20

Day 3

Louis’s Heritage

I asked to see Dr Beaugrand at the end of the day. He had a solemn expression and seemed worn out, a distant look in his eye. For a moment, I thought he was trying to avoid me, but I was there and I was waiting for news.

Over the past few days, I’d sensed something was happening inside Louis, even though the electroencephalograms were still as haphazard. But I could see signs that the others didn’t seem to have picked up. Or, at any rate, didn’t interpret in the same way. For some time now, Louis’s body had regularly trembled with slight spasms, movements. Reflexes – nothing conscious, nothing coordinated, nothing logical. I agreed with the diagnosis, how could I not? I was so desperate to see some meaning in the brief clenching of a hand, the twitch of a cheek or a foot, in those soft yelps. But they happened randomly, sometimes even while his brain was being scanned . . . and the tests were still showing the same anarchic pattern. And yet, in the past few days, I’d noticed some changes. Real changes. The intensity when he clenched his hand was different at different times, I was certain of it. And, most importantly, I’d noticed that the movements were more frequent and lasted longer when I was speaking to him. As if he were trying to communicate. No one in this damned hospital would listen to me – or, rather, everyone listened to me, everyone knew the situation. The countdown. Hope does your head in, makes you imagine an awakening that isn’t happening. So, when I spoke about Louis, people’s faces changed. I could see the pity and what they were really thinking in their eyes: She’s losing her mind as well as losing her son, it’s not surprising . . . It’ll all be over soon, in any case.

But I was certain of what I was seeing, of what I felt. Maternal instinct. I’d never really understood what that meant. Now, the expression really resonated and seemed so utterly appropriate. Maternal instinct means seeing things others can’t see, feeling the slightest fluctuation in your child’s behaviour in your bones. I could feel Louis. I could feel Louis, and Louis was talking to me.

That was why I wanted to speak to Dr Beaugrand. I thought he would listen to me, that he’d try to do something. He listened to me, his face blank. He had the direct look of the expert navigator whose job it was to bring those who are adrift back to the shore. Charlotte was with me. She spoke in my defence, arguing that I was the one who spent the most time with Louis, that, statistically, if anything happened, I was the one who had the greatest chance of witnessing it, so account should be taken of my observations and views.

Alexandre Beaugrand told me I should prepare myself for the worst, adding that the medical team was increasingly concerned because there was no change in Louis’s condition and the clinical evidence was undeniable. To show his willingness, and because he accepted Charlotte’s reasoning, he was prepared to increase the frequency of the electroencephalogram over the last remaining days, but he did not share my observations, or my conviction. Over the last remaining days. Alexandre Beaugrand had just stabbed me brutally in the back. I concluded that he couldn’t be a father – which Charlotte confirmed. How would he handle these situations when he was able to apply feelings he had personally experienced to other people’s tragedies? How would he react when the face of his own youngster superimposed itself on the ashen face of a child in the final stages of life?

Charlotte took me home. I didn’t feel like seeing either Edgar or Isadora.

I knew there’d be something with Edgar, one day. It was a certainty I had a gut feeling about, which was reinforced by the time we spent together. But, right now, my heart was closed to everyone except my son. Edgar would have to be patient. He assured me he would be, and I wanted to believe him. At any rate, I didn’t want to think about that sort of thing, not at present. So, I let things take their course, I let things go.

When we were on our way back from our trip to Budapest, in the taxi taking us to the airport, we exchanged a kiss. Or rather, our lips brushed. Chaste, pure. Let it stay that way for now.

‘I can’t give you any more,’ I whispered.

‘I don’t expect any more,’ he replied, taking my hand. ‘We have plenty of time. Think about Louis, do what you have to do. Don’t have any regrets.’

Three days to go until the end. I needed my mother by my side. To have her squeeze me. Hard. My mother and I had never been very demonstrative, but I do believe that, over the past few weeks, we’d made up for a good ten years or so. I couldn’t get to sleep any more without her. Finding myself alone in my bedroom terrified me, I needed to feel her warm body next to mine, and I could tell she needed that too. Every day, my mother repeated the words she spoke too rarely when I was a child: I love you. My mother and I were experiencing a total revolution. Why had it taken such a tragedy for us to discover how much we meant to each other? Why had we ruined all those years hating each other through all that remained unspoken, when, deep down, nothing was broken? So much time lost, so many missed opportunities, so much emotional damage.

I needed my mother to face the challenge that Louis had set me for the next day. I’d turned the page in the Book of Wonders. It was the penultimate entry. After this, there’d be just one left, and then that would be the end. I wiped away the tears welling up in the corners of my eyes.

