Page 41 of Vianne

I woke up in the ambulance. A nurse was holding a mask to my face; a blood-pressure cuff was around my arm. I tried to sit up. The nurse – a young man with long hair and a beard – gently pushed me back into place.

‘Don’t try to move. You’re going to be fine.’

‘My things—’

‘I left them with your friend.’

I wanted to say: I don’t have any friends .

But I was still too confused to speak. My heart was racing, my head was sore and my shirt was dark with half-dried blood.

I felt a sudden panic as I realized my trousers were also wet, but it was not blood, only coffee, spilt as I pulled at the tablecloth.

‘A lot of people get nosebleeds in the first trimester. We’ll just get you checked over, and then you can be on your way.’

I nodded and said nothing. Inside, I was thinking furiously.

I had no papers with me; nothing to prove my identity.

Of course, I had no insurance; but no one asked me for details.

Instead, they asked for my name and address: I told them Sylviane Rochas, and gave an old address in N?mes, an empty house behind the old fish market.

Arriving at the hospital, I was given a series of tests, including an ultrasound that showed them my baby was healthy, and some blood tests that revealed nothing but a moderate iron deficiency.

‘Plenty of leafy vegetables,’ said the doctor who saw to me. ‘Also, red meat. And chocolate. Did you know that chocolate contains as much iron as spinach?’

I did, because Guy had once told me, and for a moment I felt a powerful sense of longing for him, and for Allée du Pieu.

Now I would never see the chocolaterie up and running.

I would not see the Christmas lights along the Vieux Port, and the candle-lit processions up the Butte to Notre-Dame.

I would never see Mahmed and Guy on the night of their grand opening.

That’s always been our fate, of course: to see so many stories begun, and to leave so many unfinished.

‘I’d like to keep you overnight, just to make sure,’ the doctor said. ‘Your blood pressure is a little low, and in your condition, we need to take care.’ He smiled. He was kindly; balding; plump. ‘Would you like to call Papa ?’

For a moment I thought he meant my father; a man whose name I’d never known, and of whom my mother had never spoken. Then I realized who he meant. The baby ’s father in New York. The man with no name.

I shook my head.

I thought the man looked crestfallen. I’d seen the way he looked at my hand, noting the absent wedding ring. Then, he smiled again, and said: But most importantly – boy or girl? Would you like to know?’

I started to tell him I already knew, but I could see he was trying to lift my mood, and it seemed unkind to refuse him. I nodded.

‘Well, you’re having a boy !’

I stared at him. I know he’s wrong. And yet, once more I feel that troubling sense of forking , as if my life were divided in two.

On one side, my little Anouk, so very like myself at her age; moving from town to town in my wake, just as I did with my mother.

On the other, a little boy. A different life entirely.

‘You’re disappointed?’

‘No, I – no.’ I managed a smile. ‘I’m just – a little tired.’ In fact, what he’d said made no sense. My Anouk is already so real in my mind that to tell me she doesn’t exist seems absurd: like denying the rising sun. I said: ‘I don’t suppose these tests are ever entirely accurate?’

‘Completely accurate.’ He beamed. ‘You can start knitting those blue bootees.’

I thought of the pink bootees in my bag, and of what Khamaseen had said: A little boy could be good for you. A little boy who sleeps at night, and never hears the call of the wind.

But I’d escaped that, hadn’t I? I had averted that destiny. I had followed the wind. I had done everything I was meant to do—

So perhaps Anouk doesn’t want you , whispered an evil voice in my mind. Perhaps she knows what you’re really like, and wants nothing to do with you. Perhaps because she knows you don’t know how be a mother.

I took a shaking breath. You’re wrong. I’m going to be a good mother.

Like your mother was to you? Dragging you halfway across the world? Changing your names in every town? Running from every shadow?

That’s unfair. She did her best. She taught me everything she knew.

And what do you know, exactly? Where were you born? When’s your birthday? Who was your mother? What’s your name? Are you really telling me that your child would be different? That you’d give them security? That you’ll never change their name, or tell them: the next town will be better?

I lay awake for a long time, listening to the hospital sounds like music from a seashell, and when at last I fell asleep, I dreamed of a railway station bench, with the sounds of the distant trains in the dark, and a lemon-slice moon hanging overhead like something from a fairytale, and Khamaseen’s voice in the distance saying : If you’re going in search of yourself, be sure not to leave yourself behind .