Page 18 of The Little Provence Book Shop
But as Adeline walked again towards the kitchen, a little voice asked her, ‘And Mummy, why don’t you have any friends? The other mummies talk to one another. But you don’t talk to anyone, do you?’ This was asked in the way that many children’s questions are asked: in complete innocence of their impact.
Adeline felt herself pause at the doorway. She breathed deeply. ‘Well, Mummy had friends in England,’ she said – although had they been friends? Were they still friends now they were no longer colleagues, now she’d disappeared from their daily lives? Even Chris, whom she’d thought of as a best friend, hadn’t been in touch. ‘And I have Monique here now. And there’s Michel,’ she added, ‘Monique’s nephew. He’s nice.’
Lili nodded. ‘So you’re not lonely?’ she asked.
‘No poppet, I’m not lonely.’
Once in the kitchen, she boiled the kettle and leaned on the counter watching it rattle into life. It was funny how childrencould cut through to the heart of things without realising. She’d read the odd clickbait article about the funny things children say or the difficult questions children ask. And they’d often seemed amusing. But Lili’s questions had cut her to the quick – the way her five-year-old was able to see things that perhaps she’d been denying herself. That she was lonely, and it was essentially her own fault.
The day she’d found the papers amongst Mum’s things, she’d felt her entire world shudder. And now everything in her life seemed divided into before and after. Before, she’d been relatively sure of who she was, what she was. After, she’d found herself freefalling; her memories tainted, her sense of who she was, altered. Her reaction had been to try to start again. Create a new her with the new knowledge she had of herself.
Colleagues who’d signed her leaving card had called her brave when she’d told them she was going to France.
But was she brave? Had she been running towards a new future – a future she could create for this new Adeline, the one she’d discovered under the lies? Or had she been running away; had she cut everyone out because she didn’t want to have the conversations about it all, didn’t feel ready to face the truth properly?
It had been the timing of everything, she thought. The fact that she’d thrown her phone across the room after the call with Kevin, shattering its touch screen so it was no longer usable. And then the advert she’d stumbled across online when she’d been looking up this area of Provencejust to see what it looked like. She’d made an abrupt decision in a heated moment, had come across with her passport and her daughter and not a lot else. She didn’t know anyone’s phone number, couldn’t remember her passwords for social media; but if she was honestwith herself, she could have made more effort to get back online. To get a phone. To, at least, answer her brother who was perhaps a little at fault, but didn’t deserve the worry she’d no doubt piled onto him.
Here, everything was new. Her job, the people, the house, Lili’s school. And so different from everything that had come before. And she’d created a partition in her brain; allowed herself to step forward and done everything she could to avoid looking back. It had felt good; she’d convinced herself nothing was wrong. The only things that sometimes pierced her denial had been the emails from Kevin – and she’d stopped checking even those.
Looking at it rationally as she poured boiling water onto a teabag and watched the water stain copper-brown, her actions had been far from proportionate. She’d raced to this other version of her, as if by living the life that perhaps she should have had from the start would erase the lies and the pain. Instead, she’d isolated herself, made herself lonely. And confused her daughter.
She fished out the teabag with a spoon, added milk to the amber liquid and watched it swirl and combine as she stirred. She would get herself back on track. Buy a phone and re-establish old connections. Force herself to read Kevin’s emails and respond. She’d ask Monique whether she could finish early a couple of times a week and try to chat with the other mums, rather than race to thegarderieafter the shop closed; and she’d accept any invitations for coffee or any gestures of friendship that were offered, without suspicion. Michel had seemed nice, there was no reason to believe he had any ulterior motive in asking her for coffee. Even if, as she suspected, Monique had put him up to it.
She took her tea through to the living room where Lili wasworking on her second biscuit, spraying crumbs on the page as she looked at the pictures of a little, lost chick trying to find its family. It was a French book, borrowed from the school, but they’d read it almost every night recently.
Adeline smiled at Lili’s earnest face and messy eating, then picked up her volume of poems. Turning to the next one, she read:
Tell the truth but tell it slant
Reading the short verse, the end lines stood out most for her:
The truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind.
A memory flashed in her mind – Kevin, his face red with frustration or anger or some other mixed-up emotion, saying to her again and again, ‘She was always going to tell you. But it was never the right time. She was scared.’
‘Scared of what? That I’d reject her?’
‘No, Addy. Scared of breaking you.’
Tell the truth but tell it slant– the idea of gradually revealing truth rather than letting it hit others with its starkness out of nowhere. Wasn’t that a kind sentiment rather than something malicious? Mum had been sick for several years – maybe she’d put off telling Adeline because of this thing, or that thing, or Lili’s birth, her illness; perhaps she was always waiting for the right time and was never given the chance. Adeline would never know. But she had to believe her mum’s intentions were good – she owed her that, at least.
Perhaps, even now, she’d have been better off not knowing.
Adeline had lied too – to Lili, she realised. About Kevin. About being lonely – because if she was honest with herself, shewasa little lonely. A little lost. She’d lied to protect her child’s feelings. Because that’s what you do when you’re a mother.
‘Are you crying, Mummy?’ a little voice piped up. Lili had left her chair and was standing next to her, looking worried.
Adeline realised her cheeks were damp. ‘It’s just this poem,’ she said. ‘It made Mummy feel sad for a moment, that’s all.’
And she missed her mother, she realised. Despite it all, she’d do anything to have her mother back.
‘Stupid poem,’ Lili said crossly.
Adeline found a laugh breaking through her sadness. ‘Oh, no, it’s a lovely poem. It just made me feel sad for a moment, that’s all.’
Lili reached for her hand and pushed something into her palm.
