Mathilde fetches it and crouches next to me. ‘Can you stand?’
When I don’t respond she repeats it in English. I still don’t say anything, but begin to heave myself up. Without asking, she takes the rucksack from my shoulders.
‘Lean on me.’
I don’t want to, but I’ve no option. Beneath the thin cotton, her shoulder is firm and warm. She puts an arm around my waist. Her head comes to my chin.
Gretchen moves out of the shadows as we reach the bottom of the steps. The baby is still red-faced and teary, but more curious now than upset.
‘I told you to stay in the house with Michel,’ Mathilde says. There’s the slightest edge to her voice.
‘I only wanted to help.’
‘I can manage. Take him back to the house.’
‘Why should I have to look after him all the time? He’s your baby.’
‘Please, just do as you’re told.’
Gretchen’s face hardens. She brushes past us, her flip-flops slapping angrily on the steps. I feel rather than hear Mathilde’s sigh.
‘Come on,’ she says, wearily.
She supports most of my weight as we go up the steps and over to the bed. It takes for ever. I collapse onto the mattress, barely aware of her going away again. A minute later she’s back, carrying the rucksack and lamp. She sets both by the bed.
‘Your father didn’t know I was here, did he?’ I say. ‘You didn’t tell him.’
Mathilde is outside the lamp’s circle of light. I can’t make out her face, don’t know if she’s looking at me or not.
‘We’ll talk tomorrow,’ she says, and leaves me alone in the loft.
The rucksack bounces on my back as I run to where the car waits on the slip road, its engine ticking over. It’s a yellow VW Beetle, battered and rust-pitted but right now the most beautiful car in the world as far as I’m concerned. It’s going dark and I’m numb from standing in the cold for the past two hours, cursing the drivers who’ve whipped past me onto the motorway without a glance.
I open the passenger door, surprised to see that the driver is a lone girl.
‘Where are you going?’ she asks.
‘London, but the next services will do,’ I tell her, desperate to get out of the bitter wind.
‘I’m going to Earl’s Court, if that’s any good?’
‘Thanks, that’s fantastic.’ I can catch a tube from there. I’m staying in Kilburn, renting the spare room in a flat whose owner is away for a month. After that I haven’t a clue what I’ll do.
But that’s a problem for another day. I dump my rucksack on the back seat, careful to avoid the large artist’s portfolio lying there, and then sit up front. She has the window wound down slightly on her side but turns the heating up full blast to compensate.
‘I’ve got to have the window open because the exhaust leaks in,’ she explains. ‘I mean to get it fixed, but …’
Her shrug eloquently suggests a combination of what-can-you-do and can’t-be-bothered.
‘I’m Sean.’ I have to raise my voice over the competing roar of the open window and hot air blowing from the heater.
She gives me a quick smile. ‘Chloe.’
She’s maybe a year or two younger than me, slender, with pale-blonde cropped hair and deep-blue eyes. Pretty.
‘Are you warm enough now?’ she asks. ‘If I leave the heater on full for too long it overheats.’
I tell her I’m fine. She reaches out to the dash and adjusts the temperature. Her hand is long-fingered and fine-boned. A thin silver band encircles her wrist.
‘I’m surprised you stopped. You don’t often find girls taking a chance on hitch-hikers. Not that I’m complaining,’ I add.
‘You’ve got to take some chances. Besides, you looked harmless enough.’
‘Thanks,’ I laugh.
She smiles. ‘What are you going to London for?’
‘Looking for work.’
‘So it’s a permanent move?’
‘If I can find a job, yeah.’ Although just the word permanent makes me feel uneasy.
‘What sort of work are you looking for?’
‘Whatever’s going. Bar work, labouring. Anything that pays.’
She glances over. ‘You a graduate?’
‘I was, a while back. But I wanted to travel, so I took some time out.’ Some time is deliberately vague: I’m uncomfortably aware of how it’s slipped by. Most of my peers have settled into careers by now, but I’ve drifted from one job to the next without any real direction.
‘Good for you,’ Chloe says. ‘I went backpacking to Thailand for six months. God, absolutely brilliant! Where’d you go?’
‘Uh … just to France.’
‘Oh.’
‘I plan to go back,’ I add, defensively. ‘You know, when I’ve got enough money together.’
That’s not likely to be any time soon. Even though I’ve stopped smoking, the casual jobs I’ve been doing don’t pay much. She nods, but isn’t really listening. I grip my seat as she suddenly switches lanes to overtake a van, pulling out in front of a speeding Jaguar that’s forced to brake. It flashes its lights indignantly, jammed right up to our rear bumper. The VW’s engine becomes shrill, gathering just enough speed to draw alongside the van without being able to pass.
‘Come on, dickhead,’ Chloe mutters, glaring past me at the van driver. I watch anxiously as she keeps her foot down until we’re just ahead before darting back into lane. The van blares its horn and drops back, putting space between itself and the mad young woman in the VW. I let go of the seat, my hands aching from the pressure.
‘So what did you study?’ Chloe continues, unperturbed.
‘Film.’
‘Making or theory?’
‘Theory.’ I realize I’m sounding defensive.
She grinned. ‘Ah, now I get it. That’s why you went to France. Don’t tell me — Truffaut’s your hero. No, Godard.’
‘No,’ I say, stung. ‘Well …’
‘I knew it!’
I can’t keep from grinning as well, happy to find someone to argue with. ‘You don’t like French cinema?’
‘I don’t dislike it, I just think the whole New Wave thing was overrated. It’s just dull. Give me the Americans any day. Scorsese. Taxi Driver.’ She turns one hand palm up in a there-you-are gesture. ‘And he didn’t have to use black and white to make his point.’
‘What about Raging Bull?’
‘That was a deliberate reference to the boxing footage of the forties and fifties. And it made the blood in the fight scenes more effective. What has Truffaut done to compare with that?’
‘Oh, come on …!’
The argument runs on, both of us warming to it, until she has to stop at a services for petrol. I’m surprised to see from a road sign that London is only twenty miles away; the journey has passed too quickly. Chloe waves away my offer of a contribution towards the fuel, but as we set off again she seems distracted.
‘So what about you?’ I ask after a while. I motion towards the portfolio on the back seat. ‘Are you an artist?’
‘That’s what I tell myself.’ She smiles, but there’s something sad about it. ‘For a day job I work as a waitress and try to sell the odd illustration to advertising agencies. I’m on my way back from a pitch now. A big-eyed little kitten for a cat-food manufacturer.’
I’m not sure what to say. ‘Congratulations.’
‘They didn’t go for it.’ A shrug. ‘It was rubbish anyway.’
The conversation dies after that. Suburbs have sprung up around us, and it isn’t long before we reach the outskirts of London. She taps her fingers on the wheel in frustration with the slow-moving traffic. When we get to Earl’s Court she pulls up by the tube station, leaving the engine running. I look for an excuse to delay the moment, but she’s waiting for me to go.