Marc and I are round the back of a village called Les Baux-de-Provence. I overheard someone at the lake saying it got its name because it appears, when you look up at it on the clifftop, like a boat. Sort of. If you have one eye closed.
But I was drawn to this place. Round the front of Les Baux there are fancy ice creams and moules frites, parked cars winding around and around the streets where tourists try to work the pay-and-display machines with minimal French in searing heat. Sweat drips down their backs and they are exposed but it is worth it to be the person who drinks their rosé in the sun in Provence on their holiday or for a well-liked Instagram post. Just to know who they are, when they turn off the light in their five-star hotel, smiling at the thought that breakfast will be served next to the pool in the morning. That the private Pilates class is booked for 10 a.m. That they’ll head to the exhibition in the cave after that, of course, because who comes to an area with this much artistic significance without prioritising the culture?
Round the back of the fancy village though is where it gets interesting. You round the bend to those cliffs and they take you by surprise, like a gritty gruyere after that soft brie. Provence is soft and gentle. Even if the Alpilles calls itself a mountain range, other mountain ranges would laugh at its audacity. Here though, there are edges; the limestone juts out to get you wherever you turn. You stop ambling along, but clamber up. Nothing undulates; it spikes instead. Travellers climb up high on the rocks in flip-flops to see those villages below, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Maussane-les-Alpilles, Mourieres, Egalyieres, a troupe of beauties even from this distance.
The holidaymakers pose for pictures.
Every time I saw them I winced; checked my footing.
And here we are, round the back of Les Baux in pure darkness.
I can’t even see where my feet are.
‘I have a pressure pain,’ I tell Marc, whether he knows what I’m talking about or not. ‘I need to sit down.’
Careful, I find a rock and perch, the stone hard and cold beneath me. When I’m down, something gives way and tears start rolling, for the days I’ve missed, the overwhelming sensation of new motherhood, for my baby’s future, for her past, for me and Marc, a love story gone sour.
‘Look,’ sighs Marc, battling to speak over the crickets who are insistent we hear what they have to say. ‘I know you have decided I am the enemy. But that is … it didn’t happen, Romilly. I just want you to come home, see a doctor, and we’ll go from there.’
I look at his outline; it is too dark for his details.
‘If that’s the case,’ I say slowly, ‘if I’m imagining the text messages, what about those things you said to me the night I went into labour?’
In the silence that follows, I look around. Inhale the skin of Provence: its abundant lavender, rosemary as thick as ribbon.
‘What things?’ he says finally, with a frustrated puff of breath.
‘That you would take my baby away from me,’ I say, tears painted now down my face. ‘You said you would take my baby off me and that’s what made me leave in the end, that’s what tipped me over the edge and yes, the fucking irony, Marc, that I lost her by doing this anyway, it is not lost on me. Please don’t point it out.’
He is close enough that I can see him shaking his head, over and over, but his face is covered by his hands; his head moves from side to side.
I look up then. Try to work out where we are exactly though I don’t know the landscape well enough. But I look down and see lights and in the distance Marseille and the ports and I look up and only see the clarity of the stars so I know that where we are must be near the highest point.
It is May and the start of tourist season but there is still so much space here that at this time, even just a few miles from villages packed with outdoor tables and tipsy tourists, the silence is absolute.
I picture them down there, the thirty-somethings with babysitters back at the mas, laughing over another bottle of vin blanc, brown legs bare. I think of the retirees and their unrushed walks through the market, basket in hand, filling up with cured sausage for dinner later, a nutty block of Cantal, olive oil spiked with garlic, imbibing it all: the scents, the experience, the feeling. I think of the teenagers I see zooming past, espadrilles light on the pedals of their mopeds. Of the locals. Of the ex-pats. Of the vintage cars and the mountain bikers and the hikers and the horse riders.
I think of all of them, living.
And I think of us, here, everything in our life with the film of a nightmare over it now, and I hope none of them have to live through a time like this, none of them.
‘Do you feel up to walking again?’ Marc says, finally.
So I stand up and I try to block out the pain and I step forward, forward, forwards, the crunch of branches juxtaposed with the simmering quiet of us. The smell of thyme is as strong as in a restaurant kitchen.
‘Any answer?’ I say, as the climb bends even higher. Marc walks ahead. Ignores me. I hear him breathe heavily; he has got unfit, I notice with surprise. His tummy flops over his shorts. When did that happen? He is obsessive about the gym. Obsessive about never being that old Marc – Mark – again.
A scurry, sudden. I jump.
‘Just a gecko,’ mutters Marc through that breath.
It is too dark to see it, even though I can hear it’s close.
A few minutes later, I sit down again. Marc sits next to me.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘It just gets a bit too much after a while. Still physically recovering.’
Marc leans down and touches me so lightly on my forehead then that it makes the hairs on my arms stand on end.
And then he sits down too, looks at me and takes hold of my chin, with its slight point.
‘Listen to me, Romilly,’ he says, and it’s soft. ‘I never said those words. Never. I never would. You’re her mum. Always will be.’
I stare at him.
‘So you’re telling me I’m imagining that too?’ I say.
He is close enough now for me to see him nod. ‘I am, yes.’
‘And you didn’t delete those texts off my phone?’
I picture leaving it, during our marathon conversations today, when I went to the bathroom. Numerous times. Changing bloody pads. There would have been time too when I was changing Fleur’s nappy, head down, concentrating: it’s new to me, takes me a while. Plenty of time for a man who knows my passcode to delete swathes of one-way conversation.
‘No.’
‘That whole conversation before I went into labour?’ I say, teeth biting at my bottom lip.
‘Didn’t happen, Romilly,’ he says, firm shake of his head.
‘I nearly died,’ I say. ‘In the water, in the car after you shoved me down the stairs …’
‘Whoa whoa whoa, enough, Romilly, enough. This is warped. You can’t go round saying these things.’
I am sobbing now.
‘My hair, Marc. My lovely long hair that you hacked …’
‘I hacked your hair? Okay. Okay.’ He takes a breath. ‘I’m sorry to tell you that – and I know it must be terribly hard to hear – but you are ill. We can get you the help you need. Keep you home with your family. This is hard for me too, Romilly.’
And I laugh. But it is tinged with terror. The messages are no longer there on my phone. Ella says their relationship was uneventful. There is zero evidence.
What if I am having delusions? It’s the biggest fear of all, deep in my stomach: how would I even know?
I go to reach for my phone to call Mum, Loll, Steffie, someone who can tell me what is true.
But it isn’t there. I didn’t bring it.
I sit back on that rock, look down at the lights and then I put my head in my hands.
The highest point.
The ache intensifies. I put my hands between my legs. Wince.
‘I give in, Marc,’ I tell him, ‘I give in, I give in, I give in.’