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13

TWO WEEKS AGO

‘I thought you were going to dump me again, you know,’ Tom said out of the blue. ‘Back in the day.’ He leant back on her bed, arms behind his head, and not for the first time Sophie wondered what Will would say if he knew. But they’d done nothing wrong. And there wasn’t anywhere else to sit, really, in the hotel room.

‘Dump you?’ She repeated, incredulous. ‘What? After uni?’

‘On that second trip. You know when we’d agreed to go as friends, to see what happened? I was terrified the entire time.’

‘You didn’t seem terrified. Anyway, can you even dump someone when you’re not officially together?’

‘Well, shatter my dreams, then.’

She laughed softly. ‘So dramatic.’

‘Everything did feel quite dramatic in those days. All or nothing.’

‘We were kids, really.’

He nodded. ‘Yeah.’

He’d turned up at her hotel room this morning after she’d returned from breakfast, and was now lying on her bed as she brushed her hair and added a slick of mascara to her lashes. She was glad – relieved even – that he’d decided to come back.

Closing her eyes now she pictured that day, so many years ago. When she’d taken him to the bridge and he’d looked at her. And they’d both just known. The kiss under the stars, the water running beneath. That magical midnight hour where heaven had seemed to come down to earth and they’d felt part of something enormous, bigger than themselves.

Last night she’d been uncomfortable on her basic mattress at the Cler, and had woken with the realisation that either she had got used to slightly better things, or her body was a decade older than when she was last here and felt the bumps and hard areas of the mattress more keenly than its younger self.

Tom hadn’t tried to come in when they’d returned, just after midnight. And she hadn’t felt able to ask. Instead, they’d said goodbye chastely outside the double doors, and she’d been left to return to her room and sink into sleep. She’d been both glad and disappointed at his absence – feeling better when texting Will, but also being aware of the emptiness of the room with its impersonal beige and brown colour theme and basic, laminated furniture, without Tom’s easy smile to make it seem like the best place on earth.

There was only one more day before she left – one more night to sleep. And then she’d be home, two weeks away from becoming Mrs Will Baxter, and it would all be over.

She was ready for this new time in her life, to walk down the aisle towards a man who’d not only been there for her as a friend, but had literally saved her in recent years.

But saying a final au revoir to Tom? It was too soon. It would always be too soon. Yet what choice did she have?

She smiled now. ‘But I had come to Paris with you, that must have given you a clue that I was interested.’

‘Not really. I thought you might just be in it for the art galleries.’

She shoved him playfully, her hand missing its target and making her stumble. She felt her cheeks get hot.

‘I see your aim hasn’t improved,’ he said, laughing.

‘I thought the same,’ she said, more serious, as they left the room and made their way down the beige corridor. ‘I really worried you were just being a nice friend.’

‘It’s not that long ago, really. But I can’t imagine being that…’

‘That what ?’

He shrugged. ‘I just remember it being really difficult, in those days. To say the right thing, to know what I was meant to do or say.’

‘The perils of your twenties.’

‘Yes, probably.’

She pressed the button for the lift and he waited at her side as it made its way to the fourth floor. The doors hissed open to reveal an elderly woman with a suitcase. She looked at both of them and they stood to one side as she wheeled it past.

A man pushed past them and got into the lift, and Tom raised an eyebrow at Sophie as they made their own way in. ‘No, no, after you,’ he said quietly into her ear.

She tried not to giggle as she stood in silence next to the rude man who strode off the minute the doors opened on the ground floor.

‘Weren’t you tempted to say something?’ Tom asked.

She shook her head. ‘It’s not worth it. Men like that.’

They walked across the foyer and emerged into the sunlight.

‘It’s funny,’ she said as they began to walk together, seemingly on the same page, ‘when I think back to that trip. I mean I don’t feel like I’ve changed much over the years. But I can’t imagine why I just didn’t ask you outright.’

‘What, like, Look, are you going to shag me or not, because I’ve been waiting long enough?’

‘Yes,’ she said, mock-earnestly, ‘something subtle like that.’

He laughed. ‘Well, it would have saved me a huge amount of heartache if you had.’

She was silent for a moment. Around them, crowds milled and moved back and forth along the ancient streets – blood in the veins of the city, giving it life.

‘What will you do after?’ she asked him, her face serious.

‘After?’

‘Tom, you know. You know .’ She couldn’t find the words to say it out loud.

He shrugged. ‘I literally don’t know,’ he said. ‘I guess I’ll just take one step at a time, see what comes my way. I don’t feel… it’s not really up to me. What happens next.’

‘Oh Tom, I…’

‘No,’ he said, turning to her. ‘Stop it.’

A man with a backpack stumbled behind her as she suddenly halted, turned to look. Huffing and cursing, he pushed past her and continued, glancing over his shoulder at her from time to time. She barely registered it.

‘Stop what?’

‘If this really is our last day, then I don’t want to fill it with sorry s and I wish es and worry for the future,’ he said. ‘Whatever happens next will happen; there’s nothing I or you can do to change that. I just want to spend the day with you. With the real you. The you that you are when you’re not worried about tomorrow. Otherwise, what’s the point?’

