For the first week that he was back, she had haunted him. Everything reminded him of her. Even things that didn't remind him of her reminded him of her. The comfort of the drizzle reminded him of her because he knew that she wouldn't like it. The ordinariness of the plain clothes police officers reminded him of her because he knew that her bright clothing would have made her stick out like a sore thumb. The respect his colleagues afforded him because of his job title reminded him of her because he knew she would never have been so deferential.
He held out until the end of the week before he could bear it no longer. Waking on Saturday, the first of his days off, without the rush of work to prepare for, he felt truly alone for the first time since his return. He lay back and imagined her warmth against him, her tangle of hair and her breath tickling his skin. He felt the beginnings of lust stir within him and without thinking reached for his phone dialling her number. It rang once before he realised the time difference and quickly cut the line. His mistake had cost him his arousal. Resigning himself to a day on his own, unpacking his boxes from storage he was half out of bed when his phone sprung to life, the tone shrieking at him like a banshee. Four rings. Five rings. He debated whether to let it go to answer phone. Six rings. He picked up but didn't trust himself to speak.
"Hello?" Her voice, he hadn't quite realised until now just how much he had missed her voice. It was thick with sleep.
"Hi."
"Hi." Silence. He could imagine her frantically blinking her eyes, trying to wake up.
"I'm sorry, I forgot about the time difference. Did I wake you?"
"I don't mind." He could hear the sleepy smile in her voice and his heart soared.
"Camille, its 4 in the morning..."
"Well then, this had better be important or I'm going to get angry." How was it possible that he had missed her teasing?
There was another uncomfortable moment of silence as Richard tried to decide what to say. He heard a sigh. "You know Richard when you leave a woman sobbing at the airport you don't have to wait 5 days to let her know that you've landed safely. Not unless you're trying to tell her something."
"I know I'm sorry. I, um, I got caught up with work."
She felt an ominous weight in her stomach at his excuse, suddenly realising that this wasn't going to be the romantic late night conversation that she had been hoping for. She tried fishing for a compliment, hoping to ease the truth out of him.
"I thought you might have been avoiding me..."
He didn't answer. He wasn't sure if he had been avoiding her. The exquisite pain of hearing her voice, the vivid memories, he had needed to forget a little.
Her heart sank and her voice tightened. "You're not embarrassed about what happened between us are you?"
In the space of 30 seconds they had stumbled into dangerous territory. He wasn't really sure what he wanted anymore, or rather, he knew exactly what he wanted, but also what he couldn't have. He should never have called her.
"No!"
"So you don't regret it?"
He was indignant now. "Of course not!"
"So why didn't you call? And please don't hide behind work again because if you like someone then you make time to talk to them. Unless you're trying to avoid me for some reason?" She had a thought, a horrible thought that she didn't really want to give countenance to. But she had to. "Unless...it didn't mean anything. Is that why you haven't called?"
"No, that's not..." He was hurt that she could think that it might just have been about that. That she didn't know him better. He wanted to tell her that he felt lonely without her, that he would have done anything to have rewound the last week and woken up with her in his arms again. But his mouth dried up and his courage failed him.
There apparently was no avoiding this. Again, he silently cursed the fact that he had rung her and words tumbled from his mouth before he could stop himself.
"I just wanted to talk to you." It was the nearest approximation to what he actually wanted to say without giving himself away.
"About what? About how you haven't called for a week?" She misread his loneliness for the beginning of a break up conversation and inadvertently triggered it.
He sighed. "This is why I didn't call. Because of this, because we argue. I just think that we need to be careful, we're in danger of living in a fantasy because we're 6,000 miles apart and..."
"So, you think I need to grow up," she searched for the word, "get real?" The imagined slight and her freshly revealed insecurities combined forcefully as the need to protect herself became overpowering.
"That's not what I said Camille."
She fell back to sarcasm and attack as the best form of defence. "Because I'm a child living in a fantasy land, daring to dream that one day my knight in silver armour will come and pick me up and take me away from my horrible job and my horrible friends."
"Shining."
"What?"
"Shining armour." He realised too late that his correction wouldn't do anything to calm her down. "Never mind."
"So now I can't speak English properly either?"
"That's not what I meant. Camille, it's 4 in the morning. Perhaps..."
"Perhaps I misunderstood you because I'm not fully awake. Or perhaps I misunderstood you because I can't speak English properly. It's my fault again." Somewhere, in her conscience she knew he was right. It was very early in the morning and her brain perhaps wasn't at its most functional. It only made her more stubborn. "You know Richard. At least I try. You spent 2 years with us and you didn't even bother to try and learn French. You never bother with anything. You didn't even bother to call to see if I was ok after you got back. It's pathetic."
