It was half a day’s work for Nicolas to put up the new cupboards and shelves, and I was glad to pay him and see him off, though he would be back the following week to fit the metal finishings. He was surly and greasy and arrogant and immature, and was as repelled by me as I was by him.

And then, Axelle. I hadn’t seen her since the cupboards came down and I was aching. I wrote to her and asked her to come but heard nothing back. I wrote every day for a week to no reply, and I looked for her at La Samaritaine. I was told she had left the perfume counter for another position. Finally, on a Friday while Madame slept, a knock at the door. I knew it was Axelle and, as soon as I opened the door, I kissed her. Her whole body was rigid. She pulled away.

‘Don’t be such an idiot,’ she whispered, her voice fierce, from the throat.

‘Madame is fast asleep.’

‘I don’t mean her. Anyone could see us.’

‘There’s no one here but us.’ I took hold of her hand and tried to pull her closer, but her body tensed like a cat.

‘I’m not staying,’ she said. ‘I’ve only come to tell you. Stop writing, and for goodness’ sake, don’t come looking for me.’

‘What?’

A creak on the stairs made us both freeze and we stared at one another, waiting for someone to come up. I listened for another moment, sure I could hear someone breathing. Axelle began to turn away, to leave.

‘You can’t just—’

‘It’s happening, chérie. The position I’ve wanted all this time. Modelling the dresses. I can’t go running around playing these little-girl games anymore. Everything is different now.’

‘It was never a game.’

She stared at me with a look that was shattering and horrendous and foul: pity. She shook my hand and turned, descended two or three steps, and stopped. Looked up at me over her shoulder. Half her face was concealed by the lilac ribbon that draped from her hat, the same shade of lilac I had once seen woven into the seams of her chemise. ‘I won’t forget you,’ she said, and then she turned the corner of the stairs and was gone. I stood, holding on to the door frame, for a lot longer than any person should.

24

Pieter

The Koie, 1955

Bear, for your fourth birthday, we packed you and your sister into the car with blankets and pillows and boxes of food, with beach balls and paddles, fishing nets and poles, and we drove out of the city on the motorway that followed the river of Bjerkreim. You’d been on this drive before, but this was the first time you were old enough to appreciate what you were seeing out of the window; forest and lush summer farms, the deep gorge. I always loved this drive along the river; it was never boring. Sometimes the riverbed was so wide that the water ran smooth and still. In other places, where the land closed in on the river like a vice, the water surged and kicked and frothed.