A Heart Bent Out of Shape (4 page)

‘Let me try it for you,’ she said, ‘mine’s a bit sticky too.’

It opened on her second try.

‘How did you do that?’ the girl cried. ‘Amazing!’

Hadley helped her carry her cases in. She dragged the largest, catching her bare toe on its edge.

‘I’m hopeless,’ the girl said, cheerfully, throwing herself down on the bed. ‘What would I have done without you? What’s your name?’

‘Hadley Dunn,’ Hadley said. ‘I’m in the next room.’

‘And I’m Kristina.’ She held out her hand to shake and Hadley took it, not sure if she’d ever shaken another girl’s hand in greeting before. It felt formal and jaunty at the same time, and they smiled at one another. ‘So we’re neighbours,’ Kristina said. ‘That’s brilliant.’

‘I can’t recognise your accent.’

‘Denmark.’

‘Oh, wow, really? I’ve never met anyone from Denmark. And how come you’re arriving so late? Did your plane just get in?’

Kristina pulled up her sleeve to look at her tiny gold watch. It hung on her wrist as loosely as a bracelet. ‘Practically four o’clock in the morning,’ she said. ‘I was in Geneva and completely lost track of time. So what’s it like here, then?’

Hadley didn’t expect the first thing to come to mind to be the watery blue of the unknown American’s eyes, and his crooked smile, and how thinking about those very things had sped her walk home through the city. She started to speak but Kristina interrupted her.

‘Don’t answer now, Hadley, you must go back to bed. You can tell me what I missed in the morning. I’m really sorry for the disturbance.’

‘Oh, it was no disturbance,’ Hadley said. She shivered, for it was cold in Kristina’s room. She shrank smaller inside her pyjamas, and rolled on the balls of her feet. There was always time for friendships to develop, when fleeting first impressions could be replaced by more informed judgements, but within their brief meeting Kristina had somehow imprinted herself upon Hadley. She felt like she was six years old again, on her back lawn, spotting a new friend through the fence posts, a relationship that could be sealed with the bite of a chocolate bar or a ride on the back of a bicycle.

‘Maybe we could have breakfast together?’ she suggested.

‘I’d love that.’

‘After you’ve had a lie-in, of course.’

‘I hardly sleep as it is. I’ll be up with the sun.’

Hadley stifled a yawn. ‘Me too. Goodnight, then.’

‘So nice meeting you, Hadley. Thank you again for saving me.’

Back in her own room, Hadley walked over to her window. She lifted the blind a fraction, and peeped out at the sleeping city. ‘
J’habite à Lausanne
,’ she said. Then she went back to bed and fell asleep almost instantly, a smile at her lips.

That first night her dreams were twisted versions of the evening’s events, where insignificant details were switched around and made to matter. It was Kristina who appeared childlike and sleepy in baggy pyjamas. It was the unknown American who unstuck the lock of her door. And it was Hadley’s neck that was smudged with a love bite; a mark of honour that was already fading, as fragile as a butterfly’s wing.

three

Despite only a few hours of sleep Kristina rose early, just as she had said she would. She swung into the kitchen with her hair still wet from the shower, wafting scents of coconuts. Hadley saw how in the light of day her skin was sun-brown, and her hips pointed through the denim of her jeans. She might as well have stepped from the pages of a magazine. They made a pot of coffee together and spread rose-coloured jam on neat roundels of baguette. Kristina laid a paper serviette across her knees and pressed a finger to each scattered crumb on the tabletop. She seemed delicate and reckless all at once.

‘To our first morning,’ said Hadley, holding up her coffee. Kristina laughed and chinked cups with her, and it seemed more like they were making a pact than a toast.

‘And every morning after,’ Hadley added. ‘You know, I can’t believe the others are lying in bed on a day like this.’ She and Kristina were sitting side by side, facing the view of the city. In the night, snow had fallen on the furthest peaks, and the thinnest slip of cloud streaked the sky. ‘I can’t wait to get out there. Can’t you feel it calling?’

