The guest, p.11
The Guest, page 11
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. But maybe we can help?”
His hands clenched and for a moment, Iris thought he was going to push away from the table. But then his shoulders sagged.
“I had a letter from the counselor who is helping Charlie’s mum. Apparently, she—Charlie’s mum—wants to meet me.”
“How do you feel about that?” Hugh asked carefully.
“I don’t know.” Gabriel rubbed his chin. “I mean, I don’t see what good it would do. It would be painful for both of us.”
“But it might give you both some sort of closure,” Iris interjected, repeating what she’d said when she and Gabriel had first spoken about it.
“I don’t see how it can ever be closed. It’s not as if either of us is ever going to forget Charlie.”
“But it’s understandable that his mum wants to meet the person who was with her son when he died,” Iris persisted.
“From a mother’s point of view, I would want to, if it were me,” Esme said gently. “Just to say thank you for being there, for my son not dying alone.”
“She’s already passed on her thanks, via the police. Anyway, I don’t need her thanks, I didn’t do anything.”
“You allowed him to tell his mum he loved her,” Iris said. “That’s huge.”
Gabriel looked at her with such loathing that she physically flinched. She didn’t know why, but she had gone too far.
“There’s no obligation for you to meet his mother, is there?” Joseph said, breaking another uncomfortable silence.
Gabriel looked as if he had been thrown a lifeline. “No, no obligation.”
“Then stop putting yourself under pressure. Do what’s best for you.”
Iris frowned. “Shouldn’t it be about doing the best for a mother who’s lost her son?” There was a flare of panic in Gabriel’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I really shouldn’t have brought this up. Can we change the subject?”
“Good idea.” Hugh clapped Gabriel on the shoulder. “Why don’t you and Joseph show me how the walled garden is coming along?”
Iris waited until they’d left. “I shouldn’t have said anything,” she groaned, putting her head in her hands. “It’s just that I can’t believe Gabriel is refusing to meet Charlie’s mum. It seems cruel. And Gabriel isn’t cruel, he’s the kindest man I know.”
“Stop beating yourself up,” Esme said firmly. “It’s probably helped him to hear a few opinions.” She paused. “I’ve been meaning to ask—I’d love your help in choosing the soft furnishings and color schemes for the house. As a client, of course. Is it something you’d be interested in?”
A warm glow spread through Iris’s body. “Definitely.”
“I know you’re waiting to hear back about the town house. I thought it might fill in the time while you’re waiting.”
“It would, thank you.”
“Great.” Esme gave her a smile. “Maybe we could have a day out in London together to look at furniture for the nursery. Do you have a free day this week?”
“How about Thursday?”
“That works for me.”
“Perfect,” Iris said. And it would be—as long as Laure didn’t ask to go with them.
26
Gabriel watched the French countryside speed by, glad to be out of the house for the day.
Away from Iris too. He still couldn’t understand why she’d brought up Maggie at lunch yesterday. He knew she was frustrated with him—but what had she been hoping? That everyone would come down on her side and tell him that he had to meet Charlie’s mum? That hadn’t happened. Although Esme seemed to think that he should meet Maggie, Joseph had said he should do what was best for himself, and Hugh had remained neutral.
Deep down, Gabriel knew he was going to have to bite the bullet, because Iris was right. Despite what Joseph had said, he needed to do what was best for Maggie, not what was best for him.
The controller announced their imminent arrival at Gare du Nord. Gabriel pulled his overnight bag from the rack and stuffed his earphones into his pocket, both excited and apprehensive about seeing his friend. It was a thirty-minute walk to Pierre and Laure’s apartment from the station, and, as it was only five o’clock, and Pierre wouldn’t be home before seven, Gabriel stopped at a café on the Place de la Republique and sat on the terrace, an espresso in front of him.
