Page 36 of Beautiful Losers

‘No, you stay here in case he comes back.’

Jack nods. ‘Don’t worry. He can’t have gone far.’

I sprint out through the gate and run up thelane towards the main square. I’m out of breath, my stomach churning by the time I get to the village. I scan the packed tables outside Chez Colette, ask the pharmacy, thetabac, theépicerieif anyone has seen a red-haired boy in swimming goggles. I pass a woman, reading today’s newspaper outside the phone-box library, and catch the headline,Search for child in well ends in tragedy.I tear up the cobbled street towards the old town, medieval stone gargoyles snarling at me from the ramparts. My thighs are burning by the time I reach the top of the hill, where vendors are dismantling exterior displays and counting the day’s earnings. A handful of tourists are taking selfies of the view before the horizon swallows up the sun. I feel my pockets for my phone to call the guesthouse to see if Ari has turned up. They’re empty.

It’s dusk when I get back down to the square. As I’m passing Utopie, I realise I haven’t asked Sabrina if she’s seen Ari. The lights are out in the shop, a sign on the door sayingFermeture exceptionelle.Shivering, I rub my bare arms and race back to the house.

The front door is open, the smell of garlic and oregano summoning me across the threshold, gypsy jazz music and laughter coming from the kitchen. Standing at the doorway, I see Jack and Sabrina at the stove, Jack’s sleeves rolled up as he leans in to taste from a cast-iron pot. Sabrina grabs the spoon off him and instructs him to add more black pepper. Leonard is lighting fat church candles in the centre of the dining table, which has been laid with six place settings.

‘There she is,’ he says, looking up with a grin.

‘Where’s Ari? Is he okay?’

‘Everything is fine. Sabrina found him,’ saysLeonard, walking across the room and placing a hand on my shoulder.

‘He came into theboulangerieasking for chocolate madeleines for a secret mission,’ says Sabrina, adding more pepper to the simmering pot. ‘I assumed this was an unsanctioned outing, so I brought him back here.’

‘Where is he now?’ I say, relief flooding through my veins.

‘Myriam is giving him a bath,’ says Jack.

‘Okay, that’s good. So he’s good then. We’re all good.’ My hands start to shake. Suddenly, Sabrina is at my side, steering me gently to a seat.

‘You’re freezing,’ she says disapprovingly. ‘Jack, make Fiadh some tea.’

Jack does as he’s told, looking grateful to have something to do.

‘Mummy!’ Ari runs towards me, naked, and throws his arms around my neck. Myriam follows behind him, holding his pyjamas.

‘I’m sorry for running way. I didn’t want Margaret to be all alone in the water park.’

‘It’s okay, baby,’ I say, squeezing him tightly, inhaling every inch of him. ‘You’re home now.’

‘À table, everyone,’ says Sabrina, placing a bowl of green salad on the table.

I dress Ari and we take our seats. Sabrina hands me a plate of steaming ratatouille and rice; Jack pours the wine. I look around at the full plates and broad smiles, at Ari in between Leonard and Myriam, lapping up the attention after his big adventure, and feel a satiety I haven’t felt in a long time.

After dinner, I put Ari to bed and we decamp to the terrace. I sit beside Sabrina, my feet tucked up beneath me, sedated by red wine and the scent of jasmine hanging in the air. Opposite us, Jack is cross-legged on a rattan chair, watching me with a strangely rapt expression. I’m too tired to try and figure out what it means and lay my head on the cushion beside me, listening, eyes closed, to Leonard telling us about the time he free-climbed El Capitan, the 3,000-foot vertical rock formation in Yosemite National Park.

It’s after midnight when I wake up, the table cleared of empty bottles and glasses, everyone in bed. There’s a chill in the air, but I barely register it. I feel warm, protected from the elements. I look down at my feet stretched out across the sofa. Someone has wrapped a blanket around me.

21

I called the aqua park the day after Ari’s disappearing act. They couldn’t understand why I was looking for a fish and told me, with considerable condescension, to get in touch with the aquarium. I explained that Margaret was Ari’sdoudouand the tone of the woman on the phone immediately softened. (The French aren’t known for their customer service, but they do appreciate the importance of childhood comforters.) She instructed her team to do a thorough search of the park. Margaret was nowhere to be found.

Ari took a couple of days to process the blow, his spirits lifting after Leonard suggested a funeral. I pointed out that we had no body to bury. It’ll be more of a memorial, Leonard said, to honour Margaret’s life. I’m not sure mourning an inanimate object is what Ari’s teacher had in mind when she insisted I broach the subject of mortality with my son, but inthe absence of an expired human, pet or bee, a stuffed toy fish will have to suffice.

~

We gather at the bottom of the garden at sunset. Leonard, wearing a white tunic, welcomes us and says a few words about the Japanese culture of treating objects with respect. In Shintoism, all things have a soul, and should be thanked for their service. What did Margaret mean to us all? ‘Let’s start with you, kiddo.’ He tilts his chin towards Ari.

‘I loved Margaret because she listened to me when I was sad,’ says Ari.

Myriam says she appreciated Margaret’s discretion, while I acknowledge her role in raising the profile of the California golden trout. Sabrina, who, touchingly, closed up shop early to attend the service, dismisses Leonard’s request for her contribution with a wave of the hand. ‘Non.’ Leonard waxes philosophical on the Tibetan Buddhist interpretation of life and death as a continuum, before reading Seamus Heaney’s‘Limbo’, a nod to our Irish friends here, he says, with a wink. It was hard to find a Gaelic poem that mentioned both trout and death, but there’s a salmon in this one. (The poem is about a woman who drowns her child in a river. Thankfully, no one else seems to notice.) I’m hoping we’re about to wrap it up when Sabrina starts singing an unsolicited rendition of ‘Ne Me Quitte Pas’, her eyes closed, lost in the popular French song about a man who has been abandoned by his lover and isn’t taking it all too well.

I drift off, Sabrina’s voice surprisingly hypnotic, and remember. I remember the coffin at the front of the church,draped in his GAA jersey. His photo in a gilt frame on the altar. The air thick with incense and old-lady perfume. She was there, standing in the front row, still as anything, her fingers clutching the delicate gold crucifix around her neck. I remember my cheeks burning when I saw Dad, making a big show of genuflecting before the altar. I excused myself and pushed my way out of the pew, clamouring over knees and handbags as I searched for the exit. And then I was outside, and I could breathe again.

‘Fiadh?’

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