‘Maybe they’re hungover.’

‘But you can be hungover anywhere, it’s such a waste.’

‘Maybe they just know that they’re here for the whole year. The city’s going nowhere, Hadley.’

‘I want to make the most of every moment. I’ll never have a first morning in Lausanne again. Never.’

Kristina stood up and went over to the window. She threw it open, and the cool air danced in.

‘There’s a phrase in French, you know,’ she said, turning back to Hadley, ‘
i
l faut profiter
. It means, “make the most of it” or “take advantage”, that sort of thing. But it’s more than that. It’s about really appreciating things, luxuriating in a moment. I barely know you, Hadley, but I can already tell that you’re going to
profiter
the whole time you’re here, because you want to.’

Kristina’s blithe conviction was catching.

‘I love that,’ Hadley said. ‘I hope it’s true.’

‘I know it is. So there you go. French lesson number one. Now, shall we get out of here?’

‘
Oui
. Let’s
profiter
.’

They took the bus to L’Institut Vaudois to register, and saw it together for the first time. The campus was all formal gardens and directional architecture, built on a hillside outside of the city. The lake was just discernible in the distance, the ever-present mountains forming a rim.

‘I can’t believe this place,’ said Hadley, throwing out her arms as she took it all in. She told Kristina about seeing the brochure that day last spring, as the snooty Carla had flicked through its pages. And how the reality looked exactly the same, better even.

‘I never actually imagined I’d get here,’ she said. ‘It feels like a dream.’

‘We’d better make sure it’s a good one, then,’ said Kristina, hooking her arm through Hadley’s. They carried on down the walkway, Kristina tall and slender as a lily, the breeze taking hold of her hair and throwing it out behind her like a bride’s train. Beside her, Hadley appeared skull-capped and impish.

Without ever having been to the campus, Kristina seemed to know her way about. She crunched an apple as she walked, tossing the core into a rhododendron bush with casual abandon, her rapid chatter never faltering. She was studying art history and already knew all the names of her professors. She talked about her love of the Romantics, foppish young men in billowing blouses who painted scenes of unrivalled beauty, and as she spoke it was as though she knew the lives of the artists; as if she’d lain on a bed draped in silk and been rendered beautifully and from every angle. For a moment Hadley imagined being a tutor and having her in your class. She would be the one whose eyes you’d seek, whose papers you’d look forward to marking, whose tutorials would run longer than anyone else’s.

‘What’s your favourite book in the whole world, Hadley?’ she asked, alighting on a new subject with ease.

They were on a raised section of the walkway from which a broader band of lake was visible. It looked flat as a mirror, and invited reflection. Hadley thought about the question. Over the summer she had read Hemingway’s
A Farewell to Arms
, in preparation for a course she wanted to take on American Literature. She finished reading it on the bus one day, and was so lost in the story that she missed her stop. Outside it had been raining, just as it had rained in the book, and as she cried at the last pages the tears on her cheeks exactly matched the drops as they ran down the window. She told Kristina this.

‘Hoary old Hemingway! Who’d have thought?’

‘And it ends here in Lausanne. I didn’t even know that when I started reading it, I couldn’t believe it.’

‘Does it? That’s romantic.’

‘It’s not romantic, it’s just very, very sad,’ she said, but Kristina was already on to the next thing. The campus café had presented itself, and soon they were inside, sitting among the deserted tables, eating chocolate-stuffed croissants and toasting their status as official students over shots of coffee.

‘We have to go out and party tonight,’ said Kristina, setting her cup down with a clatter. ‘It’s absolutely essential.
Faire la fête
, that’s what the Swiss-French say.’

‘
Faire la fête
,’ repeated Hadley, ‘that’s got a nice ring to it. But the place we went to last night was terrible, it couldn’t have been less Swiss.’

‘I know where we can go,’ said Kristina. ‘We’ll just have to find people to buy all our drinks.’

‘Expensive?’

‘But beautiful.’

