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‘Did it work?’
‘For a while. And then I thought: fuck, I cannot do this for the rest of my life. My mother would be mad! I had already been offered the place at music college, it was something she had been very proud of. So I packed up and came to Paris, as soon as I could.’
A group of Japanese tourists came thundering up the steps towards us, following a guide waving a yellow flag. I shuffled closer to Léo to let them pass.
‘Is that why Paris means such a lot to you?’
He nodded. ‘My mother was from here, so immediately I felt closer to her, more so than I had in my town.’
‘Where is that?’
‘Limoges. It is a small city in south-west central France.’
‘Why did your mum leave Paris?’
‘She met my father and he was not a big city person. We had a beautiful house near the river, and everything that we could need, but she missed the excitement of Paris. We would sometimes take a trip here together, the six of us, my mother, my sisters and me. We came only once to the Sacré-Coeur. I remember we each had an ice cream and we sat on the steps over there and my mother told us stories about what it was like for her when she was a kid.’
‘Do you still miss her?’
‘Every day. And every day, too, I think about that I did not say goodbye to her. And I still feel very bad about it.’
‘What happened?’
‘I knew that she did not have long left, but I could not bear to see her like that, so ill and on all these different types of medication so that she was hardly ever awake. She had always been so full of life, and so it was very difficult for me to see her like this, lying in a bed, so small and sad.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I can imagine.’
‘So I went out all the time, hanging around the town centre, leaving it as long as possible before I had to go home. And then one day, I arrived at our house and my father was in the kitchen crying, and my sisters, too. I had heard them from the end of the street and I knew, before I set foot inside, that she had gone and that I had missed my chance.’
I swallowed hard. ‘You feel bad that you weren’t with her,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘It has stayed with me ever since. The truth is, in some small way, it is why I came back for you,’ he said.
I looked at him, confused. ‘At Gare du Nord?’
‘I cannot bear to feel guilty or to let anybody down. I cannot stand it, and I do everything I can not to feel that way. Because it takes me right back to that time. And even though I know it is a different situation, a different set of circumstances, I feel almost as bad as I did then.’
‘Is this finally an apology for tripping me over?’ I said, touching his knee with my little finger.
He smiled weakly. ‘Nice try, Hannah.’
A cheer broke out from the bottom of the steps where a street performer was blowing giant bubbles into the air, sending all the children whirling around in a frenzy as they tried desperately to catch one. He looked at his watch.
‘We have to go,’ he said, standing up. ‘It is 1.15 already. I will have to park the bike at the station and telephone Hugo to tell him where it is. He will be mad, of course. Sylvie will go crazy with all her shouting.’
‘I bet she will,’ I said, not moving.
‘Hannah?’ he said, holding out his hand.
I took it and he pulled me up. Except that as we walked back to the bike, he didn’t release me, and I didn’t wriggle free. We let our hands trail between us, mine inside his, his fingers linked through mine. I could tell myself that it was because of what he had just told me, that I was offering him comfort and nothing more. But that wasn’t how it felt. He had turned a terrible day, the worst day, into a series of moments that I would always remember. I’d started to see things more clearly at last, and I thought that part of that might be because of him. We passed a busker playing La Vie en Rose on the saxophone. The moment felt surreal; filmic: the Sacré-Coeur behind us, the warm sun on my skin, the music, and now Léo not letting me go.
