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Chapter Thirty-Four
Elda remained in Paris. She had stood, thirteen days ago, at the Gare de Lyon as the departure board to Avignon ticked over. She’d seen her platform number and hesitated a moment too long at the sing-song voice of the announcer. It was enough to know she wasn’t going to leave. She might even have wanted to go home. Fuelled by coffee and fresh pastry, she had made a plan. Without uttering a word, she made her way across the city to the outskirts, where the real people lived, and to the apartment of her only French friend, Sylvie.
“Oui.” Sylvie’s tone had been sharper than knives when Elda pressed her intercom.
Within a few moments, the ancient double doors flung open, and Sylvie stood back to let Elda into the cool foyer.
Two weeks later, Elda laid on a rigid futon bed in the living area of Sylvie’s flat, counting the sections of the wicker blind at the window. Elda sketched in her book with both legs outstretched. Her muscles were tired, and she craved more sugar.
“Are you sick? What is wrong with you?” Sylvie looked up from the textbooks piled on her kitchen table. There were six empty bottles of Kronenbourg on the floor.
“Nothing. What do you mean?” Elda dragged herself across the tiled floor to close the shutters.
“Walks by the river. The same songs on repeat. Sketching in your book non-stop. Eating every time I look at you. Are you sick?”
As ever, Sylvie shone a light on Elda’s worst attributes. She was lost. At first, Paris had been a distraction. Elda was seeing out her mourning period in a magnificent city, and she had plenty to keep her busy. She devoured the exhibitions, sat at the back of churches with a rosary, ate from patisseries on street corners, and listened to accordion music without throwing money in the hat.
And she found comfort in long, meandering conversations in the flat, shifting between her bad French and Sylvie’s rude English.
But there was a different emptiness emerging. Something was pulling at her thoughts and her body every day. She couldn’t shake the thought of Charlie and what she was doing back home.
“Why are you still here?” Sylvie asked as she fried onions and courgettes.
Elda had missed the frankness of Parisians. She smiled and tried to answer simply. “I don’t want to go home, and I don’t want to move on. I’m stuck.”
“Meaning,Iam stuck withyou. You feel like Paris owes you an explanation?”
“Maybe. That’s a curious question.” They both laughed. “I do actually. This place has done me over every time I’ve been here. It’s about time it served up some excitement and adventure.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s supposed to be a magical place. People come here to fall in love and find their artistic purpose. I’ve only ever fallen out of love and lost everything.”
Sylvie made a sound that meant something in French but just sounded like a big wheeze to Elda.
“Paris owes you nothing. You brought terrible people with you, and you gave up your painting. Face it; you’re to blame.”
Sylvie pulled a cigarette from her pack of Gauloises and lit a match. She blew smoke across the small kitchen table and picked at her red lip. Elda considered whether Sylvie might be right. She shuffled the memories around in her mind. Her shoulders sank as she remembered her own part in the chaos and how powerless she’d been in her life. “What can I do? What the hell am I doing?”
“Ah, well, that is the question, darling.”
“I’m serious. I don’t know what I’m doing.” Elda sighed, holding a cushion to her chest.
“You don’t have a rudder.” Sylvie flicked her cigarette into an ashtray.
Elda bit back a comment about how close it was to the food. “Yep. Rudderless.”
“Your mother is a shit. Useless.” Sylvie’s expression was dead serious.
“Well, I wouldn’t put it exactly in those terms, but yeah. She’s done bugger all with the funeral or the admin. There’s tonnes still to do when I get back.”
“So you are going back.” Sylvie peered through the steam. “What is bugger all?”
“It meansnothing.” Elda pushed the image of mounting paperwork from her mind. “Plus, Jack is being a constant nag and worrier. His heart is in the right place, and I do love him, but I can’t stand any more questions. It was bad enough when I was at home, now he’s just texting me every day.”
“And Charlie? Where are we today with Charlie?” Sylvie held a glass of wine at her lips.
“I told you.Charlie is obsessed with becoming a silk or whatever at work, something I cannot even comprehend because it looks to me like it takes twenty years to even get a promotion, and you just stay locked at the same firm forever. She couldn’t spare the time for me when I was caring for my dying grandmother, so what hope have I got any other time?” Elda knew, deep down, that Charlie’s distance wasn’t about work, but she couldn’t put words around what was happening between them. “I’ve put her out of my mind.”
