Other People’s Diaries (24 page)

I think I'm getting better at this lousy dinner stuff. Two nights ago I made scrambled eggs. Despite my intentions to make it easy and fast, I found myself thinking it wouldn't be that much harder to make a frittata. But then I could almost feel Alice looking over my shoulder saying, ‘It doesn't have to be fabulous. In fact it doesn't have to even be good.' I'm considering adopting that as my new mantra
.

C
laire pulled up outside a nondescript warehouse and checked the address. She was in the right place. At least parking wasn't a problem at this ridiculous hour of the morning. Surely Alice had got something wrong. Nothing at all was happening here.

A white four-wheel drive pulled up behind Claire's car. Claire watched in her rear-vision mirror as the driver looked straight ahead – directly at Claire it seemed. The driver's door opened and a woman stepped out and walked toward Claire's car.

She stopped beside the door and Claire wound down the window.

‘Hello Alice,' she said.

Alice smiled apologetically. ‘Sorry I didn't tell you I'd be here. Thought it might be a bit much for you. After all, telling you to
do volunteer work is a bit clichéd. It's just that, well, this is a good place and I thought you might like to give us a hand.'

Claire looked at her for a moment before nodding. ‘Okay.' She opened the door and stepped out, following Alice back to her car.

‘I collect yesterday's bread from a bakery nearby and drop it down a few mornings a week,' Alice explained as she opened the door at the back of the car and pulled out several large shopping bags. ‘I started years ago when the kids were tiny and I was up early anyway. The kids don't come any more but I do.'

Alice smiled. ‘All right, follow me.'

There was already a handful of other people at work in the large kitchen. Alice introduced Claire, but greetings were perfunctory. It was early, they were all there with a purpose, not to chat. Alice's bread was taken out of the bags for sandwiches. An older woman set Claire to work chopping pineapple. Alice left soon afterwards with a small wave across to Claire.

As they got underway, people relaxed and conversations started. Claire was mostly silent though, concentrating on her job. An hour later they began loading the sandwiches and fruit into big steel bins, then carting them outside to the van which had arrived earlier. Large urns were filled with hot water and two of the volunteers climbed into the back of the van.

‘Right, that's it.' The older woman who seemed to be in charge rubbed her hands down the side of her jeans and headed back inside.

She turned back when she realised Claire hadn't moved.

‘You can go with them if you want.'

Claire smiled slightly. ‘I'd just get in the way. I didn't think it would all be so easy, that's all.'

The older woman smiled. ‘It is when we've lots of helping hands – you should see the carry-on when there's only a couple of us.'

She hesitated. ‘Will you be coming back?'

‘Yes, I think so,' Claire replied.

‘Great,' the other woman answered brusquely. ‘You're a champion fruit chopper. It normally takes two people to do what you did this morning.'

Claire smiled slightly and headed for her car.

She pushed the radio on and pulled away from the footpath. A recording of a Boyer Lecture was on her normal radio station. It was about the nuclear threat facing the world. Claire knew she should be interested. It was the kind of thing she tried to listen to, something to casually refer to at a dinner party so she didn't appear to be a vacuous housewife, but she couldn't face bad news at the moment. She stabbed at the dial and the radio settled on a commercial station, with a witty duo doing the drive-time show.

Claire was normally asleep at this time, or nursing a coffee trying to decide how to fill the day ahead. Although she was on her way home, rather than to work, she felt strangely useful.

A song came on. ‘Uptown Girl' by Billy Joel.

As soon as the first chords came through the speakers, Claire felt unreasonably happy. She turned the volume up, the music filling the car.

She sang along as she caught the good edge of an amber light, gliding through the empty intersection. The music carried her through the city, where the earliest office goers were pulling into empty carparking stations. The song finished and Claire felt deflated, wishing she could rewind it. But then another song took its place. ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.'

Claire laughed out loud. There was a lot to be said for commercial radio. Peter loved music and always knew what was new and popular. There was no room for eighties hits CDs in their collection. Turning the volume knob even higher she let the music take her away, memories of George Michael posters and fluoro-lettered T-shirts filling her mind.

The song was just finishing when she pulled up outside home.

Claire sat for a moment, engine running, singing along wildly. The last bars sounded and she reluctantly took the key out of the ignition and opened the door.

It was only then that she saw Peter standing several metres away. His car keys were in his hand, bag slung over his shoulder, courier style.

Claire stood up, her arm resting on the top of the door.

‘Hi,' he said. ‘How was it?'

‘It was good.' She hesitated. ‘I think I'll go again.'

Peter nodded.

‘Off to work?' she asked rhetorically.

The silence stretched. Claire truly didn't know what to say to the man she'd lived with for seventeen years. She felt as though their final common thread had snapped after the fight about the house plans. Not because of Peter's concern about the costs, that wasn't new. It was the realisation that he believed her renovations were an indulgence, not something skilful and valuable to them. Everything had shifted slightly now she knew what he really thought.

Peter raised his hand and walked toward his car, parked a little further down the street.

Claire was still watching him when he turned back.

‘You know – I haven't seen you look that happy in a lot of years.'

