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Nancy refused to tell him anything beyond the bare bones of Caroline’s life. If he asked how Caroline liked her first proper job or enquired about her love life, Nancy shut him down.
‘You’ll have to ask her yourself,’ was all she would say, but Harry didn’t feel entitled.
No, that wasn’t true, he thought now as he pushed off for another, slower length of the pool. The fact was that he didn’t have the nerve.
It was Caroline who had unveiled his affair. She was fourteen. By pure bad luck, Caroline had come home early from school – he would never know why – and caught him with Rita,in flagrante delictoon the rustic pine kitchen table. He didn’t even know how long she’d watched them. He’d enjoyed a shudder of release and opened his eyes to the sight of his only child standing, frozen, in the doorway.
Her face was empty. She didn’t say a word. She turned unnaturally slowly and walked away. He heard the front door slam as he was pulling up his pants. He tripped over Rita’s stiletto and stubbed his toe on the doorframe.
He didn’t manage to catch up with Caroline, and after that she seemed to set up a defensive shield against him. His daughter was polite, cordial even, but she never, ever let down her guard.
It should never have happened. Rita should never have got a pointy-toed foot inside his door. Why couldn’t they, Nancy and Caroline, see that it was only a moment of weakness, that he’d always loved them, only them? Wasn’t a kid supposed to want her divorced parents to get back together? Could a wife stop loving you, just like that?
And then Jenny had given him the damn book. He should have suspected there was something other than business savvy in her insistence. Jenny was out to teach him a lesson. The daughter in the book was revulsed by her father’s adultery. He recalled the word the author had used –revulsion– because it had made him break out in a sweat. Was that how Caroline felt about him? The wife in the novel, because she was strong and good and had done no harm, remade her life and carried on being strong and good and even happy. The husband, because he was short-sighted and greedy and weak, forfeited everything he had ever cared about.
Harry hit the pool wall. He stood up. It took longer, this time, to fill his lungs.
‘Stupid, stupid asshole,’ he muttered, and the words seemed to hang accusingly in the chlorinated mist above his head.
Unless, thought Harry as he swam a fourth slow length of L’Hôtel’s pool, unless he could make Nancy believe that he understood now. It was her trust he’d destroyed, not her love.
He still loved her. He’d never loved anyone else, and he believed that she loved him, too.
No, the only thing to do was convince Nancy that he’d seen the error of his ways. This movie was the thing. The critics might slate it, but he wasn’t making it for the critics. Nancy would understand. She’d see that, even if hewasmaking a fool of himself, it was all for her. Prostrating himself – that’s what he was doing – in abject remorse. He was laying out his true personal valuation, warts and all, for all the world to see. It would work; he was sure of it. The problem was: he wasn’t certain anymore that he had time to wait for her to see the movie.
Harry got out of the pool and made his way back to the wood-panelled bedroom. Nancy would love this place, he thought. She’d crack up over that purple silk coronet above the bed. If he could just convince her to come to Paris, he would convince her of his repentance.
He sat on a purple-silk-covered chair to tie his laces. He looked at his wrist. Dammit – no watch. Where the heck was it?
He tapped his phone. The screen showed 6.45am. He did some mental arithmetic, figured it was 9.45pm in Malibu. She’d be reading in bed. He brought up her number and hitcall. Three rings, then a switch to voicemail. He didn’t know what to say.
End call. He threw the phone across the bed and scratched his head with both hands, then pressed his fingers into his temples, trying to press his brain into action.
He thought of Dan, the kid in the bookshop with his love declared in secret poetry. He stretched for the phone, opened an email and said what he wanted to say.
Nancy,
I know that I was the one who burned the bridges. I was a fool. I knew I was a fool even when I was doing it. I couldn’t seem to figure out how to stop being a fool.
Come on, Nance. Come to Paris. Bring that blue dress, and I’ll buy you a fancy dinner, for old time’s sake.
Love,
Harry
Harry flipped through the tourist information at the back of the room-service menu. He wasn’t in the mood for climbing the Eiffel Tower or battling crowds at the big museums. He didn’t want to stand in lines. Even the bookstore last night had a line to rival Space Mountain. He wasn’t up to it.
His eye caught the entry for La Cimetière du Père Lachaise. Okay, he thought, if he was going to sleep on Oscar Wilde’s deathbed, he might as well go visit his grave.
Kicking for Touch
Claire stared for a while at the back of her eyelids, then opened her eyes to unrelieved darkness. The room, the building, and the courtyard were intensely, stonily quiet, but somewhere beyond the gates, a remote clatter and hum sounded like morning. She sat up, reached over and felt for the handle of the bathroom door, then turned it, letting light through from the small, shutterless window. Her watch showed 7am.
‘Did you sleep?’ Ronan was reaching for his phone.
‘I did,’ she said, though she didn’t think she had.
‘Me too,’ he said, ‘like a log.’
