Page 47 of Best Laid Plans
Standing up, she took a couple of steps towards him. ‘Julien, will you please just spit out whatever it is you’ve come to say? You’re killing me here!’
He stopped moving and turned to face her again, his expression apologetic.
Taking an audible breath, he walked closer. ‘Okay, first of all, I wanted to say sorry, about trying to buy my freedom – and your forgiveness. It was a crass and selfish thing to do. I knew how much you need that money, and it wasn’t fair to make you choose between that and me.’ He snorted gently. ‘Not that you did. In your inimitable style you turned your back on both options.’
‘I couldn’t feel like I was indebted to you, Julien; it would have destroyed any equilibrium between us.’
He nodded, his expression telling her he understood what she was saying. ‘It seems to have become a bad habit with me to throw money at things to try and fix them quickly and without pain. It was ignorant of me to do that, and I can see now why you were offended. I apologise.’
A heavy weight seemed to lift from her chest. ‘Apology accepted.’
* * *
Julien looked at the woman he loved and knew that if he wanted to repair things between them, he had to tell her everything. He owed her an explanation after all the strife he’d caused. But now he was here he was having trouble finding the words he needed without making himself sound like the worst kind of lowlife.
This was exactly why he’d not talked to anyone else when it became apparent that his marriage was over. The shame had stopped the words – kept them lodged inside him, somewhere between his chest and his throat, like a cork pushed too far down to extract.
‘I want to tell you why I was such a nightmare to be around in Italy,’ he said. ‘So you understand that my behaviour was never about something you did or didn’t do.’
The apprehension in her eyes made his blood pump faster and he watched with concern as she walked further into the living area and sat down heavily onto her small red velvet sofa as if her legs had suddenly refused to hold her any longer.
‘Okay. Go on,’ she said quietly.
He sat down too and turned to face her, making sure he had her full attention before he started his sorry tale.
She looked back at him with such apprehension he hoped to God this wouldn’t be the last time he’d ever see her after making his confession.
‘My ex-wife’s name is Celine,’ he began, deciding to cover the basic facts first, hoping the rest would flow from there. ‘We met at a mutual friend’s wedding. Both of us were late and we snuck into the back of the church together and somehow managed to knock over a huge flower display and disrupt the service at a key moment. As you can imagine, that didn’t exactly make us popular guests, but it banded us together as social fugitives.’
‘Is your mutual friend speaking to you yet?’ she asked with a smile in her voice.
He grimaced, too aware of the regret pulling at him to enjoy the gentle joke, but relieved that she felt comfortable enough to tease him still. ‘Only just.’
She flapped a hand. ‘Sorry to interrupt. Do go on.’
‘At that point in my life I’d been working so hard I’d not given any of my relationships – with perfectly nice women – a decent chance of surviving and it had begun to occur to me, as I watched all my friends get married and move on with their lives, that I’d put my career before my personal life for too long and if I didn’t do something about it I was going to end up a lonely old man.’
She shifted on the sofa, pulling her legs under her, and he took her cue and settled back, making himself more comfortable.
‘Celine made me feel like there could be an exciting future ahead of us and, after our first meeting, we started seeing each other regularly, though when I say “seeing” I mean we spent a lot of time in bed together. It was a crazy whirlwind of a relationship, and she turned my entire world upside down. She had this energy that electrified me: she was wild and spontaneous and creative – all the things I’m not – but she was also highly strung and only seemed to thrive when all the attention was on her. I can see that now, with the benefit of hindsight, though I was blind to it at the time.’
He was quiet for a while as he relived the memory of what he’d thought was the most passionate and extraordinary interlude in his formerly routine life – until he’d met Indigo and realised what passion really was.
‘So what happened?’ she prompted gently.
He sighed. ‘We jumped into getting married too quickly.’ He took a breath. ‘I thought I was doing the right thing at the time, but it was a huge mistake.’
‘What do you mean, “doing the right thing”?’ she asked with a careful tone to her voice, which made him think she’d already figured it out.
He turned to give her a sad, knowing smile. ‘Oui, she was pregnant.’
She looked at him steadily for a moment and he saw her throat bob as she swallowed hard. ‘Ah. I see. Well, that was honourable of you.’
‘Yes, well, my father left my mother after he got her pregnant and she struggled for money and support for years, raising me. It was very tough on her. I didn’t want Celine to suffer like that and I wanted to be there for my child. I worked hard for years to be successful so I’d be in a good position to support a family, should I have one. It didn’t happen the way I was expecting it to, but I thought: so what? This was my child and I was prepared to make a go of the marriage so we could all be together.’
‘So you do have a child?’ she asked quietly.
He shook his head and averted his gaze, staring instead at a print of Monet’s Poppies that she had on the wall behind the sofa, finding comfort in the vibrant colours. ‘Non. We lost the baby a few weeks after our wedding.’
