Out of Sight (16 page)

‘You're not. This isn't your fault.'

‘It is! I was stupid! Why else did I just assume that he'd go along with happy ever after?'

‘You were in love, Lennie. That's what love does. Besides,'
Stella went on, ‘it's a romantic dream to expect to know anyone entirely. Everyone keeps some little part of themselves private. And he may have lied as much to himself as to you. If not more.'

Leonie nodded obediently, but went on lecturing herself for so willingly letting herself be duped.

Stella comforted her as best she could, but their Christmas Day ended in misery. As they went to bed, Stella took a deep breath, obviously making up her mind to say something: ‘I know you're not ready to hear this, but Patrice has not behaved honourably. Even if he comes back, and even though he's the baby's father, you shouldn't forget that.'

Leonie nodded, too sore to speak. Stella looked at her wretchedly, clearly wishing she could do more to relieve her pain, but all she could do was hug her tight. ‘Sleep well, Lennie. Happy Christmas.'

But the nights were the worst. The moment Leonie closed her eyes, she was swept away on a wave of longing and regret for all she had lost. She felt his physical absence like a homesickness. Along with the craving for his smell, his touch, the warmth of his body next to her in the bed, came renewed anguish to be released from the ache of not knowing what had happened. Where was he? What were his thoughts? Did he still love her? For all his lack of candour, she could not believe that what he had told her instinctively with his hands, his mouth, his body, had been a lie. It was so easy in the dark to imagine him back beside
her; she had only to roll over to imagine she felt his warm back press against hers. The memory of his touch was sharp and real even while her body felt butchered and toxic. Never before had she experienced the duality of mind and body so forcibly. It drove her mad, stopped her sleeping. Her body, the source of such joy and pleasure, felt old and weary. So far, the new life inside her was still only a concept, a blue mark on a plastic stick; meanwhile every heartbeat was a reminder of her mortality.

The memory of the last night they had spent at his house was the hardest. She tried to avoid the probability that their final hours together had been so close and sweet not because he loved her and was happy they were to have a child but because he already knew that he was leaving. Ignorant, she had actually watched him make his silent decision as he sat at the kitchen table, looking around the room as if for the last time; had observed him relax because, with his valediction clear before him, he had felt safe with her, perhaps the only time he ever did. All the tenderness and love he had expressed that night, those murmured endearments, were in reality regret, apology, sorrow at the chain of events he had determined to set in motion in the morning. Their love-making had been his guilty Judas kiss, the worst lie of all, something monstrous, as if, somewhere deep in him, the reality of her had already ceased to exist. Reviling his betrayal, yet yearning to hear him say all those wonderful words again, she fell asleep.

The following morning dawned dry and clear. Stella suggested a walk and Leonie chose the path beside the river. While Stella buttoned up against the chill rising from the dark, fast-flowing water, Leonie seemed oblivious, her mind going round and round on its now sickeningly familiar loop.

‘Do you know anything about the Way of St James?' she asked Stella abruptly.

‘It's part of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, isn't it?'

Leonie had no idea.

‘I'm sure it is,' Stella went on. ‘Why?'

‘He said once that he walked here, followed part of the Way of St James.'

‘Walked from where?' Stella asked.

‘I don't know. I assumed it was like a vacation. I wasn't really paying attention, but what if he's done this before?'

‘Left other women the same way, you mean? Just walked away?'

‘Literally walked out on his whole life. Arrived here on foot, with what he could carry.'

‘There are people who do that,' agreed Stella. ‘Simply go off with no warning, no plan of what they're doing. People who go missing because they've forgotten who they are.'

‘Except that he was heading for his grandmother's house when he came here, wasn't he? So when he set off, he knew his destination.'

‘He refuses to drive, doesn't he?'

Leonie nodded.

‘So what's all that about?' mused Stella. ‘When you first told me, I wondered if maybe he'd been responsible for some dreadful smash-up.'

