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The Reunion

The Reunion

Titel: The Reunion
Autoren: Amy Silver
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permanently wrapped around her shoulders.
    The entire character of the place was different in winter. It was so quiet. In summer, you would hear the clang of bells on cows, sheep bleating in the fields, tractors in the distance, birdsong. In winter there was nothing, the deepest calm interrupted on the rarest of occasions by the sound of a triporteur, one of those funny little three-wheeled vans, chugging past on the road below, or a sudden crackle from the fire, which always made her jump. It was unnerving, this silence, it rang in her ears. She had to put the radio on to drown it. And at night, she kept the radio on to drown out the other noises, the ones that kept her awake: wooden beams creaking, the wind in the trees behind, whispering or howling, the foxes with their horrible cries, like infants abandoned to the elements.
    You could smell the cold. In summer, the air was full of the scent of the lavender and rosemary that grew in the beds along the front of the house. There used to be climbing roses, too, although they were gone now. The essence of wood smoke remained, of course, but underneath that was something else, damp, untouched, the smell of cold stone, like a tomb. The quality of the light was also different. She remembered the house as it was in July, all the windows and doors flung open, shutters hooked back, sunshine streaming in along with the scent of the flowers and herbs. Now it felt as though there were parts of each room which light never touched, as though she were living in permanent shadow.
    And there were ghosts. No neighbours (Villefranche, the nearest village, population 1,489, was a five-minute drive down the mountain; further up, there was nothing but shepherd’s huts and, much further on, a farmhouse or two). Only ghosts. They sat around the kitchen table, they searched for firewood in the stand of trees behind the house, gently caressed Jen’s shoulder blade when she stood at the mirror in the bathroom brushing her teeth. There was Conor, standing on a ladder, stripped to the waist, hammering nails into a beam, Natalie and Lilah sunning themselves on the lawn out front, Andrew listening to the World Service in the kitchen, Dan sitting on the dry stone wall with his notebook, cigarette dangling from his lower lip.
    And now, this afternoon, weather permitting, they’d be back for real, those of them that could make it. And in her mind they would be exactly the same. People don’t really change that much, do they? Her own life had been turned upside down, once, twice, three times, and she still felt pretty much the same as she had when she was twenty-one. A little worn around the edges, rounder and slower, but essentially not much different. The same convictions, the same passions – she still loved words and language, Offenbach, sailing; she loved the sea but hated beaches; she loved dogs but not the ones Parisians have, the ones that fit into handbags. She wasn’t sure whether this was a failing or something to be proud of, this sameness. She liked to think of it as suggesting a certain strength of character, but sometimes she wondered if it just meant she was stuck.
    She was nervous, she couldn’t settle. Now, arrivals imminent, she almost wished it
would
snow. She was suddenly frightened, to think of them all, here in France, making their way here, to her. There was no going back. She felt a flutter in her belly, butterflies or baby, she wasn’t sure. She couldn’t escape the feeling that she might have made a terrible mistake. She went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of red, trying not to feel guilty about it. After all, she’d been in this country the best part of twenty years, and French women think nothing of it.
    A couple of hundred miles south, in a hotel room in Nice, a skinny girl lay on a bed, propped up against the headboard, her long blonde hair not quite covering her breasts. She watched her lover haphazardly throwing clothes into a suitcase.
    ‘You should stay tonight,’ the blonde girl said. ‘It’s going to be snowing in the mountains and you’ll get stuck on the roads. Stay with me.’ As she said this, she raised her left knee slightly and, grasping the sheet which covered her between her toes, pulled it a little lower, exposing a few inches more of her pale flesh. Her teeth grazed her lower lip. Her eyes held his. Dan laughed.
    ‘I can’t stay, Claudia, my friend’s expecting me. In any case your plane leaves at
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