75

ZOE

Camille was not down for breakfast when the rest of us were ready to leave. Gilbert had been up to their room twice.

‘She is enjoying a lie-in,’ he told us after the first time.

After the second: ‘She would like to speak with you, Zoe.’

She was still in bed, but it seemed like she was physically okay—sitting up with a half-finished coffee next to her on the table. She smiled when she saw me.

‘You and I must talk.’

There wasn’t a chair, so I perched on the bed, but she waved me off. ‘Not here. Tell the others to walk. You and I will make our own day.’

‘All good,’ I told the other four downstairs. ‘We’ll see you in La Storta.’

Martin raised an eyebrow. ‘Maybe you’ll catch up.’

It wasn’t going to happen unless they waited for us. Camille was in no rush, and when I finally got her up and dressed and we’d had breakfast, she wanted to stop right away for another coffee.

Leaving Campagnano, we had a view over the countryside we had been travelling through, and then we walked through the magnificent Veio Park, crossing the inhabited area to join a long track. At last, Camille started talking.

‘You know I will no longer live with Gilbert. I needed to make my final decision. He made me a wonderful birthday and I thought…’

‘…If this is as good as it gets, no?’

‘I was tempted. Practically, he is so good. But I will not let the disease make me take him back. You know he has never apologised.’

‘Would that change things?’

‘I am not talking about…hypotheticals.’

‘Have you told him? That it’s over?’

‘Not yet. But he knows.’

She’d said I had become practical. Someone had to be. So, I added: ‘But he gave up his business, right? Does he have anywhere to live?’

‘The house has enough space. He will stay until he finds somewhere else. Or I find my hostel. Life is short.’

‘Remind me if I get annoyed with you, that I think you are truer to yourself and what you believe than anyone I know. And you are brave.’

Camille smiled sadly. ‘I am not so brave. But I have choices, and this one I make, even if it does not make Gilbert happy. We were not happy together and he forgets this.’

We walked for half an hour in silence.

‘You can come and live with me in Bastien’s room. But if you change your mind…’

She was giving me the out I wanted. Why couldn’t I take it?

‘Why didn’t you talk to Mary-Lou when you found out you were pregnant?’ I blurted out. ‘Back when you needed help?’ I wanted to hear it from her.

Camille neither spoke nor looked at me for some time. Then she stopped and turned. The sunlight filtered behind her through the deep-green leaves on the tree that framed her face. She looked hardly older than she had been when, instead, it was my help she had asked for.

‘Because I thought I could trust you to do what was right.’ Then, limp and all, she strode ahead.

It occurred to me that there was something even harder to accept about what had happened between us all those years ago. Worse than my self-congratulation. My mother’s anger—the anger that had estranged us for years, that I’d only forgiven after she’d died—had been at me. I had wanted her to choose me rather than her beliefs, and been driven subconsciously to make her choose. Camille had been collateral damage.

Yet my mother had been right in Camille’s case, even if I could never agree with either on the principle of it being a woman’s choice, not God’s rule. Camille would have been better off if I’d helped her to tell her parents and not have the abortion. Ironically, if I had my time again, with what I understood now, I would never have taken that trip: a trip that defined me. Who, then, would I have become? Would that version of me have taken the way out that Camille might be offering now?

By the time I caught her up, I could see Martin ahead. And I sensed that something was very wrong.