‘If so, then it didn't leave a mark on him.' Leonie realised she was becoming confused by her own tangle of suspicions. ‘Oh, nothing makes sense!' She linked her arm in Stella's.

‘Lennie, this will pass. You will get over him.'

‘I don't want to get over him! I want him here!' Her voice cracked. ‘Even if I never see him again, I need to know that he did love me.'

Stella stopped on the path to hug her friend. ‘Shush now. It'll all come good. You're going to be fine.'

Leonie stood crying, not even raising her hands to wipe away her tears. Stella began seriously to fear for her friend. ‘Listen to me,' she said, shaking Leonie's shoulders, trying to get her to concentrate. ‘You have to start thinking about yourself. You're fabulous. A much better person than him.'

‘But I don't feel whole without him,' Leonie wept. ‘Being me's not enough any more.'

‘I hate leaving you,' said Stella two days later. It was a damp, misty morning. She had loaded up her car and now stood beside it with Leonie shivering in the cold. ‘Are you going to be all right?'

‘I have to be, don't I?'

‘Oh, Lennie, I had such faith that this would turn out well. I still can't believe it hasn't.'

‘It was never going to work. It's been in him all the time to do this. And part of me always knew it.'

‘Then you're better off without him.'

Leonie nodded, unable yet to conceptualise any notion of a viable future.

‘Take care of yourself. Call me if you need me.'

‘I will. Promise. And thanks, Stella. For everything.'

The two women embraced, and Leonie stood and waved as Stella, fighting back tears, drove off. As Leonie went back indoors alone, she couldn't help feeling relieved. The constant effort of emerging from her thick fog of sadness to pay proper attention to another person had sapped what little energy she had. Now she was free to return undisturbed to her own relentless thoughts. Disappointment, she was learning, was a very under-rated emotion. It was not that she felt betrayed at being left to have their child alone: she had never made Patrice aware of her avid hunger for a child, of her sense of time running out. On that subject, as she had to acknowledge in her most self-lacerating moments, it was she who had tricked and misled him. No, her grief now was for the loss of an imagined future, of all the cherished illusions and daydreams she'd allowed herself to believe could indeed come true because they loved each other. The unfairness of placing such a burden upon him did not prevent her feeling its loss. The final wrench – like pulling a barbed arrow out of her
heart – would be to let go of all those dreams, and that she could not accomplish because to do so must surely kill her.

All the while, a fierce and insidious internal voice kept whispering eagerly that it wasn't over, it couldn't be, not something so precious and special. She knew this was fantasy, but the idea of returning to a life without even the potential for such bliss was unbearable. Without the ecstasy she believed she and Patrice had shared, then her life stretched ahead cold and meaningless: she did not want it, not even now that it held the child for which she had yearned. Such comfortless thoughts frightened her. What kind of mother would she be if she couldn't stop such despair intruding on her view of the future – her child's future? She had to find some new way to live with herself, to fall out of love. She reminded herself that she had done so before, after Greg, when she had first come to France, and for a second she saw that it might be possible to survive this dreadful pain, to forgive herself for being so undeserving of Patrice's love.

But she knew she had never loved Greg with the same visceral attachment, never felt her own identity as obliterated by the loss of his love for her. She had been younger and more hopeful and had chosen to leave. And even though she no longer really cared, she still heard through Stella where Greg was and some news of what he was up to. Patrice's exit was a rebuke to everything she thought she'd known and understood, to her very existence. She
could no longer comprehend anything about a world where this could happen.

The week after New Year Gaby re-opened the office and Leonie went back to work. She also made an appointment to see a doctor about her pregnancy, something she had postponed before Christmas in the vain hope that Patrice would return and be there to accompany her. Gaby immediately reported that neither she nor Thierry had gleaned any new information, though Leonie guessed that, whatever talk there was in the town about Patrice's continuing absence, Gaby chose not to repeat it. She was grateful that the older woman's loyalty and discretion overruled any relish she may once have had for gossip on the subject. Leonie recalled guiltily how dismissive she had been of the Duvals' life together when she had taken Patrice to their house for dinner. How had she permitted herself to belittle such warmth and kindness? Was it merely because she had been, as Stella had dubbed it, too loved-up to see what really mattered? If so, she had learnt a hard lesson.

