Recognising that Nicolas is likely to be some time with his fan, I turn my attention beyond the reading room, to a tiny space above the stairs where there are books on one wall, a day bed and typewriter, and anoticeboard –The Mirror of Love– which is covered in customer notes.
‘Are you going to leave a note?’ asks Flynn, appearing beside me, after I’ve read a good few of them.
‘Maybe,’ I reply, not entirely sure what I would write, not sure either how I feel about Flynn’s sudden appearance. I feel suddenly tight, mirroring his guardedness, compared to the lightness of being with Nicolas. ‘What about you, are you tempted?’
He scoffs with a shake of his head, his hair free of the product from earlier, and now wearing a sweater and jeans rather than the three-piece suit from the train.
‘Why not?’ I ask.
‘It’s for the romantics, not someone like me,’ he says, but there’s something in his eyes, a slight disappointment perhaps, that makes me wonder if really, he’d like to.
‘Someone like you?’ I ask, taking a seat on the daybed, curious to know how he sees himself. I catch a trace of his sandalwood cologne.
‘I’m a pragmatist, not a romantic,’ he says, that look again sneaking into his gaze.
‘You think one is exclusive of the other?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know,’ he says, fidgeting with his watch strap.
I watch him for a moment, the image of the elegant woman in the bar springing into my mind.
‘These daybeds are used by writers and artists who stay to write or create while helping out in the bookshop,’ he tells me.
‘I didn’t know that,’ I say, liking that he did, trying not to dwell on who the woman might be.
‘I did it for a week when I was a student.’
‘Get out of here!’ I laugh, feeling my brow knit in confusion.
‘What’s funny about that?’ He smiles wryly, clearly enjoying my surprise.
‘Nothing at all,’ I smile back, wondering if beneath Flynn’s wooden exterior lies a romantic after all.
19.
FRAN
When I mentioned to Ginny that I was heading to the Pompidou Centre, she asked if she might join me, and I agreed. The two of us chatted amiably as we strolled through the gardens close to the hotel, through the Jardin des Tuileries, memories of Alistair springing to mind, and on along the banks of the Seine, past the Louvre towards the modern masterpiece that is the Pompidou Centre. As we walked, I explained that I’d need a little time when we got there, to revisit a particular piece of art alone, that might in some way help me with the idea for the next book.
Having stood in wonder at the spectacle of the building for a while, I leave Ginny to explore on her own,and find myself being pulled into the vast entrance forum, and up into the huge, external covered escalator. Without map or guidance, I travel to the fifth floor, to the exact spot I remember from mytime with Alistair, after we’d ridden here on our bikes from the Jardin des Tuileries.
‘It’s this way, I think,’ I say, checking my visitor map, Alistair happy to follow my lead. And before long, having navigated the space easily, we’re standing in front of Chagall’sLes Mariés de la Tour Eiffel.
‘It gives me goosebumps,’ I say, mesmerised by the depiction of a large white cockerel transporting a bride and groom, the Eiffel Tower standing strong in the background.
I half expect Alistair to dismiss it, to call it modernist mumbo-jumbo, but he doesn’t.
‘Me too,’ he says, putting his arm around me and leaning in.
As we stand admiring the painting, I allow myself a little fantasy, to wonder if this is to be Alistair and me, the bride and groom, whisked away over a Parisian backdrop as if in a dream.
When Carly discovered the Pompidou ticket on the floor of the taxi, I found myself conjuring up Alistair as the perfect romantic hero of my next book, the love who’d got away only to be rekindled thirty years later. But now, standing here without him, thirty years on, I’m struck by something different. In the painting I see new details, things I hadn’t seen last time: a village at risk of ruin, an upside-down angel, various symbols of both French and Russian life, and I find myself thinking not of Alistair but of Robin, and the painting I started back home, clearly a pastiche of this one.
Sitting on a bench opposite the painting, I’m transported back to when Robin and I first met. He’d comeup from London to Glasgow, to give a lecture on the author–editor relationship to my creative writingMAcohort. His talk had been relaxed and engaging, and he’d told funny anecdotes about the publishing industry. I’d sat in the small lecture hall thinking how worldly he was, how experienced and established he was in his field, that one day I’d like to be as successful as he was.
We didn’t meet at the reception after the talk, despite our eyes meeting several times across the room. I’d admired his dark wavy hair, the depth of his mahogany eyes, the ease with which he spoke to everyone he met. There was something commanding about him, despite his medium frame which leant more towards soft than muscular. He wasn’t conventionally handsome but there was something about him – a confidence in his own skin – that drew me in.
After the evening was over, I went to my car, intending to drive straight home, to the house where my mother had died only a month before, and where my father remained, unshaved and unkempt, barely able to get out of bed to open the gallery doors. Elsa and Bill had stepped up, running the business together, despite their own wavering grief. And I was there too, having given up my life in London almost six months earlier to care for Mum full-time. But none of it helped; my father was unable to be consoled. It felt as if we were living in a house stripped of its soul.
