Page 12 of The Riviera House Swap
By the time she locked the car and walked the few steps to her front door, she was laughing softly to herself.
She had survived. And now she knew. She didn’t have to wonder whether she should have done it.
You don’t regret what you do, you regret what you don’t, she thought to herself as she unlocked the door.
6
THEN
Nina was one of the last to be claimed by her host family. Brigitte arrived, looking a little taller than when they’d last met, but otherwise unchanged. She was OK. A little quiet, a little serious. But OK. When she’d come to stay with Nina the previous February, she’d spent a lot of her time with her head in a book, or writing earnestly in her diary in beautiful, cursive script. Bess’s pen pal had been a little more fun – wanting to explore St Albans, go to London, sneaking cigarettes into Bess’s room for a crafty puff out of the window.
This time, Bridgette was flanked by her parents – who smiled at Nina and apologised for their lateness. ‘Bridgette had her piano recital,’ her mother explained.
Nina smiled and said it was fine. All the same, she couldn’t help but wonder whether the week was going to be a little dull. Still, she supposed it was about learning French more than anything else.
7
NOW
‘When should I come and pick the last of my stuff up?’ Rory’s voice was matter of fact on the phone the following morning.
‘Well, hello Nina, how are you doing?’ she said, petulantly.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s just… you know. I probably should start to get rid of a few things. You know. Move them out. Before…’
‘I know,’ she said.
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s OK. Just one of those things.’ She tried to remind herself that Rory was an OK guy. A good guy even. And he’d ended their relationship for all the right reasons. She’d probably have drifted relatively happily to the death do us part bit, but he wanted more and that was fine.
‘How about tomorrow?’ she said. ‘I’ll be at work but, you know…’
‘OK,’ he said.
It was both awkward and endless, this finalising of things after their split. In her past relationships – not that there had been many – the breakup aftermath had been relatively easy. A last call or text, an afternoon spent listening to sad songs. Maybe the odd binge on ice cream if it had hit particularly hard.
But this, the forensic picking over shared possessions, shared memories. The paperwork. The solicitors. It made the whole thing into more of a bereavement. Something that had already stretched over a few months and would continue – even though they’d got their final decree absolute – until the house was sold and Rory picked up the stuff that he’d negotiated with her to keep.
It was a work-from-home day today and perhaps she ought to have told him to come over this morning. It wasn’t like they were at each other’s throats. But it was draining, seeing him. And she could do without it. She opened up her laptop on the kitchen table, where she tended to work these days, and logged in but found she couldn’t focus after his call. There was a meeting at 10a.m., but nothing much to tie her to the screen for the hour beforehand.
Perhaps she ought to be sorting things out too. She could always catch up with work later, and she felt too restless to settle to the boring admin tasks she had flagged for today.
With a sigh, she got up and went to their once-shared bedroom – she now slept in the guest room with its impersonal bedding and lack of memories – and opened the door. The room was neat, clean: not scattered with physical signs of their cohabitation. But somehow, she found being in there overwhelming. The years they’d spent in there. The laughing, the cuddling, the sex, the companionship, the getting up with a groan on workdays or the snuggling till late on weekends. Rory had been a good husband, and a good friend. It was hard to have to let go of both of those things at once. Weird somehow, how you could never really be friends with someone you were that close to. All or nothing.
She’d already cleared most of the wardrobe on her side, apart from a few boxes of shoes she’d likely never wear again but couldn’t bear to part with. Long, narrow-heeled shoes shecould probably no longer walk in but held memories of dancing and laughing and tripping along pavements after nights out. Boots that stretched to the knee that she’d used to wear in the winter teamed with skinny jeans. Her most tottering heels that she’d worn almost constantly until about five years ago when a particularly comfortable pair of flats had spoiled her for all other shoes.
She piled the boxes to one side and discovered a belt she’d thought she’d lost, a pile of paperwork she’d meant to file, a few odds and ends of clothing that she’d flung in when doing a quick tidy and forgotten all about.
And a single, more battered shoe box, the logoClarkscrossed out, adorned with the words:
Nina’s Stuff KEEP OUT
She smiled when she drew it towards her, knowing already it would contain the printed photos from her uni days, ticket stubs from concerts that had seemed too important to throw out, notes from friends passed in lectures and classes. Valentine’s cards from long-forgotten crushes. A necklace – a heart pierced with a silver arrow – something Pierre had given to her. Plus his letters.
She reached in and pulled one of them out. It was light, written on airmail paper, and had discoloured slightly in the twenty years plus it had been consigned to the box of memories. Seeing the slightly curled, yellowed edges made her feel about a thousand years old. But she read the missive anyway, her mouth turned up slightly as she remembered details she’d long forgotten: how they’d met one heady week aged seventeen on the French exchange; how he’d grabbed her hand during a dance arranged by the teachers and run with her until they were breathless and finally alone. And how he’d taken her in his arms and kissed her; how everything from then had become a blurof passion and romance and something both brand new and timeless.
She touched her lips lightly. It had been her first real kiss. Not an amateur, wet-lipped slobber from an at-school boyfriend, but something real and adult and filled with passion. No wonder she’d fallen into his arms and let him undress her.
