‘So am I.’ She was running her fingers along the edge of the table but looked up. ‘I never took the blame for any of it. The falling-out between us took two. I think it was happening long before that night. We were having to fight to stay in each other’s lives and we both let it happen.’

  ‘We should’ve prioritised our friendship and maybe it would’ve given us a better chance.’ Lise gulped. ‘You couldn’t stand the sight of me in the end.’

  It pained her to hear those words. ‘I couldn’t stand the sight of Xavier.’

  Eventually, a slow smile crept onto Lise’s face. ‘Neither could I eventually.’

  Emma’s lips curled into a similar smile, which soon faded. ‘I couldn’t forgive Xavier and I blamed you by association. I lost Gabriel just like that. He wouldn’t talk to me. He wouldn’t see me. He wasn’t at his apartment, he didn’t show up at the café and I never ever found out what had happened to him. His sister was terrible. She hated me. I lost my love, my job and I felt like the only option I had was to come home.’

  ‘You really never heard from Gabriel again?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘I can’t believe that that was it. I mean, I always thought he’d get in touch. Even if it wasn’t to work things out between you, I thought he’d contact you and you’d both talk. He was so decent. I’m really sorry, Emma.’

  ‘Me too. But if we hadn’t split up, I’d never have got together with Sam, I wouldn’t have Naomi and I wouldn’t have spent all that time with Toby before he died.’

  Lise let the information settle. ‘I don’t want to dredge it all up but I have to say this…’ She paused but Emma urged her to say what was on her mind. ‘Xavier always said that Gabriel bought those drugs.’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘What I don’t understand is that if he bought them, why close himself off from you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I never understood it either and I think that’s what hurt me the most – that none of it made sense. Sam said he probably did it to protect me but perhaps that was Sam trying to be positive, see the best in everyone.’

  ‘I remember Sam being that way. And he always liked you. It took him the best part of a decade to make a move but at least he got there in the end.’

  Emma felt a connection she’d pushed aside in all these years, someone else who knew Sam back then. ‘I’m very sorry I never told you he died. It was a mistake to do that to you and you have every right to be angry.’

  ‘I understand why you didn’t,’ said Lise. ‘Max said his death was very sudden.’

  Emma felt her voice tremble as she began to speak. Even though she’d picked up the pieces, telling Lise, given their history, was still hard. ‘It was. He kissed me goodbye in the morning when I came here to open up. I went home late morning when he didn’t come in to see me the way he usually did.’

  ‘You found him?’

  She nodded. ‘It was terrible. I’m only glad I did and that it wasn’t Naomi.’

  Taking it all in, Lise told Emma, ‘Naomi is a great kid, you know. I can see Sam in her. I can see his smile.’

  ‘And she’s kind, like him,’ said Emma. ‘She inherited his love of meteorology much in the same way as she got my hair colour. It’s nice that she got a bit of the both of us.’ She met Lise’s gaze, which every now and then dropped away as though she wasn’t sure whether being here was right and any minute now, she might be given her marching orders.

  ‘Do you mind Maisie being friends with Naomi?’

  ‘I haven’t minded it at all. It’s been nice to watch.’

  ‘I did wonder whether it would be a problem.’

  Emma sat forwards, resting her forearms on the table top, toying with her nails. ‘I think that maybe deep down, I needed something to pull me to you.’ She looked up tentatively, her honesty stark in the emptiness of the café.

  ‘I could’ve got someone else to deal with the house,’ Lise admitted.

  ‘Dad said the same thing to me. He told me you weren’t just back here because of property.’

  ‘Nothing much gets past your dad. He’s the dad I never had.’ Her smile faded. ‘I resented you, you know, when you once said to me that I’d picked a man just like my father.’

  ‘I don’t remember telling you that.’

  ‘You said it the night you came to the apartment, the last time I saw you.’

  ‘Oh, Lise. My mouth was out of control that night. I didn’t know half of what I was saying.’

  ‘You know the worst thing?’ She waited a beat. ‘It was completely true.’

