Page 102 of Midnight in Paris

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NOW

Sophie sat up. It was time to try to get herself together. She’d taken time off work for the Paris trip. Lying to her head of department about needing compassionate leave for a recent bereavement had felt wrong, but she knew she’d have been denied leave if she’d shared the real reason. It would have been impossible to explain just how important it was.

She fingered her engagement ring as she stood. It had been this that had triggered it all, she was sure of it now.

It had been shortly after Will’s proposal that she’d started to dream about Tom. Healthy, whole, strolling in Paris on her arm. Younger, at university, dressed in that ridiculous tunic. They were happy dreams in many ways, but they always made her ache with sadness on waking. On those mornings, the engagement ring that Will had given her felt cold on her finger, and her heart felt fat and full of emotion.

She’d shake the feeling off as much as possible and get on with her day. The school had been undergoing an inspectionand every other member of staff had seemed both terrified and horrified in equal measure. She’d been a little worried, but also relished the distraction that the additional work had given her.

‘You’re quiet,’ Will would say from time to time.

‘I’m fine,’ she’d reply. ‘Just thinking.’

With Will’s career going well, and her salary having increased again a little, they’d been looking for a new place – maybe even a house on the outskirts of the city. Somewhere to perhaps raise a family in, although she’d tried not to think about the hope-and-pain roller coaster that had been her last experience of trying for a baby. Maybe they’d adopt or even foster.

But the ashes had been playing on her mind.

Soon after the funeral, Tom’s parents had asked her about them. Whether she’d like to sprinkle them in the memorial gardens – but she’d taken possession of the little pot of his remains, wanting to do the right thing, not ready to let go.

She’d been sure that the right time would present itself, that she’d feel ready. That one day she’d simply know what to do.

She’d pushed the issue to the back of her mind, and the ashes to the back of the cupboard. They’d moved flats with her three times – once to the small, first flat where she’d lived alone, again into her bigger place, and finally into Will’s flat closer to the centre. She hadn’t been able to imagine taking the urn to their next home, making it part of the furniture there too. It used to symbolise Tom, her memory of him. Now it seemed to have become a symbol of her inability to make a decision.

‘I think Tom would be happy wherever you decided to scatter them,’ Will had said when she’d mentioned it to him. ‘He wouldn’t have wanted you to worry about it.’

‘Probably,’ she’d said. ‘But I don’t want to regret it. I have to get it right.’

He’d looked at her.

‘I know,’ she’d said. Neither of them bought into the idea of an afterlife in any real sense, neither was religious. And if that was the case, then why was she so worried about it?

She hadn’t been able to explain it.

‘Keep him,’ Will had suggested. ‘Well, get a decent urn. He can come with us.’

But that had seemed wrong too. She’d tried to imagine how she’d feel if the situation were reversed, and it was hard to picture herself living alongside the ashes of her predecessor.

She’d been alone when it happened for the first time. Leaning on the edge of the kitchen sink, her hands in rubber gloves, plunged beneath the foamy water when she’d said aloud. ‘I don’t know what to do!’

‘With what?’ someone had said.

She’d turned, expecting to see Will. But instead, there was Tom, standing in the kitchen, looking entirely himself. Except she knew it was impossible.

‘I…’ she’d begun, feeling the colour drain from her face.

‘Happy to help, if you need,’ he’d said casually, as if it were perfectly ordinary to be standing in someone’s kitchen five years after you’d died, ready to discuss where to sprinkle your own ashes.

She’d lifted her hands from the water and turned fully. But the only sight that had greeted her then was an empty kitchen.

She’d felt her legs buckle, had sunk to the tiled floor with a cry. But a few minutes later when her heart had stopped racing, she’d got up again, got herself a glass of water. The sun had shone through the window reminding her of reality, of life. And she’d begun to wonder whether it had happened at all. It had been easy to dismiss. Overactive imagination. Lack of sleep. A trick of the light.

But the next afternoon he’d been there too, in that hour or so she had in the house before Will arrived home. ‘Long timeno see,’ he’d said, which would have sounded straight out of a horror film if he hadn’t been there, looking completely lifelike and smiling at her.

‘Are you really here?’ she’d asked, feeling stupid for even acknowledging what was clearly some sort of hallucination.

‘Far as I can tell,’ he’d said, looking down at himself.

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