Soft Limits Read online

  Leading Man Hid Voice Condition From British Agent, Director

  Frederic d’Estang Retreats To Paris After London Show Shame

  Dad has been hounded by journalists for angry sound bites but all he said to one was that “his thoughts are with Frederic during this difficult time and he’s certain that the singer regrets the way things turned out.” He’s been framed as a wronged party by the press but Martin, Frederic’s Canadian agent, didn’t get off so lightly. Once he admitted that he knew about Frederic’s condition but “didn’t realize how dire it had become,” the reporting became snide and disbelieving and he was accused of avarice and professional shortsightedness.

  Frederic hasn’t spoken one word to any journalists, though perhaps he can’t speak, still. I’ve read up on Reinke’s edema, the condition Dad said Frederic has. My blood turned cold when I read the treatment directions. Elimination of the cause of the disorder is essential to successful treatment. All those heated arguments between Frederic and Giselle; the careful way Marion spoke about wanting him to slow down; the tense look on Frederic’s face as I asked him what came next in his career. All the signs that something was badly wrong were there, and I didn’t see them. As his biographer I had his life handed to me on a plate but I didn’t suspect a thing. I’m so stupid. So fucking stupid.

  I roll my head on the pillow away from them. “I’m fine. Just tired.”

  My sisters sigh, and sit a while longer looking at my averted face. Then they slink away. I hear them whispering to each other outside my door. “...upset after Adam, but not like this...” “...fell in love with him so quickly. How could he be so callous when he knew she had a huge crush...”

  They think I got hurt because I had some persistent fan-girl crush that Frederic took advantage of. I muffle a groan with my pillow. If only it had been that.

  On the days I have to run tutorials and meet with my supervisor I stay at the university, but the other days—the days I used to spend with Frederic—I come home. Not for the company, because I don’t want to talk to anyone, but because it’s easier to be miserable at home without having to explain why. The less people I have to endure the better.

  But I should have realized that Mona and Therese would only let me wallow for so long. Three days later they’re back, and they’re done being gentle with me.

  “What were you doing, practicing cannibalism together?” Mona exclaims, standing over me with her arms folded. “You’re not going to shock us by what you say, you know. We’re not a couple of old maids. Whatever happened between you and Frederic, it will help to talk about it.”

  Therese nods. “We just want to help. Talk to us.”

  “There’s nothing to help with. I just need time,” I croak. A few thousand years ought to do it.

  Mona glares at me, and then her face crumples. I stare at her, and something finally pierces my fog. Shock. I never see her cry. She’s the strong one, the flippant one, the ice queen. She doesn’t need anything from anyone. I wish I was more like her. But here she is, crying. “Mona, what’s wrong?”

  She swipes at the tears on her face and says angrily, “I’m worried about you, you idiot. What do you think is wrong? You were miserable after Adam, whatever happened with him, and I thought, well, that’s that. You’ll choose better in the future. Get wiser. But here you are fading away to nothing over Frederic, only it’s worse, and you still won’t tell us why.”

  Therese jumps, because Mona has bellowed this last bit at the top of her voice. My heart aches as I didn’t realize how upset this was making her. But what can I do? I feel sick just thinking about Frederic and I, let alone speaking about it.

  She takes a deep breath and goes on in a more reasoned tone of voice. “We don’t need to know all the gory details. Just tell us what’s wrong, please. It’s awful seeing you like this.”

  The despairing note in her voice does me in. I press my hands over my face and think. I should at least tell them something. They’re my sisters and they’re clearly worried about me. “All right. But not here.”

  I lead them down to the bottom of the garden, me still in pajamas but with a sweater on top because the evenings have grown chilly. We sit cross-legged in a triangle on the grass in the orchard, hidden from the house by the redbrick garden wall. The shadows are long on the ground and the sunlight is the color of overripe apricots.

  “Did you know about Frederic’s voice problem?” Therese asks.

  I tug on blades of grass with my fingers and listen to them snap. “No. He didn’t tell me, and I didn’t guess.”

