would listen. She could make reading the weather forecast sound momentous.
‘I don’t think anyone knows who he really is.’ I pull a couple of handtowels from the wall, dry my hands quickly and then manage a half smile before grabbing my bag. ‘Have a nice evening, Maxine.’
‘I think that’s a lie, Ava,’ she says as I reach for the doorhandle, within touching distance of freedom, so close to getting out of this altercation unscathed. ‘I think you know him better than most people.’ I stop, try to ignore the daggers in her voice. ‘And by the looks of things earlier, it’s all getting a little incestuous, wouldn’t you agree?’ I don’t turn around. I let her comment soak into me, the implication, the venom, the satisfaction that here I am, the girl she always knew I was, one who clearly never loved her favourite son as much as I should have.
I open the door and disappear back into the noise.
The gallery’s attendees are thinning out. I look at my watch: it’s nearing ten and these things rarely lasted until the early hours, especially on a Monday. Florian’s fans have aged significantly, and he is now being cornered by four elderly ladies who lay their hands on his arms and tell him how wonderful he is. I slip in next to him, stringing my arm through his. He looks mildly alarmed that I have broken the wall between us, the private and public spheres of physical touch.
He leans over to me whilst one lady is deep into telling her crowd a story. ‘You okay?’ he murmurs.
‘Your mother,’ I manage with a grimace. Something passes over his face – anger? An understanding? It’s hard to translate but his hand snakes its way around my waist and rests itself on my hip. I feel the weight of it, the way it pulls me into him, the way it feels like the most intimate thing we have done and yet we’re still fully dressed.
One by one the crowd disperses until it’s only waiting staff and a few stragglers. Florian gestures to the door and I follow him. As he holds open the door I look back for any signs of Madame Grenaud.
‘She’ll have gone home.’
‘Thank God.’ It’s cold out, there’s a wind that ricochets off the wide bend of the river – the end of the premature heatwave. Florian throws something heavy and warm at me from where he stands a few metres ahead, arms crossed, jacketless.
He drops back, offers me the crook of his elbow as we walk up the sideroad. ‘What did she say to you anyway?’
I think about telling him, but I don’t see what good it’d do; it would only mean that I stoke an already established fire. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
Florian stops as if the thought is only just dawning on him. ‘How are you getting home, Ava?’
‘Not sure,’ I shrug, play the idiot. ‘I hadn’t planned that far ahead.’
‘That’s very adventurous for you.’
‘Well, I figured that if this whole plan blew up in my face then I would probably have enough time to call another taxi.’
‘And if your plan worked? How were you planning on getting home then?’ He smiles, watching me try to grapple with some excuse.
‘Like I said, hadn’t thought that far ahead.’
We stop next to my beloved old car. ‘Fine, I’ll drop you home.’ He sighs dramatically, patting the bonnet of the car with his hand. ‘Or better yet…’ He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the keys, swinging them from his finger.
‘I’ve had a drink.’
‘Thank God. I’ve had two.’ He throws the keys at me and immediately heaves himself into the passenger seat. I reluctantly make my way to the driver’s door, pull it twice until it eventually gives way and I smooth out the dress before slipping into the seat.
The familiarity hits me again, how it feels like my own personal time-capsule, the smell of the cigarettes still ingrained into the leather. ‘How does it feel?’ he asks.
I grin at him. ‘Like yesterday.’
