Page 94 of Midnight in Paris

They exited on the second floor and moved to the separate lift that would take them to the top. There were fewer people with them now. She put her hand on Tom’s shoulder and he lifted his hand to hers, their fingers interlocking. She squeezed gently. There was no need for words. Every moment of this trip had been a goodbye, and this was no different. The place they’d come the first time, the place where they’d agreed to get married. The place where they’d argued about fertility – something thatseemed so trivial in this moment – and the place they’d resolved that they’d find the strength to beat the cancer.

And this time. The goodbye to a tower that would hold their memories for them for as long as it stood, centuries into the future.

51

NOW

It had taken two years to lift herself back to life properly, she remembered, sitting on the couch, drifting with her thoughts. To move flats, get a new job, start building herself up again. She remembered the early days when she’d first moved, how she’d fallen into a routine. How she’d realised – perhaps for the first time – that some sort of life was still possible without him.

The alarm went off and she sat up in bed, keen to get rid of its annoying trill as quickly as possible. Drawing back the duvet, she climbed out of bed and went to the bathroom to take a shower. Waking up in her new flat was still a dream come true – it was modest, small – sure – but it was clean, in a better part of town, quiet and importantly,hers.She’d said goodbye to the frugality of the white bedsit and it felt good.

She’d finally made it through the threshold and was onto the upper pay scale in teaching and, after much persuading by Libby, Sam and her parents, had used the money from the sale of her and Tom’s flat as a deposit on her own place. ‘It doesn’tmean you’ve moved on from Tom just because you’re not living in a shithole any more,’ Libby had told her approvingly, and she’d smiled.

Her classes were going well; she’d made some proper friends in the staffroom and they’d all pile down to the pub on a Friday night. And although she’d stopped rowing, she’d joined the gym down the road from her building, spending an hour each time she went on the rowing machine. It wasn’t the same, but it was something.

Sophie saw more of Sam, too. Her sister was still seeing Ian so she spent most of her weekends in Cambridge, always squeezing in time to see Sophie.

It wasn’t quite happiness. But it was enough.

An hour later, she closed the door behind her and walked down the stairs to the foyer, then out into the spring sunshine, not yet enough to warm the air but enough to brighten it. She felt her mood lift – things always felt better in the spring, more optimistic. With the promise of summer ahead. She tried not to think about Paris – so synonymous with the approaching summer.

She kept her mind in the present moment, as she’d learned to do over the past two years, and thought about the lessons ahead today and the meeting she had to attend after school. Teaching was a job that would take from you as much as you were willing to give, and although that had caused stress for her in the past, it was a comfort now – she let it fill all the spaces in her life and her head where thoughts of Tom had threatened to overwhelm her.

It was Friday – payday – and she’d go to the cemetery after school, as she often did, to sit in the memorial gardens close to where Tom’s cremation had taken place. In that first, raw week when they’d arranged the funeral, Julie had asked her if they could invest in a plaque – somewhere ‘to come and remember Tom’. Sophie had been ambivalent at the time, convinced it waspointless, but hadn’t said so. And now she was grateful for it. The quiet ritual of visiting the place where they’d said goodbye gave her a strange sense of comfort. She didn’t believe Tom was there, any more than she thought he was in the ashes that still sat at the back of her cupboard at home. But it was a focus, a way of telling the universe that she hadn’t let him down or broken her promises to him.

Tomorrow she was shopping with Sam, who was hoping to find a dress to wear to a friend’s wedding, and Sunday she’d set aside for marking and preparing the lessons for the following week. In the past, she’d resented the way that teaching bled into her weekends and evenings, but for now, at least, she was grateful for the distraction, the way she was able to spend time at home without the loneliness of it closing in on her.

After parking her car in the teachers’ car park, she made her way to the staffroom to get a coffee and start her day.

By lunchtime, her upbeat mood had soured. She’d taken on a new English set from a colleague and they had been raucous and difficult. Although she was well used to the ups and downs of the classroom by now, the constant behavioural challenges left her feeling jaded and drained.

‘All right?’ Pete, one of her department colleagues asked, passing the table where she sat, steaming black coffee next to her, staring off into the middle distance.

‘Yeah. Just 11b,’ she said.

‘Ah,’ he nodded. ‘Biscuits then?’

‘Biscuits,’ she said, smiling. He passed a tin to her and she took a few, gratefully. She was always trying to eat healthily, to lose the few pounds she’d gained over the past year: rowing at the gym worked wonders, but she never burnt as many calories there as she had when she was with Will. There just weren’t enough distractions in the plain, mirrored room with its various machines – no real distance to cover, no need to keep goingif you wanted to get back. Too easy to quit once your muscles started to protest. But somehow, sugar was the only way to refuel after a class like that – there was probably something scientific in it, she thought, stuffing a chocolate digestive into her mouth. Sugar cravings in times of stress, or something. Whatever it was, it seemed unavoidable.

The rest of her lessons passed without incident, but as she went to her car, a light rain started to fall. She briefly considered leaving her visit until the next day, then felt a horrible stab of guilt at having even thought that.

Instead, she climbed into her car and drove the short distance to the little florist that nestled in a line of local shops – a newsagent, chip shop, estate agent – just along from the school. There she bought a bunch of daffodils – the tiny ones that bloomed in white and yellow. Little smiles on stems. Putting them on the seat, she started the car again and drove towards the city centre, through and out again, to the familiar turning into the memorial gardens.

The bumping started almost immediately. Light at first and then more violent, until she was forced to stop. She got out into the wet afternoon air, her face and hair almost immediately saturated by the tiny persistent drops. It was instantly obvious what was wrong: one of her tyres was completely flat, the rim resting on a thin layer of rubber against the tarmac.

‘Shit,’ she said, looking around to see if there was anyone who might help. But of course, as always, she was alone. She went to the back of the car and lifted out the spare with difficulty, then jacked up the car as her dad had taught her and wrestled with the nuts.

No matter how hard she pushed against them, the nuts would not budge. Tightened by her dad, or maybe even Tom, months or years ago. Designed to keep her safe. But now stopping her from making the repair.

There were moments these days when she enjoyed the feeling of being alone. When she walked along one of the footpaths close to the flats after a busy day; when she could watch whatever she wanted on TV at night; when she could choose what to do without having to check with anyone else. But this afternoon, wet through from the light spring rain, next to a useless car with its sunken tyre and unable to do anything to fix it for herself, she felt only anger. It wasn’t fair. Tom should be here, he should be here. With her.

She didn’t hear the car pull up behind her, or a man in a black suit get out until he was close. ‘Can I help?’ he said.

She looked up, her face tear-stained, and wiped an embarrassed hand across her face. ‘It’s just this tyre,’ she said. ‘I know how to do it… only…’

‘It’s no problem, honestly,’ the man said, waving to the passenger in his car who, also dressed in black, nodded briefly. He quickly turned the nuts and got the wheel off, putting it in her boot as she placed the spare into its space. Then he was back, tightening things. The whole process took him just ten minutes.

‘I hope I haven’t made you late,’ she said to him when it was done.

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