Soft Limits Read online

I think about how shameless Mona is about putting herself forward when she wants a job. It even works now and then. I still want to strangle her for sending him my fan fiction, but I know she was only trying to help.

  Taking a deep breath, I say, “It’s a yes to talking about it.”

  Chapter Four

  Frederic

  “Just so you know, I thought about it and I’m not going to take the job.”

  Surprised, I look up from the menu at Evie. We’ve been sitting down in the restaurant for about thirty seconds. The waiter hasn’t even had time to bring bread yet. She’s looking at me with a mixture of defiance and awkwardness that’s so cute I have to bite down on a smile.

  Laying the menu down, I say, “Oh? Why is that?”

  The evening is still very hot and she’s twisted her hair up off her neck, though it’s blessedly cool inside the air-conditioned restaurant. Her pale blue dress reveals her creamy shoulders and there are small silver hoops in her ears. The effect is simple, but attractive.

  “I don’t want to sound rude but it’s occurred to me that you want someone inexperienced to write your biography so you can boss them about and control what they say about you.”

  I’m surprised, wondering where she could have got that idea. It’s not that I don’t think people would do that, I just wonder what has given her the impression that I would. Sometimes silence is more effective than words so I let hers hang in the air.

  After a moment, she says, “I guess that did sound rude, huh?”

  Little bit, chérie. “Any other concerns?”

  “No,” she says, but her voice goes up at the end. “All right, yes. You’re about to start work on a new show so I doubt you even have time for lengthy interviews about your life.”

  Her hands are working in her lap as if she’s twisting her napkin. I wait, sensing there’s still more.

  “And I don’t think you really want your biography written at all. It was someone else’s idea and you’re going along with it. You’re not much fussed who writes it.”

  Ah, her sister will have passed this tidbit on, based on the conversation she overheard between myself and Anton. Dear Mona doesn’t seem to have much tact. “That’s a lot of reasons. And I was trying to decide between the steak tartare and the Dover sole.” I take a sip of water, looking at her. “If you have such grave concerns I wonder why you agreed to come at all.”

  Evie scrunches her nose, rueful. “Well, I didn’t have them, not right away, and then...and then I thought there’d be air-conditioning and I wanted to get away from my sisters for the evening.”

  With the straightest face I can manage, I say, “That’s the most flattering reason a young lady has ever given to have dinner with me. Shall we put it in the book?”

  She gives me a sheepish grin. “Sorry. It’s hot and they’re tiring.”

  I wonder if I should feel annoyed. But though we’re here to discuss the book, in a roundabout way she’s taking my mind off it and the complicated mess of feelings I have about it, so I don’t mind at all if to her I’m no more than a respite from the heat and her sisters. She’s a respite from Anton’s probing questions. “You do realize that not all of your concerns can be true. Either I want to boss you about, I don’t have time or I don’t want the book to be written. It can’t be all three.”

  She leans forward. “Which is it?”

  “In fact, none of them are true. Now, let’s stop talking about the damn book and just eat, shall we? What looks good?”

  Evie takes ordering very seriously, chattering through the options, agonizing over what to have. I watch her, amused, noting how different she is at this dinner table than the one at her home. She was like this in the garden, too, before Mona came along and embarrassed her—at ease and talkative. I guess that she’s at ease now because she’s decided that she’s not going to take the job, and she doesn’t know yet that I’m going to change her mind.

  While we eat she tells me about her studies, carefully excising from the discussion, I note, any books that she’s written stories about or that I’m connected with. When we’re not speaking her eyes dart around the restaurant curiously, and every now and then she leans across the table to whisper, “The couple in their fifties over there, do you think it’s a first date?” or “The waiter with sandy hair, he looks so unhappy, and the barman keeps giving him sad looks. Do you think they’ve had a row?” She watches me from beneath her lashes as I effect a casual glance in the direction she’s indicated before turning back to give my opinion. As we play this little game I think of the dolls she sews, and I find it charming, her tendency for make-believe and stories.

  I wait for dessert to arrive before I say, “We need to talk about the book now, Evie.”

  She’s got a spoonful of chocolate fondant in her mouth, and her face falls. The spoon gets put back on the plate. “Oh. I was enjoying that.”

  “You eat the chocolate, I’ll talk. Go on.” She doesn’t look happy, but resumes eating.

  “All your concerns about the job are legitimate ones,” I tell her. “You don’t have the sort of experience that the publisher will expect. I am about to start rehearsals for a show and I have some recording commitments in Paris next week as well. And you’re right, I haven’t been keen on the idea of the book from the start. But despite all that, I do think the book needs to be written now, and I want you to do it.”

  She puts down her spoon again and sits back, contemplating me. “Why?”

  “Why? Well, it needs to be written now because it’s the right time in my career, and I want you to do it because of Sabine.”

  Her eyebrows shoot up. “Who’s Sabine?”

  “Sabine Montrechet. She’s a famous singer, retired now, and my mentor when I was just starting out. She took me under her wing when I was an unknown and awkward nineteen-year-old and made me into a name. I’m the same age now as she was then, so there is a nice synchronicity to it, do you see?”

