Helena left for England in February, at the start of “hiver”, the traditional mid-term winter holiday of her school year. It was sunny but freezing cold in Paris, and the roads glistened with frost as she drove us onto the slip road down to the N170 and into the city in her little car. She’d been driving at every opportunity and wasn’t put off by the weather, although it was in fact only fifteen minutes on the train from Eaubonne to the Gare du Nord, when the trains were running on time. They’d announced delays today, though, and Helena hadn’t fancied waiting in the cold. I didn’t mind driving into the city with her, as I needed to take a trip into the office.
The motorway led over the bridge to the Seine, which snaked around the north-western edge of Paris before making its well-known journey across the city. A long boat carrying two huge piles of sand chugged gently down the river with seagulls following. I could see Montmartre in the distance. I gave Helena directions to move into the right hand lane for St Denis and the Porte de Clignancourt, before we joined the Périphérique and entered the outskirts of Paris. The frost had begun to thaw and I relaxed a little, although Helena had been unfazed by the slippery conditions and had driven well. To our right were narrow streets flanked with shiny antiques or dusty old wooden furniture under flimsy shelters, and I saw that we’d reached the flea market of St. Ouen. Rows of run-down shops stuffed with out-of-date leather garments lined the road, which led away from the market. Groups of men sat at small tables or stood haggling or gambling on the pavements.
Parking at the Gare du Nord was tricky, so we quickly swapped seats and said goodbye.
“Call me when you get there,” I told my daughter.
“I will. And look after my little baby.” Helena patted the car bonnet. “I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.”
I drove down rue La Fayette to my employer’s office and took a detour, as I often did, through the rue du Faubourg St Denis where I’d lived in the first year after my arrival in France, eighteen years ago. Pregnant and adrift, with no plans other than to escape what had happened in England and to start a new life on my own with my baby, I’d lived a happy day-to-day existence here. These old narrow Parisian streets, flanked with jewellery and flower shops and open-fronted Indian épicieries with their piles of fruit and vegetables, huge sacks of rice and pungent spices, could recapture in an instant the sensation of both loss and joy that I had experienced as I walked the streets alone, preparing to bring my daughter into the world.
I parked the car outside the tiny office of the agency that provided me with translation work. Working from home suited me well – I enjoyed the freedom to organize my own life and to work as much or as little as I pleased (though I rarely turned down work) – but I enjoyed my little trips into the city too, and in some ways missed the social aspect of working in an office with other people.
The agency was housed inside one of the traditional old shuttered buildings that had been bought up by North African landlords and filled with sewing machines and illegal immigrants in the years that I’d lived in the area. The owner, Juliana, was on the telephone, waving a cigarette in the air as she talked. The small office was thick with tobacco fumes, as usual, and it crept instantly down my throat and into my lungs. Juliana looked up and smiled and nodded at a pile of manuscripts on the table opposite. I picked them up and waved to her, crooking a finger towards the street, where the car was double-parked. I headed back outside and shut the door behind me, glad to breathe in the fresh air again. Much as I loved her company, I could never have worked in that small space with Juliana and the permanent stench of smoke.
I placed the pile of manuscripts onto the car seat beside me, pleased to have plenty of work to occupy me while Helena was away. I drove back, once more, through the rue du Faubourg St Denis and looked around me at the streets I’d wandered, both before and after Helena was born. I resolved, once again, not to worry about her while she was away, about something that was beyond my control and that, indeed, may never, ever come to pass.
*
A few days later Zara phoned. I was sitting at the kitchen table, flicking through my old Collins Robert French-English dictionary, with my various projects spread out around me.
“How’s it going?”
“It’s good. Helena’s fine. She loved the open day at the University. I went with her for the guided tour.”
“Yeah, she said. She seems pretty excited about everything.”
“She really wants to go there, Lizzie. The Academy of Sport is amazing. There’s a gym there that the public can use. I’m going to start going too.”
I laughed. “Zara, you’ve never been inside a gym in your life.”
“I know. That’s why I’m starting now. I need to get fit.”
I laughed again. “You need to ogle at fit men, you mean.”
Zara was silent.
I said. “Okay. Well, anyway, I’m glad it’s all falling into place.”
Zara still said nothing.
“So,” I said. “Everything okay with you?”
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “You’re upset about Oscar Pistorius.” Oscar Pistorius had been Zara’s obsession since the London Olympics last summer. That he was a celebrity with a glamorous and beautiful model girlfriend had been no obstacle for Zara; celebrities were the ideal love objects for her – attractive and unavailable being the two main criteria. But the fact that he had no legs appeared to be what made him stand out from the crowd – the crowd consisting primarily of famous footballers, Zedane, Ronaldo, and Fernando Torres to name but a few. Pistorius had a special place in her heart, though. I guessed that his semi-vulnerability appealed to Zara’s caregiving side. Either that, or there was something kinky about prosthetic legs in Zara World.
“I know. I can’t believe they think he did it deliberately,” she said. “I believe him. He didn’t mean to shoot her. It was an accident.”
“Maybe you should be a character witness.”
