Significance by Jo Mazelis Read Free Book Online Page B

No backward glances, no attempts to catch his eye or wave. I will just become what I was a few days ago, a woman alone, quietly going about my own business.
    She looked about her. Only three other tables were occupied. A bodybuilder in a Real Madrid football shirt was hunched over the table by the exit with his back to her. His neck, she noticed, was almost as thick as his head. The shirt was very tight on him, giving the impression that he had been inflated inside it. She supposed some women would find such a build attractive, but it did nothing for her. At the table nearest the entrance to the café were four young people, three girls and a boy who seemed to be playing some sort of game, each of them taking turns to speak while the others paid careful attention. Perhaps it was one of those memory word games where you had to remember and add to alphabetically arranged but otherwise unconnected items bought at a supermarket. She was too far away to hear the words, and when they occasionally raised their voices she didn’t recognise the language.
    Nearest to her, two tables away, was a middle - aged couple. The woman had a striking plait of long silver hair that reached halfway down her back. You seldom saw older women with hair that long, or certainly not hair which was long and had been left to go grey naturally. She was plump but shapely, with large breasts, large hips and by comparison, a smallish waist. She wore a navy linen dress with a deep V at the neck. The skin on her chest looked red and almost bruised with sunburn, though her face wasn’t affected. The man she was with had closely cropped salt and pepper hair. He wore a brightly patterned shirt in splashes of orange and turquoise that jarred and jumped, a mushroom - coloured seersucker suit and a straw hat. He looked like a character from a John Grisham novel, a New Orleans lawyer with some kind of secret weakness that would be his downfall. Lucy’s eye happened to drop towards his feet. Socks and sandals. Mottled grey and green socks, a little thin at the heel, and brown leather sandals. Not a Grisham character at all then – he had to be British – the proverbial Englishman abroad.
    Lucy had been half aware of voices speaking English close by, but had somehow tuned them out or rather taken them for granted, forgetting for a little time, while she had talked to Scott that she was in France. Now as she measured time with each slow puff on her cigarette, she tuned her ears towards the older couple’s conversation.
    â€˜Is this the world we created?’ the man said. ‘Are we culpable? My God, it’s worse now than I could ever have imagined.’
    In a different frame of mind Lucy might have been fascinated to overhear such a conversation, but at this moment, in this angry state of mind, she felt only a raw resentment and felt that this old man, this straw man was lecturing the woman he was with, lecturing Lucy too.
    The woman reached for the man’s hand. ‘We tried,’ she said. ‘We shouldn’t forget that.’
    Lucy stubbed out her cigarette, and slowly gathered her belongings. It was still warm so she didn’t put her cardigan on, but draped it over her bag. She stood, resisting the urge to look in the direction of the café. Hesitated. A coffee and two half litres of house wine, plus a tip would cost less than twenty Euros. She took a twenty Euro note from her purse and placed them under the empty carafe, a ring of burgundy liquid seeped onto the note.
    She picked her way between the tables and out onto the pavement, and at a stroll began to head back in the direction she’d come.
    Her hotel was a good twenty - five minutes walk away, and she needed to navigate her journey by returning via La Coquille Bleue, then doubling back to the hotel. But there were many side streets which could provide a faster route. She did not wish to pass the house with the yellow shutters again tonight, and planned to