A French Affair (2 page)

Strangely, now she was here the only thing she really felt was vaguely distanced from herself, almost as if she were another shopper watching Jessica Moore's progress and wondering what it was like to be her. Do well-known people feel things as deeply as everyone else? Is it easier for them because they've got money, or fame, or beauty, or successful husbands, to fall back on?

‘It's not her,' she heard someone whispering nearby.

‘I'm telling you, it is.'

‘Who? What are we talking about?' a third voice asked.

‘Jessica Moore,' came the reply.

‘Jessica who?'

‘Moore. You know, the one who does the arts programme on Wednesdays, after the news. She's on the radio too, I think, but I've never heard her. It's terrible what happened. Makes you want to go up and hug her, doesn't it?'

‘Why, what happened?'

‘Don't you ever read a paper? Honestly, I wonder if you even know what day of the week it is sometimes.'

Jessica dropped a French stick into her trolley and turned towards the checkout. That was another thing about being ‘known', people seemed to discuss you as though you were unable to hear.

As she waited to pay she picked up a magazine, opened it and stared down at the words. She didn't want to catch anyone's eye, or hear any more whispers, she just wanted to be left alone. If she could, she'd tell them how she was trying to get her life back together, and coming here was one of the first small steps.
So please don't look at me any more, just try to pretend you've never seen me before.

She detested self-pity, but she knew that the envy she felt of those around her was rooted in it, for she longed to be free to go about her business in a normal, unnoticed way, untouched by curiosity, barely even registering in people's consciousness, except as a tall, slim woman in white jeans and a plain T-shirt, who was paying for her groceries in cash, and taking a little too long to pack her bags.

As she wheeled her trolley across the upper level of the car park she could feel the summer sun on her skin and hear the nearby roar of traffic. Then someone whistled – a long, tunefully appreciative note, swooping up, and then down, before ending in a small staccato burst that made those around him laugh.

Though she didn't look up, she guessed the whistle had come from the scaffolding nearby, where a small group of men with bare chests and hard hats were, apparently, not paying too much attention to their work. Of course, the whistle might not have been for her, but instinct, and the fact that no-one else was around, told her it was.

At thirty-nine she might have felt flattered by the attention, but she didn't. In fact, it almost upset her to be reminded of how attractive she was. It seemed so superficial and irrelevant, and so very out of kilter with the way she felt inside. Who cared that her lithe figure
and subtly exotic looks could still turn heads? Certainly not her. As far as she was concerned nothing could matter less.

As she approached her husband's Jaguar she caught a glimpse of her reflection and felt a moment's surprise. Then a small flutter of emotion broke into the numbness of her heart, like the tiny wings of a moth making ready to fly. She'd cut her hair so radically that she almost hadn't recognised herself. She didn't mind – she felt she'd like to be a stranger – but it seemed odd to see this different person looking back at her. She wondered if she'd been trying to make herself less attractive by chopping off the sleek blonde mane she'd always had. If so, she wasn't sure it had worked, because the wispy strands that now curved and curled like feathers around her face and scalp seemed to make her dark, almond-shaped eyes appear even deeper and more lustrous, while lending a new softness to the precise symmetry of her delicately flared nostrils and sumptuously wide mouth.

Nikki had cut her hair short first. In fact, Nikki had gone a step further and totally changed the colour, so now she was a brunette, instead of the scrumptious teenage blonde her father had so adored. It was a rare event to hear those two quarrel, but Charlie had been so upset by Nikki's new look that he'd been unable to hold back.

‘It doesn't suit you at all,' he'd shouted, his pale, handsome face darkening with fury – though Jessica had known it was pain. He didn't want anything to change, even though everything already had, irrevocably, and suddenly Nikki's new hairstyle was too much for him to bear.

Was it really only a week since that explosion? It seemed so much longer, but time had lost all meaning since Natalie, their younger daughter, had been so cruelly taken from them.

Because of the way Charlie had reacted to Nikki's new hair, Jessica had been sure to warn him about her own plans to cut hers. Instead of protesting, as she'd expected, he'd merely nodded, as though already half-expecting it.

