A Foreign Country

25

The first thing that François reacted to was Amelia’s beauty. He had not expected to find her so striking. Her remarkable appearance surprised him, because he had deliberately decided never to look at her photograph. Extraordinary dignity and strength of character in her face. She was elegantly dressed. The cut of her jacket brought out the fullness of her breasts and made her waist look slim and flat, as though she had never borne a child. He saw that she was wearing only basic make-up: a pale pink lipstick, light foundation, some definition around the eyes.

At first, because it was what he had decided on as the best course of action, he closed the door behind her and then reached out to shake her hand. Very quickly, however, he was drawing Amelia towards him into an embrace. She resisted this at first, and looked at him as though concerned that he might run off, like a frightened animal. He was touched by this. Her embrace, when it eventually came, was soft and hesitant, but as she reacted to the strength in his arms she squeezed much harder. She was not shaking, but he could sense that she was overwhelmed to be with him and he allowed her to rest her head briefly against his shoulder. François found that his own breathing was quick and lacked control, an irregularity that he put down to nerves.

‘Do you mind if we talk in French?’ he said, the line that he had practised and rehearsed many times.

‘Of course not!’ Amelia replied, and he heard the accuracy of her French, the flawless accent.

‘It’s just that I have never learned to speak English. I heard from the agency that you were fluent.’

‘Well, that was flattering of them. I’m a little rusty.’

He had rehearsed the next part, too. My mother is British, and the British like to drink tea. Offer to make her a cup. It will break the ice and it will give me something to do in the first awkward minutes. To François’ relief, Amelia accepted, and he led her through the small apartment to a kitchen that faced on to the street. He had already set out two cups and saucers and a bowl of brown sugar and could sense her watching him with forensic attention as he poured water into the kettle and retrieved a carton of milk from the fridge.

‘Would you like a biscuit?’

‘Thank you, no,’ she replied, a lovely open smile. She was so impressive to look at; what his grandfather would have called ‘sophistiquée’. He could see the euphoria in her eyes; she was trying hard to disguise it. He knew that she wanted to hold him again and to apologize for everything that she had done. Behind a British screen of nods and acknowledging smiles was a woman overwhelmed by the privilege of meeting him.

They spent the next four hours deep in conversation. To his surprise, Amelia told him almost immediately that she worked for SIS.

‘I can’t bear the idea of any lies coming between us,’ she explained. ‘Obviously it’s not something that I speak about very much.’

‘Of course.’ He was so surprised by her candour that he made a joke about it. ‘I guess it’s kind of cool to have a mother who’s like Jason Bourne.’

She had laughed at this, but he realized that he had acknowledged her biological role as his mother before he had meant to. It was not a mistake, but it was not how he had wanted the afternoon to proceed. He suspected that the secret Amelia had shared with him had been intended, from her point of view, as a bond between them, something that even François’ adopted parents had not known about her. And so it proved. Thereafter, he was surprised by how easy it was to talk to her. There were no awkward silences, no moments when he wished that she would leave so that he could be alone again in the apartment. They spoke about his career in I.T., they discussed the horror of the attacks in Egypt. Amelia appeared to be deeply sensitive to his loss, but she was not sentimental about it. He liked that. It showed that she had character.

In due course, he asked about Jean-Marc Daumal, but it transpired that Amelia knew very little about him. The last time I saw him, she said, was the night that I left the house. She confessed that in the face of near-constant temptation, particularly at the outset of her career, she had never run a trace on him, nor asked a colleague in Paris to peek into the French tax records.

‘They would do that?’ he asked.

‘They would do that,’ she told him.

Only once did he feel that she overstepped the mark, suggesting that their own reunion might be a precursor to François tracing his biological father, if indeed Jean-Marc was still alive.

‘More than anything,’ she said, ‘I want you to feel that you have people in your life who care very deeply for you, despite what has happened.’

He had felt that this was crass and pushy, but disguised his reaction.

‘Thank you,’ he said. They had been standing, so he had allowed her to embrace him again. He could not place her perfume; he had a vague recollection that one of the girls in his high school class had worn it to a party at which they had kissed.

‘I would very much like you to come to the funeral tomorrow,’ he said.

‘I would be honoured,’ Amelia had replied.

Later, after she had gone, despite the remarkable success of their first meeting, François’ overwhelming feeling had been one of exhaustion. This was only to be expected, he told himself. They were at the beginning of what he hoped would be a deep and rewarding relationship. In order to achieve that, he would be called upon to dig into reserves of strength and mental fortitude that were perhaps, at this stage, unknown even to him. It was part of the deal he had struck with himself. They were getting to know one another.