After the lunch rush, I give the coffee machine a wipe-down. Next to it is our café pinboard: photos of us all at the Christmas do, quotes we like, a thank you card from a customer who had her fiftieth here. We all shoved stuff on there regularly; it’s supposed to be a kind of inspiration thing. I know, I know, but we love it.
My eyes fall on a piece of paper, slipped mostly underneath it.
I wish I had longer nails – hadn’t picked them all off over the last three days – for some purchase. But eventually I get it.
Just three words, in Ro’s handwriting: Lac de Peiroou.
I frown.
Was it meant to go on the board? Did it fall off? Unlike the other stuff on there, the note has no context. No beauty.
When my phone rings, I leap on it as per current emergency rules.
‘Stef, I think she’s in France,’ Marc tells me, breath ragged with excitement.
I dart outside.
And suddenly the note means everything. I dig it out from my pocket.
‘Yes, Marc … that makes sense.’
‘What?’
‘I found this …’
I reach into my bag. Take out the crumpled paper. I feel myself pause.
What if I’ve just exposed something of my friend’s life I wasn’t supposed to expose?
He hears my doubt.
‘What did you find?’ Gently mocking, he adds: ‘Don’t worry, Stef. I don’t think this is the time in her life that Romilly has gone off to have an affair.’
There’s a beat.
‘And to be honest, even if she has it’s the least of my problems.’
I hear the baby stir.
He tells me what the email said. Then, daring: ‘Now you.’
I sigh. Of course I need to share. What am I thinking?
‘There was this note in the café that she wrote, that I think she was keeping for some reason.’
‘What did it say?’
‘Just the name of a lake. Lac de Peiroou. I’ve looked it up. It’s in France.’
He googles.
‘Fuck. Near Nîmes airport.’
Silence at both ends of the phone call but there is a charge between us. News. Information. The start of something. Dots connecting.
‘And you haven’t heard from her?’ he says, and I am thrown.
‘No, Marc, I would clearly tell you if I had heard from her.’
Something occurs to me.
‘Don’t you have family in France?’
A pause.
‘No.’
‘It’s just …’
‘The C in my name. Yes.’
‘I thought you said you had …’
‘They’re distant,’ he snaps, dismissing. ‘Second cousins or something. No one Romilly knows.’
I smirk then and suspect his spelling of Marc is, actually, an affectation. A hangover from a time he thought it was cool. But how can a thirty-year-old man with a paunch admit that without cringing?
I hear Loll walk into the room. He fills her in on the note. Puts her on speaker.
‘How about your mum, Loll?’ I ask. ‘There’s no chance she’s in France?’
‘Nope. Spoke to her yesterday – she’s in Spain.’
I hear a thump, thump, thump. A rustle.
‘Marc! What the hell are you doing?’ shouts Loll.
And then the phone goes dead.