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His lack of courage didn’t seem to matter anymore.
‘Maybe I should go,’ he said.
It would be better to get it over with, Noémie thought, than face a week of torturous goodbyes.
‘Go. I don’t hate you.’
Dan lifted his leg from the roof tiles and hopped athletically back into the room. Noémie watched in silence as he picked up his satchel and began to fill it with a haphazard selection of his belongings: two shirts from the hanging rail, as many socks from the drawer as he could grab in one hand, a book, of course, though she was sure it wasn’t his—
‘C’est à moi,’ she said.
‘What?’ He lifted his head. His face was wet with tears.
‘That one’s mine.’
He looked at the book. ‘Oh.’ He shook his head, as if to wake himself from a bad dream. He handed the book to her. ‘Sorry.’
She looked at the book. Valérie Perrin. She put it down on the window ledge. Her head hurt.
Dan was tying his shoelaces. Once he was done, they were finished.
Maybe, she thought, maybe the better thing was not to waste the time they had left.
‘Don’t go,’ she said.
‘No. You were right. Iamchicken. It’s better, for both of us, if I go now.’
‘Perhaps.’
It simply didn’t matter what her brain said. Every fibre of her body wanted him near. She pulled at the edge of his jacket, drawing him closer.
He stood still, hardly breathing, his hands stuffed defensively into his pockets. She closed her eyes and let her head lean against his chest. She could feel his heart pounding.
‘Alors,Dan,’ she said. ‘Are you brave enough to stay?’
A Star Falls
It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born.
Ulysses, James Joyce
It was the bounce of the mattress that woke Claire. Ronan had left the bed. He was rustling something on the floor, probably rooting in his jeans pockets for his phone, she thought. The studio door opened and closed again.
Suddenly alert, listening hard, Claire heard his steps on the stone staircase. He’d left.
She sat up. The room was shuttered dark, but she patted the wall above her head until she found the light switch. She looked around, finding it hard to believe he wasn’t there. Heart thumping, she picked her dress off the floor and pulled it on, grabbed her cardigan with one hand as she opened the door with the other, and ran after him.
‘Ronan!’ A whispered shout. ‘Wait.’
While she wrestled with the mechanism of the front door, she heard the definite slam of the wooden gate. She ran across the courtyard and pressed her palm hard against the button to open the lock. She pulled back the gate and stepped through to the street outside. He was gone. Damn him. On the opposite footpath, a man was holding a wheelie bag with one hand while unlocking his door. He didn’t turn around. A taxi disappeared around the end of the street.
The stone cold of the footpath on her bare feet penetrated Claire’s consciousness. She should get shoes, at least. Turning back to the grey gate, she stared at the keypad. Blank. What was the bloody number? 5247? Nothing happened.Calm. Think.5427? The lock clicked. It would all be fine. He was probably just going for a run. She tapped the same number, 5427, into the keypad at the front door. Another reassuring click. When was the last time Ronan went for a run? Probably more than two years ago, during those first lockdown days, when they were both going nuts. Slower now, barefoot padding up the stairs, facing the closed door of the studio, tapping again on the buttons of the box for the studio key, knowing as she opened the box, there would be no key. He had taken the key; of course he had. He’d be coming back. He had taken the key so that he could get in without waking her. That made sense.
She walked two steps down the staircase, stopped. Grey light was seeping from the glass dome in the roof. She retreated into the shaded recess of the studio entrance and tried shoving the door, just in case, but it didn’t budge. She put her back to it, remembering earlier, the feeling of her spine against the other side of it. She slid down to the floor, pulled her knees to her chest, and stretched out her cardigan until it covered her toes.
What was he doing? Didn’t he know she’d panic if she woke up alone? What was he thinking? Her mind rewound through their last conversation. What more could she have said? She was sorry, and she was tired. She seemed to go to sleep and wake up again with those words on her lips: sorry and tired. Sorry for being tired, and tired of being sorry. These were her thoughts, around and through, over and over, since Mabel.
Claire felt her head fill with heaviness. She let it drop to her knees. She wrapped her arms around her legs and pulled them closer.
