Weak at the Knees (25 page)

I shake my head. I’m not even going to contemplate it. I gather the few bits and pieces I’d actually bothered to unpack and stuff them back in my bags. Then, for memory’s sake, I stuff one of Olivier’s jumpers in my bag too, a baggy, navy crew-neck. I think about writing a note, but decide he doesn’t deserve it. Besides, what could I say? I think about leaving my contact details because the only number he’s got is my work mobile which I’ve had to return. But there’s no point. If he didn’t call I’d only be wondering why. If he did, where would it lead? Better to make a clean break and to try to move on. I take a last look around the home that I thought and dared to believe would soon be mine. I take a deep breath and summon the courage to do the right thing. I kiss Asterix goodbye, apologise for not taking him for a walk and open and shut the front door behind me.    

As I make my way down the driveway I can hear the cheese shepherd barking madly and jumping at the door. As I make my way down the driveway I realise that I’ve left my birthday present, Abba Gold, sitting there on the piano. As I make my way down the driveway, I realise there’s no going back, because I’ve left the key behind.

*****

According to one theory, something as insignificant, as innocent as a butterfly flapping its wings in South America can eventually result in a hurricane, months later, on the other side of the world. If I look back to my life and try to work out if any one insignificant action led me to Olivier and to this amazing panorama of the Alps that I’m leaving behind, I’m not sure which one I’d pick. Perhaps it was the day my Grandma sent me on a quest to find a man who made me dizzy ven he kissed me. Perhaps it was the day my father made a chance remark about fresh air over dinner and how none of us got enough of it, so prompting Amber to encourage me to learn a foreign language and escape from England. Perhaps it was the first time I promised to never get involved with a married man.

Or perhaps it’s got nothing to do with any of those things or any particular incident. Perhaps it’s about a string of choices I’ve made along the way, some good, some bad, but each one a conscious decision. And if the choices were all mine and not Grandma’s or Amber’s then, if I could, would I do any of it differently? If I could have avoided the tears that have started to come and the big black vacuum of nothingness in the pit of my stomach, then would I? As the air hostess asks if I’m alright because she’s seen me crying and has tossed an extra bag of consolation nuts onto my tray (as if that’s really going to help) I realise that if I could, I’d probably do it all exactly the same again. I’d break my promise to Amber again, no regrets, which makes me, and only me, absolutely responsible for the way I’m feeling now.

I hit the jackpot, but I didn’t get out the casino in time. I gambled, found perfection and then lost it. I’m learning the harsh lesson that love isn’t always enough. Love doesn’t always conquer everything. And now I’m going to have to deal with it.  

I hate being back in England. Everything’s so much blander than in France. The light, the weather, the air, the food, the language, the colours, my parents’ soulless house… the list goes on. I can’t believe I’m twenty-seven and because I’ve nowhere else to go I’ve been forced to stay with my parents again. It’s more painful than rubbing salt into an open wound. I‘ve been back two months now. For two months I’ve stayed exactly the same, consistently moody, depressed and unresponsive. The opposite of who I normally am. I may finally have taken responsibility for my actions, but that doesn’t make me feel any better. It doesn’t take away the hurt or pain. I’ve lost my way and can’t be bothered to find my bearings. The most I’ve done is to wallow in it, renting a whole library of films with unhappy endings to make me feel like I’m not
the
most miserable person on the plant. In
Love Story
Ali MacGraw dies of cancer. In
Gone with the Wind,
Rhett and Scarlet never get back together.
The Nun’s Story
finds a nun divorcing God.
Artificial Intelligence
stars a robot boy who is abandoned by his mother. And sadly nobody gets saved in
Saving Private
Ryan,
despite the film’s name. As for the
End of the Affair
, the title says it all. 