While he watched the world go by, his thoughts returned to Maggie. On the train, he’d come up with a plan. If all she wanted to do was thank him, and go over Charlie’s last moments, he would maintain the Tell Mum I love her scenario. If she insisted that Charlie would never have said such a thing, he’d tell her that Charlie hadn’t said anything, but that he’d made up the lie hoping it would bring her comfort. If Maggie accepted either of those versions, and went away happier, he would feel vindicated.
His coffee drunk, Gabriel walked to Oberkampf, the area where Pierre and Laure lived, stopping at a boulangerie for a pain au chocolat. He felt surprisingly relaxed considering what lay ahead of him, because he didn’t doubt that any conversation with Pierre would be difficult.
He arrived at Pierre and Laure’s apartment block. The code for the outer door hadn’t changed so Gabriel didn’t have to ask someone to let him into the building. He glanced at the rows of letter boxes that lined the left-hand wall of the entrance hall, pressed the release button for the inner door and made his way past the lift and up the staircase to the first floor. He’d never understood why his friends had chosen to live in such a sterile building when they could have afforded a flat in one of the beautiful buildings on the main boulevard.
On the first floor, he rang their doorbell. As he expected, there was no answer, so he sat on the floor to wait, his back against the wall. He took out his phone, prepared to while away the next hour or so catching up on the increasingly depressing news. Whenever the downstairs door clicked open, he looked up, hoping to hear Pierre’s footsteps on the stairs. Instead, he would hear the whir of the lift running down its shaft in response to the call button in the hall below.
Seven o’clock came, and went. Gabriel shifted his position, stretching his legs out in front of him. Doubts were beginning to set in. What if Pierre had a dinner tonight? What if, as Laure suspected, he was with Claire, or whoever the mother of his child was? In Laure’s absence, he might have moved in with her. He cursed his friend under his breath. You’d better not let me down, Pierre. You’d better turn up.
The downstairs door clicked open again and this time, Gabriel heard someone coming up the stairs. He pushed to his feet, but the man who appeared wasn’t Pierre, and after a curious Bonsoir, he continued along the corridor and up to the second floor, then to the third. There was the distant rattle of keys, followed by the sound of a door slamming shut. Then silence.
It was now eight o’clock. If Gabriel had had the keys to their flat, he might have been tempted to go in and wait there. But he hadn’t thought to take them with him; it was one thing to go into their apartment with Laure and Pierre’s permission, but a completely different thing to walk in without their knowledge.
Gabriel looked around. There were five other apartments on this floor of the building and he knew, from conversations with Pierre and Laure, that they didn’t socialize with their neighbors. That was why they’d chosen to live in such an impersonal building, Pierre had joked. He didn’t want to live in the sort of place where neighbors popped in and out of each other’s homes. Pierre was an enigma in that sense. When he had to socialize, he did it very well; he would talk to everyone in the room and generally be the life and soul of the party. But he wasn’t interested in small chat, and wouldn’t normally choose to talk to someone he didn’t know. An introverted extrovert, Gabriel supposed.
On a couple of occasions, when he and Iris had been using the apartment, they had bumped into the elderly woman who lived opposite. He stood up, brushed himself down, and went to ring on her doorbell.
For a while, the only sound inside was from the television, the volume turned up so loud that Gabriel knew she was watching the news. Eventually he heard someone on the other side of the door and guessed she was looking through the spyhole to check who was there. There was a rattle of bolts and the door opened a crack.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” Gabriel began, stooping so that she could see his face. He spoke reasonable French, and what he had to ask wasn’t difficult, so he carried on. “I’m looking for Pierre.” He pointed to the door of Pierre and Laure’s apartment.
She nodded, and he knew that she had recognized him.
“I haven’t see him for a while,” she said. “His wife was here on Saturday, I saw her go into the apartment. But I didn’t see him.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
She thought for a moment. “Last week, when I went down to take my rubbish to the bin in the courtyard. He was on his way out.” She paused. “I haven’t seen his wife for a while, apart from on Saturday.”
“She’s with us, in England.”
“Ah!” A smile crossed her face.
He debated whether to ask her to tell Pierre, if she heard him come in later that evening, that he was looking for him. But he didn’t want to put her out.