She nodded. ‘Sorry.’ Then, realising what she’d said, ‘Oh! Sorry. I mean…’

He laughed. ‘That’s more like it. Much less apologetic.’

She found herself giggling too. ‘Perhaps we’re not as good communicators as we gave ourselves credit for, even now.’

‘So what’s the plan? Eiffel Tower, Montmartre and then, at the end, the bridge?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘OK. Yes.’

‘It’ll be OK, you know; “all things come to an end” and all that,’ he said.

‘Yes, they do.’

‘And you know, if things go tits up with Will, maybe there’ll be a chance for me in another life.’

‘Tom!’

‘Well, can’t blame a bloke for trying.’

The day gradually came into itself as they walked, Sophie trying as hard as she could to take in all the sights and sounds of the city she’d come to love and associate with love. Of the city that had seen some of her happiest times, and her worst too. She looked at the buildings, the balconies, shutters flung open to let in the light. The cafes with their colourful awnings. She took in the scent of coffee, of cigarette smoke, the chatter and the buzz of it all. She looked up at Tom by her side, sometimes with his eyes fixed ahead, sometimes turning to look at a riverboat, or a passer-by; always beautiful, always her Tom. And better now. Not drawn and pale as when they’d last been here. Not grey in his face and hollow in his eyes.

Whatever happened next, she’d had this time with him. And she was going to commit as much to memory as she possibly could.

For some reason, seeing the Eiffel Tower again, looking exactly as it always had, almost took her breath away. The structure so familiar, so shockingly enormous each time, so strangely beautiful despite the fact it looked a little like scaffolding with its hard lines and unyielding metal construction. But it wasn’t the tower itself that made her feel this way, although seeing it always felt special; it was the memories it instantly evoked in her – as if in her mind there were a folder marked ‘Tower’ where the emotions from all her previous visits were stored and tumbled out as she stood at its base.

She thought back to that first, magical time when they’d been determined to take the stairs and spent the next day hobbling, their aching muscles protesting; about the last time, that awful last time with the lift and the grim knowledge hanging over both of them that everything was about to change. The tower had witnessed her highs and her lows, her excitement and disappointment. And now she was back – how would this memory be filed in her mind in the future? As something she thought of fondly? As a terrible betrayal and mistake? Or as something that ended so painfully she wanted to lock it away and never access that file again? She put her hand on the locket. It felt cold against her fingers.

‘Cheer up love, it might never happen,’ came a voice with a strong cockney accent in her ear. She jumped and put a hand to her chest before giggling.

‘Tom!’

She’d told him in the past of the men she’d encountered who’d called out at her to smile, or cheer up, or the hundred other versions of the same phrase, and how annoying she always found it, how she’d wanted to retort each time and say it was none of their business how her face looked. From him, though, it was somehow hilarious.

‘Can’t have a pretty thing like you looking down, can we sweetheart?’ he continued.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I booked online. Let’s go up.’

He nodded and turned towards the snake of tourists heading for the lift.

‘Oh no. Not so fast,’ she said. ‘I booked the stairs.’

‘Seriously?’

She shrugged. ‘Old times’ sake.’

‘You know that not everything that happened in the “old times” has to be repeated for nostalgia’s sake, don’t you? I know our trips have been brilliant, but sometimes there’s a reason things have… evolved as they’ve gone on. I mean, I won’t be buying a sandwich from that dodgy street vendor near the station either.’

‘Well, no. Me neither. But come on, when we visited the Eiffel Tower – the time we took the stairs – it was one of the best days.’

‘You’re looking back with rose-tinted specs,’ he told her. ‘You’ve forgotten the pain of it. My legs took about six months to recover.’

‘Ah, don’t be a lightweight,’ she said. ‘Come on!’

‘I’m not worried for me,’ he said. ‘But you’re getting on a bit now, aren’t you?’

She opened her mouth in mock horror. ‘How dare you!’

‘It’s your funeral,’ he quipped, following close behind as she strode towards the door leading to the staircase at which, unsurprisingly, the queue was far shorter.

In the end, they only made it to the first floor. Enough to see Paris spread out below them, looking almost, at this distance, identical to the Paris all those years ago that had fallen forward from their view like a sea of possibilities. Back when they could have chosen to do anything, both for that holiday and with their lives. They hadn’t realised, at that age, how many doors would shut over the next decade, how each choice they made would seal something else from their future until they were left in a situation they’d created, but would never have chosen outright.

I’m only thirty-four , Sophie reminded herself. There’s still time to do whatever I want.

Except this, she thought. She looked at Tom in profile, his brow furrowed slightly, his skin almost iridescent in the light. Her funny, upbeat, loving man. For many years, her perfect partner. His loss had been the hardest thing she’d ever had to bear.

Then she thought of Will. The way he had of making the rest of the world fall away, of cocooning her in his arms and allowing her to let go of the chatter in her own mind and finally be calm. She hadn’t survived the last decade-and-a-bit unharmed – she’d endured and got through and endured before she’d got to this point. Like a muscle, she’d been broken down, but rebuilt herself – a new version, stronger. Maybe no longer the Sophie that Tom loved. Maybe a Sophie who was brand new.