I must have walked past Amber’s house a thousand times. It looks exactly the same. In fact, everything is still exactly the same back here, except, that is, for me. Every day I feel like I’ve walked onto the wrong film set. I keep trying to drum up the courage to go and say hello to Mrs Slater, but I can’t. Even though I felt guiltier at the thought of breaking my promise to Amber than the actual breaking of it, seeing her home, the bricks and mortar concrete memory, keeps reminding me of how I let her down. I’m too ashamed to knock on the door. I’m looking for forgiveness, but I’m not sure that’s what I’d get. The real problem is that a large part of me hasn’t, won’t and can’t move on. I haven’t really accepted that it’s over.

Aside from my parents, Hugo is the only person I actually see. We might not still be together, but he knows me inside out and understands me. He’s become my best friend and confidante and I feel safe in his company. When we first met up and I gave him the two hour-long unabridged Danni and Olivier story, he neither flinched nor judged me, which came as a surprise. Hugo’s always done the right thing. If a shopkeeper gives him too much change he hands it back. If a restaurant undercharges, he points it out. So when I told him Olivier was married, I expected some kind of recrimination, but it never came. He just said he was very sorry and that he thought I’d done the right thing to leave when it transpired that there was a baby involved.

In other ways, however, he’s been entirely predictable, full of long words and all-knowing. Like when I tried to explain my mini Epiphany, how for a long time I’d blamed Grandma and Amber for my fate, without accepting that I alone was responsible.

“That was a very Jean-Paul Sartre moment,” Hugo said.

“How do you mean?”

“You’ve heard of Sartre, haven’t you?”

“Yes, I’ve heard of him, but what do you
mean
?”  

“It means that you had a very existential moment.”

Aged fifteen I hadn’t known the word ‘enigmatic’ and aged twenty-seven, I still don’t properly understand existentialism. The difference is that twelve years ago I wanted to hide my ignorance, and now I no longer care.

“And what actually
is
existentialism then?” I asked.

“It’s about people making their own choices and being totally responsible for the choices they make. I think Sartre said something profound like ‘man is free to act, but he must act to be free’.”

I decided to change the subject. It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested, I was just aware that the conversation had been entirely about me for almost four hours and it was only fair to redress the balance.

“So, how was your holiday?” I asked.

“Which one?”

I didn’t know there’d been more than one.

“The one you rang me up just before you went. Tuscany.”

He paused, contemplating and I thought that perhaps I sensed a slight smirk.

“Oh, it was great,” he said.

“Who did you go with again?”

“A colleague.”

“A
female
colleague,” I reminded him.

“Yes.”

“And I suppose you had a few existential moments with
her
along the way?”

It’s not often Hugo’s rendered monosyllabic, but he looked cagey, like he was hiding something. And it suddenly dawned on me that he had a new girlfriend and didn’t want to talk about it for fear of upsetting me.

“I don’t mind talking about her,” I said.

“Well, I don’t particularly want to.”

I was relieved, because I wasn’t really in the mood for talking about new loves. There was something odd about Hugo having a new girlfriend. Or I just felt odd about it. It’s not that I wanted him still or anything, far from it. It’s just I didn’t want anyone else to have him either. He’d been mine for so long.

“Well, you can at least talk to me about Italy. What was Tuscany like?”

“Tuscany was great, really beautiful, just like in that film we saw with Liv Tyler, that rites of passage one?”

“Do you mean
Stealing Beauty
?”

“Yes, that’s the one. Anyway, Florence was amazing, despite there being too many people on scooters. And we visited this gem of a tiny hillside village in the middle of nowhere called San Gimignano, which had all these towering chimneys. It was quite possibly the most beautiful place I’ve ever been to. Maybe wh-

He stops himself.

“Maybe what?”

He looks distracted.

“Look, Ariadne, do you mind, I’ve really got to go.”

“Not at all,” I said.

But I was lying. Hugo used to have all the time in the world for me and now he didn’t. Now his time was somebody else’s.

*****

My parents haven’t got a clue what I’m going through. When I told them what had happened, they (at least Mum) couldn’t have been more unsympathetic if they’d tried. They’ve always been xenophobic, and consider the French a nation of donkey-eating, drunk racist frogs. “You’re better off out of that one,” my mother said, before asking if I’d heard about crime of passion. She was aghast when I asked if it was a book by Dostoevsky.

