Charlotte’s smile was equally frozen. ‘I expect you two have kept in touch, then.’
Dominique said, ‘I haven’t seen Enzo since he left Thiers.’
Enzo shuffled uncomfortably, aware of the accusation in this.
‘Well, then, it was good of you to come. I expect you two will have a lot of catching up to do.’ Charlotte turned to Enzo. ‘We’ll have to leave early tomorrow. It’s a two-and-a-half-hour drive to Lannemezan. I’ll pick you up at eight.’ And she swung a saccharine-sweet smile towards Dominique. ‘Make the most of your time with him, because there won’t be much of it.’
‘All the more reason to appreciate it, then.’ Dominique fixed her with a patently hostile and unblinking gaze, until Enzo saw Charlotte look away, unable to maintain eye contact in the face of such naked animus. He had never seen her this cowed before.
It was night in the square below now, though light still spilled out from restaurants and cafés, reflecting on dark cobbles littered with leaves. The party was over. Everyone had gone. The apartment was a mess, but Nicole had promised to tackle it in the morning. She was taking charge of Laurent for the night, and had already retreated with him in his carrycot to her room. Her father had left a couple of hours earlier, and Fabien had gone back to Gaillac.
Charlotte had pulled Enzo aside before leaving for her hotel. She’d hoped to have dinner with him tonight, she said. There were things she wanted to talk to him about. But when he reminded her that they would have nearly three hours to talk during the drive to Lannemezan, she had cast a surly glance towards Dominique and left with a bad grace.
Sophie had texted again to say that she and Bertrand had found a hotel to stay overnight, and Kirsty had decided to take Sophie’s room, rather than stay at a hotel. She had retired with Alexis for an early night. And it had been some comfort for Enzo to know that his daughter, his son and his grandson were staying with him, all under the one roof, tonight. The only thing missing was Sophie.
Now Enzo and Dominique sat in the big old leather sofa which faced the French windows that looked out across the square. A slight breeze outside stirred the remaining leaves in the trees, to send flickering fragments of light from the streetlamps dancing across the darkness of the séjour. After some moments of awkwardness, they had fallen back into the easy companionship they had discovered during his time in Thiers. She let her head fall on to his shoulder, and he slipped his arm around her to draw her closer.
Silence was easier than addressing the unresolved issues that lay between them, and so neither of them felt inclined to break it for a long time.
When finally she spoke, the quiet of Dominique’s voice seemed to resonate in the room. ‘You promised you would keep in touch.’
‘I know.’
‘You didn’t.’
‘No.’
More silence. Then, ‘Why?’
Enzo sighed. ‘I think you know, Dominique.’
‘I’ll tell you what I know,’ she said. ‘I know that I want to be with you. It’s all I’ve wanted since you left. I’ve never met anyone like you, Enzo. You’re sensitive, intelligent, and you were mine. Even if only for a few days. I’ve lost count of the number of nights I’ve lain awake thinking I was never going to see you again. Dying a little with every day that you never called or wrote. Scared to contact you for fear that I didn’t mean to you what you meant to me.’
Enzo closed his eyes and felt the pain of regret at hurt given so casually, if only by default.
‘And then I thought, For Christ’s sake, girl, stop feeling sorry for yourself. If you want him, go and get him.’ She paused. ‘So here I am.’ She turned quickly on the couch, placing a finger over his lips to stop him from speaking. ‘And don’t tell me you’re too old for me. I’ve heard it all before.’
He couldn’t resist kissing her finger, then he turned his head towards her and smiled sadly. ‘Trouble is, it’s true.’
She sighed loudly and turned away.
‘Dominique, I’m old enough to be your father. You’re... what? Thirty-five? Thirty-six? Young enough to find someone your own age and still have a full life ahead of you.’
‘I don’t want someone my own age. I want you.’
‘I’m fifty-six today, for God’s sake! In four years I’ll be sixty. You don’t know how it feels, Dominique. To reach a point in your life where the distance still to go is far less than the road already travelled. When you spend more time looking back than looking forward, because there is comfort in memory and only fear of the future. When I’m seventy, you’ll just be turning fifty, and you won’t want to be looking after some old man.’
She swung herself across the settee suddenly to straddle his thighs and sit facing him, taking his face in her hands. Her own face just inches from his. ‘You’re wrong, Enzo,’ she said. ‘I’ve thought so much about this. The past is... Well, that’s your history. It’s a part of you. The memories that make you who you are. Good or bad, you can’t change them. But the future is still yours to make. However long you’ve got. You told me once about Pascale, how she died giving birth to Sophie. She could never have imagined that. She thought she had a whole life ahead of her. You both did. Don’t you see? You can’t look ahead and calculate the rest of your life by the law of diminishing returns. To live in fear, of anything, is not to live at all. You have to live for today, because you might be dead tomorrow. So damn well make the most of it!’ And she kissed him, fierce with passion, and he felt the warmth of her tears on his face in the dark.
He slipped his arms around her and pulled her to him, feeling her body soft against his.
‘I want you,’ she said.
‘I want you, too,’ he whispered. ‘I just—’
She kissed him again to stop him speaking. ‘Just know that I am yours, Enzo, and that I want you more than I have ever wanted anyone. And that I am going to treasure every moment that I have with you, and not count them off as they pass.’ She drew a long, slow breath. ‘You don’t spend a year thinking about someone, and missing them as much on the last day as the first, without realising that you must be in love.’
Her words dropped into his heart like molten metal into water, consolidating themselves into tiny bullets that pierced all the emotional armour he had so carefully built around himself for protection. He slid to the edge of the sofa and stood up with her in his arms, marvelling at how light she seemed. He grinned. ‘Not bad for an old man, eh?’ And he carried her through the darkness of the hall and into his bedroom.
Their lovemaking was not the frantic, lust-driven sex that might be expected of two people who had not slept together in nearly a year. It was slow and tender, and so filled with emotional commitment that it left them both drained, spreadeagled on the bed. Not lying on it, but floating on it, not a ripple breaking the surface of their sea of post-sex tranquillity. And Enzo wondered if, finally, after all these years, he had found the woman who would make him happy for the remainder of his life.
Moonlight lay in angles and shadows across the rooftops, and poured like liquid through the window, splashing across their naked bodies.
For a time they dozed, drifting in and out of sleep, she turning to hold him, then turning again to let him spoon her. At some point she emerged from her sexually sated slumber to an awareness of Enzo lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, hands propped behind his head on the pillow. And she sensed something dark. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Lying to me is not a good way to start our relationship, Enzo.’