“Ha ha. Very funny.” She was silent again for a moment before she said, “Lizzie, I need to tell you something.”
“What? What’s happened?”
She paused for a moment. “I met Catherine again. I bumped into her in Borough Market. On the South Bank. You know, near London Bridge.”
My heart leaped. “What? When? When did this happen?”
“A couple of days ago. When Helena went to the Open Day, at the Uni. I went down to the river with her and then I went to the Tate Modern while I waited for her, and then...”
I interrupted her. “Was Helena with you?”
“What? When?”
“When you bumped into Catherine.”
“No. No, she was at the Uni, at the open day. I was walking back to meet her. It was freezing, and snowing a bit. I decided to go via Borough Market, to get some Turkish sweets, and some baklava and that lovely almond honey cake they sell there. But the stall wasn’t there – there was hardly anything much there in fact – and that’s when I saw her. She was buying a wrap from the Spanish place on the corner by the cathedral that has that big pan of stew and the enchiladas and stuff... and I nearly didn’t see her but then she saw me, and she called out my name, and I turned and recognised her straight away.”
“Oh my God.” I breathed in sharply. My heart was hammering against my chest. I turned the gas ring off on the stove and sat down at the table.
“It’s alright, Lizzie. She’s left Martin. She’s not with him anymore.”
“Really? Since when? What did she say?”
“She said they broke up a few years ago. She’s fine about it. She’s seeing someone else. And she was really keen to hear about you.”
“What? What did you tell her?”
“I told her you were living in France.”
“Zara!”
“I didn’t say where! It’s okay!”
“So what did you tell her?” I repeated.
“Not that much. Honest. She said she’d tried to find you on Facebook and I... well, I said you weren’t on there, for obvious reasons...”
“You told her that? For obvious reasons?”
“No! No, I just meant that I know that you’re not on there, for obvious reasons, like because of – you know – you not wanting Martin to know where you are and everything. But I didn’t say that. I didn’t tell her why.”
“So you didn’t tell her about Helena?”
“I said you had a daughter. Obviously I didn’t say that she was Martin’s daughter. She didn’t actually ask.”
“Oh God!” I said again.
“Lizzie, it’s okay...”
“Did she ask how old she was?”
“No. Lizzie, I didn’t give anything away, I promise. I was really careful. We mostly talked about her, what she was doing.”
“So what is she doing?” I couldn’t help being curious. My frantic and purposeful searches for Martin aside, I was not one for trawling search engines or social media, looking for people from my past. I hadn’t looked up Catherine or anyone else since I’d left England. I wanted to move on with my life and didn’t see the point. But now that Catherine – who had once been my oldest and dearest friend – was ‘here’ again, I couldn’t help but ask.
“She’s still acting. She’s been in a couple of shows. She’d just been up to the National Theatre to buy some tickets for a play and she was killing time until it started, she said. She was just on her way to check out the Shard.”
“Oh yes, the Shard.” The latest addition to the London skyline. It was meant to be amazing, and taller than that building in Frankfurt – what was it called? I tried to think about The Shard, to calm myself, to control my breathing, but I was still breathing in more than I was breathing out. “So what happened? How did you leave things?”
Zara was quiet for a moment and I knew I wasn’t going to like the answer. “Well, we swapped phone numbers. She asked if I would keep in touch—”
“Oh my God!” My breathing stopped again.
“—But I don’t have to, Lizzie! Really, I won’t see her again if you don’t want me to. I didn’t arrange anything. It was just, you know, a thing.”
“A thing,” I repeated.
Neither of us said anything for a moment.
“So – let me get this straight – she didn’t see Helena? She didn’t even catch sight of her? At all?”
“No. I just walked with her to the Shard and we both had a quick look inside to see how much it cost to go up but neither of us could afford what they were charging. And anyway, it was snowing by then, and we were laughing because there were people up there in the snow, and Catherine said that they can’t have been able to see very much, and then, like I said, we swapped numbers and said goodbye. Then I walked to down to meet Helena.”
“Okay.” I breathed out again.
“But she’s left him, Lizzie. Don’t you see? It’s over between them. It’s been over for years, she said. So you don’t have to worry.”
“Did she say why?”
“Why what?”
“Why she left him?”
“No. She just said that she didn’t like the way he treated her. And that he’d gone off with someone else.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, another woman.”
“Poor woman,” I said. “But lucky Catherine, I suppose.”
“She seemed happy, Lizzie,” Zara said, encouraged by my change in tone. “Back to, you know, how she was, when she lived with you, that time.”
“Yeah.” I thought back to the first time that Catherine had left Martin, the time he’d knocked her tooth out. When she’d come to live with me in my flat in Baker Street, and we’d had such a close friendship, such a good time.
“It’s good that it’s all worked out for her,” I said. I didn’t know quite how I’d expected Catherine’s life to pan out but, somehow, it wasn’t like this.
“I know.”
“So what did she look like?” I asked.
“Pretty, still. Her hair’s long still. A bit older.”
I smiled. “Yeah. Well I bet she looks younger than me.”