  Without a word, Emma got up, went into the kitchen and came back with two glasses and a bottle of red wine.

  Lise told Emma everything about Xavier, the way he wanted her at his side, and she loved it mostly but also how she felt she couldn’t have much of a life outside of their relationship.

  ‘It was fine for a while. I basked in the attention. I felt special, noticed, worthy.’ She thanked Emma for topping up her wine glass. ‘He made me feel beautiful every day.’

  ‘Nobody would ever deny he was in love with you, but maybe he loved you too much.’

  ‘Do you think that’s possible? To love someone too much?’

  ‘In his case, yes. He wanted you from the moment he laid eyes on you, Lise. That night at the restaurant, Gabriel and I could see it. We talked about it as we watched the both of you.’

  ‘I was flattered. He was handsome, successful, confident. I felt like I was his world. But without realising, I began to forget the importance of everyone else, the importance of our friendship. That was the worst casualty.’

  Emma had seen it for herself but never realised Lise ever saw it that way.

  ‘Another way my own father impacted my life, I suppose. My own dad never noticed me, was never pushing me to be better. He was absent despite living in the same house. I never had to fight to be seen with Xavier. Maybe that’s why I wanted him so much.’

  ‘I’m still sorry I threw those words in your face, about your dad.’

  ‘It hurt but maybe I needed to hear it. The thought that Xavier was anything like my father came back to me often enough in the following years; perhaps that’s how I finally saw it for myself.’ She paused. ‘Do you remember that big book Sam took camping that time?’

  ‘The one about the weather? I do. It was one of many he collected and it now sits on Naomi’s bookshelf.’

  ‘No way!’ Lise began to chuckle. ‘Rather her than me. But my point is, do you remember me reading it and finding those sections that described tornadoes? I do because it scared the hell out of me. I’d planned to go to Florida to see my cousins and that put me off big time.’

  ‘What do tornadoes have to do with Xavier?’

  ‘It was when I left him that an analogy, description, reference, whatever you want to call it came back to me from the book. I can’t recall the exact words but it was something along the lines of how a tornado comes along, picks up everything in its path and twirls it around in confusion before it lets the pieces fall in a way they weren’t before.’

  ‘And that’s how you’d describe Xavier?’ Emma had never known him that well but now that she thought about it, those descriptors weren’t too far off the mark.

  ‘I didn’t expect to meet Xavier that night in the restaurant. I didn’t expect the attention and before I knew it, I was carried away and then it was up to me to pick up the pieces after our falling-out, once I was pregnant and when I became a mother.’

  ‘You’re a good mum. Maisie seems happy.’

  ‘I came back before now,’ Lise admitted.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I came back here, to England, to Bath, to Honeybee Place. Ten years ago.’

  Emma narrowly avoided missing the table altogether when she put down her glass and pushed it to safety.

  ‘I left Maisie with Mum who was in London by then. I stayed in a hotel, but I came and stood outside this very café.’

  ‘Why didn’t you come in?’

  ‘Come on, seriously?’

  She pulled a face. ‘Yeah, not sure how I might have reacted.’

  ‘I don’t know why I thought it a good idea. But I’d just split up from Xavier. It was a knee-jerk reaction to come and so I did.’ She turned and pointed to the window farthest from the door, the window you could see through from the opposite side of the street. ‘I stood over there on the pavement and watched you. You looked happy. I saw you had a child with you and there was a man hugging you both. I didn’t recognise him as Sam because he was there one second, gone the next, but you all looked so content. A complete unit. And so I walked away. I didn’t want to mess with that. I returned to Paris and tried to carry on with my life. I thought that was where I was meant to be. Without you, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be here.’

  ‘What changed this time?’

  ‘A few things.’ She sat back in her chair. ‘Maisie was the linchpin. The timing was right for her and she wanted to come here, finish her schooling. I was out of work, which made it easy and it gave me time to do up number twelve. The house is actually in my name, which was Mum’s decision.’

