I am in the water when he arrives.
I have swum a slow breast stroke as far out as I can go, exhausted, legs jelly, a deep ache across my middle.
Running out of steam and treading water until I can muster the energy to swim back to shore, I look up.
And there he is.
Adam.
Standing on the edge of the lake.
He is barefoot. Trainers and socks on the sand next to him. He’s been waiting for me to pause.
My chest tightens.
I scan the shore for Marc.
Eyes back to Adam.
No.
He confirms it with a tiny shake of his head: Marc is not here.
I realise then that I can reach the bottom of the water. Put my feet down. Scan around for an exit. The fight-or-flight reflex hasn’t fully departed, even with Adam’s assurance.
Is he round the corner? Waiting for the nod from his friend?
‘I’m on my own, Romilly,’ Adam shouts, as I take tentative steps over stone to shore. A few people turn. ‘I’m alone!’
And that’s when I lose it because empathy is what I didn’t expect to receive ever again, after I did this: the most awful thing.
I stand there in the water, unmoving, except for the sobs that make my body convulse. I wait there as Adam wades in still clothed, scoops me up and carries me back to shore.
‘Thank you,’ I whisper as it starts to subside. We sit alongside each other on shale. My breath is shallow. ‘I know you will call Marc. But can you wait and hear me out first? Please. If you could just give me …’
Inexplicably, he nods.
Puts his phone back into his bag.
I see the screensaver: a beautiful close-up of my best friend Steffie.
Adam and I are silent on the drive back to the campsite along the narrow, one-car road.
There will be a time for talking, we know, but it is not now.
Instead, air con ineffective in a cheap hire car, we open the windows and the crickets do the chatter for us.
I lurch to one side as Adam pulls over for a much faster local driver.
‘Sorry,’ he mutters.
I shake my head. That’s all we can manage.
When we get there, Adam and I sit outside my tent under the shade of the awning with a beer each. I am still in swimwear, dry now with the heat though; a towel wrapped around me. The pool is closed, the bar too, even the long-running early evening games of petanque have come to an end. Most people are out now, exploring the nightlife of the region, eating rare steak, making plans over fish stew and a rosé to be up early tomorrow to see the Pont Du Gard; hop on a boat at the Calanques.
‘Is no one else here with you?’ Adam says eventually, glancing into my tiny one-person tent, picked up when I arrived here. There had been no planning, of course. ‘We didn’t think … Well, the midwife suggested someone must have helped you. That you couldn’t have left the hospital alone.’
I take a deep gulp. ‘Oh. Oh right. No, I didn’t do it alone.’
Adam frowns. A woman walks past the tent, in her sixties, a little tipsy, waves at us.
‘Bonjour!’ she yells. ‘Bon Vacance!’
I see us then as she sees us: a quiet British couple, having a quick drink on our holidays.
I smile back, no joy. Reach up and smooth down some frizz that I can feel springing up on my forehead. Not quite.
She carries on past to her tent.
‘There’s no one in France with me,’ I say. ‘But I did get help before that.’
He raises an eyebrow for more. I don’t elaborate. Other things are more important.
‘Is the baby okay?’ I ask Adam. I note the pronoun I choose; I don’t deserve my.
Adam leans back in the camping chairs the site provided. I was lucky, to find somewhere to stay at such short notice. I needed it last night. And by the time I had done what I came here to do today there were no flights back until tomorrow.
‘She’s awesome.’ He smiles, speaking slowly, like too much emotion or noise might break me. Afraid of poking me now, scared and unsure of what the hell I will do next. If she could do that …
‘Do you want to see some pictures?’
I shake my head, my heart racing, looking away. Panic sets in. No. No. The only way this has been okay is by blocking out the baby. I took a long route to my tent earlier to avoid the play area; looked away when I saw those toddlers splashing their little fists in the pool.
‘How did you find me?’
He tells me about Steffie finding that scrap of paper.
I remember then, how I wrote the name of the lake down when I saw it on Instagram in a quiet moment at work. Shoved it there when someone came over with an order.
‘Steffie knows me back to front and upside down.’
I’m pretty back to front and upside down now, as it happens.
But when he tells me about the local news sighting, the police CCTV, he throws me. I have been so consumed by the impact on my family that I hadn’t considered this reaching wider.
Adam puts his beer down. Leans forward, interlacing his fingers.
We sit in silence, realising how loud that white noise of the crickets has become here too.
After a few minutes, I look at him.
‘I will talk, Adam,’ I promise him. ‘But get us another drink first, hey?’
He grabs the beers from the cool bag – no joy, like we’re topping up the morphine drip, a necessity for what it accompanies.
And then, I start to speak.
It’s messy.
This won’t be easy.
But here is what drives a person to walk away from their family. From their home. From a human being who was attached to their insides only hours before. Here is what drives a person to do what I did: that most awful thing.