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 And so without any discussion we had withdrawn to our little world to sit quietly by ourselves.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.
Of course, I should point out that there was no way of ‘knowing’ this. In fact, at that precise moment, it probably wasn’t even true, as the gametes take some time to make contact and form the zygote. Connie’s ‘sense’ of conception was an example of ‘confirmation bias’ — a desire to favour the evidence that confirms what we wish to believe. Many women claim to ‘know’ for sure that they are pregnant after sex. When, as in most cases, it transpires that they’re not, they immediately forget their prior certainty. In the rare cases that they’re right, they see this as confirmation of some supernatural or sixth sense. Hence confirmation bias.
Nevertheless, two weeks later a pregnancy test confirmed what we both already ‘knew’, and thirty-seven weeks after that Albert Samuel Petersen was welcomed into our world and chased our blues away.
— For crying out loud, Albie!
— Why is it a problem?
— But why don’t you want to come with us?
— I want to do my own thing!
— But I’ve booked the table for three people!
— They won’t mind. Go with Mum. Stare into each other’s eyes, whatever.
— What will you do?
— Walk around, take photos. I might go and listen to some music.
— Well, shall we come with you?
— No, Dad, that is not a good idea. It’s the opposite of a good idea.
— But wasn’t the point, wasn’t the whole point of this trip that we spend some time together as a family?
— We spend loads of time together, every day!
— Not in Paris!
— How’s Paris different from home?
— Well, if I have to answer that … Do you have any idea how much this trip is costing?
— Actually, if you remember, I wanted to go to Ibiza.
— You’re not going to Ibiza.
— Okay, tell me how much this is costing, then. How much, tell me?
— It doesn’t matter how much.
— Well it obviously does, seeing as you keep bringing it up. Tell me how much, divide it by three, I can owe it to you.
— I don’t mind how much, I just wanted — we wanted to spend time as a family.
— You can see me tomorrow. Christ, Dad!
— Albie!
— I’ll see you in the morning.
— Fine. All right. See you in the morning. No lie-ins. Eight thirty sharp, or we’ll have to queue.
— Dad, I promise you, at no point during this holiday will I relax.
— Goodnight, Albie.
— Au revoir. A bientôt. And Dad?
— What?
— I’m going to need some money.
The restaurant where we’d eaten the famous chicken was closed for the annual exodus of the Parisians to the gîtes of the Loire, the Luberon, the Midi-Pyrénées. I’ve always had a grudging admiration for the chutzpah of this mass evacuation, a little like being invited to dinner only to find the hosts have gone out and left a tray of sandwiches. Instead we went to a local bistro that was so ‘Parisian’ that it resembled a set from a situation comedy; wine bottles barely visible under cascades of candle wax, canned Piaf, no inch of wall without a poster for Gauloises or Perrier.
‘Pour moi, je voudrais pâté et puis l’onglet et aussi l’épinard. Et ma femme voudrait le salade et le morue, s’il vous plaît.’