Loving Amélie (10 page)

He held his lips to his baby’s
warm head and shut his eyes. She was so fragile; so vital.

Chapter Nine

The next day was less eventful
at work and culminated in a takeaway supper for the three friends in Battersea
of roasted garlic chicken and
tartes aux framboises
.

Chris cajoled himself into being
better company; although Amélie was irritable with a slightly raised
temperature, which gave them some cause for concern.

“I will keep an eye on her,
Chris,” said Tash. “Rest assured that if she needs to see a doctor, I will make
sure she does.”

Chris had sanctioned the
purchase of a baby buggy, meaning Amélie had been out and about for the first
time with a new vantage point on the world; which made for the main topic of
conversation over their dinner. His mind was never completely clear of Steve’s
words from the day before however – like a yellow Post-it note that
needed to be lifted off before any other thoughts could be accessed. He was
chewing pastry, and considering whether he should make time for a chat with
Sara that evening, when his phone beeped a message. From Amélie.

Chris, I need to see her. I am sorry

The food turning tasteless in
his mouth, he stiffened. He explained his predicament to Tash and Ian; and
retreated to his room with his phone, as though he might be disposing of a
ticking bomb.

Well she is here, for now. Do you mean you are
coming here?

He had to wait a full five
minutes for a reply. He sat on the sofa bed with his head hanging.

I can’t

He typed
So?
then forced himself to make her
wait, in return, before sending it.

I am sending someone. Jean Luc.

Half an hour passed, the
minutes stretched out of their natural shape by the anxiety of the three
residents of his flat; until there was a knock at his door. Tash was fretful,
holding the baby to her chest; while Ian stood between her and Chris and what
appeared to be an advancing Frenchman.

“I don’t know who you are,”
said Chris, feeling the muscles of his body tauten around him like a shield,
even to his lips.

He was a tall, dark-suited man
with Gallic good looks, despite a crooked nose. He wanted to shake Chris’s
hand, but without the charm that should attend the gesture.

“It is in order. I am a friend
of Amélie.”

“Just like that? I am supposed
to hand my daughter over to you?”

The man called Jean-Luc
shrugged, with the minimum of regret:

“What can I say? It is what she
wants.”

It was like a ball of bone at
the bridge of his nose: otherwise he was handsome. Maybe it was what made him
handsome. Chris locked eyes with him and wondered if, despite Steve’s words of
the day before, he had truly lost her.

“Does she always get what she
damned well wants, regardless of everyone else?” said Ian, testily.

“She’s not getting the baby
back like this!” Tash called, from somewhere behind her husband. “It’s plain
wrong, Chris. Have none of it.”

“You have many advisors,” said
Jean-Luc, looking past Chris into the flat. There was sarcasm in his voice.

“Perhaps I am more fortunate
than Amélie in that respect,” Chris replied, determined to be calm. The scent
of his child’s hair, sweetly aromatic, rose from where it had settled somewhere
on his clothing. “You are a friend of hers that I never met, Jean-Luc. Can you
tell me how she is?”

“She is OK,” he replied. “I
can’t say too much.”

“I don’t know who’s worse, you
or her!” Tash interjected. “This is no way to carry on around a baby. She’s
been running a temperature today! Why don’t you go back and tell her to come
here herself, and face up to her responsibilities?”

In an act of sudden resolve,
Chris put his hand out to the Frenchman.

“I need your phone.”

Remarkably - possibly chastened
by Tash’s words - Jean-Luc handed it over; at which point Chris retreated back
into the spare room and tapped in Amélie’s number. It rang.

“Jean-Luc? Is she alright?”

Her voice drenched him like a
bitter sweet liqueur: a voice he longed to hear, but not loaded with words
intended for the ear of another man. Particularly a man who was like an advert
for a cologne Chris would never buy.

“Of course she is alright,” he
said. “Are you? Amé?”

“Please don’t make this any harder
for me.”

“
She
has to be my priority,” he said,
without a second thought. “She will not be coming back to you in the arms of
some bloke I don’t even know.”

He ended the call and returned
the phone to its owner, who hadn’t attempted to move from his original position
in the doorway.

“Did you speak to her? That was
an unpleasant move,” said Jean-Luc, snatching, and curling his lip.

“She said you had better go
home, Jean-Luc, before a bad situation gets any worse.”

Seemingly indifferent as to
whether his mission in Battersea was accomplished or not, the Frenchman stood
with his hands draping loosely from his pockets, his tanned jaw line set so
that the muscles twitched in his cheeks:

“
Impasse
,” he said, through a weak smile.
“The same in both our languages.”

“But, originally, in yours.”

“Again, unpleasant,” said
Jean-Luc. “I understood you were once a lover of the French?”

Chris, in turn, set his own
jaw:

“Are you fucking her?”

Tash made noises of dissent
from behind; and Ian pushed past his friend’s defiant elbows to show Jean-Luc
from the door:

“You should go, fella.”

“
Are you?
”

The Frenchman raised his palms
in a show of mock surrender; exposing himself irresistibly to Chris’s balled
fist. Chris was thwarted in hitting his target – the hatefully smooth white
cotton midriff – by a combination of Jean-Luc dodging out of the way and
Ian wading in between them:

“
Non
,” was the Frenchman’s parting shot.
“She is still too hung up on the daddy.”

*

Chris was ultimately
embarrassed by the evening’s events. It was reprehensible that his friends
– fraught with their own troubles - were sacrificing a week of their
lives to help him; for what might be of negligible value in their pursuit of
parenthood. To find themselves caught up in a pathetic drama played out by posturing
fools.

