Page 31 of Beautiful Losers

‘I’m not due back atSunriseuntil the end of August. That’s assuming I still have a job to go back to. My contract’s up for renewal.’

‘Is it likely they won’t renew it?’

‘Who knows?’ He leans a foot on the bottom rung of the ladder. ‘Harry’s meeting with the execs next week. He’s confident there’s nothing to worry about, but there’s been a targeted campaign to get me fired. One of my producers says she’s getting daily calls demanding my head on a spike Which, admittedly, isn’t anything new, though the threats of late are more, let’s say “descriptive” than usual.’

I quietly seethe at the mention of Jack’s agent, recalling the conversation I overheard by the hen house, how Jack insulted Ari.

‘Well, I’ll have to check our bookings system,’ I say with an air of efficiency, screwing the new bulb into place. ‘If I move some things around I should be able to arrange something.’

‘Thanks for accommodating me,’ he replies, extending a hand to assist me down two whole steps. I reject it. ‘I can see you’re clearly slammed.’

He walks off, amused.

~

The thing is, Iamtrying to get rid of Jack. The other night inthe kitchen, the ease of it all, of being in Jack’s company – it unnerved me. I’ve felt off-kilter ever since, unable to find my equilibrium. For example, I notice things now. Pay attention to the details of Jack’s day – when he rises, what he eats. Jack Hamilton, I have observed, is a man of routine. He goes for a run first thing, has breakfast in the same spot at 8 a.m., returns to his room to write until midday, when he’ll amble into the village for lunch. He’s back at his desk in the afternoon and resurfaces around six to read in the garden. Lately, he’s been going out for dinner more. I’m not sure where. Cordes doesn’t have that many restaurants and he hasn’t rented a car. Which is also strange, given he’s meant to be exploring other B&Bs in the area. I don’t question it too much. Everything about the man is off. Besides, it’s a relief to have a break from cooking, freeing up my time to wire light switches and deadhead rose bushes and waterproof the basement, cursing the owners with the discovery of each new addition to my never-ending to-do list.

At lunchtime, I lug the vacuum and a bucket of natural cleaning products across the yard to the outhouse. Myriam usually makes up Jack’s room, but I haven’t seen her all morning. I swear, something’s up with that girl. For someone who isn’t on social media, she spends an inordinate amount of time on her phone, whispering urgently in dark corners.

I knock before entering and let myself in. The window is open, an unexpected freshness circulating the space. The bed has been immaculately made, the blue-and-white striped linen sheets smoothed to perfection. On the writing desk is a laptop, a small jar filled with a couple of sprigs of lavender, a well-thumbed ten-pack of cigarettes (I look inside; there are eight left in the box), and a framed photo of a little boy in hisschool uniform, standingoutside a large, pillar box-red front door flanked by bay trees. The bathroom is equally spotless. No stains lurking beneath the toilet seat, no toothpaste gunk accumulating around the tap. My suspicions surrounding Jack’s oral hygiene were correct – there’s a brand new head on his electric toothbrush, which is sitting in a cup alongside some dental floss, mouthwash and one of those tartar-removal brushes. I spot an expensive-looking shampoo in the shower and unscrew the top. I’ve always been impressed by those who can identify the constituent parts of scents. My olfactory sensory neurons aren’t sufficiently developed to discern say, amber musk from cardamom. I don’t know what ingredients have gone into the making of Jack’s shampoo, but I do know it smells damn good. I’m getting weekend-away-in-a-luxury-cabin-in-the-woods vibes.

I do some light dusting, leave clean towels on the bed and have another sniff of the shampoo bottle. I’m about to leave when I see the corner of a photograph poking out from under a notebook on the shelf above the bed. My curiosity gets the better of me, and I lift the book for a better look. It’s an image of a much younger Jack – he must be about ten; I’ve no doubt it’s him, the colour of the eyes are too unusual for it to be anyone else – and an older man. The man is perched on a fold-up chair in front of a tent shaded by a cypress tree, Jack sitting on the ground by his feet. He’s leaning forward, one arm wrapped affectionately around Jack’s neck, the other ruffling his hair in a mock-wrestling hold. Both are sporting grins the size of watermelon quarters. I trace their faces with my finger, allow myself, just for a moment, to absorb the palpable sense of loveleaping off the high-gloss print, and put the photo back where I found it.

