ONE DAY(108)

He looked broken. Gaunt and tired, his face was shaded with scrappy stubble that didn’t suit him, a prison beard, and she was reminded of the potential for disaster that this visit carried with it. But when he saw her he started to smile and quicken his pace, and she smiled too, then started to feel self-conscious as she waited at the gate wondering what to do with her hands, her eyes. The distance between them seemed immense; smile and stare, smile and stare for fifty metres? Forty-five metres. She looked at the floor, up into the rafters. Forty metres, she looked back at Dexter, back at the floor. Thirty-five metres . . .

While covering this vast distance, he was surprised to notice how much she had changed in the eight weeks since he had last seen her, the two months since everything had happened. Her hair had been cut very short, a fringe brushed across her forehead, and she had more colour in her face; the summer face that he remembered. Better dressed too: high shoes, a smart dark skirt, a pale grey shirt unbuttoned a touch too far, showing brown skin and a triangle of dark freckles below her neck. She still didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands or where to look, and he was starting to feel self-conscious too. Ten metres. What would he say, and how would he say it? Was it a yes or no?

He quickened his pace towards her, and then finally they were embracing.

‘You didn’t have to meet me.’

‘Of course I had to meet you. Tourist.’

‘I like this.’ He brushed his thumb across her short fringe. ‘There’s a word for it, isn’t there?’

‘Butch?’

‘Gamine. You look gamine.’

‘Not butch?’

‘Not in the least.’

‘You should have seen it two weeks ago. I looked like a collaborator!’ His face didn’t move. ‘I went to a Parisian hairdresser for the first time. Terrifying! I sat in the chair, thinking Arrêtez-vous, Arrêtez-vous! The funny thing is even in Paris they ask you about your holidays. You think they’re going to talk about contemporary dance or can-man-ever-truly-be-free? but it’s “Que faites-vous de beau pour les vacances? Vous sortez ce soir?”’ Still his face was fixed. She was talking too much, trying too hard. Calm down. Don’t riff. Arrêtez-vous.

His hand touched the short hair at the back of her neck. ‘Well I think it suits you.’

‘Not sure I’ve got the features for it.’

‘Really, you’ve got the features for it.’ He held her at the top of her arms, taking her all in. ‘It’s like there’s a fancy-dress party and you’ve come as Sophisticated Parisienne.’

‘Or a Call Girl.’

‘But a High-Class Call Girl.’

‘Well even better.’ She touched his chin with her knuckle, the stubble there. ‘So what have you come as then?’

‘I’ve come as Fucked-up Suicidal Divorcee.’ The remark was glib and he regretted it immediately. Barely off the platform, and he was spoiling things.

‘Well at least you’re not bitter,’ she said, reaching for the nearest off-the-shelf remark.

‘Do you want me to get back on the train?’

‘Not just yet.’ She took him by the hand. ‘Come on, let’s go, shall we?’

They stepped outside the Gare du Nord into the stifling fume-filled air; a typical Parisian summer day, muggy, with thick grey clouds threatening rain. ‘I thought we’d go for a coffee first, near the canal. It’s a fifteen-minute walk, is that alright? Then another fifteen minutes to my flat. I have to warn you though, it’s nothing special. In case you’re imagining parquet floors and big windows with fluttering curtains or something. It’s just two rooms over a courtyard.’

‘A garret.’

‘Exactly. A garret.’

‘A writer’s garret.’

In anticipation of this journey, Emma had memorised a scenic walk, or as scenic as possible in the dust and traffic of the north-east. I’m moving to Paris for the summer, to write. Back in April, the idea had seemed almost embarrassingly precious and fey, but she was so bored with married couples telling her that she could go to Paris at any time that she had decided actually to do it. London had turned into one enormous crèche, so why not get away from other people’s children for a while, have an adventure? The city of Sartre and De Beauvoir, Beckett and Proust, and here she was too, writing teenage fiction, albeit with considerable commercial success. The only way she could make the idea seem less hokey was to settle as far away as she could from tourist Paris, in the working-class 19th arrondissement on the border of Belleville and Ménilmontant. No tourist attractions, few landmarks . . .

‘—but it’s really lively, and cheap, and multi-cultural and . . . God, I was about to say it’s very “real”.’

‘Meaning what, violent?’

‘No, just, I don’t know, real Paris. I sound like a student, don’t I? Thirty-five years old, living in a little two-room flat like I’m on a gap year.’

‘I think Paris suits you.’

‘It does.’

‘You look fantastic.’

‘Do I?’

‘You’ve changed.’

‘I haven’t. Not really.’

‘No, really. You look beautiful.’

Emma frowned and kept her eyes ahead, and they walked a little further, trotting down stone steps to the Canal St Martin, and a little bar by the water’s edge.