The Reunion (36 page)

15 June 2013

Dearest Dan,

Ça se passe bien à Villefranche? I hope you’re all settled in. If there’s anything you need, Monsieur Caron is the man to go to. His English is not bad at all and he’s an absolute sweetheart, plus he knows all the local tradesmen and will negotiate good deals for you if you need anything done. Don’t try to organise anything directly, they can smell a naïve Englishman a mile off.

And so for the big news: the baby arrived on Wednesday. A girl, her name is Isabelle, she weighed six pounds and four ounces. Ten fingers, ten toes, brown eyes and a surprisingly thick head of dark hair. I will email you a picture soon.

Andrew and Nat came to visit me at the hospital and Nat is staying with me for a few days while I get used to the whole motherhood thing. Because obviously in a few days’ time, I’ll have it licked. It’s quite shocking how exhausted I am. I know everyone always says you’ll be knackered, but I didn’t expect this. Still. It’s wondrous, too. No matter how many times everyone tells you what you’ll feel, you’re still not quite prepared for it. And I know everyone always says that, too, but it’s true. Which is why they all say it, I suppose. It’s indescribable.

I hope being up there in the mountains is giving you what you need. It is so beautiful, so peaceful, but also pretty lonely. I do hope you’re all right.

With lots of love,

Jen

LILAH HAD
‘
THE
Ballad of Lucy Jordan’ stuck in her head, had done for days, couldn’t stop humming it – she wanted desperately to sing it but she couldn’t quite remember the words. Something about driving through Paris in a sports car, about getting old, about missing out on the things you always thought you were going to do.

She couldn’t remember where she’d heard it last but it was making her more melancholy than it ought. Of all the things she’d missed out on, driving around Paris wasn’t one of them. All right, it was the back of a motor bike, not a sports car, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to be nineteen, racing along the Quai des Célestins with the sun setting, or rising, or whatever, with a handsome man wearing a leather jacket. That she’d done. It was all the other stuff she was going to miss out on.

They were driving back from the beach. Dan had lent them his Audi, they had the top down. It was a beautiful hot day; when she closed her eyes the world was orange. A soft, warm breeze rushed over her, her skin felt tight from the sand and the salt – she could be anywhere, at any time. She could be seventeen, with everything still ahead, including the guy with the motorbike and the leather jacket on the Quai des Célestins.

She would keep that. She’d just do everything else differently, everything since. ‘You all right, babe?’ Zac reached over and squeezed her thigh. She opened her eyes for a second and smiled at him, as reassuringly as she could. Well, maybe not everything. If she had her time over, she’d still want Zac. ‘You warm enough?’ he asked her. ‘I can get the blanket from the back if you want.’

‘I’m fine,’ she said, covering his hand with hers. ‘Sleepy.’

‘You sleep, baby. Couple of hours yet.’

They’d been to the beach at Menton. They’d left early the previous morning, spent all afternoon lying in the sun and all this morning too. She’d even swum in the sea for a while. The Med was colder than she’d remembered, colder and clearer; diving in was a shock. She gasped and gulped air and kicked her weak legs, flailed in surprise, but after a while she relaxed and floated on her back, eyes closed, Zac circling her like a friendly shark. When she’d had enough she found she no longer had the strength to walk up the beach and he’d had to carry her.

She’d never been to Menton before, but she’d go again if she had the time. It lacked the glamour of Cap Ferrat, but God knows she wasn’t feeling all that glamorous. Menton was a proper seaside resort, bustling and busy and about as Italian as France gets, just a mile or two from the border – friendlier, somehow, than most of the Côte d’Azur, although Lilah suspected she just thought that because she was feeling more sentimental than usual.

They stayed in a B&B, a listing terracotta terrace with a balcony overlooking the Place St-Michel and a view of the sea. She would have stayed another day, two or three, but she hadn’t brought all her pills, and she feared one of the bad headaches.

‘We’ll come again,’ Zac said to her. ‘We can stay longer next time.’

She opened her eyes and looked over at him, a slight frown on his face as he squinted into the sun. She’d grown accustomed to that frown, he wore it all the time now, it seemed as though he never looked at her except with concern. It was heartbreaking to watch, but no matter how she tried, she’d not been able to chase him away. He loved her, loved her like no one ever had, and there was nothing to be done. He wasn’t going anywhere. Lilah consoled herself with the thought that, young and beautiful as he was, he’d recover.

It was Zac’s idea to come to France. When she got the final diagnosis, the big one, the bad one, he’d said: ‘We can go to the French house. We can spend the summer there, it’ll be so much better than staying in London. Dan owes you, you said it, and he knows it. We even had a conversation about it.’ Lilah told him it was out of the question, she hadn’t told anyone yet, she wasn’t ready for that. Zac went ahead and contacted Dan anyway. Lilah was furious: there was a terrible argument, the worst they’d ever had, it went on for days. She refused to speak to him, she threw him out of the apartment, she took away his keys. He slept in the hallway outside their flat. She said terrible things and told him she didn’t love him, never had. He bought flowers and groceries and told her that no matter what she did he would be there with her. She gave in, in the end. His will was stronger than hers, who’d have thought it?

She drifted off. When she woke, the car was no longer moving. It was parked in shadow on the side of the road, a small road, not the motorway.

