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I could always rely on you to tell it to me straight. I always loved that about you, and I love it still, even if I don’t like what you’re saying. I know that what you say is true, and maybe I needed to hear it. I wasn’t good enough for you.
Paris is really something, Nancy. When I asked you to come, it wasn’t just because I wanted you here beside me. I do want you – I really do – but it wasn’t that. It was because I kept thinking how much you’d love it. Everything I look at, I hear your reaction to it in my head. They’ve got this purple coronet thing over the bed in the hotel – oh, Nance, it would make you laugh. And I saw this statue today, this giant goddess with outstretched wings landing on the prow of a ship, the most beautiful thing I ever saw, and more than two thousand years old – can you imagine? Someone carved that out of a block of marble, two centuries before Christianity was even a thing. And that stone goddess has been here, in this world, through everything that’s happened ever since, empires rising and rebelling, wars and famines, dark ages, Columbus sailing to America and Armstrong landing on the moon. My whole head spun just thinking about it. She’s missing her head – such a pity. Wouldn’t you just kill to see the look on her face?
You’ll have to come here, Nancy. Bring Caroline. I can see you both sitting right here where I am, right in front of Notre-Dame. There’s an ice-cream place you’ll love behind the cathedral, and there’s a nice bench, close to the river, that catches the sun in the late afternoon.
I know you don’t want to go backward. That’s okay. I get it.
And, hey, I’m looking forward to watching your TV show. I know you’ll be amazing.
You always were.
He paused there and sat for a long moment, staring into space. In his head, he heard her voice again, ‘Is everything alright?’
His wife was in bed with his best friend. He sighed heavily. Every spare wheel has its day. Louis would look after her. The battle was over.
He should take his cue from her. He raised the phone and typed.
It’s alright, Nancy. Everything is alright.
With love,
Harry
Without checking for errors or typos, Harry hitsend. That was done. He should feel bereft, he thought, but instead what he felt was something closer to relief. What he felt was a sense of completion.
He tried again to stand and failed. He found a number for his hotel and dialled it. Recognising the chirpy voice that had woken him at 6.45am, he explained his predicament and asked if she could send a car. Only emergency vehicles could drive into the parvis, she explained, but she could call an ambulance, if he wished.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Non, merci.’ He hung up. Inwardly, he groaned.
He looked around at the thinning crowd and considered calling someone over. He sat there, rubbing his thighs and assessing the faces of strangers, trying to guess who was most likely to both understand what he needed and be able to help.
Then, striding across the square in chunky boots and a floaty pale-blue dress that matched her hair, came the stern and capable waitress from Chez Michel.
‘Hello!’ he shouted. There had been a time when the resonance of Harry’s voice would have turned every head in the square, but that day was gone. His voice wasn’t what it used to be, and she didn’t respond. Her name came to him, and he shouted again, ‘Noémie! Noémie Gabrielle Fournier-Laurent!’
A nearby pigeon turned to stare, but Noémie didn’t hear. Her attention was focused on a group of people walking across the bridge from the Left Bank. Harry twisted his back to follow her gaze and saw that young Bostonian, the guy who’d sold him the book, bouncing in and out between groups of tourists. Dan, the poet.
Harry could tell the exact moment that Dan saw Noémie, because he stopped mid-stride, then smiled wide and lurched forwards. He was like a puppy who’d just spotted the ball, Harry thought. They met at the point where the bridge met the Parvis Notre-Dame, taking a sideways step together onto the quay and out of the river of people.
They stood, side by side, leaning over the quay wall, with their backs to Harry. They were close enough now that he was certain they would hear him if he made the effort to project his voice, but there was an almost visible halo around them that rejected intrusion.
‘I’m not a part of their story,’ said Harry, addressing the pigeon who stood watching him with its head cocked to one side.
He watched Dan move his left hand from Noémie’s hip to the back of her head, turning her with his other hand to face him, drawing her closer.
‘Huh,’ Harry muttered. ‘This place only needs a band.’
They kissed. Harry looked down at his phone, held his thumb on the button to turn it on – no messages – slid the screen down, slid it up again, slid it sideways and back, clicked the button to turn it off. They were still kissing.
Harry put both hands on the bench and pushed himself upwards onto his feet. He stood still, assessing the pain. He could bear it, he thought. The painkillers were kicking in. If he could just get to the other side of the bridge, he could probably hail a taxi.
He tucked the book under his arm but left the tarts. What a thing, he thought. Had Dan not chosen that book for him, had Robespierre not written his daft ode to jam tarts, had there not been a boulangerie – wrong,pâtisserie– open on a Sunday, so close to the Place de la Concorde, had he not walked and walked until he found a bench, he would have missed the ray of sunshine altogether.
He took a careful step away from the bench. Before his back was even turned, the pigeon had fluttered onto the seat and had a jam tart in its beak. Harry nodded a salute and took another step. It hurt, and he was afraid that his leg would give way beneath him. It will loosen up, he thought, once I get going.
And so, feeling very feeble, he began to make his slow, unsteady way across the square. He was about halfway when Dan and Noémie broke their embrace and walked, arms still wrapped around each other, across his path. Dan, with his free hand, was gesticulating wildly. His voice rose – a word here, another there. Just as they passed him, Harry caught a whole sentence.
‘I can’t wait for you to taste my mom’s chowder.’
