Desperately Seeking - By Evelyn Cosgrave Page 0,32
under the crisp white sheets. Keith took up the remote control and was still flicking between one incomprehensible station and another when I drifted off to sleep.
Somehow we never did get round to that moonlit stroll.
Daniel and I had spent a short holiday in Paris. That was also in May. He had a meeting in London and arranged to join me in Paris the following day. He figured he could safely get two more nights away. So I flew out from Shannon on my own, got a train from Charles de Gaulle to the city and a taxi from there to a little three-star hotel in Pigalle. Daniel knew the area. It was close to everything, he said, including the red-light district but, typical of Paris, even the red-light district is less seedy and more socio-historical. I arrived there early on a Friday evening, knowing I had at least two more hours to wait before Daniel might arrive. He had phoned earlier that day before I left Limerick to say he was thinking about us every moment and couldn’t wait to leave London and everything else to be with me. I couldn’t believe we were finally going to spend the night together. Two whole nights together. He had been feeling guilty recently, knowing he was spending a lot of time away from his family. Late nights with me meant he didn’t see his kids before they went to bed. His wife understood that he often needed to work late, she was used to it, but not seeing his kids was different. So, we had slowed things down, only meeting at lunchtimes or briefly before he went home in the evenings. And that had become unsatisfactory very quickly so he promised he’d work something so we could get away together. And he had.
I would have been happy to meet him in London but he said he had always imagined bringing me to Paris. I didn’t argue. I might not have thought it then but I’m sure part of the reason he didn’t want to meet in London was that it was still too close to home. He has many connections there and knows the streets almost as well as he knows Limerick’s. Even though London’s big you never know who you might bump into. (The irony was that, despite all Daniel’s precautions, his wife was going to find out anyway, thanks to some helpful office gossip.) But at the time none of that occurred to me.
I checked into the room using my own name. It was booked in Daniel’s and as I signed I couldn’t help smiling at what I was doing. If this had been a movie made in the fifties I would have pretended to be his wife. I would even have had to wear a wedding ring. But it wasn’t a movie, it wasn’t even Ireland: it was twenty-first-century Paris and the times had moved on. Still, something about that deserted foyer and the blank stare of the concierge made me wish for something other than a covert liaison with my married lover. But for now it was all I had.
By the time Daniel arrived (he was more than an hour later than the latest he’d said he could be), I was sleepy and a little drunk, having helped myself to the contents of the mini-bar. I would have gone downstairs in the hope of some company but apparently three stars in Paris doesn’t buy you a bar. So Daniel arrived weary from his day to find me weepy and petulant. That was the start of it.
He stood in the doorway, bags in hand, squinting, trying to adjust to the dim light in the room. I don’t think he was quite sure for a moment that I was there. For a moment I wasn’t sure that I recognized him. He seemed older that his forty-two years – even in the light of the one lamp in the room I could detect lines in his face I hadn’t noticed before. His body, usually so virile, seemed thinner and somewhat shrunken. Yet even as I was mentally taking note of this, part of me was sure I was imagining it. Here was my dashing man, come to soothe my ache for him and assure me that all was right with the world. But as soon as he spoke there was a weariness in his voice I didn’t recognize. Was it the room? Or was it us?