“If I see him, I will tell him you were here,” she said, as if she had seen his inner struggle.
He smiled. “Thank you. Have a good evening.”
Gabriel waited until she’d closed the door, then took out his phone and called Pierre. It went straight through to voicemail. “Pierre, it’s me, Gabe. I’m here in Paris, waiting outside your apartment. Can you give me a call, let me know what time you’ll be back?” For good measure, he sent more or less the same message to Pierre’s WhatsApp.
There was a brasserie on the other side of the road. He crossed over, chose a seat on the terrace and ordered steak frites and a glass of red wine. It came so quickly that he stretched out his meal by ordering dessert, and then a coffee. At nine thirty, with no sign of Pierre going into his building, and no message from him, Gabriel resigned himself to spending the night in a hotel. Tomorrow, he would go to Pierre’s workplace and confront him there.
27
Iris snatched up her phone. Gabriel had called last night to tell her that Pierre hadn’t been at the apartment and that he was staying in Paris overnight.
“I’ll go to his office tomorrow morning,” he’d said. “I’m not leaving Paris until I know where he is.”
“He is with Claire,” Laure had declared, when Iris told her.
“You don’t know that. But if you give him the address, Gabriel can go and check, if you like.”
Laure had shaken her head. “It would only make things worse.”
“Did you see him?” she asked Gabriel now. “Pierre?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Hang on a moment and I’ll tell you. So, I went to his workplace this morning, like I said I would, and asked for him at reception. The receptionist buzzed through to his extension and one of his colleagues answered and said that Pierre was away on holiday. I asked if they knew where he’d gone, and of course they were reluctant to tell me until I said that I was an old friend of Pierre’s and that I was worried about him because I hadn’t been able to speak to him for weeks. I added that his wife staying with us in England, and that I’d come to Paris to try to see him, so eventually one of his work colleagues Arnaud—Pierre’s boss, I think—came to speak to me.”
“What did he say?” Iris asked impatiently.
“He said he only agreed to talk to me because he’d recognized my name—apparently, Pierre had mentioned us over the years. Basically, he said that it was obvious to everyone in the office that Pierre was going through some kind of crisis, because he’d become very withdrawn. He hadn’t confided in anybody, but one of his colleagues moved in the same circles as Laure’s friend, Victoire, and she had heard on the grapevine that Laure had left Paris several weeks before and was somewhere in England. From that, they deduced that there were problems in the marriage.”
“I don’t suppose you asked Arnaud if he knew anything about Pierre having a daughter?”
“No, because I didn’t want to be indiscreet—and because I’m not even sure if it’s true.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, when you think about it, we’ve only heard it from Laure. What if it isn’t true? What if there isn’t a daughter, what if Laure made it up to cover something else?”
Iris felt herself frown. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. But what if she left, not because of something Pierre did, but because of something she did?”
“No.” Iris shook her head. “Laure wouldn’t lie to us.” She paused. “Would she?”
“Maybe.” Uncertainty hung in the air for a while. “Anyway, it seems that Pierre messaged Arnaud and said he was sorry, but that he’d decided to take some leave after all, and would be back in the office on Monday the first of August.”
“When was that?”
She heard Gabriel draw a breath. “Friday afternoon.” He sounded almost triumphant.
It took a moment for Iris to catch up. “So does that mean he never intended being there on Saturday to meet Laure?”
“I think he intended to be there, but then, like you said, he got cold feet. He was at the office on Friday morning but he didn’t return after his lunch break. Arnaud wasn’t too surprised by his message because only that morning, he’d been persuading Pierre to take some time off. He didn’t expect it to be quite so immediate, but he was fine with it.”
“Did he say where Pierre had gone?”
“No, but I think he must be in Brittany, and Arnaud thought so too. It’s where he always heads when he goes off-grid.”
“True. So what are you going to do? Will you go to Brittany? Laure might know where he’ll be staying.”
