Page 109 of A Wedding in Tuscany

‘Our apartment. I love it?I really do?but it doesn’t matter how much I love Paris … I …’

‘Quoi?’ he prods.

‘It will never love me back.’

He barks out a laugh and it stings as much as if he’d slapped me. Jean-Luc has never derided me before. We are on uncharted ground. ‘Why is that funny?’ I ask, my voice wavering.

‘Désolé?sorry, Catherine, that was unfair. But a city cannot love you. How can a city love you?’

‘All right, I get it. It’s a strange thing to say but that’s how I feel when I’m there. Like a visitor at best and an interloper at worst.’ A frown scuttles across his face. ‘Interloper’ must be a ‘look-up word’, an English word he is not familiar with. ‘Interloper,’ I say, ‘like an intruder.’

He shakes his head in disbelief. ‘But non?’

‘But yes! I get it?you’re blind to it, but it doesn’t mean it’s not real. It just means that you’re oblivious?oblivious to the sideways glances and the tuts and smug scoffs. And I’m not just talking about the woman at the neighbourhood shop?though she’s no charmer, that’s for sure?I’m talking about the people we socialise with, your friends.’ He expels a frustrated sigh but I can’t close Pandora’s box now. Besides, these truths would worm their way out eventually. ‘How can you not have realised that any time we get together with your friends, they’ll converse with me in English for a minute or two, then switch to rapid-fire French?talking across me and excluding me from the conversation?’

‘But your French … it has improved vastly. You must understand these conversations by now.’

‘Must I? I mean, sure, I can understand half of what’s said, but I’m not fluent yet. Not even close. By the time I’ve figured out how to respond, how to contribute to the conversation?conjugating the verbs, assigning the right fricking article?the moment has passed and they’re onto something else. Not one of them tries to include me.’

A look of concentration settles on his face, as though he’s running through the dozens of conversations I’ve been excluded from. ‘I wish you’d read Almost French like I asked you to,’ I say, referring to the memoir I first read in the early-00s but re-read a few months ago. It’s about an Australian woman?a journalist?who falls in love with a Frenchman and moves to Paris to be with him. Even after years of living there, of becoming fluent in French, of making friends and immersing herself in the culture, of becoming a citizen, she will only ever be almost French. It’s clear from his expression that he’s forgotten. ‘That book,’ I say. ‘The one with the Australian woman.’

‘Ah, oui,’ he says in recognition, ‘but I do not need a book to understand my wife.’

‘It seems that perhaps you do!’ I say, my pitch rising along with my volume. ‘And it’s far worse with your family!’ I add emphatically. ‘They go out of their way to exclude me. How am I supposed to make a home in France when even my in-laws don’t want me there?’ The tears arrive, as they often do when I’m frustrated and angry, but these are tears of sadness too, of hurt and rejection.

And now we’re at the crux of it. Jean-Luc’s family may live in Lyon, nearly five hundred kilometres from Paris, but their emotional reach negates that distance and if I did move to France, I’d be seeing a lot more of them than I do now. And not only do they openly dislike me, they use my ‘non-Frenchness’ like a weapon. Cécile calling me ‘simple’ and ‘shrill’ in an overheard conversation is just the tip of the iceberg?especially when she cranked up her tactics to eleven, trying to derail our wedding. Even with the fragile peace we’ve established, she and I still have a very long way to go and that’s if she doesn’t recant her not-quite apology.

‘Catherine …’ he says, his eyes pained. I know he just wants to make things right but when he says, ‘Ça ira,’ I see red.

‘Don’t placate, me, Jean-Luc. It will not be fine?not for a long time and maybe not ever. I just cannot see giving up my home in London?my job, my friends, my life?to walk into the lion’s den dressed head-to-toe in meat like Lady frigging Gaga.’ His confusion is almost amusing?he tilts his head, then shakes it, his eyes narrowing and lips pursing. ‘You know, because she wore that meat dress to the MTV Awards.’ His head shaking becomes head swinging and as it ricochets from side to side, he sucks his breath in through his teeth, stifling a grin.

‘Never mind,’ I say, half-a-second from dissolving into laughter. ‘I just mean that I want to live somewhere that feels like home. Like London does.’

He looks at me, serious again. ‘And you don’t want the same thing for me?’

Tears prick my eyes. Of course I want him to live somewhere that feels like home. I never want him to feel as displaced as I would if I lived in Paris. ‘Yes! Of course, I do. But you love London, don’t you? It seems like you do.’ I say, grasping. Because London is my home. It’s where my heart sings and I feel most like myself. ‘Fuck,’ I say to myself, the stark realisation hitting hard. London is to me what Paris is to Jean-Luc.

‘What?’

‘We’re the fish and the cat.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘My name aside, we’re the fish and the cat. They can fall in love, but where do they live? The fish can’t live on land and the cat can’t live in the sea. So …’

‘I see. But Catherine, what did you think would happen? About a home for us? Did you presume’ ?he means assume? ‘that we would live separately and visit one another?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe …’

‘But that is a child’s belief, non?’

‘Is it? Thank you very much for that condescending assessment.’

He snorts out a breath and bites his upper lip. ‘You are my wife. I am your husband. I want us to have a home together.’

‘I want that too.’ Now, right as the words come out, I realise I do want to make a home with him, that I’m no longer afraid that he’ll decide I’m not enough or that he’ll tire of me, that living together will ruin what we have. Ironically, I’m fairly certain it was Vanessa’s appearance at our wedding?and him sending her away?that started tipping the scales.

‘But not in Paris.’

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