There was just one line. I’d dreaded that line. I’d wondered at what point it would appear, but I knew it would be there. Painfully logical.

– Find out who my father is. And see him, just once.

I’d had a relationship for nearly two years with Louis’s father. It was a typical story, I realize with hindsight. At the time, I’d felt as if I was living in a fairy tale, a waking dream. That had made the fall hurt all the more.

I met Matthew in May, fifteen years ago. I was sitting at a pavement café on Place de la République. It was a very hot day, and Parisian women had finally ditched their woollen sweaters for the irresistible combo of sunglasses and strappy tops, while the tourists displayed their sweaty armpits. Matthew was sitting at the next table, with the Lonely Planet guide to Paris in one hand, and a beer in the other. No perspiration rings – that was a point in his favour. I noticed him at once. Matthew exuded sexiness: tall, greying at the temples, athletic looking. He reminded me a little of George Clooney in Ocean’s Eleven. Branded shades, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up – very important, long sleeves on a shirt; for me, that shows good taste. Slow gestures, even when he picked up his beer, delicate fingers – not the sort to get his hands dirty. An intellectual. Forty-something. I had just turned twenty-four. He could have been my father. That was probably one of the main things that attracted me, because I’d never had a father. I only admit this subconscious Oedipal pull with hindsight. At the time, I don’t think I was aware of it.

I was reading an excruciatingly boring management book, and my gaze was naturally drawn to the neighbouring table. After a few moments, I could feel his eyes on me. He smiled and I noticed the dimple that appeared on his right cheek. Louis has one in the same place – totally adorable. He asked me if I could help him; he was on his own in Paris and was looking for a good restaurant for that evening. He lived in London, was on a work trip. Two whole weeks. So, rather than going backwards and forwards, he’d chosen to spend the weekend in France. He didn’t regret staying. I laughed, and he added, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, that he was talking about the lovely weather compared to rainy London, of course. Of course.

Matthew had an art gallery in Notting Hill. He spoke French with a charming accent, and had a slightly caustic sense of humour. So British. How could a man like that still be single? He hadn’t found his princess, that was all, but he hadn’t given up hope. Paris was the capital of love, wasn’t it? Matthew wanted to go up the Eiffel Tower, at night. See the city at his feet. He asked me to go with him. I warned him that there’d be long queues, that we’d have to wait ages. Matthew was better informed than I was. At the last minute, he managed to book a table at the fine-dining restaurant at the top of Paris’s emblematic monument, which allowed us to jump the queue of tourists. A very expensive privilege, but so romantic.

I fell in love with Matthew that first evening. I’d just started working at Hégémonie. My first job. I gave myself, one hundred per cent, to my employer, not knowing that fifteen years later it would still be the same. Matthew and I had a passionate long-distance love affair. Twenty-three months, to be exact. We met once a fortnight. Two entire weekends each month – usually, one in Paris, the other in London. Matthew actually visited Paris regularly, and knew the city inside out. I learned much later that the Lonely Planet on his table was part of his baiting strategy. That I wasn’t the first Parisienne to fall into his trap.

In Paris, he usually came to my place, but sometimes he preferred to go to a luxury hotel, and we’d spend the entire weekend between the bed, the private pool and the restaurant. When he was in Paris with me, he was with me. ‘A matter of principle, beautiful.’ Matthew called me beautiful. I’d never felt as beautiful as when I was in his arms. Nothing was too good for his princess. I was his spoilt baby. We spent our time blissfully locked away together.

In London, I wanted to meet his friends. He told me he wanted me all to himself, only for him. He’d meet me on the Friday evening, at the gallery, when everyone had left. Sex with Matthew was impatient, urgent, sometimes on the floor, surrounded by the artworks, my weekend bag flung in a corner. Sex with Matthew was passionate, with no half measures, with biting, groans of pleasure and post-coital bliss. Sex with Matthew was intoxicating, I developed a taste for the glass of champagne we drank naked after orgasming, savouring the earthquake amid the priceless contemporary debris. I’d never felt that way about anyone before. He’d never felt that way about anyone before. He did his utmost to preserve the extraordinary nature of our affair. Sometimes, we went to what he called his ‘little pad’, a tiny apartment in Notting Hill that was nothing special, around the corner from the gallery. But, in London, as in Paris, Matthew liked to take me to incredible hotels, fabulous settings for our love – that was the exact expression he used. Better still, I sometimes had the surprise of finding in my letterbox a proper handwritten invitation, with a plane ticket to Barcelona, Dublin, Venice or Lisbon. The old-fashioned charm of pure, simple romanticism. Of the successful – not to mention rich – man who showers his soulmate with kindness. I kept telling him it was madness. He invariably replied that money was for making the people you loved happy – otherwise, what was the point of it?

