Olivier comes for us just after ten the next morning. You’ve already unwrapped your present, which I’d brought from London: a silver locket in the shape of a heart. Inside, I’d put a tiny picture of you on one side and me on the other, taken when I was about your age. You’d put it on straight away, though without taking off Élodie’s necklace.
“Won’t the chains get tangled together?” I said, but you shook your head.
When I asked you last night if you wanted to go to the gorge with Olivier, I thought you looked relieved. Perhaps I wasn’t the only one relishing the idea of putting some distance between us and the house, between each other, even: Olivier’s presence was bound to keep things light. I also felt I needed to widen the gap between past and present. The two tended to overlap at La Rêverie, the boundaries too permeable for comfort.
The roof of Olivier’s sleek car is down and my heart lifts at the thought of the day ahead.
“Did you see the news?” he says, after he’s wished Emma a happy birthday, and we’ve turned onto the main road. “They say the fires will be out by tomorrow or the next day at the latest.” He switches to English. “Emma, did you understand? There will be no more fires.”
You look at him, surprised out of your thoughts, and lift a shoulder. “I wasn’t that bothered.” You don’t mean it rudely. In fact, you look miles away, fingers worrying at the neon bands circling your wrists.
Olivier glances at me and I shake my head minutely. You’re sitting behind me and I can see your face in the side-view mirror, small and very young today, not like you’ve just turned fourteen at all. You love birthdays but you don’t seem yourself, a sharp line marking the smooth skin between your brows, and your thumb at your mouth now, teeth nibbling at the cuticle. I haven’t seen you do that in years. My stomach twists when I remember the Polaroid. I’d hidden it in the inside pocket of my suitcase, but could you have found it? You can’t have, surely. If you had, and you’d looked closely enough, there’s no chance you wouldn’t have said something. How can you have this photo, Mum? It doesn’t make any sense.
“It’ll be lovely to be somewhere new today, fires or not,” I say brightly, so Olivier doesn’t think we’re ungrateful. “The gorge is in the opposite direction, Em, and it’s very beautiful. It’s the most dramatic in France.”
You nod absently.
“How’s your chest?”
“Fine, Mum,” you say wearily. You’d woken up wheezy. I had a bad dream was all you would say. When I reach back for your hand, between the seat and the door, you squeeze mine only briefly.
The gorge’s dusty parking lot is almost full when we get there.
“Ah, the crowds have already descended,” says Olivier. “I thought it would be quieter in the week.”
It occurs to me that I haven’t been to the gorge since my teenage years. Somehow, Greg and I never got round to taking you and Élodie there.
The long absence makes it untainted, which is just what I need today, and what I suspect you do too. The wide river snakes between towering walls of stone, so tall they block out the sun and turn the water a dark turquoise. Picnics are already being spread out where the stone flattens, and a platoon of life-jacketed kids in canoes is paddling toward the arch the gorge is famous for: a curved slab of rock that seems to blot out half the sky. The scents of damp stone and the gaufres au chocolat for sale at a stand, sweet and heady, mingle strangely.
Still, I find myself combing through the crowds for long wavy hair and a certain way of standing. I remind myself this is habit, not intuition, and make myself stop.
Olivier has brought a picnic too, lugging it down from the parking lot in a red cooler. When he got it out of the trunk, seeming suddenly sheepish that he’d made such an obvious effort, I reached out and squeezed his arm, touched by his thoughtfulness.
He has forgotten to pack any plates or cutlery so lunch is a messy affair. You get the giggles watching him try to spread cold butter with a bendy plastic knife from the gaufre stand, baguette crumbs scattering all over his nicely pressed chinos. He’s remembered a bottle opener, though, and there’s more Pschitt for you and bottles of chilled Pelforth beer for us.
“Thank you,” I say, when you go off to find a toilet.
“What—for this gastronomic splendor?” he says, gesturing to the debris of crumbs and empty packets around us.
I laugh and lean closer toward him. “Not just for lunch. For being something good. You’ve made today feel like a holiday.”
A strand of hair blows across my face and he tucks it behind my ear.
“It’s just a shame this visit has to come to an end. If there’s any way I can persuade you to reconsider selling…” He runs a finger around the neckline of my top and my skin immediately responds, goosebumps rising despite the heat. There’s a beat when neither of us says anything, and I think he’s going to kiss me.
“I can’t,” I say softly, before he can. “But I haven’t booked our ferry back yet. We won’t be leaving for a little while.” I meet his eyes and I can see the desire in them, which makes something twist inside me. I trail off as he looks away, eyes narrowed at the bright water.
“I see. I must have misunderstood the other evening.”
Before I lose my nerve, I lean in and kiss him. There’s a suspended moment when he hesitates and I think he’s going to pull away, but then he kisses me back, his mouth hot and urgent. His hand goes to my waist, then begins to move up, fingers easing under my top to make contact with bare skin.
We pull apart at the same moment, smiling and then looking furtively around for you. I spot you in the near-distance, intent on a board with prices for boat hire on it.
“We’ve turned my poor Emma into a chaperone.”
“She’s a good girl. She doesn’t really mind.”
“You’ve bought her off with lemonade.”
“I think you’re worth it,” he says, smiling. “And now I’m going to bribe her some more, by hiring a paddleboat for us all.”
I watch him go, heart beating hard from his touch, the rest of me molten. My mind is already moving toward evening, you upstairs in bed, he and I alone.
At the end of the afternoon, ours is one of the last cars left, the gorge shadowed and silent now, and much more magnificent for it. It’s almost seven by the time Olivier turns off the road and onto La Rêverie’s drive. All three of us are tired and peaceful. I’m not quite ready for the soothing rhythm of the journey to end, my legs heavy with relaxation, Olivier’s hand on one knee. The light is the color of goldenrod, soft-focused and saturated, like a seventies postcard. Slanting through the scrub oaks on the drive, the lowering sun is the perfect temperature. Behind me on the back seat, you’re asleep, your head lolling gently with the movement of the car, your lips parted. Watching again in the side-view mirror, I witness the very instant you wake, your face reanimating, your hand coming up to rub your cheek. Your eyes open slowly, drowsily, but something ahead on the drive makes them snap into sudden focus.
I look round and see a figure at the gate. It turns at our approach.
As the world begins to shudder on its axis, thoughts flicker like lightning through my brain.
There’s someone there.
Can it be?
It’s her.
She’s here.
Élodie.
Élodie.