with students shouting to be heard over the general clamour, the union had been taken over by commercial food outlets and resembled a miniature food hall. Formerly the hub of the university, this place with its efficient renovations was now almost deserted, and hovering in the sedate space an echo of something lost. Ava found the nearest exit and hurried outside.
She walked past mostly familiar buildings and soon her face was prickling with warmth. There was a gorgeous pull on her thighs, she sprang from stride to stride in her cushiony shoes, she removed her hat and shoved it in her pocket and pushed herself forward in one of those floating moments when all which makes a responsible, civilised human being is legitimately switched off â like in meditation, or listening to music, or playing pinball, or the third drink alone. Harry had at last found a job he loved, her best friends were just a phone call away, and the weight of Fleur was finally shifting. Now she would start working again.
Ever since she and Harry had returned to Australia, she had struggled to hold Fleur locked in memory, but despite her efforts there had been a steady oozing through the cracks. She knew that the end of the affair had been a good thing, but it was good in an abstract moral sense, just as the affair itself had been bad in the same abstract moral sense; but neither the affair nor its ending had settled calmly in the far-from-abstract beat of her heart. She had tried to be disciplined â she truly wanted to forget. The early years of passion and pleasure could not be revisited, the cards and letters could not bereread, the box filled with all those silly treasures lovers keep could not be opened. Because of the pain, all of the good â and there had been so much good â had been put in storage along with the rest. Throw it all out, Ava had told herself when she was packing up the house in Oxford, throw this stuff out. But she couldnât. Not the letters nor mementoes, and not her own diaries with their predilection for misery, pages of detailed yet incredulous accounts of Fleurâs neglect, pages more of her own pathetic crawlings â no humiliation was too much to keep Fleur in her life. All these welts and wails were as impossible to read now as the love letters which had preceded them.
But the work had been marvellous. In the six years before meeting Fleur there had been two novels; then came the extraordinary rush of four novels in seven years. âIâm your muse,â Fleur said after the first of the four was finished. âYouâre my muse,â Ava said again and again during the writing of the next three. And so Fleur had been; how else to interpret the drone of the past two years? Ava had turned in desperation to the two novels written before she met Fleur, searching for evidence that she could write without her. And while she had read the novels with both pleasure and relief â if she could do it then, she could do it again â it was only now, after last nightâs reunion, that she knew she actually would.
For the first time since the end of the relationship she felt no need to steer clear of her Fleur tokens, no need to cover the page in her diary when Harry came into the room, no need to visit surreptitiously the file of Fleurâs old emails. No need to avoid the huge store of inflammable memories and keepsakes, no need to lie.
And yet secrets formed the fabric of a life like hers. Not simply the failed childhood shoved into a crate and weldedshut, not simply Fleur, a parallel marriage if ever there was one, but a cache of secrets added to throughout her forty-five years, hidden in memory, in diaries, in a bale of documents. Secrets enrich a life, she truly believed this, and without them life becomes a thin bedraggled affair. But secrets require unwavering vigilance, to be loyal to them can be exhausting.
She wondered how many of her secrets had leaked out. Who, for example,
She walked past mostly familiar buildings and soon her face was prickling with warmth. There was a gorgeous pull on her thighs, she sprang from stride to stride in her cushiony shoes, she removed her hat and shoved it in her pocket and pushed herself forward in one of those floating moments when all which makes a responsible, civilised human being is legitimately switched off â like in meditation, or listening to music, or playing pinball, or the third drink alone. Harry had at last found a job he loved, her best friends were just a phone call away, and the weight of Fleur was finally shifting. Now she would start working again.
Ever since she and Harry had returned to Australia, she had struggled to hold Fleur locked in memory, but despite her efforts there had been a steady oozing through the cracks. She knew that the end of the affair had been a good thing, but it was good in an abstract moral sense, just as the affair itself had been bad in the same abstract moral sense; but neither the affair nor its ending had settled calmly in the far-from-abstract beat of her heart. She had tried to be disciplined â she truly wanted to forget. The early years of passion and pleasure could not be revisited, the cards and letters could not bereread, the box filled with all those silly treasures lovers keep could not be opened. Because of the pain, all of the good â and there had been so much good â had been put in storage along with the rest. Throw it all out, Ava had told herself when she was packing up the house in Oxford, throw this stuff out. But she couldnât. Not the letters nor mementoes, and not her own diaries with their predilection for misery, pages of detailed yet incredulous accounts of Fleurâs neglect, pages more of her own pathetic crawlings â no humiliation was too much to keep Fleur in her life. All these welts and wails were as impossible to read now as the love letters which had preceded them.
But the work had been marvellous. In the six years before meeting Fleur there had been two novels; then came the extraordinary rush of four novels in seven years. âIâm your muse,â Fleur said after the first of the four was finished. âYouâre my muse,â Ava said again and again during the writing of the next three. And so Fleur had been; how else to interpret the drone of the past two years? Ava had turned in desperation to the two novels written before she met Fleur, searching for evidence that she could write without her. And while she had read the novels with both pleasure and relief â if she could do it then, she could do it again â it was only now, after last nightâs reunion, that she knew she actually would.
For the first time since the end of the relationship she felt no need to steer clear of her Fleur tokens, no need to cover the page in her diary when Harry came into the room, no need to visit surreptitiously the file of Fleurâs old emails. No need to avoid the huge store of inflammable memories and keepsakes, no need to lie.
And yet secrets formed the fabric of a life like hers. Not simply the failed childhood shoved into a crate and weldedshut, not simply Fleur, a parallel marriage if ever there was one, but a cache of secrets added to throughout her forty-five years, hidden in memory, in diaries, in a bale of documents. Secrets enrich a life, she truly believed this, and without them life becomes a thin bedraggled affair. But secrets require unwavering vigilance, to be loyal to them can be exhausting.
She wondered how many of her secrets had leaked out. Who, for example,
Similar Books
