Marie moved in for the French double kiss, but I’d anticipated she would and was ready with my brusque British handshake. She stared at my extended left hand for several seconds, smiling an amused little smile, then countered with a flawless curtsy. This, of course, left me nowhere to go. I nodded in acknowledgement of her victory and withdrew my hand with all the good grace I could muster.
My father, meanwhile, was administering several over-enthusiastic slaps to Beck’s arm, allowing him to miss, or pretend to miss, all this embarrassing power play. Maybe I should have delivered a few friendly blows to Marie Martin’s arm. That would have been a better rejoinder to that stupid curtsy. But the moment had long passed. She was now double kissing Beck, a manoeuvre that he made no attempt to forestall. It was hard to tell in the too-dim violet and turquoise lighting of the bar, but I thought he blushed a little, which I supposed was forgivable. At least I’d be able to ask him how she smelled later on.
I ordered a double vodka and Coke before we were taken across to our table.
Our table seemed to be in the exact centre of the room, which made me feel exposed and vulnerable. It didn’t help, either, that Marie inevitably attracted a lot of staring. Some people were clearly trying to place her, to work out why she looked so familiar; others were just gazing at her, the way you might gaze at the roof of the Sistine Chapel, in awe that such a thing existed. And yet she seemed completely oblivious to the attention she was garnering. She was chatting to the sommelier in French; it sounded vaguely flirty, but then French usually does. I supposed she must be used to all this attention. She probably took it for granted. My father, however, was a different matter. I knew that he wasn’t oblivious to the gawking. It would be like a dozen different fingers all massaging his ego. Though, surely, he must have felt just a tiny bit uncomfortable as well? A fair share of those onlookers must have been trying, unsuccessfully, to work out the peculiar dynamics of our table. The obvious assumption would be that this was a father taking his three similarly aged children to dinner – except no daughters would ever dress the way Marie and I had dressed for the benefit of their father. And there was zero chance the two of us shared a mother.
I glared at the pretentious menu while my father attempted small talk. How were things? What had we been up to? After less than five minutes of staccato chit-chat, he had moved on to work and money, the two themes that were never far from his mind.
‘If you’re struggling, Abigail, I can always find you some work writing copy. You only have to ask. We always need writers.’
‘We’re getting by.’
‘Yes, I’m sure. But you could be doing so much more than just getting by. You know, you could earn twice as much writing for advertisers than you do with the papers. At least. It’s worth thinking about.’
Beck nodded. It was a small, diplomatic nod, not very effusive, but it still annoyed the hell out of me.
‘I’ve thought about it,’ I said, ‘and I’m not interested.’
My father cracked his knuckles, then sipped his wine. ‘I just think it’s a shame, that’s all. You have a way with words – that’s a marketable skill. Finding the right phrase, the right slogan to grab someone’s attention, that’s a talent worth having. You shouldn’t waste it.’
‘Waste it how? By writing about things that actually interest me? That I care about?’
‘That’s not what I meant. Of course you can do that too. This would just be a sideline, another source of income. What’s wrong with that?’
‘Daddy, I don’t want to write pointless trash I don’t believe in – to sell pointless trash I don’t believe in.’
The look of incomprehension on my father’s face was so pure it could have been miniaturized and used as an emoticon. ‘I just want you to be a little more comfortable, a little happier,’ he concluded.
This was a very simple and achievable condition in his mind: increase your income, increase your happiness. But I didn’t feel like arguing the point. I downed the rest of my second vodka and told him I was going for a smoke.
‘If you need to order while I’m gone’ – I jabbed at the menu – ‘get me the braised saddle of lamb with the carrot reduction.’
I had no idea what a carrot reduction was.
I’d miscalculated – badly, stupidly. I’d thought that I’d at least be able to achieve some respite from the torture with three or four tactically placed cigarette breaks, before and between courses. I’d been counting on it when I agreed to this meal; it was one of the few occasions when the indoor smoking ban seemed a blessing rather than a curse. Whatever tumult I had to endure inside, I’d still have this handful of moments, oases of calm in which to relax and regroup.
But Marie Martin was a model. She was French. Of course she smoked. I couldn’t believe how dense I’d been not even to have considered this. But reality registered the moment I saw her stepping out of the doorway to join me in the street. She had a pack of Gitanes, the cigarette equivalent of a double espresso. Reluctantly, I handed her my lighter. She made a thank you smile, and I did my don’t mention it shrug. Neither of us said anything for a while. A man in skinny jeans and a leather jacket passed between us, got about six paces down the road, glanced back at Marie, and walked into a bin.
I gestured with my cigarette. ‘I suppose that sort of thing happens to you a lot.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Causing men to walk into bins, or lampposts, or out into traffic. That sort of thing.’
She gave a modest nod. ‘It happens sometimes.’
‘One of the hazards of beauty.’
‘It’s something I try to ignore.’ She took a deep drag on her cigarette and let the smoke trickle out of her nostrils. ‘It’s not nice to be judged always on your looks, you know.’
I snorted. ‘You may have chosen the wrong profession.’
‘Yes, perhaps. I was very young when I started. Sixteen. It was exciting at that age. But modelling is like being a football player. There is no career past thirty. Thirty-five if you’re very lucky.’
She looked at me for a bit, as if studying one of the abstract paintings inside. ‘I read your articles,’ she told me. ‘Both of them.’
‘Oh.’
I was surprised, but I shouldn’t have been. The articles were online. She probably had a Google alert set up on her name, or something like that.
‘What did you think?’ I asked.
‘They were . . . interesting. I liked the Yeats very much. It was beautiful. It made me feel warm and sad at the same time.’
Fine. So she could appreciate Yeats. She obviously understood Yeats (even though she pronounced it ‘yeets’, to rhyme with teats and Keats). It didn’t mean a damn thing. ‘If you like Yeats, I doubt things are going to work out with my father,’ I told her. ‘He’s not a sensitive man.’
Marie took another drag on her cigarette and didn’t say anything. The silence felt vaguely accusatory, enough that I wanted it to stop.
‘How did he take it?’ I asked. ‘My father?’
Marie shook her head. ‘He hasn’t read it.’
‘What, he chose not to?’
‘I didn’t show it to him. I didn’t think it would be kind.’
Terrific. A lecture on kindness from my father’s thirty-year-old model girlfriend. I didn’t know whether to scream, laugh or cry, but the second seemed the least of the three evils.
‘You’re pretty when you laugh,’ Marie told me.
‘Right. But not walk-into-a-bin pretty.’
‘No,’ she acknowledged. ‘Just pretty.’ She managed, somehow, to sound weirdly envious.
I thought it must be a front, some sort of mind game.
‘I enjoyed our talk,’ she told me. Then she crushed her Gitane under one of her two-inch heels and went back inside.
I lit another shaky Marlboro. Simon had given me a taste for them.