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‘Did you buy anything nice?’ he said.
It was such a normal question that she couldn’t think, in such extraordinary circumstances, how to answer it. She didn’t know how to begin to tell him about the vintage postcard she’d bought of the view from Sacré-Coeur, or the baby’s bonnet. She was still pondering a reply when a security announcement sounded loudly, first in French and then, again, in English. Passengers were requested to kindly alight from the train and calmly exit the station.
The throng moved, as one multi-legged entity, from the train to the platform and then waited, apparently nonplussed. Ronan enquired of the man nearest him what was happening. Unattended baggage, the man said: a bomb scare.
‘It’s a bomb scare,’ Ronan translated unnecessarily.
Claire felt a surge of anxiety rising in her gut.
‘Let’s just go,’ she said, imagining the news headline about an Irish couple tragically killed in a terrorist attack. ‘We could walk to the next station and get on there.’
‘We’re at the end of the line,’ Ronan reasoned. ‘There won’t be another train until this one moves.’
‘We could find a bus.’
‘That would take hours.’ He put his fingers under her chin and turned her face up to his. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘it’s going to be alright. Just hold on a bit longer.’
She took a breath and another. It didn’t quell the panic. Inwardly, she defended her emotion. This wasn’t unreasonable fear. She only wanted to do what the voice of authority on the intercom told her to do. How was it that some people always seemed to know when it was vital to do what you were told and when it wasn’t?
‘We could pay for a taxi,’ she said. ‘It would be better than dying.’
A few travellers were making their way up the staircase towards the exit, but most remained, waiting, perfectly resigned to their fate. They would live or die together, she thought, looking around at men, women, Parisians, tourists, Black, white, young, old, and all the in-betweens. She was just considering whether she should get out some paper and write some last words when a burly guard jumped onto a bench at the end of the platform and shouted something Claire couldn’t catch. The crowd surged forwards en masse to board the train, and Claire was carried with the wave.
‘What did he say?’
Ronan grabbed her hand. ‘He said, “C’est bon”.’
‘“C’est bon”? That’s it?’
He pulled her with him towards a space at the front of the carriage. ‘C’est bon.It’s all good. That’s all we need to know.’
* * *
Ronan let go of her hand. Gradually, the carriage emptied out, and eventually, they found a seat. As the carriage rocked and swayed around bends, Claire felt her thigh meet his. She shifted her legs away. They didn’t talk at all. They stayed on the train all the way across the river to Saint-Placide.
On boulevard Raspail, they found a busy boulangerie. There weren’t many places open on a Sunday. They queued for sandwiches and yoghurts, then walked to the Luxembourg Gardens. The tennis courts were busy with the pock-pock-pock of many balls bouncing back and forth. Families strolled the paths, mothers pushing prams, fathers chasing toddlers on scooters. Lovers lay on the grass, eyes closed against the sun, which seemed to be actively holding off a dark cloud looming to the north.
Claire and Ronan found a seat in the leafy recess of the Medici Fountain. They sat on a bench, with the picnic food spread out between them. They unwrapped sandwiches and ate without speaking. The sound of water spilling from the fountain into its black pool filled the silence. A small child rang the bell on his bike as he zipped past.
Claire tried out different sentences in her mind but couldn’t decide which, if any, was exactly the truth. She felt anger, a burning sensation at the very top of her head, and she felt a leaden weight of sadness in her chest. She felt afraid that she would say something she could never take back, something that would spoil their whole future, and at the same time, she felt that she needed to show him the worst of her anger now – or it would fester inside her, like a splinter.
‘Claire—’ He stretched his arm across the back of the bench and touched her shoulder.
Involuntarily, she flinched.
‘Claire, listen. I didn’t set out to hurt you. It just—’
She held a hand up to stop him. ‘Donotsay it just happened. That is not an excuse, nor is it an explanation. It doesn’t mean anything, and it doesn’t help.’
He backed away and held up both palms in a gesture of surrender. ‘Alright, but I don’t know what else to say.’
The anger inside her was winning the battle, and she let it. ‘Why the fuck did you even tell me? If it was nothing, why did you unload this on me? Couldn’t you just have let me stay in my naive little bubble?’
He bowed his head. She could see that he was biting his lip. ‘We were seen.’
‘What?’
He looked up and met her eye. ‘I was seen with Saoirse. Alison Rafferty came out of the bathroom and saw us.’
