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‘Is it now?’ She grinned back, getting a little kick of gratification from the fact that he was rule-breaking for her sake. Then again, she thought, it only went to show how much hope he had invested in this trip.
A small silence hovered between them.
‘I must show you what I got in the duty-free,’ Claire said, to break it before it took hold.
‘They don’t call it duty-free anymore.’
‘Do they not? Anyway, look how cute this is.’ Claire unpackaged and displayed on the palm of her hand a diminutive make-up palette.
‘Could you have found nothing smaller?’ said Ronan.
She laughed. ‘No, you’re not appreciating it. Look at this.’ And she demonstrated the mechanism by which a tiny drawer swivelled to reveal some blusher and an even tinier drawer opened to reveal an inch-long eyeliner. ‘It was very expensive.’
‘You were robbed.’
‘But Iloveit! It passed the little dance test.’
‘Thewhatnow?’
‘Before I buy something, I have to ask myself if it makes me do a little dance inside. Look, I got you something, too.’ From under her seat, Claire produced a box containing a bottle of alluring scent. ‘Go on, put some on.’
Ronan opened the bottle and sprayed his neck. He leaned towards Claire then, for her approval.
‘Mmm.’ An involuntary sound. She smiled up at him.
‘And did that also pass the little dance test?’
‘Yup,’ she said, grinning. ‘It did.’
With the tips of his fingers, Ronan turned Claire’s face towards his and brushed back a strand of hair. She felt a flutter in her stomach. She reminded herself how anxiety and excitement can be hard to tell apart. She’d read that somewhere.
For a beat, she let Ronan hold her gaze. His eyes pleaded with her for some sort of assurance. She wanted to tell him that she was trying. She was trying as hard as she could, but a voice in her head warned her not to raise his hopes. She pulled away and started tidying up the rubbish on her tray table.
Ronan swallowed what was left of his champagne in one gulp and crushed the cup. Settling back into his seat, he began to scroll his phone. Claire put her right hand into his left, felt his fingers tighten around hers. One of these days – she just knew it – he’d have enough of her. He’d stop trying, and he’d walk away. Again, she pressed her lips together and breathed in, held it for one, two, three seconds, let it out. She would make it good.
The aeroplane traced the south coast of England, crossed the bustling English Channel and found France. Fewer fields, she thought, and more forest. Little villages with quaint spires pointing skywards. Long, straight roads bisecting the countryside. Cars, all driving on the wrong side. A train.
She remembered the excitement of this, the foreignness, from her only other trip to France. At nineteen, she’d come as a summer au pair to one of those tiny villages just north of Charles de Gaulle airport. Her weekdays were spent making blanket forts with a two-year-old boy, cooking pots of green beans for lunch and remaking the beds before dinner – all with a baby girl on her hip. The children hadn’t done much for her French, but she had loved them. And she had loved the Saturdays spent exploring the city. The papa had joked about how much of a tourist she looked, heading off in her shorts and runners, camera dangling from her neck, but the maman had winked behind his back, and anyway, Claire hadn’t cared. ‘Bah, c’est pas grave,’ she’d muttered to herself, running to the station to catch the RER. Determined to see it all, she’d marched from Les Halles to the Louvre. She’d ticked off theMona Lisa, barely visible from between the shoulders of Japanese tourists. She’d climbed the Eiffel Tower, alone. She had shopped for perfume in Galeries Lafayette, congratulating herself on her independence. If it was lonely, it didn’t matter. She’d believed then that she was just getting started on life, that she would come back with a lover, that the best was yet to come.
That was fifteen years ago. There must be a tipping point in life, she thought, when you start believing the best has come and gone.
* * *
The noise of the plane’s engines changed pitch, and they banked right towards Paris. Claire raised her hand to her left ear.
‘You alright?’ Ronan asked, offering a packet of Polo mints.
‘I’m great.’ She took a mint. ‘Thanks.’
‘You seemed lost in thought.’
‘Not at all, just doing my pelvic floor exercises.’
Ronan opened his mouth to say something, then stopped. A pause ensued while he seemed to consider his reply.
‘We’re nearly there,’ he said, squeezing her hand.
‘We are.’