“That’s Crime and
Punishment
, Danni. I don’t know. All that money spent on your education.”

“I went to the local comprehensive,” I reminded her.

“Oh, don’t be so pedantic. It’s irrelevant whether it’s our money or the state’s money that’s been wasted. Anyway, in France ‘crime of passion’ is a defence against murder. So, for example, if a wife found out that her husband was having an affair and out of fury or jealousy went and killed him or his lover, she might well get off on the grounds that it was a crime of passion.”

She paused, pushing out her chest as proud as a peacock, as if she’d perfectly explained why I’m better off out of that one. If she was waiting for some kind of response, it didn’t come.

“So, don’t you see,” she continued. “If Ohhhleaveeaaay’s wife had found out about you and decided to kill you then she might well have got away with it. No, you’re definitely safer back at home, out of harm’s reach.”

I can’t stand the way my mother pronounces Olivier’s name, as if it starts with a great big ‘O’. I wish I could move out, but to move out I’d have to get a job and if I were to get a job that would mean I intended to stay, which I’m not sure I do. Besides, what job would I get? There’s nothing in particular I want to do. The only one of my friends’ jobs I fancy is the one who is still the M&S bra model, but seeing as my boobs are uneven, that job title is definitely out the question.

My parents are starting to despair. A month ago they told me to snap out of it. Dad suggested I go to see a shrink, but Mum was against it and the stigma she felt was attached to it. That was a month ago, but now, because of something I did yesterday, I’ve been given a last minute, emergency appointment with this leading Harley Street specialist, because what I did yesterday has convinced my mother that there is no getting away from it, her one and only daughter has totally lost her mind and is a bona fide nutcase.

*****

I’d seen Hugo a fair few times, about twice a week since my return. He was looking out for me, as friends do, concerned for my welfare and upset by my lack of progress. Sometimes he’d come to my parent’s place, sometimes we’d grab a coffee and occasionally, if I could muster the energy, we went for a walk. Going to the cinema was my favourite, because then I didn’t need to talk and could just lose myself in the story. Quite frankly, I don’t know why Hugo bothered. I was constantly going on about how much I loved Olivier and I wished I could see him again, if only his wife wasn’t pregnant. I’d have hated it if Hugo ever went on about his girlfriend the way I went on, but he never mentioned her and never once flinched when I spoke about this overpowering, all-consuming love I’d felt, saying that I hoped that he too would find this with somebody some day. Anyway, yesterday he turned up, unannounced. I was surprised to see him, because apart from the one time he whisked me to Cannes, Hugo’s not a great one for surprises.

“Is this a fleeting visit or-

“I thought we might go for a walk,” he suggested.

“Okay, let me put my trainers on.”

He followed me in, watched me slip into my chunky Skechers, crouch down and tie up the laces. I yelled up to my mother who was in the bath to tell her that Hugo was here and we were going out for a while and then we left. We walked to the local park and sat on the swings. It was the sunniest, warmest day since I’d got home. For a while I’d swung back and forth, eyes closed, enjoying the rays. I eventually stopped kicking and waited for the swing to slow to a stop. Then and only then did I open my eyes and when I did I turned to face Hugo who was staring at me.

“Were you looking at me all that time?” I asked.

“Yes, you looked really lovely. Your face was really soft.”

That was the first complement he’d given me since I got home, probably because I’ve looked rubbish. He smiled nervously and cleared his throat.

“Danni, I didn’t want to say anything at the beginning, but I noticed you stopped wearing the ring I gave you for your 18
^th
.”

I didn’t know whether to tell the truth about what I’d done with the ring or pretend that it was somewhere safe at home. I fumbled, playing for time.

“I, err, I, well, you see, it’s just that-

“It doesn’t matter. You don’t need to explain.

I wondered why he’d brought it up then. Was he trying to make me feel guilty? There was always an ulterior motive behind everything Hugo did or didn’t say. Perhaps he was going to give me a replacement. As he put his right hand into his trouser pocket and fished out a little box, I realised that I’d hit the nail on the head. He swivelled round to face me better and looked me directly in the eyes.