  ‘Do you think she transferred ownership to make you come back?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Emma couldn’t believe it. ‘I never would’ve thought…’

  ‘I know – surprising, isn’t it? But Mum and I have worked on our relationship over time. She’s not the same person as she was when she was with my dad. We get along quite well now; we talk often. She’s remarried and living in the south of France, and she adores Maisie.’

  ‘I’m pleased for you, Lise. But may I ask, what made you leave Xavier for good?’

  ‘It’s a very long story.’

  ‘I’ve got time.’ She looked at the bottle of wine. ‘And plenty more where that came from, if we need it.’

  When Lise took a while to compose herself, Emma realised how hard this was for her too. Their friendship had shown no bounds, had the strength many admired and then all of a sudden, it was gone. And that had had a long-lasting effect on both of them.

  ‘It was a little after Maisie’s fifth birthday when it all went downhill. When I was pregnant, Xavier was exactly the way you remember him: attentive, put me first. I was his whole world. But once I had Maisie, he became more and more like my dad. It wasn’t that he was a terrible father. He provided, he was there with us, but spending quality time as a family never seemed to happen. He wanted me to himself; he didn’t understand why that wasn’t possible. I told myself he was mourning the life we’d had as a twosome and I understood because sometimes, I’d have given anything for a night or two as a couple, free of responsibilities.’

  ‘I totally get that. Motherhood is hard. It’s full time, it’s overwhelming.’

  ‘That’s how I felt a lot of the time but loving Maisie was the easy part – it kept me going on the tougher days. Xavier opened up another restaurant and we saw even less of each other. Business came first, and the less time we had together, the more difficult it became. Maisie had started school. I had the urge to get back to work. But Xavier insisted it was too hard. I’d been out of the industry for too long to catch up he said, and while my French was good, he told me it wasn’t fluent enough to understand everything and not miss the nuances in the business world. I called him out on that one, said it was bullshit. I knew he had another British worker who spoke less French than I did and yet they seemed to be doing just fine. It caused so many rows.

  ‘I was missing England more and more. Although, if I’m totally honest, I don’t think it was that in isolation. I think I was missing being myself, a professional as well as a mother, a woman with a best friend who’d come with her to France on an adventure and was nowhere to be seen.’

  ‘I left you.’ It was another reminder that as hard as she’d had it, Emma had blinkered herself and not seen her friend’s pain too. How could she have been so unable to see it?

  ‘You had your reasons. And I stayed, I didn’t come running after you begging to sort this out. I gave up when you ignored my emails and letters and I let our friendship go.’

  ‘Both of us were wrong to do that. It’s just taken a while to see it.’

  Lise returned a tentative smile and carried on. ‘The fighting between Xavier and I was exactly the way our relationship always was – dramatic and passionate. But it got worse and worse. We fought more than anything else. And then one night, he yelled at me that everything was my fault. He told me that I’d made this life for us all, as though it was terrible, as though he begrudged being a part of it. And then he told me he’d never ever wanted to have kids. He never wanted to be a father.’

  Emma’s heart went out to her.

  ‘He’d never said it to me before.’

  ‘Oh, Lise. That’s so hurtful. To you, to Maisie.’

  ‘Since the divorce, I’ve made sure to tell Maisie in my own words that children weren’t in Xavier’s future plans. The thing is, he’s not so much of an arsehole he ever would’ve said it to her – they actually get on pretty well. I don’t think she suffered and she’s known ever since she was around five or six years old that Xavier isn’t her biological father.’

  Emma sat up straighter. ‘He’s not?’

  ‘The night he spat out that he never wanted to have children, he told me something else… that he was infertile. He had a chronic health condition as a kid and he knew from an early age that he’d never father a child. The way I was manipulated was all part of the reasons why I had to leave.’

  It took Emma a while to get her head around the facts. ‘Did you know all along that he wasn’t the father?’

  ‘No! I honestly thought he was. I didn’t have an affair. It was one night and we used a condom. I never used protection with Xavier, not apart from the pill I was on, so I was convinced Maisie was his. I sometimes think what an idiot, how could I not know, not ask the questions, but I didn’t. Until that moment.’

