9

I was woken by the sound of falling water. I wondered, was it the sound of rain? I turned my head slowly and saw the curtains drawn on the French windows and the sun hitting the garden trees and I realised Sarah was having a shower. The clear glass of the bathroom door was mottled with steam and there was a blurred female shape standing in the bath beyond it. There was too much glass in this house, I remember thinking. All of the alpine promise of the exterior, the gate, the roof, the chimney, was not carried through into an interior of mottled glass, plastic curtains, false marble tables and once-clear Perspex. But she was there, behind two layers of steamed surfaces, like a pointillist nude painted by whom? Odilon Redon, maybe. She came through then, wrapped in a towel, and smiled at me, as she began assembling her clothes for the day. She slipped thin underwear on with a lace floral rim and wrapped an athletic brassière round her thin breasts in one of those deft movements that once stopped my heart. How did women do it? I wondered. the arms crooked round the shoulder-blades and the hands clasping the unseen clip. She dipped her head and massaged her dangling hair with the towel and smiled at me again, upside down this time, and asked me would I be taking Jenny to school.

I would like that, I said.

Well, you’d better get a move on then, she said, and struggled into a summery dress and stepped into two canvas slip-on shoes. I’ve a lecture at nine.

So I began to get a move on. I angled my legs out of the bed on to the floor and she came towards me and bent her head down so that her hair was all around my face.

You smell musty, she said.

Bad? I asked her.

No. Just kind of musty. Take a shower. I’ll wake Jenny on my way out.

And she brought her lips towards me and moved her head this way and that so they brushed off mine. It was more a nuzzle than a kiss, but it felt more than fine. We were shy when we first met, so our hands and lips would touch without our eyes really meeting, and it reminded me of that. Our lovemaking had been urgent and immediate, but rarely discussed. We didn’t need to discuss it and we didn’t know then it was a paradise that would be hard to return to.

I had a quick shower, dried my hair, pulled my clothes on, listening to the sounds of plates and cutlery clinking from the kitchen inside. And only when I heard the sounds of goodbyes and the front door slam did I finish the charade. I walked out into the hallway and realised, with a large dollop of shame, that I had been waiting until Sarah had left. Jenny was playing idly with the star-shaped cereal in her bowl. She was fully dressed and had her hair twisted into a ponytail.

Hey there, sweetie, I said and palmed the hair on the top of her head.

You’re taking me to school? she asked.

That seems to be the case, I told her.

Why don’t you both do it?

Because, I said, parents lead busy lives.

Busy busy busy, she answered, as if addressing some fundamental fact about life in the twenty-first century.

But there was peace in that kitchen, even if it was the peace of absence. I poured myself juice, boiled the kettle, made us both some toast and realised I had traversed the floor several times without stepping on imaginary presences. Maybe they lived busy lives too, I surmised. And I was wondering what life would be like with just the two of us when she, with uncanny precision, voiced my thoughts.

Is Mummy going to leave you?

Why would you think that? I asked. And I immediately knew why she would think it.

Because she says you don’t look at her any more.

I never tire of looking at her.

So why does she think you don’t?

Don’t what?

Look at her.

You’re not making sense, Jenny.

I know. That’s what Mummy said. Sometimes things stop making sense.

She played a little more with the soggy star-shaped cereal. The pastel colours were all merging into a pink soup.

And if she does leave you, will I go with her or stay with you?

That’s not going to happen, darling.

Melanie thinks I should go with her. But then Jessica thinks I should stay with you.

So they were back, and performing some therapeutic function for her. Cheaper than our Viennese, I thought.

You shouldn’t listen to imaginary friends.

I don’t have real ones to talk to.

You have, I tried to reassure her. You have plenty of friends in school. And we had better hurry now, or we’ll be late.

She returned to the theme as we sat in a traffic jam, approaching one of the bridges over the river.

It’s not as if my friends don’t talk, but they speak English funny.

She was at the Lycée International, with children of diplomats, businessmen and various bourgeois transients. And she had many friends; I could see it every time I dropped her off, when they crowded round her like some exotic specimen.

So you prefer imaginary ones?

Only ones I can understand.

And I decided to leave it at that. The traffic finally shifted, and I pulled in by the little faded park across from the municipal exterior. It had been a government building once, with art deco columns, decorative brickwork and with muscular versions of an ideal proletariat carved on the door. But it now housed the Lycée.

I kissed her and told her I would pick her up at three.

For music, she said. I forgot my case.

But I didn’t, I said. I had it perched in the passenger seat beside me. It’ll be waiting here.

And she ran, then, with a sudden outburst of childlike enthusiasm and was soon surrounded by a flock of real, chattering friends on the broad, churchlike steps.