I stare out of the window.
Those industrial edges of the city are a distant memory now and at the side of wide roads are small wooden frames selling fresh melons, figs. We pass magazin du vin after magazin du vin; unending boxes of Côtes de Provence stacked up outside.
‘Loll tried everything,’ she says. ‘Telling Marc to sleep. Offering to take Fleur for walks. But he wouldn’t let her out of his sight.’
Perhaps that claustrophobia was less to do with flickering lights and more something I was soaking up from Loll.
‘What I still don’t get is her leaving the country,’ I say. ‘It makes no sense when she was trying to get closer to Fleur, not further away.’
Aurelia nods. Sighs.
‘Loll and I both felt exactly the same. God, it was frustrating. Romilly was insistent there was no other way. She said this Ella was the answer. But in the end it sounds like the whole thing was pointless.’
I have no idea what she is talking about. Who is Ella? The name means nothing to me. I stay silent waiting for her to explain.
‘Left turn here,’ she says, looking at her phone. Then she murmurs to herself: ‘Where are you, Lolly?’
A frown is etched deep into my forehead. I don’t know whether I am now considering Romilly’s mental health myself or just imagining things from Marc’s perspective; working out what will play into his narrative.
But something here is sitting badly.
Romilly had just given birth.
‘Why would she be boarding a plane?’ I sigh. ‘Who the fuck is Ella?’
Aurelia sighs.
So Aurelia fills me in. And I am so focused on this bizarre tale of the trip to France to find Marc’s ex that when I look up, I don’t know how I got here.
A dirt track; our little car huffing.
‘Is this right?’
Aurelia looks at her phone.
Shrugs.
‘Looks like it.’
We pick up.
‘But Romilly called me yesterday; Ella was no use,’ she murmurs. ‘Who knows why but she wouldn’t say a word against Marc to Romilly. Said their relationship was barely memorable. Romilly was inconsolable. She had pinned everything on this. Gone all that way. She begged her, pleaded. But nothing. And there was Romilly, left out here all alone away from her baby.’
Aurelia shudders.
We turn down an even smaller track. It feels like we are in somebody’s back garden.
I hold my breath for an angry farmer with a gun; instead there is just a washing line, and lines and lines of pants.
It niggles at me again, that feeling. Ella denying things. Another cross against Romilly’s version of events. That’s not a reason to worry, is it? Not a reason to doubt?
I picture Marc again, exhausted but in love, staring at his baby girl.
Finally we come out of the other side of the track. I exhale.
We are in a small village now, the road narrow. On one side a boucherie, with all kinds of unimaginable French meatiness hanging in the window. A hungry dog faces into it, stares longingly.
‘This is pretty,’ says Aurelia, loving travel, loving a sense of place, but her eyes are glazed.
Something occurs to me. A question I had wondered about earlier. ‘How did Romilly get her passport? If she only decided to go to France after she left hospital?’
But Aurelia points out: Loll had free rein of Marc’s house, cleaning, tidying. It was pretty easy to grab that.
Of course.
We sit in silence for a minute or two. There is a lot to take in.
On the other side of the village is a town hall, and then a courtyard. Aurelia opens the window and lets the buzz permeate; carafes of local rosé glugging into large glasses, chatter that tumbles along too fast for the basic French I learnt at GCSE to pick up. Scents drift in clearly though: rare steak, steaming frites, toasts topped with tapenade made pungent with anchovies.
I have a quick scan for Romilly, just in case.
Her mum reads me.
‘I don’t think they’re going to have popped out for moules frites darling,’ she says, a sad smile.
I nod. Wherever Marc has taken my friend, there’s no doubt that it will be somewhere they can be alone.
Aurelia waves her hand to the left and we are out of the village and into countryside that goes on as far as we can see. Less lush than in England, home to vineyard after vineyard. Tiny farmhouses lie at the top of long potholed lanes where you can try the wine, pick up some olives, throw in some saucisson for dinner. A couple cycles up one of them, wobbly enough that they might have visited a few more vineyards before this one. Behind them is a group of women in their forties on electric bikes, battery pack in the back for when they hit the hills or hit the vin blanc.
Round the gentle bend there is a language school: eat cassoulet and drink pastis with strangers each evening after a long day working on your past participle. Right up Ro’s street, actually. Back in the day.
Aurelia flicks a glance in my direction.
‘Do you remember when the midwife put in his head that Romilly couldn’t have left by herself?’ she says. ‘That was us done for, I think, from that moment. Marc started looking at Loll oddly. Asking questions. She was worried he would try and contact Lucy, to find out what she knew.’
I picture Lucy’s face. Her Uncle Marc. How confusing this must be for Loll’s kids.
We overtake a beautiful but slow red vintage car with the roof down; retirees out for a drive. Their life – from a distance at least – pleasant, content.
‘So your visit?’
‘Yeah, all fake,’ Aurelia says. Half a smile. ‘Thank you, am dram society. Loll and I were pretending to be snippy at each other so Marc wouldn’t realise we had made up. Everything has been different with us since Romilly had the baby, since we knew what had been happening. We had a shared focus.’
She flushes.
‘They think I’m useless, my girls, so I was surprised they let me into things. But in this situation – so strange, so precarious – there aren’t many people you can trust I suppose.’
I know it shouldn’t, but that bruises.
‘We couldn’t let Marc realise that though; it would have rung alarm bells. Wasn’t hard to pretend to be at each other’s throats. We’ve had years of practice.’
I think about a percentage of what was real in that house. Maybe ten?
Ro’s mum softens, a touch. ‘I hope it helped to make up for lost time. Being there for her this week. I’m getting older, Steffie.’
She pushes her glasses back onto her nose, focuses, and I feel horribly, horribly sad.
But the part I’m coming back to …
I stare out of the windscreen.
Walking past the car, there is a family heading back from a market, loaded down with bags. Walking the walk of the fatigued, sweat darkening their clothes, pink edging on their shoulders. They try to keep to the shade under the trees that line the side of the road but I am still a little too close. I swerve. Put a hand up in apology. See a hand raised back at me in rage.
Aurelia pauses.
‘Loll had told the kids that Auntie Romilly was coming while she got better from having a baby. Now she had to tell them she had gone home to her family. Meanwhile the whole time: no baby. The whole thing was a shitshow.’
‘Did Lucy not ask if she could meet her cousin?’
She nods.
Throws her head back hard against the seat. I jump. She raises a hand in apology.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘She told them Fleur was still too little to see other children. We both did. And it’s not the biggest lie I’ve told lately but it’s another one. Another one to add to my long, long list.’
Out of the corner of my eye, I see her look at me.
‘We weren’t liars before, Steffie,’ she says.
Do I know them all now? I think. Do I know all of her lies? And what about Loll? Adam? Marc? Romilly? Do I know all of anyone’s lies?
Aurelia starts crying then, nothing held back, it gushes over and it’s ugly and I bite my lip. It is horrible to witness when I am driving and can’t comfort her.
But I am unsettled too.
‘Why would Ella lie, Aurelia?’
I hear my voice and it surprises me with its ice.