Page 9 of Vianne

I awoke to the sound of voices, and the feel of a damp cloth on my face. ‘It’s all right,’ said Louis. ‘Just give her space!’ I opened my eyes. ‘You’re going to be fine. You shouldn’t have missed breakfast.’

‘What about the bouillabaisse?’

The regulars were mostly standing around, looking both apprehensive and obscurely guilty, as men of a certain age often do when faced by women’s weaknesses – except for Emile, who was still in his place, calmly eating bouillabaisse.

‘Needed more pastis,’ he said.

Louis turned and snapped at him: ‘The last thing you need is more pastis.’ He looked at me anxiously. ‘Are you all right? Is it something to do with the baby?’

‘I’m fine,’ I said, sitting up on the bench.

‘I overtired myself, that’s all. What do you mean, it needs more pastis?

’ This was to Emile, who by now had finished his bowl of bouillabaisse and was eyeing the dish of toasted bread.

I looked at Louis. ‘I did everything just the way you showed me. I want to learn.’

Louis gave me one of his looks. He has reverted to his earlier position of watchful mistrust. I sense that my youth is a problem; my pregnancy still more so.

He wonders if I will change things. He wonders if I will break his heart.

Not in any romantic way – all that ended with Marguerite – and yet I remind him of her, somehow. I trouble his composure.

Grief is love with nowhere to go. That’s what my mother used to say.

And there is love inside him. It’s like a seam of something bright between two layers of bitter rock.

But he has learnt to live with his grief.

At least it is familiar. Love, on the other hand, is not.

Love, and its dangerous sibling, Hope. I sense these things in Louis, and his resistance to their influence.

I sense that, in spite of his kindness, he would rather I did not stay.

My mother would not have persisted. She was used to moving on.

But there is something in me now – something like an anchor – that wants something more than the open road.

It wants the constraint of being wanted.

It wants the familiarity of its own utensils, burnished smooth; it wants the sounds of a place it knows inside-out, to the smallest detail.

I flashed him a tiny, hopeful thought. It shone all around the dingy room like light shining through a moving prism.

I looked at him. ‘ You try it,’ I said. ‘Try it. See if I went wrong.’

He shrugged, and picked up a spoon from the bar. Tried the broth; tried a piece of fish. Tried a sip of the broth again, and said: ‘Next time, pissaladière.’

I hid my smile behind my hand. Good. For now, at least, I was in.