‘Just please don't change the colour,' he'd said, lifting the hair from her shoulders and letting the cool softness of it run through his fingers. So she hadn't, but even so, Charlie's angels, as he'd teasingly called his three blondes, were no more.

As she loaded her shopping into the boot of the car the sound of rap music suddenly crescendoed beside her. She took a quick step to one side, as though to avoid a collision, then half-smiled when she realised it was the mobile phone in her pocket.

‘Hello, Charlie Moore's number one fan,' she said into it.

‘Jessica?' Charlie said. ‘Is that you? Where are you?'

‘In the supermarket car park. Where are you?'

‘At the office, looking for my phone.'

Humour was lighting her eyes. ‘Well, seems you found it,' she said. ‘You left it in the car when I dropped you off earlier. Sorry, I should have called to tell you.'

‘No problem. Has anyone rung?'

‘No. You're your own first caller and it's already past ten o'clock.'

‘No-one's rung me at all?' he said incredulously.

‘Seems you're not quite as much in demand as you thought,' she responded dryly.

He chuckled. ‘So how did it go? Was Sainsbury's as bad as you feared?'

‘I'm not sure. It felt odd, but I'm glad I did it. I need to get back to normal. You and the children need me to get back to normal.'

‘You've done a lot better than you give yourself credit for,' he told her. ‘It's been a difficult time.'

‘For you too,' she reminded him, while thinking ‘difficult' had to be the understatement of the year. However, there was no point in trying to put it into words any grander than that, because no matter how descriptive, accurate, or cleverly metaphorical they might be, they wouldn't lessen the pain, or change it in any way. If anything they were more likely to make it worse, so it was best to keep to the trusty old euphemisms which they were now becoming quite good at.

‘So what are you doing?' he asked.

‘I'm on my way home. I've decided to write a couple of reviews. It'll keep me busy.' Her career as a presenter was over. She'd been unable to continue as though nothing had happened, so she'd withdrawn from the limelight completely, though lately she'd realised that for the sake of her own sanity she must do something to help fill her days. Book and art reviews were an obvious choice, but staying focused was hard, so a few days ago she'd applied for a full-time job in TV that would make her part of a team again – behind the scenes though, because nothing in her wanted to return to the public eye. ‘What shall I do about your phone?' she said. ‘Do you want me to bring it over?'

‘No. If anyone rings, just tell them I'm at the production office all day, so they can get me here. Unless you want to bring it, and I'll take you for lunch.'

‘You have time for lunch?' she teased.

‘No, but I'll make some if you want me to.'

She was touched by the offer, not only because they didn't always find it easy to be together these days, but because his commitments to the news channel, as well as to his own independent company, meant that he rarely had time to grab a sandwich in the middle of the day, never mind break for lunch. She was about to respond when she realised she was being watched, and her expression instantly sobered. She was afraid the woman in the next car would be thinking that someone in her position should have nothing to smile about – unless, of course, it was true that celebrities, even minor ones such as Jessica Moore, simply didn't feel things as deeply as the rest of the world.

The sun suddenly seemed too hot, burning into her skin with the same scalding intensity as the guilt that all too often blazed in her heart. Then the blessed numbness returned and sliding into the driver's seat, she said to Charlie, ‘I'd love to have lunch with you, darling, but that would hardly make it a normal day, and as that's what we're trying for now, I shouldn't duck out at the first opportunity.'

She wasn't sure if he'd heard, until he came back on the line and said, ‘Sorry, Carl just put his head in. So, was that a no I heard? You're turning me down?'

‘Try not to sound too relieved,' she chided. ‘Are you in the studio tonight, or will you be home for dinner?'

‘Definitely home for dinner. I'll try to get Nikki to join us. It'll be nice for us all to sit down together.'

Would it? No, of course not, because one of the angels was missing, creating a hole in their lives and an empty space in the house that nothing would ever fill, but since it was all about getting their lives back on
track, and somehow accepting that they were four now, instead of five, perhaps it was a good idea.