Claire said nothing, following him with her eyes as he drove off. She only moved once the car was out of sight.

L
illian reached the top step and stopped. After the concrete and tiles of the Metro system, the beauty of the street was astounding.

She stood still, people flowing around her.

The street was lined with aristocratic buildings, the colour of the plaster ranging from clotted cream to café au lait. Wrought-iron balconies decorated the buildings in graceful swirls. Large, flat, charcoal-coloured stones covered the roadway, and huge plane trees sat in the middle of footpaths. The street was crowded, people swirling around the small tabacs selling papers and drinks.

Parisians didn't dress formally as Lillian had always imagined, but in a dress code that looked something like ‘impeccable casual'. Jeans or soft trousers were matched with light jackets, evidence of a well-founded suspicion of the autumn weather. The only people wearing open-toed shoes were tourists. The locals' feet were shod in cut-away flats or boots.

There was a cafe on the corner, its awning stretched out toward the footpath, rain from a shower earlier that morning glistening on the canvas. Underneath were small round tables, just big enough for two drinks. Nestled next to each were chairs, green and cream plastic strips woven to create a wicker type look. The morning was cool and only a few of the outdoor tables were occupied.

Lillian sat down, moving her scarf to better cover her neck. There was no way she was going inside and missing this view.

A waiter paused imperiously in front of her, taking her order for a coffee with a nod.

Kyla was at work. They'd caught the Metro together, Kyla sending her mother off the train at Saint-Germain-des-Prés station and continuing on her journey.

Lillian and Kyla had been on this street the week before, but being here by herself was a totally different experience for Lillian.

She smelt cigarette smoke drifting over her and breathed it in. She followed the white tendrils back to their owner, a man with dark chin-length hair pushed behind his ears, leather-jacket clad arm draped over a chair beside him.

It was almost forty years since Lillian had smoked regularly, but the smell suddenly made her crave it. It was a habit she'd taken up when she was a teenager, as a lot of people had in those days. Even then she'd known it had to be bad for her, and she had given up soon after she was married. But she had sometimes managed the occasional cigarette sneaked around the back of the shed, so the children couldn't see.

Lillian pictured David in those days. He'd been lean and muscled, playing competition squash two nights a week. Their marriage had been good, very good. They'd complemented each other well. He was gregarious, making friends without thinking about it. But it was Lillian who built those friendships and kept them going in the times when David was buried in another research project.

David had loved the children fiercely. But he focused on things intensely, to the exclusion of everything else. When it was the children, he was fun and constantly entertaining and they were besotted with him. But when it was work that took his focus, both Lillian and the children suffered.

Lillian had always known that. She'd become accustomed to it and had thought the children had too. But after Kyla's remarks the other day, it seemed that perhaps they hadn't.

Lillian thought back on those years. She thought of the times
David had worked until dawn and was unreasonably grumpy at being unable to sleep in the small family house. She thought also of the times when she'd realised halfway through a conversation that he had no knowledge of, and in fact no interest in, what she was saying.

Those bad things had been overlaid in Lillian's memory by the many good times. Perhaps Kyla was right, more and more of the bad things kept dropping off Lillian's memory while the good ones glowed brighter.

The waiter deposited a cup of coffee in front of Lillian, tucking the bill under a clip on the edge of the table.

Lillian ignored both, staring out at the street. Somehow things seemed more possible here than at home. She hadn't even thought of having another relationship. But perhaps it wasn't as ridiculous as it sounded. Kyla was right. David had been wonderful, but he was not an irreplaceable demigod.

As she watched, a man turned away from the tabac stand on the footpath with a packet of cigarettes in his hands. He ripped open the cellophane packet, flipped a cigarette into his mouth and leaned over to light it, hands cupped against the breeze.

Lillian stood up and walked across to the stand.

Too late, she realised she had no idea of the French word for cigarette.

The man behind the counter looked at her, eyebrows raised.

‘Uh, les Galloises, please,' Lillian managed with sudden inspiration. Of course, if she was to smoke in Paris it could be no other brand.

She strode back to her table, intoxicated by her bravery. She was in a strange city, free of her real life. Why not have a cigarette? After all, lung cancer was unlikely to get her before the multiple sclerosis did. Lillian pushed away the thoughts of her illness which threatened to crash down on top of her if she let them.

Then she realised she had nothing with which to light the cigarette. She could go back to the tabac, but somehow that wasn't the point.

Her euphoria disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. She pictured herself, someone with wrinkled skin and sunspots on
the back of her hands, sneaking a cigarette like a teenager. And as for contemplating another relationship, who was she kidding?

Lilian sat there, cigarette packet in her hands.

‘Madame?'

The voice came from beside her.

She turned. It was the man who had been smoking at the other table.

‘Would you like a light?'

His English was excellent but soaked in an accent that could not be more French.

He held out a silver cigarette lighter and flipped back the top.

Lillian hesitated for a moment and then put a cigarette in her mouth, leaning forward toward the flame and breathing in deeply.

She opened her eyes and exhaled.

‘
Merci monsieur
,' she said.