  All this is true, but I’m still holding back the main reason why it has to be now. This is not the height of my career. This is the end of my career. The end of my power and influence. If I want to help someone like Sabine helped me, then it has to be now. Any hint of a voice condition and you become a leper in the musical world. Damaged goods. If it gets out that—

  But I mentally shake myself. It’s not going to get out because you’re not going to tell anyone, no matter who they are.

  “And you want to do the same for me?” she asks, doubtful.

  “Not precisely. I’m not a writer and I don’t have influence or expert knowledge of that world, but I can bestow an opportunity. Sabine coached me, but she also persuaded a director to cast me in my first lead role, and the rest, well...” I open my hands, palms up.

  Evie still looks wary and I realize with a pang I’m not convincing her. What can I say, apart from the truth, to show her that I’m sincere?

  I think for a moment. “Evie. It’s very important to me that I do this. I’ve thought about it a lot lately. I’m not a religious person but I feel that this is something I owe to a higher power, or the energies that cycle throughout the universe. That’s the best way I can explain it.”

  I wonder if she’s going to laugh at me, but she says, “Sort of like you want to pay it forward, the chance she gave you?”

  “Yes. That’s exactly it.” A young singer would have been the more obvious choice, someone like Mona. But I don’t like Mona. I like Evie, perhaps because she reminds me a little of myself at that age. What she needs most is some confidence and space to find out who she is. If I can give her that and finish my career with one more show, then I’ll slide into obscurity a satisfied man. Not a happy man. I don’t expect so much.

  “All right,” she says slowly. “I believe you have sincere motivations. But I have reservations about the job itself. Questions.”r />
  I try not to look as smug as I feel as I pour the last of the water into our glasses. Details can be gotten around. I’ve already won the battle. “Tell me.”

  She sits up a little straighter as if she’s on firmer ground now. “I don’t speak French. You’re Canadian. Surely you want it written in French first.”

  “An English-language version can be written first and then translated into French. I imagine it will be translated into Russian, German and Czech too, at least for starters. Good markets and good royalties for you.”

  “Ghostwriters don’t get royalties,” she points out.

  “You wouldn’t be a ghostwriter. You’d be the biographer, your name would be on the cover and you’d get an advance and a percentage of sales. Worldwide sales.”

  She bites the inside of her cheek as this sinks in.

  “You look like you could use a brandy,” I say, smiling, and flag down a waiter.

  When the brandy balloons are placed in front of us, she looks at the amber liquor for a long time. “I don’t want you to think I’m mercenary and it’s not that my family’s hard up, as you’ve seen. But I’ve been supporting myself independently for a few years now. It’s very important to me, and maybe you remember that being an independent student means being a poor student. I’ve been very worried about what happens next.”

  “It’s not mercenary to want to support yourself.” I swirl the glass on the tablecloth. “Out of interest, do you plan on writing other people’s stories all your life, or some of your own?”

  Her eyes flick up and something hardens in them. I seem to have hit a sensitive spot. Good. I’ll work on that later.

  She ignores my question and says, “I’d ask you all sorts of personal questions. I’d go to people who know you and have known you and ask them to tell me about all the great and terrible things you’ve done. Are you prepared for that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anything that’s off-limits?”

  Yes. “For now, no. But I’ll wait to see what you dig up.”

  She gives me an assessing look, but says, “All right. Those are my concerns about you. Now some more general questions. I have a month before I have to be back at university. I also have one client whose book I’m finishing. I estimate that it needs another ten or fifteen hours’ work.”

  Ah yes, the Cold War book. “Do both. I won’t demand all your time.”

  “And you, what about your commitments?”

  “Rehearsals for Jane Eyre begin in London in three weeks. The show begins in October. I have to be back in Paris on Monday to do some recording, and you’re going to come with me.”

  She looks startled. “I am? Why?”

  I’m making this all up on the spot, but it just feels right, Evie coming to Paris. Nothing has seemed to go right for me for the last year, so I’m not letting this opportunity slip away. “Because I’ll be in Paris and you’ll have to interview me, and many people who know me well live in Paris. Sabine, for one.”

  The doubtful look is back. “And how would that work, practically speaking?”

  “I have a flat in the 4th arrondissement. A large one. You’d have a room and a study to yourself.” I can see she thinks this arrangement is unseemly. “Come now, we’re old family friends, in a way. And doesn’t it sound nice, summering in Paris?”

  “Perhaps,” she hedges.

  “It is nice. It’s why I live there. There are seven pâtisseries within five minutes of the flat, and all manner of bookshops and galleries and shows for you to spend your advance on.”

  I can see she likes the sound of this but she also wants to remain professional. “I’d want a contract.”

  “Of course.”

  She studies the tablecloth as if she’s searching desperately for more obstructions or doubts. It’s a big undertaking for her, but a big opportunity as well. Come on, Evie, be brave.

  Lifting the brandy balloon, she says, with a wobbly but excited smile, “All right. I’m in.”