‘Zac?’

‘You were shivering,’ his voice called out from behind her. He was rummaging in the boot and appeared at her side with a woollen blanket in hand. ‘Here you go. Won’t be long now. Half an hour or so. Shall I put the top up?’

‘No. Leave it down.’

‘OK.’ He leaned over the door and kissed her gently on the lips.

She snuggled down under the blanket and they set off again.

‘When do they arrive?’ she asked Zac. ‘I’ve forgotten.’

‘Thursday.’

‘Today is?’

‘Monday, sweetheart.’

‘OK.’

‘You nervous?’

‘Yeah.’

Andrew and Natalie would be joining them in three days’ time, with their daughters in tow. And a while after that, she couldn’t remember exactly when, Jen would be arriving too, with the baby. She couldn’t remember the baby’s name. She kept forgetting things, they just vanished out of her head, and when she was told again it was like discovering something for the first time, there was no familiarity, no comforting flash of recognition. She hated this feeling of confusion most of all, it was like fear, worse than the headaches, worse than the exhaustion. It reminded her of the blackouts she used to have when she drank, the sense of losing time forever, never to be recovered.

She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again, rocking her head back, gazing up at the sky, still deepest azure and completely cloudless. Count your blessings, Lilah. A man who loves you, who will stay with you, no matter what. A roof over your head, and not just any roof either. Friends.

She wasn’t quite sure what to expect of her friends. She’d written to Natalie, telling her about her illness and the fact that she was staying with Dan, asking her to come. There were things they needed to get straight, things they had to resolve. She couldn’t do it over the phone, she couldn’t do it by letter or email, it had to be face to face.

The sun was just dipping behind the brow of the hill as they drove up the driveway; Lilah could see Dan standing at the kitchen window, he was waiting for them. He emerged within seconds from the front door, his brow furrowed, too.

‘I was starting to worry,’ he called out. ‘Did you have a good time?’

‘Marvellous,’ Lilah called out, her voice little more than a croak. She coughed. ‘It was lovely. You should come, next time.’

Next time. They made plans, all the time, her and Zac. Zac hadn’t given up on her. And why not make plans, Lilah thought. She knew that Dan found it disconcerting, but what was the point in
not
making plans? It wasn’t like they had an exact date, a deadline. There might be time for another trip to the beach, there might be time for several.

Dan opened her car door, helped her out.

‘You’ve caught the sun,’ he said, giving her a kiss on the cheek.

‘I should hope so,’ she said, smiling at him, her most reassuring smile. She could tell that he was searching her eyes, her face. How was she feeling? Was she really OK? He did this every time they were apart for more than a day or so. Zac did it too.

That was normal when it came to Zac, but it was funny coming from Dan, because they hadn’t been close for years, not for such a long time, and she’d forgotten how sweet he could be, how caring. In her anger over that stupid bloody film, Lilah had completely forgotten how good Dan was to her after Andrew dumped her, after Natalie betrayed her, when Jen was gone and she was left all alone.

Dan was the one who persuaded her to come to France. He’d written her an email, asking her to come, and then when she’d said no, he’d called her up and begged her, which in itself was gratifying. And when she refused him still, he ended up making it all about him, telling her how he was going mad there all by himself, how lonely he was – didn’t she remember, he asked, how he hated more than anything to be all alone? At the time she believed him, although once she and Zac had arrived it became clear that he was perfectly happy here, he wasn’t lonely at all. Still, she liked that he’d made the effort.

And she did feel sorry for him. Poor old Dan, he’d never get what he wanted, and when he did, he wouldn’t want it any more. He was just one of those people, he wasn’t built to be happy.

They’d decided this, the pair of them, one night not long after she and Zac arrived. Zac had gone up to bed, Lilah and Dan stayed up drinking wine and talking about how hopeless they were and all the things they’d done wrong, and how some people were simply not capable of happiness, it just didn’t come to them like it came to others. Then they decided that that was bullshit and they were being self-pitying and ridiculous, and if they weren’t happy then it was all their own fault. They talked about how, given the chance, they’d do everything differently, or most of it anyway. Then Dan put on ‘Je Ne Regrette Rien’ and they danced around the living room and laughed until they cried.

16 July 2013

Dear Natalie,

This is a hard letter to write, for so many reasons. As a result, I’m keeping it short. I need to see you; there are things that you and I need to sort out. You may think that there’s nothing left to say, but I have a feeling that if you read to the end of this note, you’ll change your mind.

I don’t mean to be melodramatic or anything, but I’m dying. No seriously, I am. Don’t laugh.

Don’t be sad, either. Just come and see me. I’m at the French house, with Dan. I’ll be here for a while, a few weeks more at least. Please come, bring Andrew, bring your daughters. I’d love to meet them. If you don’t come, I’ll only end up turning up on your doorstep in Reading, and just think how inconvenient that would be.

I need to see you, Nat. I really do.

Love,

Lilo

August 2013

DÉJÀ VU. THE
airport, the car park, the endless search for a silver Citroën. Just like last time, only worse, because this time they were travelling in close, clammy, suffocating heat with two miserable teenage girls dragging themselves along behind them, every movement an effort, every expression a snarl, every response to every question a shrug or an eye roll. And Andrew was in no mood to appease anyone, not his daughters and certainly not Natalie.