  Mona winces. “That’s awful. Did he ever try to tell you, do you think?”

  Did he? He was so good at hiding his thoughts and feelings from me but I thought he only did it when he was worried about being too sexually intense with me. There were times when he hesitated, when he seemed like he wanted to say more. But I could just be reading things that weren’t really there into those moments. “I don’t know. Maybe. If he did he didn’t try very hard.”

  Silence stretches between us, and the expressions on my sisters’ faces tell me everything I need to know: they won’t say “I told you so,” because it would be too cruel given how upset I am. But they’re thinking it. It has all ended in tears, but it’s not for the reason they suppose.

  My voice is tired and heavy when I finally speak. “You think I had some adoring crush on Frederic, the performer, and that he took advantage of me. It wasn’t like that. Living with him...” I think back to the ease of our days together, the way we talked and shared things. “I didn’t see him as famous Frederic d’Estang, I saw him as...” Daddy. I squeeze my eyes shut against the pain.

  Daddy, how could you do this to me? I need you and you aren’t here.

  “Oh, Evie, it’s all right, you don’t have to talk anymore.”

  But I wave Mona away, needing to get it out. “He and I shared something very special, and it needed a lot of trust. I put a lot of trust in him.” I spread my hands, looking down at them as if they contain all the hurt and betrayal that I feel. My sisters are probably wondering what I mean exactly by “something very special,” but they get the point: I trusted him to be careful with me, and he wasn’t.

  Therese snorts. “Well, whatever he did, I’m glad his career is over. If it wasn’t we’d make Dad fire him.”

  I can’t share in her vitriol because despite everything he’s done, all the pain he’s caused, my feelings haven’t changed. I still love Frederic. I wish I didn’t. I wish these feelings would go away, but beneath the layers of pain and anger I can still feel my love for him.

  “What’s going to happen about the book?” Mona asks.

  I wince. I’d forgotten about the book. The unfinished manuscript is languishing on my laptop and the contract is filed with the publisher, promising that I’ll complete it. “I don’t know. Maybe it’ll get canceled after what’s happened.”

  “Good,” mutters Therese. She looks angry, but Mona seems like she hasn’t made up her mind how she feels about things yet.

  She chews her lip for a moment, and then says, “Dad says he was in denial about the whole thing. That he never came to terms with the fact that his voice wouldn’t recover, which is why he ploughed on when he should have stopped. What do you think, Evie?”

  It’s hard to disentangle my feelings about Frederic with the things that he’s done. I remember the hours he spent at the studio in Paris and at the piano when he wasn’t recording. Did he use me as just another way of avoiding what he wouldn’t face? I want to hate him like Therese does, and put down his actions to his selfishness and villainy, as if he really is the Gothic antihero he was so good at portraying. But remembering how tense he was those last weeks, how haunted, I realize he was afraid. Who would he be if he couldn’t sing? Like Rochester in his manic need to marry Jane, Frederic was driven to villainy by his passions.

&
nbsp; “Yes, I think he was in denial. But it doesn’t matter if he meant to hurt people or not. He did, and now he’s gone.” I stand up, brushing the torn blades of grass from my pajama bottoms and heading for the house, my feet dragging as I go. “Let’s not talk about it anymore, okay?”

  * * *

  “Evie! Telephone.”

  I peel myself off the garden chair and slink inside, wondering who on earth could be calling me on the house phone. It’s Thursday and I’m exhausted, having spent three days fielding plaintive questions from undergrads about their essays and stern questions from my supervisor about my thesis. I haven’t turned a corner with it like I had planned to; in fact I feel on the verge of packing it all in. The only thing that’s stopping me is the knowledge that everything seems a hundred times harder because of the Frederic fallout. I’ll push through it to the other side and things will start to get easier again.

  I will push through soon, won’t I?

  Taking the phone from Mona, I hold the receiver to my ear and hear a heavily accented voice say, “Allo? Mademoiselle Bell?” It’s a woman’s voice, somewhat familiar but I can’t place it.

