same wavelength on holiday. We would fly over to Paris for long weekends with nothing booked, nothing planned, staying in a tiny little boutique hotel in Le Marais, le Bourg Tibourg, spending all day every day just walking. We would go to the Rodin Museum if we felt like it, or the Musée d’Orsay, and we would walk. We would wander up and down the banks of the Seine, stopping for café au lait and chocolat chaud, entering the tiny boutiques, where Jason practiced his school French on the chic sales assistants.
We would go to the Greek islands, staying in stark white beautiful villas on Mykonos, spend all day lying on the beach, plunging into the Mediterranean, happy to read a book, play backgammon, be with each other. We’d wander back to the villa after lunch, make love, fall asleep with a fan whirring above our heads, wake up in time for showers and dinner.
Then Annie came along, and our holidays changed, but we were still good together.
We were so good together.
Walking along these cobbled streets, Annie chattering away, from time to time both of us smiling at each other across the top of Annie’s head, it is absolutely clear to me that we are still good together. That our divorce was a terrible mistake.
I don’t get an ice cream. Annie does, and Jason does. I abstain, deciding that my jeans may be skinny, but my thighs definitely aren’t, and if I want to continue being able to get into them, I have to stop with the ice cream.
Jason holds his ice cream out to me, and I lick it, making the mistake of looking up just as my tongue touches the swirl. I meet his eyes, and the intimacy in this look, in my tongue being out, in a flood of desire washing over me, turns my cheeks bright red, and we both look away.
Why is this happening to me now? How has all this time gone by, during which I have been able to accept that my old life is over, that Jason no longer wants me, that I screwed things up and we have now both moved on, only for me to feel like this here?
Where the hell has this desire come from, and what am I supposed to do with it now?
Thirty-two
It has been a perfect few days. We have managed to spend time together and time doing our own thing. Even though three adults and a teenager should be overcrowded in a house as small as this, somehow it works.
Yesterday, a letter was pushed through the door. I took it into the kitchen and leaned against the counter to read it. It brought me to tears.
Cat, writes Ellie, I wanted you to know that I am sorry. For how unfriendly and unwelcoming I have always been toward you; for how I never gave you a chance.
I had no idea the girls were seeing each other before I ran into you at the Galley, and then I wanted to keep the girls apart to punish you. But seeing Annie and Trudy together, the instinctive connection they have, it’s quite clear to me that they are family; that you and I are family, however much I didn’t want to accept it. And despite my trying to keep them apart, there is an extraordinary bond between them. A bond I never allowed us to have. It isn’t easy to admit this, but I was wrong. And I am sorry. It took a lot of changes in my life, a lot of humbling experiences, for me to realize that.
I have learned many things recently, not least that nothing is as important as kindness. I have lost everything I thought was important in my life, only to realize that none of it was important; that the kindness of people is the only thing that has allowed me to get through. I know you’re going home, but I would like us to try to have a relationship. I would like us to try to get past this, maybe even find a sisterly friendship in there. God knows at this time in my life I need family more than I ever have before.
I am sending you my gratitude, and thanks, Cat. I would like to see you before you leave. Perhaps we can go for a walk? Ellie.
I exhaled as I put the letter down, overwhelmed by these words of warmth, of something even possibly akin to love; words I would never