We'll Always Have Paris by Emma Beddington Read Free Book Online Page A

magnificently silly
La Soupe aux Choux
, in which two elderly peasants are visited by a
Martian, and
La Vie est Une Longue Fleuve Tranquille
with its deliciously horrible bourgeois Catholic family, all neat side partings, guitar-playing priests and repression.
    In the evenings, we drive out along the Seine as the sun sets, the river flat and wide and Monet-hazy, banks dotted with willows, cow parsley waving in the breeze. We eat the cheapest set menu
in half-timbered and chintzy fish restaurants and splash out on a bottle of Sancerre. Sometimes we drive out to the coast to a soundtrack of George Brassens and sit on the uncomfortable pebbly
beach at Dieppe or search out cider farms and cows to admire in the lush greenery of Basse-Normandie. Sunday lunch with Olivier’s grandmother remains a fixture. Although she has moved into
sheltered accommodation, standards have not slipped remotely and the
armoire normande
full of biscuits and chocolate squares and lace doilies has accompanied her (it takes up half of the
living space). We eat and then watch
Inspecteur Derrick
, the dubbed German detective series she loves, squashed up on her tiny sofa. We pitch a tent in Olivier’s grandfather’s
field on a blustery Normandy cliff top and play dominoes with his other grandmother, who cries when she loses, then forces you to play again.
    Gradually, our periods of tranquillity lengthen and we settle into something more comfortable: he trusts me now, finally I think, and I have seen how magnificently kind and loyal he is. We have
weathered the worst of a long-distance relationship and both our insecurities have subsided. I feel a bit shattered by the past few years – I am bald now, for god’s sake – but I
have realized I do not want to conceive of my life without this man. We have become interwoven in each other’s lives, with family weddings and holidays and the delicate business of where to
have Christmas. Olivier’s parents are completely accepting of me (he does not really give them any choice in the matter, but they are lovely nevertheless): Jacqueline provides me with special
mayonnaise and aspic-free foods and I am invited to more and more of their gatherings of the clans. On my side, I think my illness has short-circuited some of my parents’ reticence and given
them a chance to see Olivier’s essential kindness. My mother treats him as an ally and in the warmth of her regard – her love is a wonderful thing – he relaxes and blossoms, shows
them he can be funny and relaxed as well as fiercely loving. As my finals approach and then pass, we can begin to think about what happens next.
    The obvious thing, surely, is for me to move to France. What is keeping me in England? This is what I have been working towards for the past six years, isn’t it? But actually, we hatch
another plan. Olivier is going to do an MBA and I am going to train to be a lawyer: in London.

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La Fille sur le Pont
    We don’t even consider moving to France until six years later, when my mother dies.
    I find out she is dead on an indolent, clockwatching afternoon in the office in autumn 2003, the air suffused with the familiar scents of photocopier toner and vending machine coffee. I am
sitting at my desk in a large law firm in the City, where I have recently qualified as a solicitor (European law, a discipline I hope will get me back to France eventually, though so far I have
shown scant aptitude or enthusiasm for it). I am pregnant for the second time: our son Theo, who is one, is at nursery. In a couple of hours I need to go and collect him, so with a sigh I turn back
to the spreadsheet I am laboriously composing when the phone rings.
    It is my stepfather Joe, his voice strained and hesitant. I just have time to think, ‘Joe never calls me’, before he says: ‘Em, there’s been an accident in Italy.
It’s your mum.’ Then there is a pause, quite a short one, and then he says, ‘She’s dead, Em.’
    I don’t really