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49
February 2018
Rachel dropped her sunglasses from her head to her nose and grabbed the handle of her pull-along case. The winter sun was noticeably warmer here in Nice, with its extra few degrees of proximity to Africa, than in London. She held her face up to it and closed her eyes for a moment, soaking it in. Then she turned and headed into her hotel. The time was 10 a.m.; Michael’s son’s school day ended at 4.30 p.m. She had all day to meander, to shop, to eat, to relax.
As she unpacked in her hotel room she remembered where she was this time last year: the wooden stilt house in the Seychelles with the bed that was wider than it was long. She thought of the silly little props she’d packed into her suitcase that had seemed innocuous at the time, a bit of fun, but that had fractured hermarriage. But she knew that if it hadn’t been then, it would have been another time, another trigger, another ‘mistake’. Michael Rimmer was a timebomb waiting to go off and now she just wanted to know that she was not alone in this world.
She wanted to know if he had raped Lucy too.
Marco’s school was in a rough suburb called L’Ariane that looked nothing like any part of the south of France that Rachel had ever seen or envisaged before. Tower blocks loomed overhead, freeways knitted together in angry graffitied tangles, empty shops were shuttered behind cold metal grilles. She pulled her puffa coat together and zipped it up to cover her expensive-looking outfit, then she pulled up her hood, even though the sun was still warm.
The school was behind a high brick wall, the sun glowing gold between two six-storey blocks. The campus was huge and looked more like a prison compound than a school. A sign by a gated entrance said ‘COLLÈGE’ with an arrow pointing ahead. Other parts of the school were signposted at two other entrances. One said ‘PRIMAIRE’. The other said ‘PETITE ÉCOLE’. Rachel realised she had no idea which part of the building she was meant to be waiting outside; all she knew was that Michael’s son was around eleven. She didn’t know what class he’d be at in school in the UK, let alone in France. It was nearly four thirty, and groups of parents were beginning to cluster around each entrance. She turned on her phone and looked again at the photo that Jonno had sent her. A shot taken from the school’s online newsletter, accompanying an article about a class trip to the aquarium. He was third from the right, taller than his peers by two inches and with a thickmop of dark wavy hair and a somewhat arresting attitude.M. Rimmer.
Rachel had assumed that Michael’s son would be at a private school, or an international school, a school with views of the ocean and palm trees in the grounds and children in uniforms clutching folders. She had assumed that Lucy would be like her: alone, but comfortable. She had pictured her playing her violin in an ensemble, her hair held back in a chignon, seated in front of red velvet curtains. She had imagined her to be bohemian, arty, shabby chic. But this school did not speak of bohemia or shabby chic, it spoke of poverty, and for the first time it occurred to Rachel that maybe Lucy was poor.
She saw some children start to emerge from the gate nearest her and watched quietly from under her hood. They looked around the right age group, early teens, so she waited where she was, her eyes not missing a child as they passed. And then she saw him. It was definitely him. Taller than his friends. Better-looking than them too. A hint of Michael, but much more of someone else with his thick mop of hair, the slightly wild, uncaged look of him. There was a boy on his left with a shaved head, carrying a Minecraft rucksack. To his right was a small blond boy wearing a dark woollen hat and a red puffa coat. Marco bumped fists with both of them in turn and then peeled away. He didn’t look around for a parent as some of the other children did but headed instead towards the entrance labelled ‘Petite École’, where he smiled at a teacher standing at the gate and held out his hand for a tiny girl with golden-tipped ringlets and took from her a pink and gold rucksack with tiny furry animals hanging from it.
Rachel flinched. A sibling. Marco had a sibling. That was another thing that Rachel hadn’t expected. But why not, of course why not? Why wouldn’t Lucy have another child? Or maybe more? She wondered if Michael even knew about this girl.
She fell into step behind them and followed them to a bus stop and then on to a cold, creaky bus that travelled for over half an hour before finally pulling off a highway and on to the bustling back streets of Nice, where the children disembarked. They walked for nearly twenty minutes through the city until they reached the far end, by Castle Hill, and she followed them to a scruffy blue house, built high up the winding coastal road, with grimy, sea-salt-encrusted windows overlooking the ocean on one side and grimy, car-exhaust-mottled windows overlooking the street on the other. Marco used a key to let them in through a scuffed, peeling door painted with the words ‘Maison de la Mer’ and then they were gone.
