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Le Retour

Alice could have gone straight into work but she didn’t want to, though they arrived back by lunchtime. She could have spent the afternoon at home, reacclimatizing to her life, but she didn’t want to do that either. She should have gone to Thea to confide and be guided, but she didn’t want to, not yet. What she wanted to do was to be by herself, accountable to no one, for a precious few hours more. She wanted to indulge in memories of the last few days; conjure the look and the taste and the feel of Paul. Transport herself back to Les Baux. Just for a little while longer. Not to daydream. Simply to remember.

So Alice whiled away her afternoon in an Internet café off Tottenham Court Road. She surfed the sights and facts of the Camargue, of the Pont du Gard, of Arles and Nîmes, of Les Baux and flamingos. She visited the O’Neill website and clicked on the same pair of shorts they’d bought Paul. She found the hotel website and clicked on every picture, analysing the tiny, pixillated figures. It was stupid to check the tariff page she told herself as she did just that. She Googled Paul’s name but found nothing. He really ought to be nothing, she told herself. It wasn’t as if she’d be going back, or would ever see him again. He had to have no role in her memory other than as a one-afternoon stand, a fantastic shag with no strings attached, guilt-free sex, a zipless fuck and best forgotten.

In his closing debrief, Fritz had told the group to ‘take what we give you and turn it into new tools for your trade’. She’d do that, she would. She could apply it to her life in general. She wouldn’t be deifying Paul. She wouldn’t long for him or allow the tricks of memory and the mundanity of everyday life to transform him into anything other than a Franco–Australian beefcake she’d shagged. She’d turn the event to her benefit, she’d make sure she was eternally grateful it had happened. After all, her sexual thirst had been quenched and the spring to her step, the glint to her eye, her verve and her smile, had been restored.

Mark arrives home with a bunch of flowers and a legibly excited smile.

‘Hullo, you,’ he coos, embracing his wife. ‘God, I missed you – I did try to ring.’

‘No signal,’ Alice shrugs, hugging him back and thinking to herself that he’s had a disastrous haircut.

‘Did you have a great time?’ he asks, taking off his jacket, loosening his tie and top button, rubbing his temples and pinching the bridge of his nose. What a day. Good to be home.

‘It was fine,’ Alice shrugs again. ‘You know these courses – part outward-bound, part bullshit-waffle assertion techniques. We were timetabled to within an inch of our lives.’

‘Was it as dull as you were expecting?’ Mark asks, leafing through the post and leaving it all unopened.

‘I guess not,’ Alice says, ‘but you’ll never guess – they made us share rooms! Can you believe that? Three hangers between us!’

Mark laughs as he selects a good Rioja and hunts for the state-of-the-art corkscrew. ‘Well, you look gorgeous, Wife – look at you. You really do. The outward-bound bit must have done you good. All that fresh air and exercise. God knows I could do with some.’

‘It was all very picturesque. Like a Stella Artois advert. And actually the workshops weren’t too hug-a-tree or primal-screamish. But I didn’t walk the Pont du Gard,’ Alice admits sheepishly, ‘I was too scared.’

‘I don’t blame you,’ Mark says. ‘I’ve done it – and it’s pretty hair-raising.’

‘You’ve been?’ Alice is stunned, appalled, intrigued.

‘During my gap year,’ says Mark, still going through endless drawers in search of the corkscrew.

‘Did you go to Les Baux?’ Alice asks, almost accusatorily.

‘Don’t think so,’ says Mark who’s found the corkscrew. ‘Was it good?’

‘So-so,’ Alice shrugs, ‘no big deal.’