  “Yes, this is she.”

  “Ah, Dieu merci, I ‘ave been at my wits’ end wondering what to do, and then I thought, Mademoiselle Bell, she is the one who can fix this.”

  Suddenly I recognize the emphatically French voice. It’s Sabine Montrechet, Frederic’s former mentor. Fear clenches my belly. “What’s wrong? Is it Frederic?”

  “Oui, c’est Frederic. He’s fallen apart.”

  Even after all these weeks of cold silence it’s upsetting to think of Frederic suffering. My waking thoughts are always of him, first to wonder how he’s coping with the loss of his voice, and then to question how he could have kept such a secret from me. I vacillate between sympathy and bitterness, each swing more tiring than the last.

  “I ‘ave never known him to be like this. He won’t see me. He won’t answer my emails or text messages.”

  “I’m sorry, but Frederic and I aren’t talking either.” We talk a great deal in my head. Or rather, I talk to him. I rail at him, scream at him, tear at him with my nails. I take great delight in clawing him because I know how he hates to be clawed. At other times I’m calmer, though no less miserable, and I ask him why he kept something so important from me at the same time he was making me feel so important. So cherished. Loved.

  But he never said I love you, did he? He was careful that way, staying within the boundaries of your agreement.

  Sabine’s voice goes up about an octave, becoming shrill. “‘E had the surgery on Monday. I am so very worried about him.”

  I clutch the phone tighter. “Surgery? What surgery?”

  Sabine explains that the edema on Frederic’s vocal cord grew so pronounced that he had to have microsurgery to correct it. I hear a clicking noise on the other end of the line as if she’s chewing her nails. “We won’t know for weeks how the operation went. He’s not able to speak a word while ‘e heals, but it is not like him to withdraw like this. He is a singer who can no longer sing. I am afraid for him, suffering alone. You are so close to ’im these days, can you not do something?”

  I protest that we’re not close at all these days, we had a falling out and we haven’t spoken in weeks. “Besides, I’m in London. What can I even do?”

  Sabine lets out a gusty, hopeless sigh. “I just thought... Oh, well, as you say, then. Au revoir.”

  I put down the phone, a sick, heavy feeling in my belly. It’s the right thing to do, isn’t it, to leave Frederic alone with this? No, of course it is. He has plenty of friends in Paris to worry about him. He’s made it very clear from his silence that he neither needs me nor wants me.

  I turn away and see Mona hovering in the doorway, having listened to the one-sided conversation. “What’s happened? Is it Frederic?”

  I give her a CliffsNotes version of the conversation. “So, yeah, he’s gone into hermit mode. Convalescing or something.”

  Mona bites her lip. “She’s right, he might talk to you. Well, not talk, but you know what I mean. Have you even texted him or anything since the play closed?”

  If I were a cat then my hackles would be rising about now. “Me? Why should I text him? He’s the one who didn’t take my call that night. He’s the one who fobbed me off with a stupid email and hasn’t contacted me since.”

  “Evie, his world had just fallen apart! He’s lost everything. Don’t you think you could offer just a little friendship? Why is this all about you?”

  I reel back like she’s struck me. “What the hell, Mona? Why are you on his side all of a sudden? You were practically casting curses over his name by moonlight a week ago.”

  Her face is pink with anger. “No, Therese was. I’ve been reading a lot about Frederic the last couple of days, all the terrible things people have been saying about him, and it’s got to me. I’m a singer, too. This could happen to me one day.”

  I march past her into the kitchen and yank open the fridge, gazing at the contents with unseeing, furious eyes. Mona’s supposed to be on my side.

  She follows me, not letting up. “He’s alone, Evie. He didn’t tell you about his voice, but he didn’t tell anyone, remember? I don’t think it was about keeping things from you. It wasn’t personal.”

  “Not personal?” The weight of all the things she doesn’t know press down on me. Suck your finger, baby. “Believe me, it was personal. Very personal. You don’t understand.”

