Flowers of Darkness by Tatiana Rosnay (e novels to read online TXT) 📕

in a tearoom near the Bastille. Because of the rain, they’d decided to meet indoors. Clarissa suggested a place she knew well, on rue de la Roquette. She often caught up with her daughter there, as Jordan lived nearby. When she got there, she saw Mia White was already installed at a table.

The young woman had been in touch recently, suggesting they get together, and Clarissa had agreed to see her again, despite her misgivings. This time, she’d be careful not to disclose anything too personal. She was looking forward to conversing with her young reader. Getting out of the residence, taking a break, trying not to think about her husband, these had all become essential to her. This morning, as she had waited for Jim Perrier in vain, she’d received a pitiful text message from François. He wrote to say he was at the end of his rope. Totally desperate. He wanted to do himself in. He must see her, peacefully. He suggested she come to their apartment, so that she might pack her things, talk about the future. For a brief moment, she felt pity. Had she been too hard on him, perhaps? Did he deserve a second chance? Should she go talk to him? While she had been thinking it over, the little voice she knew well had whispered to her: Hey, hang on, look at you! Talk to him? You’re delusional. You’re going to sit here nicely and say you understand, yes, you understand because you always understood? So marvelously comprehensive. So wonderfully patient. Cut the crap. Clarissa ended up not answering François’s text.

Mia White observed her with the same benign yet penetrating gaze, which became unsettling after a while. She looked young and pretty, with her disarming smile. She was reading A Room of One’s Own, her oversize glasses perched on the tip of her adorable nose. Wasn’t she overdoing it? As if she wanted above all to please Clarissa. Was this just inept eagerness from a zealous devotee? Or something else? Perhaps Clarissa was asking herself too many questions, and so couldn’t even relax enough to enjoy the moment.

The young girl bent over to pick an object out of her bag. It was a frayed copy of Topography of Intimacy.

“I’d really like you to sign this,” she said.

“With pleasure,” replied Clarissa.

As she opened the book, she noticed there were notes in nearly every margin. Entire paragraphs had been underlined.

“I read it thoroughly,” admitted Mia White with a smile. “And I often read it all over again.”

The date written on the flyleaf was the same one as the publication of the book.

“This is my mother’s copy. Your book was published the year I was born.”

“So your mother read it, too?” asked Clarissa as she signed it.

“She did, but I pinched it from her and never gave it back.”

A delightful impish grin.

“I think you mentioned your mother’s from Nantes?”

“That’s right.” Mia White nodded. “I grew up there.”

They switched effortlessly from one language to another, like they had during their previous encounter.

The waitress came to take their orders. There were some delicious cakes to succumb to. The place was not full; it was quiet and comfortable. Outside, the rain splashed merrily. Glistening umbrellas bobbed up and down along the sidewalk.

For a fleeting moment, Clarissa wondered if she should tell Mia White about the night the alarm went off in the residence, and that she thought she had seen her there, wearing a dressing gown, her hair braided down her back. But Mia White spoke up before she did.

“Would you mind telling me about what happened in Virginia Woolf’s house? That’s also one of my favorite parts. Unless you’d rather not, of course. I know you’ve been asked about it repeatedly, and I’m sure it’s tedious for you to have to go over it again.”

Mia White used the same method as last time, those wide, beseeching, respectful eyes. It was impossible to resist them. Clarissa felt she was in no danger. She had often described that crucial scene to journalists, to readers. It wasn’t as if she had anything new to add. She felt in control.

She said she had been spending time with her father in Brighton. This happened about twenty years ago. Her father was doing very well then; he was in his late seventies and still energetic. He enjoyed traveling with his daughter, discovering new places with her. He was the one who suggested visiting Monk’s House, the cottage Virginia and Leonard Woolf had bought in 1919, at Rodmell, in East Sussex. It was only thirty minutes or so from Brighton. He had heard there was a lovely garden. They could visit it on their way back to London.

Clarissa articulated her story calmly, as if she had switched on automatic pilot. The words she had so often used wrought their way around her tale, and she did not think twice about them. Mia White listened assiduously, her tiny fingers cupping her mug. The rain hissed outside. Clarissa described the drive from Brighton, her father’s long, knobby hands on the wheel, the lush greenery of the English countryside. What she didn’t tell Mia White was her state of mind at that point in her life, the sadness she had been carrying around for so many years. With the passing of time, the weight of the sadness felt like a huge boulder she had to drag along behind her. It was like coping with a shameful disease. She had learned to live with lugging it everywhere, hauling it up stairs, pushing it into rooms that were always too small.

Clarissa went on with what she had to say, discarding the boulder of agony. But it was still there, lurking in the back of her mind. She found it perturbing to pursue two trains of thought: a spoken and unclouded one describing Virginia Woolf’s house, and the other, inner and murky, hovering over an obscure zone she did not wish to return to. She had to concentrate in order to