We go the wrong way twice when we come out of the hire car depot, and everything about Marseille – even this distant outpost of the airport where they send the cheap flights to – intimidates.
When we drive out of the airport there is roundabout after roundabout after complicated road system and any calm I was hoping to imbue from a journey through the Provencal countryside is a fantasy.
This is not the Marseille of lunch at the port and plates full of rich, steaming seafood. We don’t see the markets heaving with sacks of North African spice. Instead it’s just the edges of a city, the part no one heads for, the part people just get through. Large and looming.
I see no vineyards.
No olive groves.
Just those roundabouts and a massive branch of Decathlon.
I press various buttons to figure out where the air con is.
Even without it though, it’s less claustrophobic than Marc and Romilly’s house.
God, that house.
I think of the window I tried to wrench open. The light that flickers on, off, on, off in the kitchen.
I shiver with the relief at being out of there. Even when I am here, biting my lip while I sit still at another fucking roundabout.
Aurelia reaches in her bag for hand sanitiser.
I look ahead at the road. Recalibrate to driving on the right.
I think about the story she told me on the plane. There is a part of me that feels envious of the trust Ro put in her sister that night; why didn’t she come to me? She moans about Loll all the time. It’s a standing joke that I’m the ‘sister she never had’. But I’ve never realised that Romilly not seeing Loll as a sister just means she sees her as her mum.
Loll’s closed lips; Romilly’s open heart. Romilly didn’t dislike her sister. She just didn’t always get her.
I would have been too much of an equal and from the moment she left hospital, Romilly wanted parenting.
The car is small and Aurelia and I are physically close enough to each other that I can feel her body tense. She shakes her head like Henry after a soaking. Reaches into her bag to change her glasses for prescription sunglasses.
‘Where now?’ I say as we move towards a junction.
She clutches her phone with the map on it.
‘Left when you get out of the exit and then first right,’ she says.
‘Anything from Loll?’ I ask.
She shakes her head. Nothing.
Loll would lose her shit when she knew we were out here without her. But what choice do we have?
Aurelia picks up the story that’s been on hold since we got off the plane, went through passport control, picked up the hire car.
‘Loll thought it would be a matter of hours. She thought she could tell Marc to go for a sleep or something, and get the baby out of there to Romilly.’ She shudders. ‘But he wouldn’t leave Fleur alone. It was a nightmare.’
‘Did he know, do you think?’ I say. ‘That she was helping Ro?’
She shakes her head. ‘I don’t think so,’ she says. ‘Not at first, for sure. I think he’s just obsessed with control. I think he’s paranoid. Even if he doesn’t know what about.’
‘First exit at the roundabout,’ she mutters. ‘Where that yellow car is going.’
What I’m about to say next makes me tentative. ‘He also loves the baby though.’
Aurelia’s face whips round to me.
But I feel like someone has to point this out. Marc won’t leave the baby alone because of control, fine. But I have watched that man’s face. His hands as he’s slipped cream onto a tiny red bottom. His eyes if he nods off and wakes up and for half a second, is unsure where she is.
They are Ro’s family so they are going to view him now as all bad. But that man is completely in love with his little girl.
And where does that come into all of this?
Aurelia ignores me.
I flick on my indicator. Remind myself again which way to go round a French roundabout. I’m nervous. Aurelia hasn’t noticed.
‘When Loll told me what Marc had done to her, I got straight on a plane.’
I reach over to hold her hand but she is folded in on herself, consumed in a one-person hug.
‘I had two daughters in bits too. Loll had just wanted to help. And she felt like she had made everything so much worse.’
I reach out again then and this time I make contact with Aurelia’s hand, soft from the hand cream, small like a child’s.
I hear something guttural in the base of her throat. She gulps it down.
‘You’re on here for a good few miles,’ she says, brusque, as I indicate to pull onto a motorway. I take my hand from hers, flick into fifth gear and try to relax into the drive.
But I don’t think Aurelia can stop speaking now she’s started.
‘Marc called, of course, and told Loll she was gone,’ she says. ‘She told him she would come. Straight away.’
I sigh. ‘She must have been nervous leaving Ro.’
‘You’ve no idea,’ she says, and the tears gather momentum.
She shakes her head to move on.
‘When I got to Loll’s, I moved Romilly’s flip-flops out of the hall when I left, so if anyone came round suddenly there was no sign of her.’
‘Didn’t Loll’s kids ask what was going on?’ I say, suddenly remembering their existence.
A car beeps behind me. I pull into the middle lane. Put a hand up to the mirror. Pardon, pardon.
Aurelia rubs at her temple like it hurts.
‘God, Lucy,’ she says. ‘I forget how grown up she’s getting sometimes. Ten now. She asked where the baby was, why Romilly was here alone and Loll realised what she thought – that something had happened to the baby. She’d been so caught up in Romilly she hadn’t thought about how the kids might be processing this. What was going through their little minds.’