“Pierre has made it clear that he doesn’t want to see me. He’ll have seen my messages telling him I’m here and I also left him a couple of voicemails. So no, I’m not going to Brittany.” He hesitated. “I’ve been thinking—what if he’s annoyed with us for allowing Laure to stay with us for so long? What if he thinks we’re taking sides? If the story of him having a daughter is a pack of lies, and their problems are because of something Laure did, he might think we’re condoning her behavior.”
“I never thought of that. But if Laure has made it up, how can we find out? It’s not as if we know any of their other friends. We met some of them once, at his fortieth birthday party, but I don’t know where any of them live. Funnily enough, I asked Laure if she wanted you to go to Claire’s, to see if Pierre was there. But she said it would only make things worse.”
“Interesting. The only thing we can do is ask Laure again about his supposed daughter. If it is a lie, she’ll trip herself up in the end. Liars always do.”
28
Iris pushed her feet into her trainers and went quietly out of the front door. It was only six thirty in the morning, but she’d had a restless night. She was going to London later with Esme, and she needed a clear head.
She climbed over the stile and took one of the routes up the hill. It was much steeper than any of their usual running routes but the view from the top was spectacular. When she was almost at the summit, she found a convenient stone and sat facing the early morning sun. From her viewpoint, she could see their end of the village with the quarry behind it, the fields in front and the wood that lay to its right. She traced the ribbon of road past the duck pond, past Esme and Hugh’s house, and all the way to The Watershed. It looked so utterly peaceful. A wave of depression took hold; the beautiful scene in front of her only accentuated the ugliness she felt inside.
Laure had been with them for six weeks now, and sometime during those six weeks, Iris had lost her way. Before, she had known who she was: Iris Pelley, wife to Gabriel, mother to Beth, home enhancer. But things had changed. She was still Gabriel’s wife, but not in the same way as before. The physical side of their relationship had gone, and his rejection of her was having repercussions she found alarming. She had never fantasized about anyone before, but now her dreams were haunted by Joseph. If she was honest, she even found herself daydreaming about him. It made her ashamed, because she loved Gabriel and that should have been enough. But it wasn’t, not anymore.
Maybe if she and Joseph hadn’t started their morning ritual of waving to each other, he wouldn’t be on her mind so much. On the surface, it was innocent enough. It had begun last week, on Tuesday morning, when she’d happened to glance out of the bedroom window and had seen him standing in the garden, gazing up at the house. She had watched for a moment, wondering what he was thinking about. Was he contemplating its elegance as the sun climbed over the gray slate roof? Was he contemplating what it would be like to live in it, own it? It was only when she’d moved nearer the window and had given him a little wave that she had broken the spell the house had put him under. He’d raised his hand in acknowledgment, then walked to the shed to prepare for the day ahead.
She had thought it a one-off, so she’d been surprised to see him standing in exactly the same place when he arrived for work on Thursday. Again she had waved, again he had waved back. When Saturday came around, he’d been there again and she had watched surreptitiously from behind the curtain for a while, wondering how long he would stand there, how long he would wait for her to wave. Quite a while, it seemed, because it was at least a minute before she’d made herself visible. Even though he was quite a way from the house, she’d been able to see that he was smiling, as if he knew she’d kept him waiting. And two days ago, on Tuesday, they had gone through the whole ritual again. She wasn’t sure what it meant, or if it meant anything at all. It was only a wave—but it gave her a frisson of excitement. It was only a wave, but it felt illicit, intimate.
And then there was Beth. Although Iris had come to accept that they would never have a close mother-daughter relationship, the physical distance between them—because Beth was in Greece—had amplified that emotional distance. It was only now, in the cool breeze stirring the air around her, that Iris finally acknowledged her disappointment when Beth had told them she’d be spending her gap year in Greece, and wouldn’t be back until the following August. The three weeks that Beth would spend with them at the beginning of September, before starting at university, would be taken up with seeing her friends before they all went their separate ways again, leaving very little time for her and Gabriel. She might have a couple of shopping trips with Beth, but that was about it.