After ringing off Jessica drove carefully out of the car park, onto the Cromwell Road, then turned up towards Kensington High Street. There were closer supermarkets to their home in Notting Hill than this one, but it was the Sainsbury's she'd come to know while she was working, so it had seemed easier to go back there for her first venture out alone.

As she turned into the crowded shopping street full of trendy boutiques, mobile phone shops and open-top buses, she was mulling over Charlie's invitation to lunch and wondering if he'd guessed the real reason she'd turned him down. Probably he hadn't given it a second thought, but if he had, he'd be likely to realise that it was his fame, much more than her own, that was making her head for home instead of an expensive eatery in Knightsbridge or Soho. As a newsreader his face appeared on television screens on an almost daily basis, so he could go virtually nowhere without being recognised, and whilst he seemed to handle the attention perfectly well, even now, after ‘the tragedy', Jessica was growing increasingly resentful of the consequent intrusions into their lives.

‘I'm just not cut out for fame,' she'd informed him on several occasions during the last few years. ‘I never was. In fact, I could almost be tempted to give it all up and become a full-time housewife. Or better still, I'd like to go back to Dorset to live the same kind of normal, uncomplicated life my grandparents had.'

‘If that's what you want,' Charlie sometimes replied, ‘let's get a house there and go as often as we can.'

His answer could be annoying, because it showed that he'd failed to understand that no matter where she
went with him, recognition would always be theirs. Or maybe he deliberately avoided the issue, since there was really nothing he could do about it, for not even changing jobs would allow him to blend in with the crowd now.

Their home in Notting Hill was a four-storey townhouse in one of the white stucco crescents that made the area so desirable. They'd moved in a little over eight years ago, from a much smaller end-of-terrace in Chiswick, mainly because Charlie had fallen in love with the place. And who wouldn't, when it was so stylish and spacious and full of light, even on the gloomiest day. Of course it had cost a fortune, and they'd onlybeen able to afford it because Charlie's mother, Rosa, had died, leaving them her large house in Kew. It was where Charlie and Jessica had lived for the first six years of their marriage, with Rosa taking care of Nikki while her youthful and ambitious parents made a start in the world. Jessica missed Rosa a lot, probably as much as her grandparents who'd both died before Nikki was three.

Since Notting Hill was where many of the up-and-coming were setting up home these days – and the Moores were certainly part of this elite – it had come as no surprise to Jessica when Charlie had focused his search there. And it wasn't that she didn't love the house too, or the glittering social life that had come with it, she'd just never really felt as comfortable with it all as Charlie seemed to. Perhaps if she could have bonded with one or two of the women, or seen something worthwhile in their astonishing need to be considered important, it might have helped her feel more at home, but she never quite managed this. Charlie, on the other hand, had no problem fitting in at
all, though he insisted it was because he had no need for any bonds beyond the one he had with her and the children.

‘But I understand it's different for women,' he readily conceded. ‘I know how much your friendships mean to you, so I won't take offence that you need something more than me.' Could she have been so generous, she wondered, if she'd felt he needed something more than her? Once, she knew she'd have found it hard to take, now it was different.

If only Lilian hadn't moved to Paris. She'd never needed her best friend more than she had these past months. Of course Lilian was always there, at the end of the phone, and whenever she could she'd talk for hours, but she was generally so busy and anyway, it wasn't the same as having her here. However, she mustn't begrudge Lilian her new life, for if anyone deserved to be happy it was her, even though it could be said that were it not for Lilian's new life none of it would have happened. She wouldn't allow herself to think that way though, because when Lilian had married Luc Véron, last Christmas, she couldn't possibly have known what a terrible route fate was opening up for them. No-one could have known, which was why no-one was to blame. Jessica told herself that over and over. It wasn't anyone's fault that Natalie had died – but still the guilt ate at her like a cancer, for she knew in her heart that she should never have allowed her mother to take Natalie to France. If she hadn't Natalie would still be with them, she was in no doubt about that, because she of all people knew how selfish and irresponsible her mother could be, how incapable she was of putting a ten-year-old's needs before her own.