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“I bluff my way through all my seminars. Just keep going. No one cares about you.”
Elda loved Sylvie’s honesty. She was a brash and brutal friend, and she was authentic. Everyone else she’d met here had been presenting a palatable version of themselves. There was fashion, art, and music, but it was all a scene that Elda couldn’t keep up with.
“You homesick?” Her friend prodded at her again.
“Of course. I miss everything and everyone. But I’m here now. I’ve made my choices.”
“Life isn’t binary, Elda. You don’t have to abandon one thing to be another.” Sylvie fiddled with a packet of Gauloises cigarettes, signalling their departure. “Why is your face screwed up?”
“I’m thinking.” Elda twisted the hair at the base of her neck.
“You think too much, ma chérie.” Sylvie tutted and bit down on her unlit cigarette.
The next day, Elda covered a single wall of the one-bed apartment she shared with Francis with notes and planned her lessons for the next week. She looked up at Francis, installed at his mahogany desk. His brow was furrowed, but his body was relaxed. He was drawing up proposals for a new workshop space at the university.
Elda wiped at sweat on her forehead and whispered the lecture timetable to herself, searing it to her memory. She’d been bunking on his sofa since she’d outstayed her budget at the hotel. She had struggled to find anywhere to rent with no cash up front and couldn’t fathom the French guarantor system to get a place of her own yet. She’d only packed up a few clothes, her sketch pads, and painting tools. Jack was due to ship the rest over when she had somewhere more permanent.
She wished he was here with her. He’d fill her up with stories and love. But she was alone, learning to live in Francis’s orbit without making too much of a mess. Elda’s world had got a little bit quieter. She missed the natural pattern of aconversation with a stranger in a shop. She couldn’t just switch on the TV for company anymore. She was bombarded with words she couldn’t quite make out and sentences she was struggling to pull apart and put back together.
At every opportunity she played familiar songs in the flat. She tried hard to learn French, but until she was near perfect, no one in Paris would entertain her attempts. So the chances of practicing were limited to her small evening class and Sylvie, if she was in a patient mood.
Francis moved from his desk to rearrange a bookcase. “Elda, are you nearly finished with all these stickers on the wall?” His smooth voice had an edge of impatience.
“Sorry, there’s too much to do, and I just need to get my head around the lectures.” Her hands swept across the landscape of little square notes. If she dipped her eyelids, they could be the pixels of an abstract painting. She ignored a growing bitterness in her mouth. A little piece of her spirit had been left in her studio back at the mill. Her creative confidence was being slowly crushed in this city, and she was questioning whether she could even paint anymore. Whether she had the right to create something here, in the same air in which great masterpieces hung on walls. She was being dramatic, and her self-talk was unkind.
But she also burned with resentment. Their lives were bobbing along to Francis’s rhythm. He had become the author, editor, and publisher of their story, which had somehow become intertwined, and she was frozen with inertia. She was trapped in a job he had found for her, living in an apartment in his name.
Back home in the warehouse, when he’d described his vision for her, it had made her heart race. Now, she begrudged such power.
“Elda, we have dinner plans. What are you going to wear?”
She bit her lip. “Do we? Who with?” She placed her palm across her forehead as the notes peeled off the wall. This was the next in a line of social engagements that made her feel that she was coasting along in the sidecar of her own life.
“I told you. Monsieur Michel from the university. It’s important. Please try to look nice and get yourself together.”
His words were soft, but every one of them was pronounced. Elda knew by now that Francis’s English was blunt, especially when he rushed. But this time, she knew he meant it. She looked across at him, at the crisp white shirt collar framing his stubbled chin. “I will.” Her lip turned up in disgust, and she left an echo of footsteps behind her.
***
A week later, Elda perched on the edge of her desk at the front of the classroom, looking over the bowed heads of her students. She had led the group through their exploration of female desire in sculpture. It had been two hours of slideshows, debate, and insight which had left her exhausted and empty.
She knew the aching need she had was for Charlie. She’d been working later and later at the faculty. She’d creep back into the apartment and crawl onto the futon fully clothed, not wanting to disturb Francis and face his questions. She’d been sinking deeper into listlessness, missing Charlie’s voice, her movement, the crease of her smile. She slept poorly through the night, awoken by vivid dreams. Few things brought joy. In class, her voice would shake when she delivered lessons. She was a fading copy of herself.
After dismissing the class and tidying her folders, she stepped out into the December night. Trees along the main boulevards glistened with strings of lights. She made the metro with seconds to spare and found a window seat.
Shops brimmed with treats and red ribbons hung like bunting between buildings. Rather than kindle a festive fire in her heart, it made Elda feel the void there. She yearned to be home for pub crawls with Jack, cocktails with Charlie, and Christmas dinner with her nan.
When she reached Francis’s apartment building, he was standing on the front step, dressed in a dinner suit, all set to attend the gala organised for funders of the new hall. It had been etched in black permanent pen on the calendar since she’d arrived.
“Have you forgotten?” Francis asked.
“I can’t make it tonight. I’m not well.” Drained of energy, she couldn’t face another social engagement.
“We’ll be late.” Francis stared at her, looking agitated.
“Go on without me.” Elda’s feet rooted to the spot. She wouldn’t move at his command.
“I want to arrive with you,” he said. “Get on with it. I won’t be embarrassed by you.”
