Page 62 of Beautiful Losers

‘If it is, they’re about to get an earful.’ He leans across me and fumbles for his phone on the bedside table.

‘Jack Hamilton,’ he says, brusquely.

I hear indistinct chatter. A woman speaking French in an urgent tone.

‘D’accord. On est en route.Merci, Sabrina.’

Jack tosses his phone on the bed, a concerned look on his face.

‘What is it?’ I say, sitting up.

‘It’s Leonard.’

~

Jack drives us to the hospital, a thirty-minute journey that feels like thirty years. I drum my fingers nervously on my lap, snippets from Sabrina’s brief conversation with Jack playing on repeat in my head.Unconscious. Barely breathing. An empty packet of pills on the beside table.Jack puts his hand on mine and squeezes it.I smile at him, grateful he’s here. An hour ago, I was ready to abandon my non-believing ways and join the faithful. Good things happen in the world! I should have known better.

Albi is packed with tourists in cargo shorts and visitors to the weeklybrocante,carrying vintage lamps and chipped porcelain plates back to their cars. After twenty minutes circling the town centre, we find a space near thePont-vieuxand walk briskly to the hospital. Sabrina is in theUrgencewaiting room, sitting on a chair beside a plastic fern. She looks tired, the usual spark of resistance in her eyes gone. She stands up when she sees us and I give her a hug. French people aren’t natural huggers. Least of all Sabrina Rousseau. But she doesn’t stiffen or pull away when I embrace her.

‘What happened?’ I say, guiding her back to her seat.

‘We left you around midnight. Leonard walked me home then cycled back to his house. He was meant to be running the bread stall at the market this morning as a favour to our friend Magalie. She called me when he didn’t show up for the van and we went to his place together. The door was unlocked. Magalie found him in the bedroom.’

‘What did the doctors say?’ asks Jack.

‘No one will tell me anything.’

We wait. I show Sabrina baby photos of Ari on my phone. We drink undrinkable coffee from the vending machine because it gives us temporary relief from our Covid masks. A man with a six-inch nail protruding from his boot passes us in a wheelchair, his girlfriend live-documenting the event on Instagram. Paramedics rush by with a little girl aboutAri’s age. Her eyes are closed, her mother clutching a tattered stuffed rabbit as she runs alongside the gurney.

A doctor is walking towards us now. She’s wearing blue scrubs, wisps of black hair falling from her surgical hat. We stand to greet her. She pulls her face mask down, letting it hang on one ear. I’m sorry, she tells us. She says other words. Something about a fatal mix of sleeping pills and alcohol and anxiety medication. They believe it was unintentional. She squeezes her eyes shut then opens them wide, willing herself to stay awake. How many hours is she into her shift, I wonder. How many times today has she had this conversation or some variation of it?

‘But … he was there, at my house. A couple of hours ago. I just saw him,’ I say, my brain a saturated paper towel, unable to absorb the information.

The doctor is nodding, a practised gesture of sympathy.

‘And he isn’t anxious. He’s happy, isn’t he? He’s the happiest person I know. Tell her, Sabrina.’

Sabrina puts her hand gently on my arm. The doctor is asking if Leonard had medical insurance and I’m thrown by how seamlessly she moves from respiratory failure to paperwork.

I think about my old English teacher, Mrs Mallon. How she planned her own funeral. Chose the hymns and the floral arrangements, booked the caterers for the reception afterwards, because she knew her husband would get the ratio of chicken curry to rice wrong and the older mourners would rate the spread poorly among themselves. How everyone said, Ah,didn’t Christine do well, it was a beautiful service. Like it was something you’d put on your CV – good at dying.

I remember wondering how it felt, to know, at thirty-two, that you wouldn’t see your kids start school or lose their baby teeth. You wouldn’t get to watch them fall in love for the first time and stroke their hair two weeks later when they declare their life is over and they’ll never find love again. You can’t allow yourself to think of these things, these little moments denied to you, because if you did, you’d set the world on fire with your rage. And so you do the paperwork, attend to the bureaucracy of your own death.

The doctor wants to know about next of kin. Did Leonard have any family? It hadn’t occurred to me before. That Leonard was a whole person. That he existed outside of Cordes, outside of La Maison Bleue, that he was more than a supporting character to our life here. I never asked him if he had anyone who knew him Before. Who knew how he looked when he slept, who put a plaster on his knee when he fell.

I should have asked.

~

It’s after 6 p.m. when we get back to Cordes. We drive in silence, Sabrina in the front with Jack. Chez Colette is buzzing as we pull up outside her house, crowds spilling out onto the pavement, soaking up the last of another perfect summer’s evening.

‘His house,’ Sabrina says without looking round. ‘We’ll need to clear it out. And Magalie will handle the calls to his relatives. She knows more than I do. I believe there was a wife once.’

‘Leave it to us,’ Jack says, patting her on the shoulder. ‘You’ve had a long day.’

Sabrina gets out of the car with a heavy sigh. I move into the front seat and Jack drives on, indicating right for the lane leading to the guesthouse.

‘Wait,’ I say, touching his wrist. ‘I’m not ready to go back yet. Can we go somewhere?’

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