I wanted to believe that this was life with Matthew.

In reality, it was everything but life.

In the twenty-third month of our relationship, I became pregnant. It wasn’t planned. I went to see my doctor, describing my symptoms. I felt tired all the time, I vomited sometimes, my energy level dropped in the middle of the day. Had I been having periods? My periods were irregular, I hadn’t had one for a while, but that wasn’t unusual. I didn’t see the connection. It hadn’t even occurred to me. When the pregnancy test showed two blue lines, I cried my eyes out. I didn’t want this child, not now, not like this. My life was all mapped out. I was planning to have a child when I was around thirty, not before. Before was too soon. My career at Hégémonie was my priority, and Matthew and I still had so much more we wanted to do. Matthew didn’t want children, he’d been very clear about that. I’d always told myself I’d manage to convince him, when the time was ripe. Certainly not now.

But, gradually, the tiny bird unfurling its wings in my belly started to carve out a place for itself. At first, discreetly, then more and more insistently. I caught myself in the middle of a meeting, imagining the child I might have. I didn’t say anything to Matthew, and I didn’t see him for a whole month. I wanted to make the decision on my own, and I also wanted to avoid him discovering the truth. Five weeks later, my mind was made up. The feeling was visceral. I was going to keep the baby. It would be a girl and I’d call her Louise. Matthew would be besotted with us. I’d move to London. We’d be happy.

I prepared a charade in two languages to inform Matthew of the good news. He’d be shocked, of course, but I was certain he’d be over the moon, after the initial surprise. I took the Eurostar and went straight to the gallery, in the middle of the day, a Thursday. It was the first time I’d gone to meet Matthew without warning. He so loved giving me surprises, but this time he’d be on the receiving end for once!

A woman in her forties opened the door at the gallery. Elegant, sophisticated, in a Chanel suit. Frosty. A businesslike smile, looking me up and down scornfully as her eye roved over my H&M clothes and my Bata shoes. I asked to see Matthew, but he wasn’t there. Who wanted to know? Thelma – a friend.

‘I see . . .’ the woman replied.

What did she see, exactly?

‘Matthew has many women friends, you know, he’s a very busy man . . .’

I didn’t like this woman’s insinuations about Matthew at all, and, anyway, who was she? As far as I knew, he’d always run the gallery on his own, like the big man he thought he was. She held out her hand and introduced herself, in an English that was both impeccably polite and condescending.

‘Delighted to meet you, Thelma. I’m Deborah. I help my husband out by looking after the gallery when he’s away. Matthew travels a lot. He’s very fond of Paris and Parisian women. I’m not jealous, I assure you. The agreement we made many years ago allows me to live my life as I please, too. But, I must say, Matthew usually has better taste in women. You really are nothing special. Good day, mademoiselle.’

I never saw Matthew again. I never contacted him again.

He never knew I was pregnant. He’d never seen Louis.

He tried to call several times over the weeks following my encounter with his wife. I didn’t respond. He kept trying. One day, I sent him a text: Deborah is very beautiful. You’re a stupid bastard. Don’t ever try to contact me again.

I was three months pregnant.

Nearly thirteen years later, I switched on my computer and did a search for his name. I’d never done that, despite the ease with which the god Google spat out information to anyone who asked. I had forbidden myself to do so; that book must stay closed. It didn’t take long for my search to produce results. Matthew still ran the same gallery, at the same address. How old was he now? Fifty-seven, fifty-eight? I clicked on the Images thumbnail and received a shock. Louis was the spitting image of Matthew, the resemblance was striking. I stared wide-eyed at the photos of recent exhibition openings. Matthew, glass of champagne in hand, broad smile. Matthew, arms folded, tight-fitting suit and salt-and-pepper hair, posing in front of the works of an obscure New York artist. Matthew, still as good-looking. How many other Thelmas had he ensnared? I scrolled down the page. Then I saw her – sure of herself, of her power. Whatever Matthew had got up to, she was still there. Deborah was smiling, Matthew’s arm around her waist.

I suddenly wanted to throw up.

I was thirteen years pregnant. I was going to have to deal with my nausea.

The address was 80 Portobello Road. I could have found my way there blindfolded.