After a light lunch of salad and tomatoes – both from the garden, thanks to Leonard’s handiness with a hoe – some olives and crusty bread, I walk to the village for ingredients for dinner. It’s a beautiful day. I’m feeling great, uncharacteristically sanguine and at peace with the world. In theépicerie, I buy courgettes, cheese, fresh pasta and a small tub of raspberry ice cream, and strike up a conversation with the owner, who tells me he visited Ireland once. It was a very beautiful country, but he saw a man urinate into his pint glass in a Dublin pub at three in the afternoon. He looks at me with a grave expression, clearly expecting some kind of commentary on the obscenity. I apologise and assure him that while daytime drinking is common practice in my homeland, public urination is generally frowned upon – unless it’s the Saturday before Christmas. He seems satisfied with this response and hands me a complimentary chocolate truffle.

Back home, grocery shopping was either a dreaded weekly affair, trundling down the aisles on a Saturday morning with a truculent preschooler; or an after-work raid of the frozen food section, searching for oven chips and the will to live. It was a chore, a necessity. Lately, how do I explain it? Being here, having the luxury of time to consider what to purchase and eat, exchanging bon mots with the person serving you – it’s like buying a courgette isn’t just buying a courgette. It’s not a means to an end. It has value in itself. Simple, everyday tasks, they have weight somehow. Maybe they’re as important as all the other stuff that makes up a life.

I pay the shopkeeper and find a shady spot toenjoy my ice cream. Standing beneath the awning outside thetabac, I dip my wooden spoon into the tub and watch a woman taking a photograph of her daughter on the carousel. An old man with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth reading the newspaper outside Chez Colette. Jack Hamilton heading towards Sabrina Rousseau’s house with a bag of florentines and a bunch of wildflowers that look suspiciously like the ones growing outside my kitchen.

I pull my sunglasses down over the bridge of my nose for a better look. He’s standing outside her front door now. A woman I don’t recognise answers. If you typed ‘French girl’ into a search engine, this woman would come up. Artfullydéshabilléhair, arse-hugging Levi 501s, sexy oversized shirt. She greets Jack withla bise, the Gallic kiss on each cheek, and touches his arm when he offers her the florentines and flowers.Myflowers. She’s laughing, throwing her head back, a head supported by an elegant neck. She must know it’s an impressive neck, because she keeps stroking it. She’sneck flirting. Now she’s pointing towards thetabac.I turn abruptly to face a rack of postcards and souvenirs and lift the first thing I see – a pocket-sized book calledThe Cats of Cordes. I peruse it with what I hope appears to be deep interest, shooting furtive glances over my shoulder to check if they’re still looking. They’ve gone inside. I return the book to the rack and place my hand on my chest to steady my heartbeat. I look around, searching for my ice cream. The old man sitting outside the bistro points at my feet. The tub has upended on my sandals, a thick blob of pinky-red gelato smothering my toes. I didn’t notice the cold.

18

The good thing about working in a newsroom: you stay informed, up to speed with what’s going on in the world – the injustices, the corruption, the natural disasters. The bad thing about working in a newsroom: you stay informed, up to speed with what’s going on in the world – the injustices, the corruption, the natural disasters.

AfterThe Chroniclelaid me off, I continued to seek out my daily fix of information, reflexively checking my phone every hour for alerts on what was happening across the globe. These past few weeks, I haven’t felt the need to stay on top of the news agenda as much. It’s been a relief, to suspend reality. To pretend – if only for a little while – that life is fair and people are uncomplicated.

For some reason, the old urge for information is back. I’m not sure what’s driving it, this compulsive need to know all the bad things that are going on in the world. It’s likewhen you have a canker inside your mouth and you can’t stop biting it. I scan the terrifying headlines on my laptop. Floods in Europe, the deadliest in a hundred years. All but one of the baby-faced kidnappers of the Parisian oil executive arrested and facing twenty years in jail, their futures in tatters. (One commentator pointed out the irony of the defendants’ sentence, given their unpromising future was the reason they committed the crime in the first place.) Prince Harry agrees to a massive publishing deal to write his literary memoirs.

