‘I wonder what Albie’s up to,’ said Connie.
‘He’s asleep, probably.’
‘Well that’s all right. He’s allowed.’
‘Either that or he’s trying to work out why there are no mouldy mugs on the windowsill. He’s probably there now, burning cigarette holes in the curtains. Room service! Bring me three banana skins and an overflowing ashtray …’
‘Douglas — this is precisely what we came here to avoid.’
‘I know. I know.’
And then she slowed and stopped. We were on rue Jacob, standing near a small, somewhat ramshackle hotel.
‘Look. It’s our hotel,’ she said, taking my arm.
‘You remember that.’
‘That trip, I do. Which room was it?’
‘Second floor, on the corner. The yellow curtains. There it is.’
Connie put her head on my shoulder. ‘Perhaps we should have gone back to that hotel instead.’
‘I thought about it. I thought it would have felt a little strange, with Albie there.’
‘No, he’d have liked it. You could have told him the story, he’s old enough now.’
It must have been eighteen years ago.
The anniversary of our daughter’s birth was fast approaching and, all too soon after, that other anniversary. I knew those days would be hard for Connie. Her grief, I had observed, tended to come in waves, and though the intervals between each crest were increasing, another storm was certainly due.
In my rather strained and bludgeoning way, I had been endeavouring to keep Connie buoyant with a kind of manic chirpiness; the perpetual warbling brightness of a morning DJ, endless loving phone calls from work, constant maudlin pawing and hugging and kisses on the top of her head. Tinny sentiment — Christ, no wonder she was blue — alternating with a private, secret wall-punching rage at the fact that I could do nothing to lift her spirits. Or indeed my own, because didn’t I have my own guilt and sadness?
Usually I might have expected her many loyal friends to step in where I had failed, but everywhere we looked babies and toddlers were being brandished, and we both found their proud display almost unbearable. In turn our presence seemed to make the new parents self-conscious and embarrassed. Connie had always been greatly loved, always popular and funny, but her unhappiness — people seemed affronted by it, especially when it quashed their own joy and pride. And so without any discussion we had withdrawn to our little world to sit quietly by ourselves. Walked, worked. Watched television in the evenings. Drank a little too much, perhaps, and for the wrong reason.
Of course, I had considered that another child might be the answer. Connie, I knew, longed to be pregnant again, and though we were fond and affectionate and, in some ways, closer that we’d been before, things were not easy. The stresses and strains of ‘trying for a baby’ have been rehearsed many, many times. In the shadow of what had happened — well, I won’t go into the details except to say that anger, guilt and grief are poor aphrodisiacs and our sex life, once perfectly happy, had taken on a rather dogged and dutiful air. It was not so much fun any more. Nothing was.
Paris, then. Perhaps Paris in the spring might be the answer. Hackneyed, I know, and I wince now to recall the lengths I went to in order to make that trip perfect; the first-class travel, the flowers and champagne ready in the hotel room, the chi-chi and expensive bistro I had reserved — all this in a largely pre-internet world where arranging such excursions involved PhD levels of research and nerve-shredding phone calls in a language that, as we’ve established, I neither spoke nor understood.
But the city was beautiful in early May, absurdly so, and we walked the streets in our best clothes and felt as if we were in a film. We spent the afternoon in the Rodin Museum, returned to the hotel and drank champagne while crammed into the tiny bathtub, then went woozily to dinner at a restaurant that I had previously reconnoitred, French but not cartoonishly so, tasteful, quiet. I don’t remember all that we said, but I do remember what we ate: a chicken with truffles under the skin that tasted like nothing we’d ever eaten before and wine, chosen purely by luck with a blind jabbing motion, that was so delicious as to be almost another drink entirely. Still in that corny film, we held hands across the table and then we went back to our hotel room on rue Jacob and made love.
Afterwards, on the edge of sleep, I was startled to notice that Connie was crying. The combination of sex and tears is a disconcerting one, and I asked, had I done something wrong?
‘There’s nothing to be sorry for,’ she said, and, turning, I could see that she was laughing too. ‘Quite the opposite.’
‘What’s funny?’
‘Douglas, I think we’ve done it. In fact, I know we have.’
‘Done what? What have we done?’
‘I’m pregnant. I know it.’
‘I know it too,’ I said, and we lay there and laughed.
