‘I’ll pick you up at three on Wednesday.’
‘Are you sure I can’t tempt you inside for a drink? Am I not the definition of sexy right now?’ I gesture to my face, how I know the eyeliner and mascara will be forming little rivers down my face.
‘Quite sure.’ He pats me on the shoulder, groans as he gets to his feet. I watch as he stretches out his long body until he stands there, hands slipping into the comfort of his pockets.
‘I’m really happy you came, Ava,’ he says earnestly. ‘But if you hadn’t, I was going to head here tomorrow anyway. There’s no way on earth I was going to let you get away that easily.’
I am flooded with a delicious relief.
‘I’ll see you Wednesday.’
Chapter 28
Idon’t know whatto wear to a graveyard. I didn’t know what to wear to his funeral either. Mum suggested I wore his favourite colour, but I didn’t really know what that was. And then I cried some more because I would never get the chance to ask him. I’ve never really liked colour at a funeral anyway, it feels wrong. I wanted all the colour to drain out of the world, do a Queen Victoria and wear a little black veil for the rest of my life.
I imagine Ettie sitting on the edge of my bed, rolling his eyes as I stare at the void of my wardrobe, how the clothes are mostly thrown into drawers and sagging off hangers. He would tell me that it didn’t matter, just shove on something and get out of the door. I reach for jeans and a bright-green jumper that we had bought together when I hadn’t realised that a couple’s trip to Prague in March might be a little brisk.
‘Perfect,’ he would say, emphasising the ‘f’. ‘You look like a couple hundred euros.’ And I would hit him and pretend to be offended.
I do my hair, my make-up even, put on my jacket and then sit on the sofa checking whether my phone clock has actually stopped working because once again, despite trying my hardest to be late, I am on time; no, in fact today I am early.
The apartment is strangely calm. I had filled it with as much noise as I possibly could, but typically it’s only now when I have five days left of my tenancy that I realise quite how peaceful it is, how it feels safe and warm and clean, how it feels like mine. I don’t have a place that’s mine when I get off the plane. I have a bedroom with a fresh beige carpet with beige walls and a beige bed. It will be spotless, vacuumed, dusted, there won’t be cobwebs and dust and birds on the walls and it will feel like I am a million miles from home even though I am there.
I reach for my diary from underneath the coffee table; it’s still left open from my session after Florian had dropped me back after the gallery. Amongst the guilt of forgetting why Wednesday was significant were particularly vivid reruns of details I never want to forget: his smile when he saw me, the protective arm around me in the gallery, his jacket on my shoulders. I turn to a fresh page, write the date, press my pen to the first blank line and feel a distinctive and recognisable tremor of inspiration. I close the diary, reach for my shopping bag and throw it in along with some fruit and wine for the meal tonight, Florian had made the decision that he would cook; said that perhaps more space might defuse the tension than sitting at a restaurant for other people to listen.
When Florian rings me to say he’s outside I’m grateful to see the front seat is empty.
He gets out of the car, holds open the passenger door with an outstretched arm. I hover before getting in, take him in. He has gone for the same approach to his outfit as I have, like if we treat this asnormalthen maybe it might feel it eventually.
We stand there assessing each other for a moment, an awkwardness descending that feels so alien now. I place a hand on his shoulder as he presses his lips to my cheeks and then we pause, bodies still locked together and then I lean in, stealing the simplest of kisses. His cheeks flush.
‘I’m never sure what the protocol is,’ he mutters, eyes still half closed.
‘I’m not sure there is one for this specific situation. I think we get to make up the rules.’
His hand slips to my waist. He chuckles and then he kisses me back. ‘I like it.’
‘Is she not coming?’ I ask, gesturing to the empty backseat as Florian thunders down the cobbles, the entire car vibrating beneath us. I know I sound entirely too hopeful.
‘She’s meeting us there.’
‘And does she know thatI’mmeeting her there?’ Florian swallows and then nods a little apprehensively, the ghost of a conversation he clearly hadn’t wanted to have still lingering in the air.
‘She does.’
‘And I’m guessing she wasn’t best pleased?’
He manages a sideward glance in my direction. ‘No comment.’
I feel the saliva dry in my mouth, an all-consuming nausea descending on me. ‘Maybe it’s a bad idea, we can go anytime just you and me…’
‘I’m not doing this on my own.’
Ettie was buried in a town thirty kilometres away. It wasn’t his home. It made no sense. The only connection to the fortress balancing precariously on a hilltop was the fact that the Grenauds had a family vault there, where three generations of his family had rested their own skeletal remains. Whilst I tried to protest, I had been too numbed by Valium and shock, so I quickly gave in.
Ettie and I never wrote a will; I’m sure we would have got around to it eventually, maybe if we ever decided to have kids, but it was never exactly high on his agenda. I came to realise that part of his attraction to me was my age: he could get away with ten more years of pretending that he wasn’t ageing; ten more years of drinking too much; morning, lunchtime and afternoon sex. He wanted lie-ins and cigarettes for breakfast. And I wanted him.
Florian parks the car at the bottom of the hill and we have to walk up a steep cobbled pathway until the dome of the Basilica comes into view.
