"So, tell me about you, then."

It was late evening, and Sandra sat with Max in the small French restaurant they'd discovered in Victoria, on a table by the window looking out into the greyish blue haze of London in the evening. She felt as though she'd been talking all night, because he asked her so much about herself that she was sure that he now knew her better than she herself did, and now she wanted to be the one listening and asking, whilst swilling the information he handed to her down with the bottle of expensive white wine they'd ordered. Usually, Sandra Pullman was not a woman able to be wined and dined this easily, but with Max, it felt natural; as if this was all she should ever have been doing.

"I lived in Landes when I was young, then Saint-Tropez, where I met my wife, Isabelle," he began, and Sandra almost choked on her wine at the second part of the sentence, remembering just how many times she'd heard about her lovers' wives over the years as she'd acted as an incredibly effective catalyst for breaking up people's relationships, "We moved to Paris after a year or so, where I started working as a detective, and we had children..."

"Children?" she interrupted, noticing her hand shaking involuntarily; the wine rippling in the glass as if there was a minor earthquake occurring. She didn't want to know how much he missed his wife; how he thought she reminded him of her; how his children would love her. She wanted him to understand that she wasn't the woman who was able to cope with suddenly having someone else's children thrust upon her, because frankly, she didn't think she was grown up enough for that, as she'd had to tell so many men in the past.

"Yes," he paused momentarily, running a hand through his thick, dark hair and frowning slightly, as if he knew that the explanation of his family would probably scare her off, "Inès, my daughter, she's nineteen, studying fashion design in New York. And Xavier, my son, he's twenty-three and a lawyer in Paris." He looked into Sandra's eyes for a second, reading her thoughts as he'd learnt to do over the years, before pulling his wallet out of the pocket of his jeans and rifling through it, then taking two crumpled Polaroid pictures out and passing them to Sandra.

The first photo was a few years old; depicting a slightly younger looking Max with his arm around a raven-haired young girl of about sixteen, presumably Inès, with long, slender limbs and a beautiful, sculpted face, with tanned skin and her father's deep blue-green eyes. The pair were sat at a restaurant table outside, the sea behind them as they smiled into the camera and the sun set behind them. The second photo was slightly newer, and showed a young man in graduation robes stood grinning next to Inès and Max in the courtyard of a university. He was handsome; the spitting image of his father who stood proudly behind him, squinting slightly in the bright sunlight as the moment was captured. Sandra thought to herself that Max looked like the proudest man alive in that photo; happy with his two children who both so clearly adored him. She didn't think that she could bear to intrude on that, cold-hearted as she'd always been.

"Isabelle and I split up when Inès was five and Xavier about nine." Max interrupted her thoughts, taking a sip of the wine, "She moved back to Saint-Tropez with the children, and her new man... Pierre, I think his name is. Anyway, Xav had a huge argument with him when he was about sixteen and next thing I know, he and Inès got a train up to Paris and I came home to find them sat on my doorstep."

"Really?"

"Yes. To this day, he won't tell me how he paid for the tickets, but anyway. Isabelle wasn't happy when I had to phone her, but Xavier wouldn't go back, so neither would Inès. I had to sleep on the floor for a month because I only had a one bedroom apartment at the time," he laughed, his eyes glinting and the tanned skin of his face crinkling slightly, "They stayed with me until they left to study, so Xavier stayed a year, Inès five. We're very close, really - they don't want to see their mother, and as far as I know, she's not spoken to them pretty much since they left, so I suppose I'm the person they come to."

"You miss them, then?"

"Yes... and no. It's nice to have some peace and quiet now and then, you know?" he laughed, and she did, too; her ice blue eyes sparkling in the light coming from the small candle in the centre of the table, smiling at the touch of his hand encasing hers in a way she'd never quite found comfortable with other men.

"So where do you live in Paris, then?"

"Just by the river, in the east. It's a big apartment, for Paris - the only problem is that I told Inès and Xav to decorate it whilst I was in London, so I think it's probably painted orange now. Inès has a sort of... eclectic taste, I think you'd probably say. I, on the other hand, used the same shade of paint all the way through the last apartment."

Sandra laughed, picking up her wine glass and twirling it in her right hand idly; looking down at the tablecloth like she'd never seen anything more interesting. She'd never wanted children when she was younger, but now she felt as if she'd perhaps missed out in never having a family. Not that she thought she'd have exactly been Mother of the Year, but perhaps it would have been nice to have someone who, despite everything, would always be a part of her - with no real family to speak of, she'd never had that.

The conversation carried on; anecdotes shared and numerous bottles of wine emptied. Sandra had never felt quite so lost - usually when she was with men, she was focused purely on sex, but she actually gave a shit about Max's life (for want of a better phrase), and found herself fascinated by the stories he recalled and the facts about himself and his family, committing every tiny detail to her memory as if she was reading a case file.

"Sandra, when you take this new job, do you want to stay with me in Paris? I mean... don't feel that you have to, but it's just probably easier with the job and... us."

Us. That was a word that usually made her run a mile. "Us" implied that it was more than sex. "Us" meant that they had feelings. "Us" meant love; a concept she hadn't really grasped fully, despite her numerous relationships. That was the problem; she didn't know exactly how to love him.

"Yeah. I would." she responded quietly, a small smile on her face as she felt his intense eyes focus on her and a blush crept across her cheekbones. She glanced up, regarding his handsome smile from across the table and realising that, if she could make this work... this "us"... then she'd be the luckiest woman in the world.

But that was a big "if".

This isn't a oneshot, but I'm not sure how much time I'm going to have to update it - I have mocks in January in all 5 of my AS subjects, then my Biology, Chemistry and Physics ISAs, then my real AS exams, so I'm pretty stretched for time at the moment! I'll hopefully be able to update a couple of my other stories over Christmas, but I can't promise.

Sinéad x