He’d given her a high five. Confused her with a young person like the ones he read about in the newspapers. It had been quite disconcerting.
‘It’s in a bad state,’ Libby says, now. ‘And it has a history.’
‘History?’
‘Yes. Some people died there. A bit shady. Distant relatives.’ She was about to mention the baby left behind in the cot but stopped.
‘No way!’
‘Yeah. All a bit shocking. So for now I’m just going to act like everything’s normal.’
‘You’re going to keep on selling kitchens? In St Albans?’
‘Yes,’ says Libby, feeling her equilibrium start to rebalance itself at the thought of nothing changing. ‘I’m going to keep on selling kitchens in St Albans.’
8
Marco and Lucy spent the night on the beach in the end. The rain had stopped at about 2 a.m. and they’d gathered their things and walked the twenty minutes across town to the Promenade des Anglais where they’d unrolled their yoga mats on the wet pebbles, tucked themselves under sarongs and watched shreds of spent grey rain clouds chase each other across a big pink moon until the sun started to leak through the line between the sea and the sky.
At eight o’clock Lucy collected together all the cents from the bottom of her rucksack and the bottom of her purse and found she had enough to buy croissants and a coffee. They ate them on a bench, both stultified by lack of sleep and the awfulness of the night before. Then they’d walked back across town to Samia’s flat to collect Stella, and Samia had not invited them in for lunch despite the fact that it was midday and they had clearly not slept in beds. Stella had been bathed and redressed in clean clothes, her soft curls brushed out and pinned back with pink fluffy clips and, as they walked back across town yet again, Lucy pondered that it probably looked like she and Marco had kidnapped her.
‘I can keep her for another night,’ Samia had said, her hand on Stella’s shoulder. Lucy had seen Stella shrug against Samia’s hand, almost imperceptibly, a tiny shake of her head.
‘That’s kind of you, but I’ve found us somewhere to sleep tonight.’ She’d felt Marco’s eyes burning into her shoulder at her lie. ‘But I am so, so grateful to you. Really.’
Samia had tilted her head slightly and narrowed her eyes, processing some silent account of Lucy’s situation. Lucy had held her breath, awaiting some damning pronouncement on her appearance, her parenting, the part she’d played in Samia’s precious son’s moonlight flit. Instead Samia had moved slowly towards the table halfway up the hallway and pulled a small purse from her shoulder bag. She’d peered into the purse and pulled out a twenty-euro note which she passed to Lucy.
‘It’s all I have,’ she’d said. ‘There is no more.’
Lucy had taken it and then leaned into Samia and hugged her. ‘Thank you,’ she’d said. ‘God bless you.’
Now she and the children and the dog are walking along the Promenade des Anglais in the burning afternoon sun with a bag full of clean clothes from the laundromat and bellies full of bread and cheese and Coca-Cola. They head towards one of the many beach clubs that line the beaches here in Nice: le Beach Club Bleu et Blanc.
Lucy has eaten here, in the past. She has sat at these tables with Marco’s dad, worked her way through piles of fruits de mer, a glass of champagne at her elbow or a white wine spritzer, whilst being cooled by intermittent puffs of chilled water squirted from tiny nozzles. They wouldn’t recognise her now, those jaded old waiters in their incongruously trendy blue and white polo shirts. She’d been a sight for sore eyes twelve years ago.
A woman sits on a perch at the entrance to the restaurant. She is blonde in that way that only women in the south of France can be blonde, something to do with the contrast between vanilla hair and darkly toasted skin. She glances at Lucy, indifferently, taking in the state of Lucy and Marco and the dog, before returning her gaze to her computer screen. Lucy pretends that she is waiting for someone to join her from the beach, cupping her eyes with her hand and peering towards the horizon until the woman is distracted by a party of five people arriving for lunch.