  Pleasure surges through me. Not only will I be able to tell Martin that the book will be going ahead, but I’ll know that these last months of my public life will change Evie’s life for the better. What I was given won’t die with my career.

  “Good girl. Merci beaucoup. I mean that.”

  Evie finishes her brandy while I pay the check, and then we head out of the restaurant together. Something giddy has come over her, and when the night air touches her face she yanks out the clip holding up her hair and it tumbles around her shoulders. “It’s cooled down finally!”

  It’s such an ingenuous gesture and she turns to me with a delighted smile. I remember the beautiful, submissive passages she wrote about being whipped, and I almost reach out to her, wanting to taste the gloss on her lips. Wanting to ask her if she’s ever experienced it. If she likes it. It’s a moment before I realize that two cabs have slid past, and I flag the next one down.

  Opening the door for her, I say, “Are you sure? I haven’t been too pushy, have I? I’ve been told I can be rather demanding.”

  She thinks for a moment, and turns her face up to mine and squares her shoulders. “‘I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.’”

  A slow smile spreads over my face as I recognize the quote. “And I thought you didn’t like Jane Eyre.”

  Evie gives a decisive nod—I wonder if the quote was a test, to see how seriously I take my work—and then gets into the waiting cab. I step in after her, thinking that she needn’t worry about that. I take everything I do very, very seriously.

  Chapter Five

  Evie

  Frederic is waiting for me in the Eurostar ticket hall at St Pancras International. He’s got a cabin bag standing at his side and is looking fresh and neat in a collared shirt and dark jacket. When he sees me coming across the hall he breaks into a smile.

  “Bonjour, mademoiselle. Êtes-tu prêt pour nos aventure estivale?” He kisses both my cheeks and takes my suitcase from me.

  Coming up on the train from Oxford this morning I felt strangely nervous and hearing his smooth, incomprehensible French makes me panic. “Oh, god. You know I don’t speak French.” I’m trying, though. I downloaded an app and have been saying blanc and pomme and nous avons into it since the morning after Frederic and I had dinner. I learned some German at high school but I’ve never been good with other languages.

  But he just smiles. “I’m teasing. If you can point at a croissant, you’ll be fine. Shall we?”

  Despite my nerves about the book and the suddenness of the trip to Paris, it feels good to get away from Oxford for the first time in nearly a year. I love the city and the surrounds and my parentsʼ house, but so many recent memories are of the time I spent there with Adam. He has a flat near the university and I can’t think of it without remembering all those times I cried after we made love, sometimes in secret, other times while he looked on, perplexed. For heaven’s sake, Evie. What’s the matter this time? And later, worse, Don’t you think you should see someone about this? It wasn’t craziness or a bad experience that made me cry, but I still don’t know what did.

  “Evie?” Frederic has stood up. “We’re boarding.”

  “Oh! Right.”

  I’ve taken the Eurostar before but I still look with pleasure at the blue, grey and yellow carriages stretching along the platform and the travelers strolling with their cabin bags. There’s something leisurely about train travel, and I love the fact that in less than three hours we’ll get off this same train in the center of Paris.

  Frederic finds our seats. “Here we are. Would you like the window?”

  It’s a beautiful sunny day and I want to watch the rolling fields of England turn into the French countryside. I grin at him. “Yes, please.”

  The business class carriage
is spacious and muted, and is dotted here and there with solo travelers, a few couples and a young family. They have twin boys in matching outfits, and one watches me solemnly while he gnaws on a carrot stick.

  My stomach gives a lurch as we pull out of the station. Frederic’s reading emails on his phone, and I watch some unlovely subterranean parts of the city slip by, illuminated now and then by bright daylight overhead. The train crawls at a snail’s pace out into the cramped southern suburbs and then picks up speed.

  Finally Frederic tucks his phone into his pocket and turns to me. “So. Tell me what you’ve been doing since I saw you.”

  Our dinner was on Friday night, and early Saturday morning he took a train back to London as he had some meetings about his upcoming show. It seems he told Lisbet, the only other person stirring at seven in the morning, that I was accompanying him to Paris on Monday, and then disappeared with a mysterious smile. Lisbet asked everyone about it as they drifted downstairs but of course nobody knew what she was talking about.

  When she saw me, Mona screeched and grabbed my arm, asking if I was having an affair with Frederic now because that was the only explanation she could come up with for me going to Paris.

  “Don’t be stupid. It’s work, of course. I’m writing his biography.”

  “Ohhh,” Therese said, suddenly understanding, and poured me a cup of tea from the pot. “Of course.” And she sounded quite disappointed.

  Dad sort of blinked when I told him about the biography, but covered his surprise quickly. Mum, to whom I’ve shown drafts of earlier books and who read them with interest, gave a decisive nod. “Wonderful idea. You’ll do an excellent job.”

  “I had my last interview with Mrs. Müller and transcribed it,” I tell him. “I wanted to do as much as possible to get that job finished before we left London. It still needs some work, though.”

  We’re interrupted by an attendant offering me refreshments. In French. “Um—”

  “Mademoiselle est anglaise,” Frederic says to the woman. Turning to me, he asks, “Tea?”