The Girl Behind The Fan (Hidden Women) (22 page)

‘It’s not exactly available to the general public,’ I said. ‘There’s someone else in the flat now.’

‘Of course.’

He smiled at me in a way that was heartbreakingly familiar.

The Opéra Garnier was everything I had expected. From the outside the building was a wedding cake and on the inside a jewellery box, with its abundance of gilt and enormous chandeliers. The people had made an effort to fit into the glorious setting. As we mingled with a crowd dressed in the finest French couture, I was very glad that I was wearing my new Parisian dress and my diamond earrings – a twenty-first birthday present and the only diamonds that I owned.

While Steven went to buy a programme, I took the opportunity to soak up the atmosphere and imagine how it might have been almost a hundred and fifty years earlier. Were the women who surreptitiously eyed each other in their Chanel and Dior actually descendants of Augustine’s contemporaries, obsessed as they were with their Indian silk shawls?

Though Augustine had not lived long enough to see the opening of the Palais Garnier, I still felt something of her spirit as I took in the scene. The human instinct towards display had not changed over generations. I thought she would have enjoyed the evening’s programme. We were going to see
Carmen
, which had its premiere in Paris. All the great tropes of the romantic opera were there. The poor girl, with beauty and charm that project her beyond her lowly station. The lover. The rival. The jealousy. The horrible death.

I also felt I understood some of Augustine’s awe at her own first opera visit. With its ceiling painted by Chagall and all those rows of golden boxes, the Opéra Garnier made Covent Garden look rather dowdy. Steven had somehow got us a box to ourselves. I settled into a small hard chair that forced me to sit upright and pay attention. It brought to mind Augustine putting on a display for the Vicomte, showing off her best assets at the behest of Clemence and Arlette.

As the lights dimmed and the orchestra struck up the overture, Steven leaned across to whisper something in my ear. The feel of his breath on my bare shoulder was unbearably intimate. When he straightened up again to watch the action below, I pulled my jacket around my shoulder like armour against the feelings I was beginning to realise I still had for him. Though, intellectually, I thought I had come to terms with the reality that Steven and I were not right for each other, it was clear that my body had yet to take the news on board.

Later, while onstage Carmen lay dying, I couldn’t help but feel a little melancholy. I dabbed at my eyes with the corner of a paper handkerchief, hoping to save my mascara. Steven noticed and when I had put the handkerchief away, he reached over and squeezed my hand to comfort me. I let him continue to hold my hand until the curtain fell. It was a curious sensation; both natural and awkward. When the applause began, I was able to remove my fingers from his without it being too obvious. I clapped hard.

‘I didn’t think you were so sentimental,’ Steven observed when I was still dabbing at my eyes as we made our way outside.

‘Neither did I,’ I said.

He helped me into my coat and put his hand on the small of my back to guide me through the crowds. I noticed several women with the telltale bright eyes of someone who has been weeping.

‘What now?’ was the question on my mind when we were outside and walking back towards my apartment.

‘We should get something to eat,’ Steven said.

I had food at home and I’d told myself I would not stay out late, not with Steven, but now it came to it, I changed my mind. I didn’t see why I shouldn’t stay out with him. It wasn’t as though I was in any danger. I knew him as well as I knew my siblings. And, I had to remind myself, it wasn’t as though I had to worry about anyone else being upset. Not Marco Donato, for sure. Why shouldn’t I let the evening carry on?

I told Steven I’d love to have something to eat.

‘Great,’ he said. ‘I know just the place.’

He took me to a restaurant called ‘I Golosi’, an Italian place that was a deli by day. The staff seemed to know him and he chatted in easy Italian as they led us to a table at the back of the shop. The sound of spoken Italian touched my heart again, as did the list of food on the menu. There were plenty of specials that I’d only previously seen in Venice. Sardines in
saor
had been a favourite of mine. I loved the contrast of the sour dressing and the sweet juicy raisins.

As Steven studied the menu, I took the opportunity to look at him more closely. My memory of our last night together in London was one of horrible anger. I would never have guessed we would meet again in Paris and that I would feel this happy to be in his company. Then Steven told an anecdote about how he came to know this restaurant. He’d first been there to celebrate a colleague’s birthday. I found I was relieved that he’d been there with a group of people and not on a date.

‘It’s nice,’ I said honestly. Our table at the back was very private. There were many places in Paris that claimed to be intimate and romantic but there were few that actually were. This one genuinely was.

We ordered our food and Steven ordered a bottle of wine, despite my protests that I had to work the following day.

‘Tomorrow’s Sunday,’ he observed.

‘Then maybe I have to get up early to go to church,’ I joked.

‘So you’ll need something to confess,’ said Steven, as he filled my glass.

I laughed.

Later, while he was telling me an anecdote about his time in Paris so far, I thought about our first proper date, back in London. I was just twenty-one. I remember how thrilled I had been when he took over and picked up the wine list. It had made him seem so sophisticated. I had spent that evening in a state of intense anticipation. It wasn’t that I was waiting for our first kiss – we’d already had that, in Steven’s office at the end of a tutorial that took us from being student and teacher to lovers and equals. But when Steven and I were first together, any time spent outside the bedroom seemed like a bit of a waste. I couldn’t look at his lips without wanting to kiss them. I couldn’t look at his hands without wanting to feel them on my bare skin. After we made love for the first time, the longing only intensified, because now I knew for sure what he could do.

Our first proper date had been in an Italian restaurant. I’d ordered some spaghetti but liked the looked of Steven’s dish more. He fed me a forkful across the table. It was so erotic. He never took his eyes off mine and I felt the jealous gaze of the people on the table next to us, who were having an altogether less interesting time. I felt sorry for the woman who would be going home to lie awake on one side of the bed while the man pretended to sleep on the other.

