Page 31 of Last Chance in Paris

‘Christ. That’s a backhanded epitaph if ever I heard one.’

‘Yeah. It’s not great,’ she said, thinking about it. ‘What would you want?’

Ronan looked at her blankly.

‘On your headstone, what would you want?’

‘Oh .?.?.’ He thought about it. ‘Sadly missed, I suppose.’

‘By his loving wife?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I hope so.’

‘Sadly missed by his loving wife and children?’ She knew she was pushing him, probing his pain, but she couldn’t help herself. Sometimes she just wanted him to show it, to let down the happy-chappy facade and say that it hurt.

‘Yes. That’s what I hope for,’ he said, and she could hear the strain in his voice. ‘What more could you want?’

She didn’t answer but leaned her head against his shoulder and hooked her thumb through the loop at the waist of his jeans.

Jim Morrison’s grave turned out to be only yards from the main gates. It should have been easy enough to find, if they hadn’t come at it the wrong way.

In seconds, they were back on the sun-drenched main avenue.

‘I wouldn’t mind sitting down for a bit,’ Claire said, but all the benches were taken. They walked past the old lady they’d helped, sitting beside the younger woman she’d met.

‘There’s our Madame le Chapeau.’

‘In cahoots with her partner in sartorial crime,’ said Ronan, ‘Madame le Tournesol.’

Each woman had a handbag propped on her lap. They appeared to be swapping photographs and didn’t notice Claire and Ronan.

‘Huh. Did you just look up the French for sunflower?’

‘Didn’t have to.’ He blew on his nails and pretend-polished them on his jumper.

‘Show-off.’ She bumped her hip against his. ‘I have an interesting fact about sunflowers.’

‘As long as it’s not from that guidebook.’

‘Harumph.’

He laughed. ‘Go on, what about sunflowers?’

‘Well, you know how they turn to face the sun?’

‘It’s in the name.’

‘Precisely. But, if there’s no sun, you know, if it goes behind a cloud or whatever, they turn to face each other.’

He took her hand and squeezed it tightly. They walked through the gates, missing Abélard and Héloïse by only a few metres.

‘Hunger,’ said Ronan.

‘What about it?’

‘Hunger .?.?. that’s how you know you’re still alive.’

Claire turned her head sharply to look at him. Sometimes she wondered if she’d said things out loud that she’d thought were only inside her head. And sometimes she wondered if the thoughts in her head somehow floated out into the ether and made their way, by some sort of thought osmosis, into Ronan’s head. Had she told him the story about Fergal O’Connor?

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