Chapters (40)
- Cover
- About the Author
- PENGUIN BOOKS
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- THE BEGINNING
St-Quentin. Laon. Reims. Chalon. Champagne country. She and Adrian had stopped near here once. She remembered nothing of it except there was a bridge and a slow wide river that they had leant over together. She remembered – she thought she remembered – brown fish under the slow, clear water; a kingfisher flashing by.
A petrol station. A quick shot of espresso. Euros clinking into the outstretched hand; barriers lifting to let her pass. A grey-white sky searing outside. Troyes. A sudden flock of geese passing across her windscreen, flying in a shifting V formation with their long necks outstretched. She joined the smaller N71, and was now following the broad, beautiful Seine. Aimee Mann’s nasal, heartfelt voice filling the car; something about loving, something about leaving, something about one day being happy again. She sang along with the words till they choked her. Grey chateaux on the hills in the distance. A wood, a village, a small lake, horses cantering in a field, brown cows, a sudden glimpse of children on the bank of the river, someone swimming in the shallows, pale torso gleaming. Vineyards and hills; snatched views down deepening valleys: a narrow, fast-running stream, smoke rising from a chimney, a yard where chickens scratched.
She turned off the main road, crossed the river, and soon found herself in a small, agreeably plain village whose street was lined with vast, pollarded plane trees. She wasn’t hungry but she felt parched after the coffee, so she sat outside a café under a striped awning, drinking a citron pressé whose tartness made her wince. She didn’t rejoin the busy road at once, but drove for a few miles along a smaller route that followed the Seine and wound through woods.
Irene examined the map. By her calculation she’d done nearly half her journey, but it was already two o’clock, and she’d been driving for nearly six hours. She ate a bit of the bread, stale from yesterday, with some of the sweaty Camembert and swilled it back with a few mouthfuls of warm, flat water. A few heavy drops of rain splattered her windscreen; the scorched sky needed to break open and pour down.