He takes a moment, runs a nail down the grooves of his tumbler, eventually returning his gaze towards mine. ‘Freer.’
I cast him a quizzical look.
‘It’s like a dead end: work, family, home,’ he continues. ‘The only escape comes from this.’ He lifts his glass and shakes it.
I listen to the ice cracking.
‘Who’s at home?’
‘My wife and son,’ he sighs, shaking his head.
‘Tell me something about her,’ I say, beckoning the barman for two glasses of water.
He shrugs. ‘What’s to say. She’s rarely satisfied with anything I do. When I’m away she wants me home, when I’m home she wants me away.’
‘Are you away frequently?’
He nods. ‘For work.’
‘Has it always been that way?’ I ask and, enjoying the analysis, I’m reminded that in my early forties, Fran’s mother, Nancy, had encouraged me to train as a counsellor when it became clear that Bill and I were not destined to have a child of our own. The change at the time had felt like too much of a jump, from bohemian art school to the responsibility of psychotherapy training, and there was the matter of the gallery to run and income to be made, Bill’s work having always been more commercially viable than my own. But over the years I’ve wondered occasionally if my decision not toretrain was the right one, if I hadn’t missed a great opportunity to work in either talking or art therapy.
‘Since I was old enough to get away.’
‘From what?’
‘From my mother.’ He pauses. ‘She needed too much.’
I allow his comment to disperse, sensing it’s not something he wants to linger on.
‘How did you meet your wife?’ I ask, hoping to turn his attention to better times.
‘Travelling in Thailand. We met at a beach party a mutual friend had put on.’
‘Sounds magical,’ I say.
‘Maybe,’ he replies. ‘Or maybe I was running from something else and she made that go away, for a while.’
‘Such as?’
At this he falls quiet, and I reason it’s too difficult, that the scars are too great to delve deeper.
‘She was the one thing I was certain of,’ he whispers into his glass.
‘Your wife?’
He shakes his head. ‘A girl. Here, in Paris.’ He turns to me, a sadness filling his eyes, and I urge him with mine to go on.
‘I wanted her to be my whole life.’
‘You lost her?’
He scoffs at the memory.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say, reaching out and touching his arm.
He thinks quietly for a time then breathes a deep sigh of resignation. ‘I married my wife instead, and then we adopted our son.’
A thought occurs to me which I mull over before voicing. ‘Perhaps rather than running all these years you’ve actually been searching,’ I suggest. ‘Searching for something to plug the gap that both your mother and the girl left behind. Perhaps your wife senses that. Perhaps she, and your son, feel rejected in the same way you do.’
