‘What?’
‘Have you got something in the oven? Your supper? I think it must be burning.’
‘Oh, merde! Not again!’ Crushing her cigarette into the ashtray, Madame got up and hurried to the kitchen. Grace could hear her muttering and cursing, the banging of pots and pans, the sound of running water.
When she didn’t return after a few minutes, Grace ventured into the hallway. The smell of charred pastry crust filled the corridor. ‘Can you save it?’ she asked, doubtfully.
‘It’s nothing.’ Madame opened the kitchen window to clear the smoke out. ‘Nothing that can’t be made again another time. I have always abhorred cooking. But every once in a while I try.’
‘I’m a dreadful cook. Far too easily distracted. I suppose I get that from my mother.’
Madame gave her a curious look. ‘Perhaps you do. But you must forgive me,’ she began ushering Grace towards the door, ‘it’s late. And as you can see, I have some cleaning to do.’ She held the door open for her. ‘Come again. Maybe tomorrow. And we will talk some more.’
Grace lit a cigarette on the pavement outside the deserted perfume shop on Rue Christine and began walking back to her hotel through the quiet, dimly lit streets, recounting Madame’s words. One sentence echoed in her mind, replaying itself over and over.
‘A young woman on the cusp of her sexual awakening is a powerful creature.’
She took a deep drag. Here in this strange city, the net of her memory loosened. She too had been intoxicated by her awakening sexuality.
It had happened just as Madame had noted; early on; after her mother’s death when she was thirteen or so. She’d only recently gone to live with her uncle in Oxford. He had no experience with children; suddenly she found she had the run of the house. He was always working and she was left more and more to her own devices, treated as an adult rather than a child. Grace remembered feeling such a tangle of opposing emotions – the aching loss of her mother, fear, and at the same time a new confidence and terrible, thrilling freedom. But underneath all that, there was an unfamiliar, overwhelming desire to be touched. Her body had grown languid, easily aroused. And overnight it had transformed from the narrow shapeless body of a child to that of a young woman, with a slimmer waist, swelling breasts, curving hips.
She began attracting attention. Clandestine looks and mysterious tensions suddenly corseted her days; unspoken invitations tugged at her awareness. Her uncle, always on the periphery, receded even further, maintaining a respectful distance from her transformation. But his colleagues gazed upon her with new eyes and suddenly she too had moved a little slower, a little more deliberately, teasing out their interest without knowing why; simply because all of a sudden she could.
She was fascinated and repulsed in equal measures by the sudden increase in male attention. She learned to cover her desire with a steely surface of indifference, playing the tensions off one another.
It had been an effective strategy, surprisingly sophisticated for one so young.
Near the banks of the Seine, tucked beneath bridges, in the shadows, Grace glimpsed the outlines of couples, bodies entwined, stealing embraces.
She crossed over the river, the black water rushing beneath her like a sheet of moving glass, the lights from the shore reflected in its smooth surface.
There had been a student of her uncle’s, a young man in his early twenties named Theo Lund; lanky, serious, with large, round blue eyes. He was shy, studious, socially awkward. From a modest background, he didn’t mix much, but was instead dedicated to earning his degree.
He came to the house every week, while working on his thesis, for private tutorials.
And she made a point of being the one to answer the door, showing him into her uncle’s study. She took care with her dress, her hair; lingering, allowing him to make conversation with her. And her answers to his questions were always evasive, teasing. Week after week, she felt his interest and admiration grow.
In private, she dreamed of his hands on her skin; of the pressure of his mouth on hers. She yearned for a physical pleasure she couldn’t quite imagine, didn’t understand.
Then she’d offered to show him the garden one late spring evening, with the magnolia tress in full bloom.
He’d followed her into the grove, talking too fast, too much. The trees had formed a canopy of rich blooms, waxy petals of deep pink, exploding with colour and perfume. She’d stood, quite still, while he admired them, looking everywhere but at her. And then finally he stopped. His hands shook a little as he reached for her.
She had met him more than halfway, tilting her face up, wrapping her arms around his neck. Tentative, tight-lipped kisses became urgent, hands travelled . . .