Squashed up against Sacha in the back of Nadia’s car and enjoying every moment, Ren peered out of the window and gaped at night-time in Saint-Denis. They passed blocky brutalist concrete structures with bizarre shadows, historic stone buildings reminiscent of Paris proper and contemporary edifices in glass. Murals adorned apartment blocks with myriad faces, animals and superheroes and strange allegories of city life.
When they pulled up in front of the grand stone cathedral, its arches and tracery and lopsided belltower a prototype for its damaged sister on the Île-de-la-Cité, she remembered standing beside Sacha in front of another church, listening to him talk about growing up in the nine-three, how he’d lived with the whole world as his neighbours. She was beginning to think he’d grown up with the entirety of history, too, and he bore it all with such honour and dignity.
‘Is it okay? Being out so late?’ he asked her softly as the others got out of the car.
She nodded. ‘It’s… my last night of freedom. I want to live it.’ It’s my last night with you. Her heart was twenty-four hours from breaking.
As soon as the first notes of music reached her ears, sung by deep men’s voices and filling the cavernous space up to the distant vaulted ceiling, Ren couldn’t stop the tears. She couldn’t understand the words of the Christmas liturgy in French, but the feeling of standing among a group of people joined by goodwill, with a man she loved by her side, touched her deeply.
Sacha said nothing. He simply clutched her hand until he must have had cramps, and stayed close enough that their arms pressed together. He didn’t need to say anything.
After the service, Sacha mumbled something about showing her the stained glass, but his tone was strangely reluctant.
‘I’ll… I need to tell you something about that stained glass in your gallery, the piece that was stolen,’ he began. She didn’t want to think about Asquith-Lewis or be reminded of the time she’d naïvely made him feel like a lesser human being by taking him to her gallery, so she shook her head and ushered him towards the enormous door.
‘We can’t see the glass properly now, anyway. At night, the light comes from within, hmm?’ she said as they passed under the clusters of carved figures over the door, peering down at them in stone. His expression was conflicted, the way she felt when she thought about tomorrow.
Snow was falling with a hush, when they emerged silently from mass. Sacha’s steps slowed. Words were written on his face, but he struggled to say them.
‘We should get back for the meal,’ was what he managed.
The same hush remained over dinner, as the snow continued to fall.
‘I’m not sure I’ve ever been up this late,’ Ren whispered to Sacha, leaning a heavy head on his shoulder. ‘But I don’t want it to end.’
‘I’ll carry you to bed if you don’t make it,’ he said, but she perked up a bit for the gift-giving, grinning as Sacha’s family opened her gifts. Raph had been easy – the latest title for his console. For Joseph, she’d chosen a small woven rug with a bright pattern and yellow tassels, and for Nadia she’d found a hand-painted ceramic planter – both from the streets around the Marché aux Puces.
Joseph gave Ren a polished brass oil lamp, which made her laugh, until she joked about capturing Sacha in it and taking him with her. The joke hit a little too close to home.
She opened an art print of the Seine at night from Nadia and Raph and, even though it was a print, flogged by the million in souvenir shops in this great city, she knew she would treasure it – and the memories it held – as much as her Matisse.
She and Sacha were making a study of not looking at each other. She wondered if he was also trying not to cry, but she thought not. He could relive this Christmas every year, surrounded by the love of his family. He couldn’t be feeling the twinge of longing that she was.
Even the remains of the yule log on the table made her eyes sting. Ren and Raph had been a little too enthusiastic with the crumbled chocolate ‘bark’ and the powdered sugar, but she’d been so overcome by how he’d opened up to her while they decorated it that she would never have stopped him, even if she’d known the cake would end up so rich that no one could finish a slice.
The last two presents under the tree were almost identical. Ren retrieved the one from her and shoved it at Sacha without ceremony and he unwrapped the volume carefully.
‘Contes de Fées,’ he said with a smile. ‘French fairytales? You do realise they don’t all have happy endings?’
‘Perhaps not, but there is some magic in them that adults need sometimes. And these were written by a woman, so I don’t think they’ll be quite as dreadful as Grimm.’
He opened the book and studied the contents page, brushing his fingers over the spine, and then he glanced at her with a momentary flash of melancholy that wasn’t the reaction she’d intended him to have.
She tore open the brown paper of her gift, eager to see which book he’d chosen for her. She wasn’t surprised it was a volume of poetry. It was a beautiful edition, blue canvas with simple gold type bearing the title: English Romantic Poetry. Sacha cleared his throat awkwardly as she ran her hands over the cover.
‘I thought… this would be the best place for you to start.’
‘Start reading poetry?’
‘Start… finding… your feelings, being the formidable person you are,’ he finished in a mumble.
Her fingers tightened on the cover of the book as she stared at him – she’d never expected to feel so connected to another human being.
‘Ah,’ he said with a groan. ‘Not formidable. Formidable, in French. It is a good thing.’
Even that error touched her. ‘I kind of liked formidable,’ she murmured.
After the gift-giving, the lateness of the hour loomed inexorably. Nadia and Raph left for the short drive back to their apartment. Joseph clapped Sacha on the shoulder and said something in French, before bidding Ren goodnight and limping off to bed. Ren was dead on her feet, but she didn’t want to sleep. When Sacha slid open the door to the balcony, she eagerly followed him out, shivering at the ice in the air. She held out her hand to catch the feathery flakes of snow and looked out at the view: the ghostly white forms of six identical tower-blocks and a windswept playground in the courtyard below.
‘What did Joseph say to you?’
He chuckled. ‘He told me I should start by telling you everything about you that I like, but… there’s too much.’
‘Start what?’ she asked, blushing.
His smile faded and he gripped the freezing metal railing in agitation. ‘I… I just want to say…’ She waited, her heartbeat faltering. ‘This… you… we… I…’ He sighed. ‘That’s only pronouns,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t know how to say it.’
Ren did.
‘I’ll never forget you, in all my life.’ Her breath stalled. ‘I know you like happy endings, but I… you are important to me, even without.’
Tears welled up again. She’d never liked stories where the lovers were wrenched apart, but didn’t that happen to everyone, in the end? ‘Even without a happy ending,’ she murmured, ‘I wouldn’t change anything about the past few weeks.’ I love you so much.
He pulled her tight to him, the embrace almost crushing, and kissed her with a passion that told its own story. He held onto her as they headed back inside to the spare bedroom and they clung to each other, expressing in actions what was unbearable to say in words.
