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“That’s really great, Laure!” Iris said, giving her a hug.
Laure nodded happily. “He said he can’t live a lie anymore and he’s going to tell me everything.”
Iris straightened up. “But—are you sure, Laure? I thought you wanted time to think things through?”
“I did. But I’ve realized that I’ll only be able to do that once Pierre’stold me the truth, the whole truth.” She moved from the doorway. “I need to book my ticket.”
Iris held the bottle up to her, offering her water, but Laure shook her head, in too much of a hurry for a drink. “I’m meeting Pierre at one o’clock at the flat, so I’ll have to get an early Eurostar. Will you be able to run me to the station?”
“Of course.”
Momentarily distracted by something that had caught her eye, Laure moved to the window. “Is that Joseph?”
“Yes.”
“Has he started working here, then?”
“Today’s his first day. He’ll be here Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.”
“Does Gabriel mind?”
Iris frowned. “Why, has he said something?”
“No, it’s just that I got the impression he liked being out there on his own, that he found it therapeutic.”
Iris felt a flash of annoyance that Laure had understood something about Gabriel that she hadn’t. “He’ll still have plenty of opportunity to be there on his own.”
Her mobile buzzed. She glanced at the screen and held up her phone. “It’s Beth. Sorry.”
But Laure grabbed the phone from her and accepted the call. “Beth! How are you?”
“Laure! I thought you’d be back in Paris by now.” Beth’s voice echoed around the kitchen, and Iris remembered that her daughter didn’t know that Laure had temporarily left Pierre. “Why are you still there?”
Knowing that she wouldn’t be able to speak to Beth for at least five minutes, she went into the garden, desperate for some air. At that moment, Joseph emerged from the shed, looking down at his hands, which seemed to be covered in something black.
“There’s a tap behind the shed!” she called.
“Great, thanks.” He held up his hands. “Oil.”
“Good luck!” she said, laughing.
She wandered over to the glass-topped table and sank into a wicker chair. The sound of running water reached her and a couple of minutes later, Joseph reappeared from behind the shed. He held up his hands to show her they were clean and, smiling, she gave him a thumbs-up.
“I’ll pass you to your mum now,” she heard Laure say. “’Bye, Beth.” Laure appeared on the terrace and handed Iris her phone.
“Hi Mum. I haven’t spoken to you for a while and I wanted to see how you were.”
Her words gave Iris a rush of pleasure. Beth and Gabriel were so close that she often felt like an outsider when the three of them were together. Gabriel had been the one Beth would turn to as a child, the one she still turned to as a young adult. When she FaceTimed, it was usually Gabriel’s number she called, not Iris’s. It hurt sometimes, but Iris only had herself to blame. The trauma of her pregnancy meant that she’d found it difficult to bond with Beth when she was born, and she never seemed able to bridge the distance it had created.
“I’m good,” she told Beth. “It’s nice of you to worry about me,” she added with a smile.
Beth lowered her voice. “I’m going to worry about you even more now that I know Laure is still with you. I love her, but she can be a bit full-on.”
“That might just be an understatement,” Iris murmured, checking that Laure wasn’t in earshot. But she was farther down the garden talking to Joseph, the Eurostar ticket she needed to buy so urgently apparently forgotten.
“Laure told me about Pierre,” Beth went on. “They will get over it, won’t they? They won’t get divorced, or anything like that?”
“I don’t know,” Iris said. “It depends on so many things. But she’s going to see him on Saturday, so hopefully they’ll make some headway.”