Early that evening, in the Les Ormes kitchen, they’d debated how the night might be shaped. It was also the first time that the others had met Kristina. Bruno’s eyes had glazed with lust, Chase had looked as interested or as uninterested as he seemed in meeting anybody, and Jenny had almost appeared to back away, as though Kristina’s good looks made her a suspicious sort of person. Kristina had suggested drinks at the Hôtel
Le Nouveau Monde, seconded by Hadley, but Jenny and Bruno voted for Mulligan’s again; they’d latched on to it in the way that people sometimes do in a strange and foreign city, with over-familiarity, and a delight in the quick establishment of routine. Chase had wavered between the two groups, but in the end Jenny caught his arm and pulled him along with them, a gesture which brought the start of a smile to the corner of his lips. Nobody seemed to protest the split.

While it was a warm evening, one of the last days of summer, the distant mountains were hunched and glowering with the suggestion of a storm to come. The air was thick with thunder flies. Before they made it to the lakeside, Hadley and Kristina found a bar beneath the cathedral where tables were arranged on steps and the view was of a patchwork quilt of rooftops. They drank tall cocktails, their glasses stuffed with ice and lime quarters, and giggled over the waiter’s manner of winking whenever he set down their drinks.

‘I can’t go on all year like this,’ said Hadley. ‘I’ll be drunk and broke.’

‘It’s my first night,’ said Kristina, ‘and only your second. We’re celebrating. What is it, why are you grinning like that?’

Hadley shook her head. ‘I don’t know, I feel half mad. I’m happy, that’s all. I’m really, really happy.’

‘Good. We like happy,’ said Kristina, ‘happy is good.’ Her eyes glittered and there was cocktail-sweet laughter at her lips. ‘Come on, let’s head to the lake. The Hôtel
Le Nouveau Monde is waiting for us.’ She delivered it in an exuberant French accent and Hadley found herself repeating her words, like a charm.

They zipped across the road to the hooting of horns, narrowly dodging a soft-top sports car blasting French techno. When they eventually came upon the lake the sun was just setting in a soft glare of pink and silver, the water mottled like the underside of a trout. For a moment they just stood and stared.

‘God, it’s beautiful,’ said Hadley.

‘No,’ said Kristina, pulling her arm, ‘
that’s
beautiful.’

The Hôtel
Le Nouveau Monde was wedding cake white, laced with wrought-iron balconies and capped with tangerine awnings. On its roof the name stood out in letters four feet high, like the old-fashioned neon of Parisian rooftops; a touch of showmanship in an otherwise discreet façade. Hadley could only imagine the sort of people that would stay in such a place: film stars, frivolous lovers, brilliantly spiky old dames burning through their children’s inheritance. The building was so contained, so solid looking, when really it should have been pulsing with the energy of all the interesting lives contained within; the flags ought to have been spinning on their poles, the shutters flapping.

‘A good hotel is the most perfect thing in the world,’ said Kristina, dreamily.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever really been in one,’ said Hadley.

‘Well, let’s change that.’

‘But it’s so grand, we can’t just wander in, can we?’

‘Of course we can. There’s always a bar.’

‘But look at what I’m wearing,’ she said. Hadley had on one of her charity shop finds, a skimpy cornflower-blue tea dress, and an oversized man’s cardigan that skimmed her thighs. On her feet she wore scuffed white plimsolls. ‘They’ll never let me in like this.’

‘They certainly will,’ said Kristina. ‘All we have to do is smile. And look like we belong.’

‘Well, the first part’s easy,’ said Hadley.

The clientele of the Hôtel
Le Nouveau Monde had the kind of confidence that Hadley presumed only came with great wealth, that feeling of never doubting that the world and everything in it was yours. Hadley and Kristina stood just inside the lobby bar and watched for a minute. A woman in a jet-black cocktail dress sat alone by the unmanned grand piano, cool as an Egyptian cat. A couple twined on a sofa, the warm shades of a lamp bringing out the matching red-gold tones in their hair. Kristina took Hadley’s hand, and led her into the next room where a jazz number was playing, low but definite. Giant gilt-edged mirrors made the room seem endless. The stools at the bar were taken by a group of men whose combined cologne hung like a cloud. Their cuffs moved to show the bulbous heads of expensive watches, and as they crossed their legs the tips of their leather-soled shoes pointed. Hadley noticed how the men turned to look at Kristina with undisguised admiration.