She hung up and he was left holding his phone bemusedly wondering what he had done wrong this time. All he had tried to do was explain himself to her. He rang her back and got her voicemail. "Come on Camille, let's not be childish about this..." He took a deep breath and then continued. She should at least know how he felt. He owed her that much.
His phone rang back 5 minutes later and he could feel her anger roll down the phone at him in waves even before she unleashed her barrage of abuse.
"I'm childish? You think I'm childish? You are the most emotionally repressed man I've ever met, you can't communicate with anyone on an adult level... Instead you are arrogant and pompous and rude and, and..." She scrabbled around for other adjectives to describe him, "anally retentive."
"Camille, I'm not...none of those things make me childish, did you even listen to my whole..." He was confused, wrong footed by the intensity of her rage aimed directly at him when all he had done was leave a voice mail.
"Oh no, because heaven forbid you be childish Richard. That you have fun or laugh or enjoy yourself. Because then people might actually think you have a sense of humour and want to spend time with you.
"Your world is cold and ordered and boring. You are boring Richard because you don't ever let anything happen to you. You're even fighting the possibility of us being together because you don't want anything to upset your perfect little world."
He was collapsing under such a personal attack. It was clear to him from her last sentence that she had heard his message and she still didn't understand. He managed to stammer out a resistance imploring her to stop. It went unheeded.
"You never think of anyone else! Do you know what I've been doing for the past week? Or feeling? Do you even care? Or have you just been thinking of yourself, how last weekend affected you, or perhaps you just patted yourself on the back because you managed to squeeze in a holiday romance before you left and now you never have to see me again.
"You want to know why you're alone Richard? You are alone because you want to be alone. You have no passion, no soul. You don't care about anyone except yourself because you've never wanted to let anyone in. And I tried. I tried so hard with you, even when everyone told me not to bother, because I wanted to get to know the real you. But you know what? It turns out that the real you isn't very nice.
She paused, waiting for a retort. She was met with silence but rather than feeling triumph she felt guilt.
He swallowed, trying to rid his voice of unwanted emotion threatening to engulf him, when he spoke his voice was full of bitterness. "Well I'm sorry that your social experiment was such a waste of your time. I can only hope that you have better luck with the next defenceless Englishman who crosses your path."
"Richard, I didn't mean..."
"I have to go Camille. I have to get on..." He almost finished it with 'my life' but that felt too final, and he couldn't bring himself to say it, to signal the end, even if that was what she wanted.
The line rang dead in her ear as she threw the phone across the room in frustration and annoyance.
She sat up in bed, resting her head against the headboard, fully awake and furious that she'd allowed him to get under her skin again. A week. A whole week and apparently they were back to square one. She tried to lie down, tossing and turning waiting for sleep that was now totally out of reach replaying their conversation over and over again, her initial excitement to hear from him followed by her hurt and anger.
At every replay though her determination to hear a slight in his words grew less and less until she found herself scrabbling on the floor in the pale light of dawn looking for her phone. With a feeling of dread she dialled her voicemail and breathed a sigh of relief when she heard the word childish again, vindicated that she hadn't imagined it.
She had been right.
"Come on Camille, let's not be childish about this...
But in her pursuit for the truth she had remained on the line long enough to hear his sigh as he collected his thoughts and haltingly began to speak again.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean that, it doesn't really reflect what I'm trying to say, but I can't really ever think properly when I'm talking to you. And I'm sorry that you think I don't care. I do. I really do.
"Work has been...exhausting and I can't stop thinking about you. I know you think that I'm using it as an excuse but I'm not, there's so much to learn and to organise. I just... I just..." He took another deep breath and she could almost hear his dejection.
"I woke up this morning and for the first time I was able to think about us without everything else getting in the way and I...I just wanted to hear your voice. But you're right, I could have called sooner and I didn't because I'm scared and I just think that we need to take a step back and really think about what we want. And I'm not presuming to know what you want, God - you probably don't even want the same thing that I do, but if...on the small off chance that you do, then we need to talk about this properly because I want to try. I want us to work so badly but I'm not sure if I can start something that's not going anywhere Camille because... I'm not sure I'd get over it as easily as you might.
I'm not explaining myself very well. Um...maybe just think about what you want, sleep on it and call me when we can both talk properly.
She listened to his message in full for the first time, and then began to cry.