Now the boot was on the other foot. There was one other couple in our room at the back of the restaurant. They couldn’t have known each other for very long, I thought. Or maybe they had. In any case, they couldn’t get enough of each other. They both leaned forward over their little table. Their arms were entwined as though they were about to embark on some amorous arm-wrestling. From time to time, they both stretched forward as far as they could and their lips met. They whispered words into one another’s mouths.

Steven caught me looking at them. He smiled at me. It was a smile that said he understood exactly what I was thinking. We’d been like that too. Unable to take our hands off each other even long enough to eat. We had been so passionately in love we would have laughed at anyone who suggested that one day we might not know what to say to one another. That one day, we might have lost the trust we took for granted. Or that we might have tarnished our tender lovemaking by deciding it was boring and we needed to introduce something, or rather someone, else into the equation.

I started to feel hot with anxiety. What was I doing in that restaurant, sitting across a table from Steven Jones? Who was I kidding when I told myself that we could just have a nice uncomplicated meal together? So much had gone on between us and so much had been left unsaid at the end. I picked up the pepper mill and put it down again, quickly, having felt the flash of an urge to throw it at him out of anger that he’d brought us to this moment of limbo. It was all because of him.

Suddenly all the pain and humiliation of the past year seemed to be pressing down on me. If Steven and I hadn’t broken up, I would not have become involved with Marco. And if I had not become involved with Marco, I wouldn’t have made such a fool of myself in Venice. I wouldn’t be so confused and angry and unsure of what to do next.

I felt such envy for the woman on the table next to me. She seemed to be cherished. Why hadn’t things turned out like that for me?

‘Are you OK?’ Steven asked.

He reached for my hand across the table.

I gave him a strained smile. ‘Thinking about the opera,’ I said.

Steven’s expression told me he didn’t believe me. He knew what I was really thinking.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

There was a sincerity in those two little words that almost had me crying.

‘It’s OK,’ I said.

He continued to hold my hand.

Despite the amorous couple, it was Steven and I who closed the restaurant that evening. We were the last people to leave by a long way. The staff hovered discreetly. I wondered if Steven was thinking the same as I was. Once upon a time, we would have taken the hint and left, knowing that we had a place to go to, but there was a sense that leaving the restaurant would have to signal the end of the evening. There was no question of going dancing or even for another drink. We’d have to go our separate ways. Me back to my stark white designer palace, Steven back to the place on the Left Bank he had rented for his stay.

My place was on the way to his.

‘Can I come in?’ he asked when we got there.

Muddy-headed from all the wine and the lonely feelings stirred up by the kissing couple in I Golosi, I didn’t say no.

Steven followed me up the twisting staircase to the apartment. He leaned against the wall while I fumbled for my keys. When I finally got the door open, he came through it right behind me, his crotch against my buttocks, almost as though he were shoving me inside. He kicked the door shut behind him. I turned to warn him to be quiet for the neighbours, but before I could protest about the slamming door he started kissing me.

Chapter 30

I didn’t try to stop him. All evening the tension between us had been building . We’d talked about everything under the sun except ‘us’ but we were haunted by unfinished business. So there we were, about to finish it. Or were we just starting something else?

As we kissed, Steven danced me backwards into the living room and up to the edge of the huge white sofa. When the back of my legs made contact, I fell onto it, pulling him down with me. We were still kissing. At the same time Steven was undressing me and undressing himself. He struggled to find the carefully hidden zip on my new LBD. I helped him out.

He stood again up to pull off his trousers. He grabbed my hands and lifted me to stand in front of him. He soon stripped off my smart black dress, leaving it in a heap on the floor, which somehow seemed like where it was always destined to end up. He unfastened my bra with one hand – he was always an expert when it came to undoing brassieres – and tossed it so that it landed on a table lamp. My knickers ended up nestling in one of the twin arrangements of camellias. The white arrangement. White for ‘available tonight’.

‘You know,’ I observed as Steven busied himself with rolling off my stockings, ‘I think red camellias were meant to signal that Mademoiselle was not accepting guests because it was the wrong time of the month.’

‘Are you not accepting guests?’ Steven asked me. He looked up. His eyes were glittering with wickedness. I could not resist. I didn’t want to.

‘I think I’ve already accepted you,’ I said.

I took Steven by the hand and led him into the bedroom, to the big white bed with the fresh sheets that I had not imagined sharing. Though perhaps subconsciously, as I’d changed the linen, I’d known that was exactly what would happen. I’d set the scene deliberately.

We were both entirely naked by now. There was such intensity in Steven’s eyes as he looked at me arranged on the pillows. It made me a little nervous, but it also made me long to have him take me there and then. He clambered on top of me and took both my wrists, holding my hands on either side of my head. He studied my face.

‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said. ‘I thought about you every single day we were apart.’

His words made my stomach flutter but before I could bat the compliment away, as was my habit, his lips were back on mine, kissing me hard. I opened my mouth to let in his tongue, which writhed against mine. The taste of him was more delicious to me than anything we’d drunk that night. We’d always had great chemistry.

He let go of my hands and I immediately ran my fingers through his hair. I gently scratched his back and bit his shoulder while he nuzzled my bare neck. I relished the feeling of his bare skin under my fingers. I traced the freckles, almost forgotten. I felt the scar on his side where he’d fallen off his bicycle as a child. I knew every inch of his body so well. I was surprised and relieved to find that nothing had changed. He felt the same. He smelled the same. He moved in the same way.