‘I’m not sure if this is my kind of place,’ she began to whisper, but Kristina was already moving towards the counter, where she was quickly swept upon by the attendant bar flies.

‘Hadley, what do you want to drink?’ she called back over her shoulder, but a Martini glass had already been thrust into Kristina’s hand, and one of the men was tucking a cocktail umbrella into her hair. Hadley saw her tip her head back and laugh. She smiled and turned away, catching the eye of an elderly man who was sitting on his own at a table in the corner. Her smile stayed at her lips and he returned it with one of his own.

‘Up until about an hour ago they were still typical Swiss men,’ he said. ‘It’s quite incredible to witness such a transformation first-hand. Your friend is the first to succumb to their well-oiled and somewhat brazen form of charm. Will you be the second, I wonder?’

His voice was low and sonorous, the most precise English, accented with French, and he spoke with exaggerated slowness, as though he had all the time in the world.

Hadley shook her head. ‘Not my type,’ she said, still smiling.

‘A good thing too,’ he said. ‘I fear they’ll be rather less fun when they return to their boardrooms in the morning. Their jollity is as permanent as the ice in their glass.’

His tanned skin was smooth at the cheekbone, his eyes were brown and round as conkers, and his silvery hair was combed with precision; the effect was of extraordinary polish.

‘How long have you been watching?’ asked Hadley.

The old man nodded from side to side as though she’d made an astute observation.

‘All my life, some would say. All my life.’

He had the demeanour of a voyeur, for despite seeming entirely at home in the hotel bar there was an aura of distance about him. His eyes twinkled with a private amusement, a look that Hadley recognised straight away.

‘May I offer you a drink?’ he said.

‘Oh no,’ said Hadley, ‘thanks, but I’ll get my own.’

‘Here,’ he said, and proffered his drink. ‘Smell it. And tell me I can’t tempt you.’

Hadley took it from him. She bent her head and sniffed. ‘It smells strong,’ she said. ‘What is it?’

‘One of the better cognacs I’ve ever tasted. And if you knew me at all, you’d understand that’s quite a statement.’

‘I’m not really a cognac drinker.’

‘You look too young to be any kind of a drinker. How old are you girls these days? I’m out of practice.’

‘Well,’ said Hadley, ‘only speaking for myself, of course . . .’

‘
Mais oui
 . . .’

‘I’m nineteen.’

‘Of course you are. A perfect age.’

Hadley glanced back to see where Kristina was, and saw her in the midst of the men at the bar. It was as if she was a rare flower that botanists had stumbled upon in the desert. They crowded around her, scarcely able to believe their find.

‘Go on,’ said the old man. ‘Join them.’

‘I’ve actually no desire,’ said Hadley.

‘That, I can scarcely believe.’

‘They’re not interested in me anyway.’

‘I scarcely believe that either. What is your name?’

‘Hadley.’

‘Hadley, I’m Hugo Bézier. And I’m enchanted. That’s what we say in French.
Enchanté
. Much more romantic than “pleased to meet you”, don’t you think?’

Hadley held out her hand to shake his, and he took it, suppressing a smile.

‘In Switzerland it’s conventional to swap three kisses,’ he said.

‘What, even when we don’t know each other?’

‘I’d say especially when we don’t know each other.’

He seemed a genuine
Lausannois
, the first Swiss person she’d spoken to beyond the most basic of pleasantries. She wondered if he was staying at the hotel, one of those distinguished elderly residents she read about in books, the kind who lived out their last days in opulence, wearing velvet slippers to dinner and knowing all the waiters by name. She was just about to reply when she felt Kristina tugging at her arm.