That first day back at her desk Leonie found it impossible to concentrate, but gradually the mundane details of taking bookings, mailing confirmations, arranging repairs and sending out brochures cleared her mind. For a whole half-hour she forgot her troubles. Through such small, welcome glimpses of returning normality she began to gain some insight into just how obsessed and disordered her mind had become.

When she arrived home that evening, there was a letter. On recognising the handwriting, she staggered as if propelled against the wall by her surge of joy. Smiling idiotically, she stroked the envelope that still bore traces of his touch. She was right: he hadn't abandoned her! She fetched a knife from the kitchen drawer and, almost reluctant to expose the reality of its contents, carefully slit open the envelope and extricated a single sheet. Seeing the brevity of the writing, she tried in vain to check her disappointment.

She unfolded the paper and read the few lines. ‘Dear Leonie,' he had written, ‘you will be very angry with me, and I don't expect you to forgive me. But I am sorry. I didn't know what else to do for the best. Your loving Patrice.' There was no address or date; the envelope bore a French stamp, but the postmark was blurred and useless. Leonie rested her hands on the counter, her arms like stone. Was this all he had to say to her?

Her emotions swung swiftly to the opposite extreme. Here finally was the proof she had so longed for that he
did
think of her, was aware of the pain he had inflicted, did feel for her. And her heart went out to him that he could ever imagine that she would be unforgiving: did he honestly not realise how much she loved him? At this evidence of his misapprehension, his lack of faith, she yearned to hold and comfort and reassure him. Yet, at the same time, the leaden weight of her limbs told her that after such intimacy this inadequate explanation was a
devastating annihilation. It showed how little he truly cared, how worthless she must be to him. With trembling fingers, she put the sheet back into the envelope, climbed on a chair in her bedroom and slid the letter underneath some boxes on the top shelf of a cupboard.

Half a dozen times that evening, even after she had gone to bed, she put on the light and dragged over the chair to climb up and re-read the letter, hoping that, as if by magic, a longer, as yet invisible, message would appear, or some revelatory meaning be vouchsafed. Each time she handled the paper, she felt its physical association with him fade beneath her fingers. It was both a comfort and a torment; she was simultaneously gladdened by it and despairing that these were not the words she had craved to hear. By the time she set off for work in the morning, she had persuaded herself that, since he had written once, he would write again. She must trust him and be patient. She tried hard to cling to that belief over the course of the week, but gradually common sense overcame what she knew deep down to be the delusion of hope.

By Saturday, the date she had set herself as the point at which, if Patrice had not returned, she would have to accept that he was gone for good, she acknowledged that his letter had, if anything, deepened the quality of his silence. It was no longer a neutral absence. While writing it, he had considered what to say and deliberately chosen not to offer her any shred of hope. Much as she longed to
forgive him, she saw now that his silence was intentional, and therefore cruel.

On Sunday, a bleak and colourless January morning, she steeled herself to drive across to his house. Although she had expected to find it just as grimly shuttered and padlocked as it had been on that other morning a month ago, it still came as a shock to read once more the brutality of his departure written on the surface of the building. A few winter leaves lay unswept on the path to the front door, and the stem of a rose that grew against the railings of the tiny front garden had snapped. They were normal winter depredations, yet, aware that she was not far off hallucinating with grief, she observed herself regarding them as omens of ruination. She did not linger, but returned alone to her apartment where, numbed almost to indifference for half an hour or so, she relinquished the last thread of conviction that Patrice would ever phone or write more fully to explain himself. She was certain now that nothing lay beyond the onslaught of his continuing silence.