  ‘Fuck.’ Emma grimaced. ‘Sorry, I tell you off for swearing in my café but this is a fuck moment. Shit just wouldn’t cut it.’

  ‘No, it really wouldn’t.’

  ‘So… you had a one-nighter? Did you ever tell the biological father?’

  Lise looked right at her. Her chest rose high, fell and on a breath, she said, ‘I never got the chance. He died.’ Tears filled her eyes when she added, ‘The one-nighter was when I found out you’d come back to the apartment, packed a suitcase and left Paris for good.’

  Emma imagined Lise distraught that night, going out, getting wasted, hooking up with a total stranger. ‘Wait… but you were with Toby that night. He told me when he came back to England that you were a mess when you found out I’d left, that you were doing shots at the bistro…’ Her voice trailed off as she grasped what this meant.

  Toby was Maisie’s father.

  26

  NOW: 2023

  Lise

  Emma’s hands shook as she brought two mugs of freshly brewed coffee over to the table. She’d taken her time making it but Lise wasn’t surprised. Emma had to absorb the fact that her brother Toby had been a father, that she was an auntie, her dad a grandfather for a second time.

  ‘This is a lot to take in.’ Emma’s voice came out small.

  ‘I know it is. It wasn’t something I ever saw happening, not really.’

  Emma said nothing. She looked so shocked. And so, barring the details a sister didn’t really want to know about her own brother, Lise recounted the night she’d spent with Toby, her head right back there in Paris with him on the night she’d needed him more than ever.

  The shots at the bistro after their food and wine had gone down quickly but when Lise woke up, she was glad Toby had stopped it when he did and made her drink water when she got back to the apartment. At least she felt semi-human after a sleep.

  She emerged bleary-eyed into the lounge and warned Toby, ‘Do not say a word.’

  ‘Wasn’t going to.’

  She didn’t need to look at him to know he was grinning from ear to ear. In the kitchen area, which was at the side of the lounge with a big window stretching all the way across, she filled a glass of water, downed it, got another. ‘I’m going to take a shower.’

  ‘A bath might be a better idea.’ He had the remote control in one hand and had been flipping through the channels but gave up at the lack of shows he’d have a hope of understanding.

  Actually, he had a point. Standing up seemed a bit energetic and perhaps a bath would bring her fully back to the land of the living.

  She went off to run it, adding in a big squirt of bubble bath for good measure.

  It was nothing like Xavier’s bathroom in here. His tub was free-standing; this one was against the wall. His had a fancy, shiny mixer tap that sat along one edge in the middle; this had two taps, the cold one only a trickle so you had to remember not to turn the hot to full or you’d end up with a temperature you could never get right.

  She was about to climb in when she heard a knock at the door. ‘You need to use the bathroom?’ she called over the sound of cascading water. She pulled a fluffy towel around her torso and opened the door.

  ‘No, just checking on you.’

  ‘Thanks to the water police – you – I’m not too bad.’

  ‘I’m bored, Lise. There’s sod all on television.’

  ‘Well, that’s not strictly true. There’s plenty, but it’s all in French.’

  ‘I hated French at school.’

  She laughed. ‘Stay there, talk to me. Through the closed door.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course.’ She closed the door, turned off the taps and with her towel back on the hook, she climbed in, slipping down into the water with an enormous sigh.

  ‘Are you sure this is okay? It feels odd,’ his voice said from the other side of the door.

  ‘Just stay there and talk, Toby. You can make sure I don’t fall asleep and drown in here.’

  ‘Deal.’

  The bubbles enveloped her skin; the temperature made her prickly in a good way.

  Through the door, which had a bit of a gap at the bottom and carried their voices easily, they talked a bit more about Paris, what the girls had seen, and Lise recounted all their best times from the start, the laughs they’d had, the thrill of it all. She covered the days after Emma met Gabriel, how she’d met Xavier at the restaurant. She asked Toby whether he was seeing anyone special but he wasn’t. Instead, he was on his way to obtaining his pilot’s licence, working as a disability support worker and at the same time heavily into wildlife photography.

 

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