“You don’t look old, Lizzie.”
“Thanks. Neither do you.”
“So, anyway. I thought you should know. I wanted to tell you. I knew how you would feel. But there’s nothing to worry about, really.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
Zara paused. “So, shall I get in touch?”
“What? No!”
“Oh, I thought you meant...”
“No!” I said again.
“But...”
“Okay, so think about it. What happens next, Zara? What’s she going to say when she meets Helena and finds out whose daughter she is?”
“Yours?” Zara sounded confused.
“And Martin’s!”
“Oh, I see.” Zara paused. “Do you have to tell her that?”
“Zara! She’s eighteen and she’s the spitting image of him!”
“Is she?”
“You don’t see it?”
“I always thought she looked like you.”
I considered that for a moment. “Well, anyway, Zara, can’t you see what’s going to happen? How long do you think it’s going to take Catherine to figure out that Helena would have been born nine months after... well, you know.”
Zara was silent for several moments and I worried I’d upset her.
“Look, Zara. Honey. I’m sorry,” I said eventually. “I’m being mean to you. I know I am. I don’t mean to be. I’m just scared.”
“I understand,” said Zara, quietly.
I bit my lip. I hated this. I moved the phone to my other ear, moved some newspapers aside and reached for a tissue from the box in front of me. As I did so, I knocked a cold cup of coffee all over the kitchen table and onto my manuscripts, at which point the doorbell rang. Lily sat up and started barking furiously. She ran into the hallway. I grabbed the cup and set it upright.
“Zara, I’m sorry. Can I call you back in just a moment?” I asked. “Please? Don’t go away.”
“Okay.”
I replaced the phone in its cradle and threw a cloth over the spilled coffee, moving my paperwork out of the way. I rubbed my ear and blew my nose as I walked to the door, calling to Lily to stop her noise. It was just the postman, as I’d suspected, but I was feeling so drained that I needed a moment or two to gather my thoughts before I called Zara back again.
I’ve got to stop doing this, I told myself, as I mopped up the spilled coffee from the kitchen table and spread the stained manuscript papers over the stove to dry. I was controlling Zara, now. I was controlling everything. She’d been Catherine’s friend too. What right did I have to object to their renewed friendship? Or to impose terms on what they could discuss? I was becoming desperate, I realised that. The Google searches, the questions I asked Helena, the way I was being with Christian, the way, in general, that I’d been feeling and behaving since I told Helena about her father just a few months ago; I didn’t recognise myself anymore.
I moved some ironing from the kitchen sofa and sank down onto it. I closed my eyes for a moment and leaned my head back against the cushions. Lily appeared beside me and put her chin on my knee.
Okay. So, what if Catherine found out about Helena? Would it really be that disastrous? She knew that I’d slept with Martin, who had been her fiancé at the time. That – or, at least, Martin’s version of what had happened – was what had brought about the end of our friendship. But she knew about it, all the same. What she didn’t know was that I’d gone on to find myself pregnant with his child. It would be a surprise, but not an altogether unexpected one, surely? And, who knew, possibly even a pleasant one, now that her relationship with Martin was over and she’d moved on with her life and found someone else? She might even be pleased to meet my wonderful daughter. I smiled a little as my maternal pride began to seep through the barrier that I’d created for myself and I started imagining us all together, the way it used to be, but better, because Martin was gone (this time, for good, right?), Helena was here and Catherine (with her own story to tell) would be bound to accept that I’d told the truth all along about what Martin had done to me.
I looked across at my stove and imagined myself making coffee for Catherine. I imagined the tearful conversation that we would have, how she would say that she was so sorry that she had chosen Martin over me and that I’d been right all along, that he was a liar, a cheat, and a bully. I looked over at my kitchen table, and imagined Catherine sitting there, drinking the coffee I’d just made with me and my friend Suzanne (they’d have so much in common! Suzanne was an old hippie like Catherine. She cared about the environment, The Universe and philosophy. And she loved the theatre too!). Before long, next Christmas had arrived and Catherine was here, spending it with us. Helena and Zara were goofing around with the presents, Christian was pouring the wine and Catherine would be cooking with me and Christian – and, oh, she had such a sweet tooth. She would just love the Bûche de Noël!
Then another thought occurred to me and I froze in my tracks.
I picked up the phone and tapped in Zara’s number. She answered straight away.
“Zara?”
“Yes?”
“Does she have any kids?”
Zara was quiet again. “That’s what I was going to tell you,” she said. “Just before you put the phone down.”
“You mean she does?”
“Yes, she has a son.”
My heart started racing again. I took a deep breath. I had no idea why this wouldn’t have occurred to me before. But it hadn’t. Not once in all these years.
“How old?” I asked.
“Eighteen,” said Zara.
“Oh my God.”
“I know. I didn’t think. When she said it, I mean. It just didn’t register. But I just looked her up on Facebook,” said Zara. “And he’s there too. His name’s Sky. He’s eighteen. The same age as Helena. Well, just a few months younger.”
“So. Helena’s brother.”
“Yes,” Zara agreed.