The Last Dress from Paris(77)
“How will it pay off?”
“If you want choices in life, if you never want to rely on anyone else for support, then you need to be fully financially independent. Only then can you truly own your own life.”
It sounds so mercenary to me. Maybe I like the idea of someone else’s support—not for battling life, but navigating it, by my side. Lifting each other up, supporting one another when needed. I don’t want to be in competition with the world. I don’t want it to feel that hard.
I’m happy to accept there will be mistakes and wrong turns and bad decisions, but isn’t it supposed to be how you react to those things that makes all the difference? Wasn’t it in the days Veronique spent working her way around Europe without a master plan that she became the woman she is today? Open, trusting, and confident, and perceptive to people and places that don’t mimic her own experience of life?
It sounds like there has been little self-analysis since the company Mum devoted herself to decided to drop her from the payroll. I wonder if she’ll ever work it out. The balance of the rich rewards versus what it cost her to get them. I think of the gated estate she calls home just off Fulham Road, and its completely gratuitous number of security barriers to navigate before you gain entry. The big, wide-open empty roads because so few people can actually afford to live there.
I can see why it is appealing. How clear a mark of success it is. She has every conceivable choice of bar, restaurant, shop, yoga studio, hairdresser all within easy reach. She blasts hundreds of pounds in each of them every week, but it never occurs to her to pay the small taxi fare the few miles to Wimbledon to see her own mother.
“How’s Granny?”
“Fine. Why?”
“You’ve seen her?”
“No. I don’t need to.”
“You don’t need to see your elderly mother?”
“Natasha calls me every day, Lucille. Trust me, not one day goes by when I don’t get a very detailed voicemail updating me on every minute facet of your grandmother’s day. How many Weetabix she ate for breakfast. How her bunions are doing. How much shouting she’s done at the TV, which seems to be as accurate a gauge as any for her general well-being.” I imagine Mum has Natasha’s number plugged into her phone purely for the purpose of avoiding her calls. Never making the mistake of answering and having to hear for herself what kind of day Granny has had. “And actually, I was thinking about going over there tomorrow. If I have time.”
“I was hoping to see you then.” I say it quickly before I change my mind.
“Even better.” That’s how effortlessly Granny is mentally struck off Mum’s to-do list. “Come over at one, I’ll have lunch ready for us, and we can talk some more about your career strategy then.”
We’re going to talk about a lot more than that, not that she knows it yet.
I go to bed and lie there feeling lighter, more energized, and more optimistic than I have in ages. I can’t sleep, but it’s for the right reasons.
I’m excited. The world suddenly feels full of possibilities again—like I just created the first space in my life for them to swim in.
20
Alice
DECEMBER 1953, PARIS
What a blissful hour with you that was. Sixty whole minutes that felt lived, when I could relax enough to be myself. To be reminded of the long-forgotten me, the kind of woman she can be. After everything you have been through, Antoine, it amazes me that you have the courage you do. To challenge yourself to live honestly and encourage me to do the same. It may have taken great individual sadness to bring us together, but I hope to only see happiness in our future. You breathe so much life into me, Antoine, I wonder how I ever lived without you. Now I know I didn’t live at all. They were meaningless days, my every simple act designed to keep others happy. I will always think of myself now as the woman I was before you, and after you—because of you.
The note is one of her more recent to Antoine, written in the heady aftermath of their first secret meeting at Dior two weeks ago. There is something so intoxicating about reading it again now, as her naked body lies warm and satisfied under his twisted bedsheets. She slips it back into the envelope on the bedside table and allows her eyes to cast around the room. His apartment is covered in sketches of her, from memories still hotly imprinted in his mind. Her tears have gone, replaced by rushed depictions of Alice with her back arched beautifully above him or lying almost broken on the bed after they have finally fallen away from each other. Dangerous, snatched hours have been lost in his bed as their need for each other grows stronger, her fear pushed foolishly aside under Antoine’s influence.
The only bit she hates is rehearsing her story with him, qualifying every detail before she heads back to the residence to be questioned. Thank goodness for Anne and her endless alibis. Her charade is just that little bit easier, more practiced—or have they simply become more careless? Because the mere thought of being caught out, the idea that she will trip over herself on a minor detail that Albert seizes upon, is still enough to make her blood run cold.
Their plan to be together is rudimentary and loosely formed. Their time together is so short, neither of them is willing to sacrifice any to Albert, to allow his name to dominate their discussions.