A Scandal Made At Midnight

‘Yes, I do. I know he was both a gambler and a drinker, and my mother despaired of him, but...’ She sighed, a soft breath of sound. ‘He was so fun. He could make you feel like you were the centre of his world, and whenever I was with him I felt as if I could have an adventure. Now that I’m older, I recognise how destructive some of his behaviours could be. But as a child...he felt magical to me. After he died, I retreated a bit, I suppose.’

‘It must have been hard.’

She nodded. ‘Yes, we’d only been in New York a short time, we hardly knew anyone and I didn’t actually speak English very well.’ She grimaced. ‘There were some challenging years.’

‘Why didn’t you move back to France?’

‘Because my mother had already met Ella’s father, Robert Ash, and there was nothing to go back to in France, anyway. My mother’s parents were dead and my father had lost all their money.’ She sighed. ‘It all sounds terribly tragic, but it wasn’t so bad, especially after Ella came to live with us.’

Had Ella been someone to love, Alessandro wondered, in a life that seemed sadly devoid of it, since her father’s death? He wasn’t normally one to overanalyse emotions, but he sensed a similar kind of loss in Liane that he felt in himself. They just happened to have reacted to it very differently, with her insisting on the happily-ever-after dream and him refusing to believe in it.

They reached the museum and by mutual, silent accord they both stopped talking about the past and instead focused on the present, touring the museum’s incredible offerings, although Alessandro enjoyed watching Liane’s face light up as she looked at a painting more than seeing the actual art on the walls—Monet, Cezanne, Van Gogh—such masters had nothing on the play of emotions in Liane’s violet eyes, her porcelain skin. The pink flush that came onto her cheeks, the sparkle in her eyes, the way she cocked her head to one side as she considered a painting or sculpture—Alessandro felt as if he could have watched her for ever.

And it was risk-free, he reminded himself, since they’d both made their positions clear. Strange, how that thought did not comfort him very much.

After the Musée d’Orsay, they went to the Orangerie, Liane leading Alessandro by the hand into the centre of the room where the massive canvases of Monet’s water lilies hung all around, laughingly insisting he close his eyes.

She guided him to a bench, her hand soft and slender in his, and then whispered, like it was Christmas, like it was magic, ‘Open your eyes.’

He did, and for a second all he saw was a blur of colour—lavender and green, flower and water and sky, all of it surrounding him. For a second, fancifully, he imagined he was in Liane’s fairy tale garden, with the blowsy roses and the lilac bush. He could almost smell their sweetly haunting scent. The dogs were in the distance, there was a child toddling on chubby legs, Liane’s laughter floating on the breeze. He felt...happy, a joy springing up in him that made a smile come to his lips.

Then he blinked the paintings into focus and found that the smeary beauty of Monet’s lilies in their endless misty garden was nothing compared to the vision that, for a second, he’d conjured from the yearning depths of his own mind.

‘Well?’ she asked, squeezing his hand. ‘What do you think?’

‘I... I think it’s beautiful.’ He felt strangely emotional, and he suspected it had nothing to do with Monet. She was still holding his hand, as if she’d forgotten, and he didn’t want her to let go. He certainly wouldn’t. He turned to her and for a second he longed to cup her face in his hands, draw her to him. Forget all his stupid resolutions. He cleared his throat. ‘Thank you for showing them to me.’

They had lunch at a little café near the Tuileries Garden, washing mussels and crusty French bread down with a carafe of white wine, and then walking slowly through the gardens, resplendent in sunshine, drinking in the day.

‘So what will you do when you return to New York?’ Alessandro asked as they wandered along, past the placid pond of the Grand Carré.

‘Nothing much, I suppose.’ Liane gave a little laugh that somehow sounded resigned. ‘School doesn’t start back up till September, and I don’t have any holidays planned. I’m working on a translation of Rimbaud’s poetry for a textbook. If I can, I’ll finish that.’

She spoke pragmatically, but Alessandro thought it sounded rather lonely—and sad. ‘And what about your farmhouse in the country?’ he asked, and she gave him a startled, uncertain look.

‘What about it?’

‘How are you going to find it, languishing in the city, translating poems?’

‘I’m not expecting to find it,’ she said after a moment. ‘Not like that. I won’t stumble upon it like...like the Prince did the bewitched castle in Sleeping Beauty, to name another fairy tale.’ She let out a laugh that held a note of longing.

‘You won’t? How, then?’ He wasn’t sure why he was pressing the point; did it matter to him if Liane found her fairy tale? The answer came instantly, absolutely. Yes. Yes, it did.

‘I suppose... I suppose it will find me. Somehow. Some day...’ Self-conscious now, she gave him a wry yet troubled look. ‘Don’t worry, I’m well aware life doesn’t actually work like that and I should probably go out and find it myself, hack down the thorns and storm the castle, as it were. But I’ve never been particularly adventurous.’

No, she’d simply supported her stepsister in her adventures. Of course he was entirely the wrong person to tell her to go have her adventures. Cut down the thorns, storm the castle, find the Prince and kiss him senseless. How could he tell her any of that when he hadn’t done it himself? When he’d told her, and convinced himself, that he didn’t believe in fairy tales, that love was nothing but pain and trouble and not worth even finding, never mind fighting for?

And yet, as they started back towards the hotel, he still wanted the fairy tale for Liane. Even though the thought caused him an almost agonising twist of jealousy and longing, he hoped she found her happily-ever-after...even if it could never be with him.