The Way I Found Her by Rose Tremain Read Free Book Online Page B

périphérique .’
    Alice nodded. It was a bit windy out here above the cemetery and her hair started blowing about wildly. Didier took off his glasses and began polishing them on the hem of his T-shirt. Without them, he looked more like a tennis star or a cyclist than a philosopher. ‘So how do you get there?’ asked Alice.
    â€˜Oh,’ said Didier, putting his glasses back on, ‘I fly. Didn’t Louis tell you I could fly?’
    â€˜Yes, he did,’ said Alice, ‘but I don’t necessarily believe everything he says.’
    â€˜Would you like a Yop?’ asked Didier.
    â€˜What?’ said Alice.
    I told Mum Yop was a yoghurt drink. Students and joggers in the Parc Monceau drank Yop and the litter bins were full of old Yop containers. She said OK, she’d like one. Then she said to Didier, ‘Which tomb is your father’s?’
    He pointed to the far side of the graveyard, where I’d noticed one of the dead people’s houses had an angel on the roof. It was the only angel in the whole place. ‘There,’ he said, ‘next to the angel. The small one on the right of it.’
    We all looked at Didier’s father’s tomb. In scale, and in situation, it looked like the garage to the house with the angel. It didn’t look as though there was any room for Didier’s mother in the garage, and I wondered whether, every time he came here, Didier thought, that fucking angel, overshadowing Papa, and making him seem small, I’m going to knock its wings off one day!
    But he didn’t seem downhearted. He bought us the Yops and we drank them while we watched the roller-skaters and I could see that Mum’s fury was lessening and that she was enjoying herself. I didn’t know which thing it was that had cheered her up.
    When Didier went off to skate, as soon as he did his first run we could see that he was the best, the niftiest. His slalom technique was perfect and he went faster than all the other skaters.
    I said to Mum: ‘That could be it, you know.’
    â€˜What?’ she said.
    â€˜Why he’s called Didier-the-Bird.’
    But her eyes were fixed on Didier and she didn’t bother to reply.
    When we got back to the flat, it was about six o’clock. Sergei was there alone. There was a furious note on the hall table from Valentina, which said: Why do you sneak out like thieves? This is not a hotel! Lewis, walk Sergei when you return. V .
    I got Sergei’s kite lead. I thought I’d head for the Eiffel Tower and beg it to let me stay in Paris. I’d never begged in French before, to something made of iron, but I didn’t see why I shouldn’t try.
    We set off down the leafy boulevard, which I now knew was the Avenue George V, but we hadn’t got very far when Sergei suddenly stopped and wouldn’t walk on. I tugged at him, but he just sat down in the street and then he vomited.
    He’d chosen a really bum place. We were right in front of the Hôtel George V, almost on its doormat, and when the hotel doorman saw what had happened he started to shriek at me. People arriving in Rolls-Royces and Cadillacs had to step round Sergei and his vomit and I could perfectly well understand that this didn’t give them a good first impression of the hotel.
    I told the doorman that I was very sorry and I tugged Sergei to a plane tree, where he looked up at me piteously. I stroked his head, like Mum used to stroke mine when I was made of Play Doh and puked in the night.
    I’d tried to make Sergei walk towards home, but he refused; he just kept lying down on the pavement. So I had to stagger along with him in my arms. I kept remembering what Valentina had said about Mr Gavrilovich heaving sacks of coal that weighed as much as a child of seven. Sergei must have weighed as much as a child of nine.
    Everyone stared at me, a thin boy carrying a gigantic dog, but no one offered to help me and the rue Rembrandt was a