Rachel didn’t know what to do now. The sun was growing low and fat, tilting lazily towards the horizon. The temperature began to drop. She thought of her warm hotel room with its squishy bed and towelling robes. She thought of a meal in a candlelit bistro or brasserie. Behind the dirty windows she saw moving shadows, lights going on, curtains being pulled across. In the lowest window she saw a small man with a moustache and a scrubby beard sitting at a computer in a scruffy room with peeling paint on the walls, his face lit by the screen. A button by the door said ‘Concierge’.
Rachel stood for a moment, her fingertip extended towards it, weighing up her options. She could ask the building manager whichroom Lucy was in, and then what? Her cover would be blown before she’d even decided what she wanted to do. But she couldn’t stand out here all night either. Lucy and the children probably wouldn’t be going out now – it was getting dark – but as she thought this, she heard noises behind the front door and quickly moved out of the way; she stood in the next doorway down studying her phone. Glancing up, she saw the children leave the hostel, followed a second later by a willowy woman with long dark hair swept over one shoulder, a velvet coat, lace-up leather boots, and an instrument case slung across her back. On her head she wore a beanie hat with a furry pom-pom. The girl wore earmuffs now and the boy had a thick scarf wound high around his neck and a pair of ski mittens.
She followed behind them for ten minutes as they walked across town towards the centre. Soon they were in one of the central squares, lit up for the evening with streetlights and fairy lights and the inviting glow of restaurants and bars on all four sides. Here Lucy and her children stopped. Rachel took a seat on a bench opposite and watched as Lucy laid out a yoga mat behind her, and then a rug. The two children sat on the rug and opened the bags they’d carried with them. Lucy opened her violin case and brought out her instrument. She pulled off her woolly hat and tidied her hair. She applied some lipstick and took off her shapeless coat, revealing a fitted black dress, tiny at the waist, with a soft grey cardigan and a silky neck scarf.
Rachel stared at her, hungrily. There she was. There was Lucy. The apparition turned flesh and bone. Although even here, in three dimensions, there was something diaphanous about her, something not quite real. She looked as if she could fade away into the cold night air, like a frozen breath. And she was beautiful. Sobeautiful, in a way that Rachel, who had always considered herself to be fairly good-looking, had never been beautiful.
It was five thirty. The day was growing dark now. The restaurants were beginning to fill. The townsfolk and a smattering of out-of-season tourists were beginning to promenade. She watched Lucy angle the violin to her chin and then apply her bow to its strings and burst into a rousing version of ‘Titanium’. This was so unexpected to Rachel that she almost laughed out loud. She’d been imagining Beethoven, Vivaldi, not David Guetta.
After that Lucy played a very snappy version of ‘Valerie’ and then an Adele song and she played these poppy songs seriously, with her heart and her soul. Nobody stopped, nobody threw any money into the upturned bowler hat at her feet. Rachel pulled her purse from her handbag and took out a twenty-euro note. She stood in front of Lucy and watched her until she hit the last notes of the Adele song and then she clapped her hands together and smiled and said, ‘Wow. You are amazing.’
Lucy smiled, but it was a guarded smile, the sort of smile that someone who feels constantly under threat would use. ‘Thank you. I appreciate that.’
Her accent was cut-glass English, like the girls at Liberty, like all girls who’ve never tried to fit in anywhere by flattening, lengthening, twisting their basic elocution, because it never occurred to them that they needed to.
‘Here.’ She handed Lucy the twenty-euro note.
‘Oh,’ said Lucy, looking at the note in surprise. ‘That’s very generous.’
‘Not at all. You’re very talented. And I guess business is slow this time of year.’
‘Painfully.’ Lucy stared at the note in her hand for a moment, before folding it in half and tucking it into the pocket of her dress.
‘Can I get you a drink?’ Rachel asked. ‘Something warm, maybe. Avin chaud? Something for the children?’
‘Oh. Actually. Yes. Avin chaudwould be amazing. That’s so kind. Thank you so much.’ She turned to the children behind her and said, ‘This kind lady has offered to get you a drink. Would you like hot chocolates?’
The children both nodded and Rachel smiled and said, ‘Right then. Twovins chauds, two hot chocolates. I will be right back.’
As she waited for her order, she watched Lucy put her violin back to her chin and then play ‘The Whole of the Moon’ so beautifully that it made Rachel want to cry.
She took the drinks back to Lucy’s pitch and handed the hot chocolates to the children who both saidthank you very muchwith a hint of French in their accents, and she placed the wine on the pavement by Lucy’s feet, who smiled at her over the top of her violin. Rachel applauded again at the end of the song and Lucy gave her a small bow.
‘That was so beautiful,’ said Rachel. ‘Did you have a classical training?’
Lucy laughed wryly. ‘No. Most definitely not. I was taught by someone who had a classical training, but she preferred to play pop, so that was what she taught me.’