Tash left the men quietly
smouldering while she showered and washed her hair. Ian began to talk over some
of the practicalities of a trip to Paris with a baby – they had travelled
extensively in Europe with nephews and nieces – while Chris listened,
suspecting they were skating over the underlying dilemma. He went off to bed
before his wife, who, not unusually for her sex, was less inclined to skate.

“You’re in a bit of a mess,
aren’t you?” she said.

“I thought loving one woman was
hard enough,” he replied.

“You would do well to
concentrate on loving one at a time,” said Tash. In her brushed cotton nightie,
surrounded by her usurped realm of folded and ordered baby items, she seemed
the epitome of good sense; the fount of best advice. She continued brightly: “I
think travelling is a fine idea, for both you and the little one. As long as
you keep her safety in mind at all times.” She gave him an affectionate push. “
Brawling
is
not recommended behaviour.”

“I thought travelling was a
good idea,” Chris replied. He looked done in; the weight of a new world on his
shoulders. “Now I’m not so sure. Perhaps I am more needed here.”

“You are
needed
where the baby is,” said Tash.
“Life is tough: we want things we can’t have; we get things we don’t want.” She
sat back on the sofa and combed out her tangled hair, the motion flicking out
defiant, watery droplets. “You need to decide what’s really worth having,
Chris. Me, I have wanted a baby for so long, I can’t remember what it felt like
to want anything else. You know,” she turned and looked earnestly into his
face, “I even considered persuading a student to ‘give’ me her unwanted
pregnancy.”

“You did?” said Chris, who
harboured this tender secret from Ian, already.

“Oh yes. And the rest.” She
sighed, despite everything a profoundly patient and principled woman. “Poor
Ian. He’s a saint, he really is.”

Chris refrained from
patronising her with a reminder of her great good fortune, and Ian’s, in simply
having each other.

“Although I am
not
ready to
give up yet,” Tash concluded. “I know there may come a time when I will have to
accept there will be no happy ending, Chris. And maybe, one way or another, you
should do the same.”

Chapter Ten

“Apparently, although it knocks
you for six when they’re first born, this is the easiest phase: and you will
look back and curse when she starts eating solids and running around the
place.”

Sara and Chris had met up at a
popular sushi restaurant in town; Amélie nestled in the corner between them in
the carrier that snapped in and out of her buggy, perfectly at peace. It had
been a different story the night before, however, when she had been unwilling
to settle for hours; and Chris had gone off to work leaving Tash, Ian and his
daughter in an exhausted pile on his bed. He hoped he had not asked for too
much from them that week: Tash relinquished her duties earlier in the day with
very red eyes – probably as much from lack of sleep as from the tears she
had shed at the inevitable loss of her temporary baby.

“So, how is Rick?”

“Oh, the usual,” Sara replied.
“Busy. But yummy.”

They ordered hungrily: dishes
of shredded duck with pomegranate, Japanese dumplings and noodles; agreeing
that six o’clock was a very civilised time to eat – less busy
and
a cheaper
menu ( a perk of fatherhood Chris was experiencing for the first time, as he
usually rarely ate before eight or nine).

“So, you’re actually
going
, then,”
said Sara. “I’m not sure I can quite believe it, after all that’s gone on. It’s
very
Hideous
Kinky
of you.”

“Hardly,” said Chris. “It’s
only Paris. To begin with.”

“I hope you know what you are
doing. What if she gets ill?”

“Then I practice my best French
chez le
docteur.
That’s why phrase books always have a whole page dedicated to
things you need to ask for at the chemist’s.” (In truth, he had wondered about
the prospect of Amélie falling ill, particularly after her high temperature
earlier in the week; but dismissed it as too awful and risk averse to dwell
on.)

“But it’s all so soon.”

“So what do you recommend I do?
Take paternity leave from the bistro and never leave London, sinking further
into seclusion and despair. Not much of a start for her, is it?”

“I suppose, when you put it
like that,” Sara conceded. “Especially now there is another man on the scene.”

“I don’t know if I would call
him ‘on the scene’, Sara.”

“He must be a fixture if he’s
on baby collection duty,” she smiled into her napkin. “And dishy, too.”

“This is making me feel better
how
?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, did you invite
me for a
let’s
make Chris feel better before he runs away to Paris
dinner?”

Chris ran his tongue around his
teeth and took a swig of wine, while Sara looked ashamed of herself.

“Have we started off on the
wrong foot here?” he asked.

She appeared undeniably
attractive: her ample figure fastened into a pinstripe jacket and her Titian
curls secured back in a snake-shaped clasp, each one looking like it had been
individually sculpted and painted a rich ancient red. She visited a ‘divine’
bisexual hairdresser called Tobias who was regularly ‘enraptured’ to be able to
colour and style her incredible mane: Chris found him decidedly saccharin,
having suffered once and once only the indignity of having his hyperactive
figures through his own hair, declaring he needed ‘deep cleansing’ and ‘a root
lift.’

“He’s a charlatan,”
Chris
had declared, after the event; when he had escaped to a nearby bar to await her
arrival with her glossy waves and numerous brown paper bags of products.
“A lesser man
would have chinned him.”

“A bigger man would have at least joined in with
a scalp massage,”
she retaliated
. “What are you so afraid of?”

She must have visited Tobias
recently: she reached across the table and grabbed his hand.

“Forgive me, darling. It’s been
a mad week,” she confessed. “I am seriously worried about you and this single
parenting gig. And I will
miss
you.”

“It will only be a couple of
weeks,” said Chris, squeezing her thumb. “Do you think perhaps you are a tiny
bit jealous?”