She moves her glasses off her face and rubs at her eyes. Turns to me, pointed. Addressing what I said earlier, I think: the love that emanates from Marc to his daughter.
‘Romilly never thought he would harm the baby, Stef.’
Then she mutters, almost to herself.
‘Such a line drawn, like that makes it all okay, what he does to my daughter.’
Aurelia bites her lip.
‘Loll was terrified anyway, of leaving them alone, of anything happening to the baby on her watch. That’s why she stayed every night while me or Jake had the kids. Why she got you and Adam to do shifts. She used to stick her head in at night, set the monitor up. She’s barely slept, Stef, bless her.’
I am on the inside lane, wanting to take it slowly through my own nerves but every second matters for Romilly. I indicate and pull out in the direction that feels unnatural, to the middle lane. Focus on the driving. But it’s hard.
‘What did she tell Lucy?’ I push because I need to know, more, more, more.
The outside lane clear, I pull out again. Aurelia seems completely oblivious to the journey; to what is happening outside of this car. Outside of her story.
She laughs. ‘That the baby was fine but it was a “long story”. Then she berated herself for being “the worst kind of adult”.’
She puts her head in her hands and I want to speak to Loll then; tell her she’s not the worst, she’s one of the best actually, even if I didn’t always realise that.
Where the hell is she?
‘Keira put a hand on her hip and stopped in front of the door. Apparently she said: “Oh, we know ALL about long stories.”’
I smile. Check my mirror. Keira is three.
The clock on the dashboard flicks to the next minute.
‘Message Adam again,’ I tell her. ‘Tell him we’re on our way.’
Aurelia nods. Sends the message. But what difference will it make?
I think about that gin and tonic on the plane. Wish hard I could have a second, or even the last dribble I had left undrunk, worrying about being over the limit or feeling tipsy on a French motorway.
Every second we are in this car, Ro is at risk.
I put my foot down, despite my nerves.
I picture them, Loll and Romilly. I want to climb into that picture and pull the duvet up over all of us, grab the sugary tea and block the rest of this out.
Aurelia’s shoulders heave. She has carried so much herself.
‘She could have asked me,’ I say quietly. ‘To help get the baby out of there.’
Aurelia nods. ‘Yes. She could have. But what a gamble, Steffie. Your boyfriend is his best friend. You believed she was going through postpartum psychosis. It was a leap. To think you would take that baby off him, hand her over to Loll. There would have been legal implications, I imagine, too, if you did that. That’s a lot to take on. It’s one thing, for family …’
A beat. Then the practical.
‘Besides, in the end Marc wasn’t leaving any of you alone with the baby. You couldn’t have done anything more than Loll.’
I move my own shoulders from side to side. An ache in my neck pinches from turning towards Ro’s mum all the way on the flight. I wish Romilly were here to give them a quick rub, like she does on a long day at the café.
I wish Romilly were here, full stop.
What’s happening to her now?
I picture her with Marc and a baby she did not name. A distorted version of a normal family picture, the three of them on their holidays in Provence, flip-flops on their feet, sun cream on their necks.
Aurelia looks at her phone. ‘You’re coming off the next exit,’ she says. She turns to me. ‘She’s a kid, Steffie.’
But I am defensive on Romilly’s behalf. There are different forms of adults. Just because one kind doesn’t fold her towels properly, doesn’t mean she doesn’t count.
‘And you’re sure about … things?’ I ask. ‘Mental health wise? This stuff about Marc, it wasn’t … a delusion?’
I am tripping over the language.
‘Well I’m no expert,’ says Aurelia with a sigh that says she has been over this, over, over, over every time she gets back from Marc pushing his phone in her face and talking about postpartum psychosis. Because even if you’re 99.9 per cent sure, even if you speak to her every day, with the family history and Marc pushing it as a theory all day every day … how could doubt not kick in?
God, poor Loll too.
This has been in her head for so long and she has been looking after Fleur, being polite to Marc, changing nappies, putting the dishwasher on, being Ro’s lifeline, pretending to be on Marc’s side, keeping calm enough not to raise an alarm …
I picture Romilly then, grief-stricken without her child, barefoot in her flannel pyjamas and I am winded again.
I picture Loll. Feel that niggle again.
‘Argh sorry, it’s this one!’ yells Aurelia, a second too late.
When I pull too sharply into the inside lane, the car behind presses hard on the horn. Aurelia braces against the car door.
‘Sorry,’ I mutter, but her eyes are dazed: she is back elsewhere.
I look up now as we are forced to slow, leaving the motorway for the French countryside. At the side of the road is a cart selling scarlet cherries so plump I could pick out the ones I want from here. We pass a boulangerie and the scent of warm butter drifts in through the now open window along with chatter that moves between a flurry of French and dollops of English. Holidaymakers walk alongside locals on their way to work, as Europe moves forward from years marred by Brexit and a pandemic.
There are many reasons I will remember this summer.
My stomach lurches, as I hope one of them will be for the moment we brought home my friend.
And not for something else.