He was sitting on one of the chairs in the square at the end of summer, smoking a cigarette, the first time she noticed him watching her as she moved between tables so that her skin tingled with the unnerving thrill of it. When she went over to ask him what he wanted, he dipped his eyebrows and pulled on his Gauloise in a way that told her exactly what, or who, he wanted. And she was in the mood to give it to him. Intermittently, from then on, she spent nights at Pierre’s flat overlooking the Seine, one of a number of properties his father owned along this stretch, not far from the Hôtel de Ville. They were in the bar next door, eating breakfast, his leather jacket slung over the back of her chair, his helmet held on his lap like a baby, the day death came.
To her credit, Valentina had never pushed for Gabriela to stay in England; she never so much as attempted to make her feel guilty for wanting to go even once it was confirmed that the cancer had returned. If anything, it might have been a relief, not to have to make room to deal with her daughter’s feelings alongside her own.
Since going home for Christmas, spending two weeks by her mother’s bedside at the house in Somerset, unwilling or unable to believe that she was as ill as the doctors said she was, Gabriela’s attitude towards Pierre had cooled, and the less she wanted him, the more he hounded her.
‘Come back to the apartment,’ he’d said as he scooped up his change, and she shook her head, leaning in to accept his kiss.
‘I have work. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
He made an expression that suggested she was the one who was missing out, and she watched his bike disappear over the bridge before making her way towards the canal.
During her time in Paris, her French had come on so well that she was close to fluent, but there were still things she didn’t know, cultural references she had little reason to encounter in everyday conversation. In a bid to widen her vocabulary, she took to browsing the titles of the books stacked on market stalls along the banks of the river, reading voraciously: historical texts, biographies of French footballers, devouring whatever she could get her hands on. This particular morning a bright sky had opened up, luring her into a false sense of security as she took a few moments to stop and peruse the selection, choosing almost at random a battered old book on the economy from the Seventies, and another on the evolution of insects, her eyes skimming over the words dimorphisme sexuel as she flicked through the illustrations, ignoring the sounds of the traffic on the intersection behind.
Even though it was nearly spring, a cold wind sliced the top of the river as she made her way down the walkway at the Port de la Tournelle, looking up at the statue of St Genevieve, her arms resting protectively over her child. For a moment she thought it was someone else’s phone ringing, but when she felt in her pocket she saw her father’s name flashing on the screen. He rarely called her mobile, suspicious of the concept of a phone that could be taken out of the house, not least in a foreign country, and instinctively she stopped walking.
‘Hello?’
‘Gabriela, it’s your father.’
‘Hi Dad, how are you?’
There was a pause and she heard him stifling a cry. ‘Gabriela, your mother died.’
She stayed very still, preserving that moment before stepping forward into the abyss.
‘Are you there?’
‘Yes, Dad, I’m here.’
She breathed in as deeply as she could, her hand feeling for a wall, the coldness of the stone, the tangibility of it, soothing. It was relief, she realised later, that stung her eyes. Relief that this was the worst thing that could happen and it had already happened, and she was still here. Relief, too, that Valentina was gone, and Gabriela would no longer be plagued by her expectations. Though in hindsight, any expectations had been self-imposed; her mother had always been far too busy thinking about herself.
Tom coughed self-consciously, and Gabriela looked up, blinking. ‘I was away and she died, so I came back. There’s not much else to say. Listen, I have to get to the pub, my shift starts at six.’
Her father’s house stood on the corner of one of the streets that ladder behind Highgate Road, a Sixties new-build a stone’s throw from the Heath. It still baffled her how he had been able to afford a place in this prohibitively desirable enclave of Dartmouth Park, however poky it might have been, with his share of the sale of the ramshackle Victorian terrace off Camden Road that had been their family home. Sometimes she wondered if her parents had made a secret pact when they divorced, whether her mother had agreed to take a lesser share of the proceeds on the condition that she didn’t have to take her daughter with her.
The day Tom came over for the first time, Michael combed his hair neatly to the side and pulled on his best clothes, a chequered M&S shirt he’d worn every other day after being taken on as maths professor at a nearby college, neatening the display of tins and condiments he had started to stockpile the day he bought the house, and had barely made a dent in since. Moving through the hallway that morning with Tom, past the mismatching table and chairs, the brown flocked sofa that once belonged to her grandparents, she noticed Michael had placed a small bunch of yellow flowers on the table for the occasion.
It was the following January when her phone rang. They were having a drink at the Pineapple with Saoirse and Jim, winding down after a day sending out ever more CVs in the hunt for a proper job, or at least an internship, that would pull Gabriela out of her own head, now that her degree was finally coming to an end. There was something about the letters flashing on the screen, their shape solid and unyielding against the garish light of her phone at this time of night, No Caller ID, that made her hold onto the edge of her seat by her fingernails.
‘Ms Shaw?’
She flattened her hand against the cracked leather seat of her stool and stood, the microphone warm against her ear as she pushed her way through the crowded bar and out onto the street.
‘Speaking.’
‘I’m calling from the Whittington Hospital, we have your number from a past calls list of Mr Michael Shaw, of …’
Before the woman on the end of the phone could finish saying her address, she felt the pavement rush up to meet her. By the time she turned to see Tom moving through the heavy velvet curtain and out into the street after her, a few moments later, she was sitting on the kerb, her vision blurred through the tears.
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