  “No, actually, I think I do. That’s the point. You know my friend Jacqui? The one I took singing lessons with?”

  I vaguely remember someone called Jacqui, but give a non-committal grunt.

  “She was diagnosed with voice polyps eighteen months ago. She’s fine now, they’re gone, but can she get work? No, she’s stigmatized, even though her voice is perfect. She’s twenty-three and washed up. The singing world is goddamn brutal. We had a long talk about it yesterday and she apologized over and over for keeping secrets from me. I had to tell her to shut up in the end, I couldn’t bear it.”

  “You weren’t in love with Jacqui and seeing her every day. She never lied to your face.”

  Mona sucks in a breath. “Maybe not, but I see why she felt like she had to. People do funny things when they’re afraid of losing who they are. If you lost your hands and couldn’t write anymore, and you knew it would happen and kept it secret, I’d forgive you. Frederic was a singer, Evie. Don’t you get it?”

  I slam the fridge shut. She’s the one who doesn’t get it. She doesn’t know what it felt like to have been made vulnerable by him, stripped back to my very core, and then betrayed. What difference would it make if I texted him? He’s known Sabine for twenty years and he won’t talk to her.

  “Did you tell Frederic you loved him?”

  The invisible hackles go up again. “That’s completely different. That was my secret to keep.”

  “Oh? Your secret? Doesn’t that sound familiar. Now, who could I possibly be thinking about, someone who had a secret they felt was theirs to keep.” She taps her finger on her chin and pretends to think.

  “Shut up, Mona. It’s different and you know it. You’re my sister and of course if I lost my hands or something you’d be there for me.”

  “Yeah? Well, Frederic’s your friend and he’s lost everything. But fine, sit around and feel sorry for yourself instead. Have fun with that.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” I push past Mona and run upstairs. How dare she? She’s supposed to think of him only as Frederic the betrayer, not Frederic the singer deserving of sympathy. The sick feeling in my belly doubles, then triples. He is a betrayer and I don’t forgive him for what he did to me.

  My body moves but it’s divorced from my thoughts. Pulling my holdall from the top of the wardrobe I throw jeans and
jumpers and underwear into it.

  What the hell am I doing?

  I spy a row of Gothic novels on my bookshelf and sweep them all in: Northanger Abby, The Tennant of Wildfell Hall, The Castle of Otranto, The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Woman in White, and a half-dozen more besides.

  I still don’t know what I’m doing, but I open an app on my phone, request a cab, hit confirm and then stare at it, my mind finally catching up with my body. I packed. I booked a cab.

  Realization dawns. I’m going to Paris.

  * * *

  It’s half-past four when the car drops me outside Frederic’s flat in Le Marais. I spent the whole journey on the train—sensible, no-frills standard class, not the cushy business class seats that Frederic used to book for us—with a book open on my lap, staring unseeing out the window. What am I even doing? He hurt me. You don’t dash across to another country for someone who betrayed you. Where is your pride?

  But standing outside his building and looking at the front door, I realize this isn’t about being weak. It’s about being strong. I’m not going to lie down and take it like I did with Adam. I’m not going to be afraid of Frederic, or my feelings, or who I am. I’m going to face what happened between us.

  I’m going to face Frederic.

  Pressing the buzzer on his flat, I wait. Nothing happens. I press it again, and then twice more over the space of several minutes. Then I dig out my phone and text him.

  It’s me. Let me in.

  A second later the notification pops up: Read 16:37.

  Nothing happens. Go on, leave me on read again, I dare you, I think waspishly. If you do I will call the fire brigade and report a gas leak. Just try me.

  I stare at the screen, waiting for the three little dots to appear that mean he’s writing back, but they don’t. Anger blazes through me. You fucking bastard, I’ve come all the way from Oxford on the spur of the moment, and if you think you’re going to leave me—

  The street door opens and Frederic’s standing there, half a week’s beard roughening his face and a white bandage on his throat.