Eight Years Later
She slowly packed the bag with lunch, a banana, some bread, olives and a juice box. Annie played in the living room, her school uniform becoming bunched and creased as she rolled on the floor with her dolls and teddies. She could hear birds outside as she switched on the oven to bake Annie's croissants for breakfast. "Annie! Breakfast!" she called.
A small minute later, Annie and her teddy came to the table for breakfast. As Annie and her mother ate, they heard the swing of the large gate outside and soon, the old wooden barn door creaked as a tall, olive skinned handsome man came into the kitchen. "Daddy!" Annie cried, jumping from her seat and running into her fathers arms. The man picked her up in one big swoop and lifted her high into the air before returning her to his hip to cuddle her.
"There is some left in the oven Luc," the woman said, standing from the table and giving the man a kiss on the cheek, "they haven't been out of the oven all that long." Luc sat Annie down onto the chair again and followed the woman up the stairs into the bedroom. "Cosette," his voice was nearly a whisper as she walked around the side of the bed and pulled a jumper over her head and over her swelling baby bump.
Luc walked over to her and pulled her into an embrace, he felt Cosette soften into his chest and he felt the baby kick into his side.
Cosette waved Annie off at the gate to school, Luc had gone off to work this morning after returning home from a night at his friends house. Cosette began to walk down the country lane back to their home, a converted barn in the town Chantilly. Just as she opened the gate to the house she heard footsteps behind her. When she turned, there was nothing to see. She shrugged her shoulders and entered into her home. The bread she had been baking earlier made the house swell with the flavours of freshly baked bread and lavender from the garden.
Cosette kicked off her shoes and settled onto the couch in the living room. The toys that Annie played with still lay on the varnished floorboards in their pretend tea party setting. Cosette leaned on the arm and picked up a magazine, idly flipping through the pages. She felt herself begin to relax, the baby kicking and her body starting to mould into the couch's material. Her eyes began to rest and her eyelids began to droop as she fell into a dreamless slumber.
She was awoken by her mobile phone ringing in the kitchen. She slowly got off the couch and made her way into the kitchen. "Hello?"
"Miss Cosette?"
"Can I help you? Hello?"
"Miss Cosette, we met many years ago, eight, I think, to be exact. You sold me a piano, an old Bentley. I asked if I could play the piano for you, but when I returned to you a year later you had gone. I searched everywhere for your card so I could call you. I found it today, amongst my old belongings after my grandmother had died. I cleared out her apartment in Paris. I had to call you. After all this time, every time I walked the streets of Paris I always looked out for you, I thought I would see you sat at a café, or walking down by the Seine, but I never did. Every single day I held out a hope for you, I checked every bus that passed, the papers to see if you had been in the marriage announcements, the birth sections or the deaths. I had only met you just once and you disappeared into the air like smoke. You were the most beautiful woman I had ever seen and nothing has ever come close to you.
My question is this. It has been years, I know this. I know that just because I have searched for you every day does not mean you have remembered me. Please meet with me, just once, so I can play for you."
Cosette stared down at her phone, and a sob erupted from her chest. She had waited years for this phone call, and it came six weeks before the birth of her first child. She could hear his silence on the end of the phone, the pause and hope crackling from the receiver.
"What is your name?" she struggled. She could remember it clearly. Marius. She wondered if he still looked the same as he did when she last saw him in the showroom.
"Marius."
Cosette closed her eyes and prayed for strength to know what to do next. She was aware of the grandfather clock ticking away in the background.
"Okay," she said, opening her eyes and focusing on the trees blowing outside, "I'll meet you."