I’ve been working on the new website for the guesthouse – slowly but surely, it’s getting there – but I keep getting distracted. Like now, I’m trying to extractsomething useful froma forum of English-speaking B&B owners living in France. I was hoping for marketing tips and advice on drumming up business, but it’s mostly people moaning about the French and how, if they’d known they’d have to change their driving licence, they wouldn’t have voted for Brexit.

Opening up a new tab on my browser, I log onto theChronicle’swebsite and read Dermot’s column on Dad’s interview with Alice Hoolihan. It's brutal. He calls Dad ‘the worst thing to come out of Ireland since Jedward’ and ‘more obnoxious than an open letter’. I wasn’t expecting Dermot to give Dad an easy ride, considering our fraught history, but I would have thought the least he could do was not describe my father as ‘a perfectly wrapped kilo of Irish gammon’.

Who was that woman with Jack? He’s free to sleep with whoever he likes, obviously, but Jesus, he’s a fast mover. Shouldn’t he be focusing on his book instead of man-whoring about the village?

I slap myself on my cheeks and shake my headvigorously, willing myself to snap out of it, whatever ‘it’ is, and continue doom-scrolling the latest horrors. A girl Ari’s age is trapped underground after falling down a well being built in a drought-ravaged village in Eritrea. Rescuers are working around the clock to get her out. I feel a wave of nausea pass through me.Please let her be okay.Snapping shut the lid of my laptop, I blow my nose loudly and toss the used tissue into a mounting pile in the wastepaper basket beside the sofa. I don’t know how I’ve managed to catch a cold in the middle of summer. I stand up uneasily and make my way into the kitchen to fix myself some hot water with lemon and honey. In the medicine cupboard, I find a sachet of soluble paracetamol and tip it into the cup. While waiting for the kettle to boil, I stand like Wonder Woman for two minutes, staring out the window at Jack’s room, wondering if he’s there. Cillian told me power posing can change hormone levels in the body by increasing testosteroneand decreasing cortisol.It works – I feel briefly restored. I hate it when he’s right.

I return to my laptop and type ‘life-affirming events’ into the search engine. On the first page of results there’s an opinion piece about Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck getting back together after a twenty-year hiatus. Their reunion, suggests the writer, is an antidote to these troubled times, a shining example of love conquering all. My eyes start to stream, from the virus, not Bennifer’s happy ending, although it really is something they found their way back to each other after all this time. My head throbbing, I swing my legs up on the sofa and check my phone – thirty minutes until I have to pick up Ari from school. Lying back on a cushion, I close my eyes, my hot drink untouched.

One of the hardest things about being a singleparent is getting sick. It’s simply not an option. Your child-rearing standards start to slip, for one thing. More screen time and convenience food, less patience for big feelings. During lockdown, my biggest fear was Ari and me catching Covid at the same time. That I wouldn’t be able to look after him, spot the signs of his deterioration. Whenever we’d go to the supermarket, I’d scan our surroundings for danger – other people not maintaining the two-metre distance, tins of tuna that had been overly handled. We’d get home and I’d haul Ari into the bathroom and scrub our hands until our knuckles bled. He cried every time.

This is why I do everything I can to stay healthy – eat my five-a-day, keep my alcohol intake to a minimum (though you’d think I was a demon for the drink listening to Ari’s threats to cut off my wine supply each time I do something to offend him). For Ari. And I guess for me too. I can’t afford the sense of helplessness that comes with depending on other people. The visceral need for touch and connection that’s part of the deal when you allow yourself to be vulnerable. When a simple act of someone wrapping a blanket over you feels like the greatest kindness in the world.

~

Two days later, my head cold has migrated into my throat, my glands swollen to the size ofboules. I take a Covid test. It’s negative, so I make an appointment with the local doctor, the one whose cacti Leonard looks after when he’s out of town. Leonard told me that Doctor Bourdariat has the most impressiveCarnegiea giganteahe’s ever seen. He did not tell me that the man is a zygote and, objectively speaking, an absolute ride.Doctor Bourdariat smiles as he pulls down his face mask and calls myname in the waiting room, his teeth sparkling brighter than the Dog Star.

‘How can I help?’ he asks, once we’re in his surgery. He instructs me to take a seat as he slips his mask back on. Clasping his hands together, he leans forward on his desk, all attentiveness.

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