“What makes you ask?”
“I also found this in your raincoat.” She held out the ticket stub.
“It’s not fair to ask questions when you already know the answer.”
“How long has this been going on?” asked Alice.
Daldry took a deep breath. “Since the day you moved into this house, and I saw you coming up the stairs. Things have become more complicated since then . . .”
“If you felt that way, why did you do everything in your power to send me away? The trip to Istanbul was just about putting distance between us, wasn’t it?”
“Well, let’s say that if the fortune-teller had told you to go to the moon, I would have been even happier. But you ask why . . . Can you imagine what it means to a man like myself to realize he has fallen madly in love? For all of my life, I’ve never feared anybody the way I feared you. The love I felt for you made me fear I was starting to resemble my father. I would never, for anything in the world, impose that kind of pain on the woman I love.” He paused. “I’d be especially appreciative if you could just forget everything I’ve just told you.”
Alice took one step closer, put her finger on his lips, and whispered in his ear, “Be quiet, and kiss me.”
The morning’s first rays of sunlight shining through the skylight woke both of them.
Alice made some tea, but Daldry refused to get out of bed.
Alice set the tray on the bed. As Daldry buttered a piece of toast, she asked mischievously, “The things you said yesterday, which I’ve already forgotten because I promised I would . . . You weren’t just trying to find a way to keep painting in my flat, were you?”
“If you doubted me for even an instant, I’d give up painting for the rest of my days.”
“That would be a terrible waste,” said Alice. “It was when you told me that you painted junctions that I really started to fall for you.”
Epilogue
On December 24, 1951, Alice and Daldry returned to Brighton. The wind blew in from the north and made it particularly cold on the pier that afternoon. The stands in the carnival were open, with the exception of the fortune-teller’s caravan. It had disappeared.
Alice and Daldry learned that the fortune-teller had died a few months earlier, and that, according to her wishes, her ashes had been scattered over the water at the end of the pier.
Leaning against the barrier and looking out over the waves, Daldry pulled Alice close to him and hugged her.
“We’ll never know whether she was the sister of your Yaya,” he said pensively.
“No, but it doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?”
“I don’t agree. It does matter. If she was your nanny’s sister, she never really saw into your future at all, she just recognized you . . . It’s not the same thing.”
“I can’t believe you really think that. She saw that I was born in Istanbul, and she predicted that we’d make a long journey. She knew that I’d meet six people—Can, the consul, Mr. Zemirli, the teacher in Kadik?y, Mrs. Yilmaz, and my brother, Rafael—before finding the seventh person, the man who would matter most in my life: you.”
Daldry took out a cigarette but gave up the idea of trying to light it. The wind was blowing too hard. “The seventh person you say . . . If it lasts . . .”
Alice felt Daldry’s arms pull her in closer.
“Don’t you mean for it to last?” asked Alice.
“Of course I do, but do you? You don’t even know all of my bad habits. Maybe with time, you won’t put up with them anymore . . .”
“But I don’t know all of your good habits yet either.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to:
Pauline, Louis, and Georges, Raymond, Danièle, and Lorraine, Rafael, and Lucie.
Susanna Lea.
Emmanuelle Hardouin.
Nicole Lattès, Leonello Brandolini, Antoine Caro, Brigitte Lannaud, élisabeth Villeneuve, Anne-Marie Lenfant, Arié Sberro, Sylvie Bardeau, Tine Gerber, Lydie Leroy, and the entire team at éditions Robert Laffont.
Pauline Normand, Marie-ève Provost.
Léonard Anthony, Sébastien Canot, Romain Ruetsch, Danielle Melconian, Katrin Hodapp, Laura Mamelok, Kerry Glencorse, Mo?na Macé.
Brigitte and Sarah Forissier.
Véronique Peyraud-Damas and Renaud Leblanc in the archives department of the Air France Museum, Jim Davies at the British Airways Museum (BOAA).
And to Olivia Giacobetti, Pierre Brouwers, Laurence Jourdan, Ernest Mamboury, and Yves Ternon, whose knowledge and work were essential to my research.
For the English translation, I’d like to thank Chris Murray, who translated the book, and Elizabeth DeNoma, who acquired it for AmazonCrossing and did the developmental edit, along with Kimberly Glyder, who designed the cover.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
With more than forty million books sold, Marc Levy is the most read French author alive today. He’s written nineteen novels to date, including The Last of the Stanfields, P.S. from Paris, All Those Things We Never Said, The Children of Freedom, and Replay.
Originally written for his son, his first novel, If Only It Were True, was later adapted for the big screen as Just Like Heaven, starring Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo. Since then, Levy has not only won the hearts of European readers, he’s won over audiences around the globe. More than one and a half million of his books have been sold in China alone, and his novels have been published in forty-nine languages. He lives in New York City. Readers can learn more about Levy and follow his work at www.marclevy.info.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
American-born musicologist and translator Chris Murray works in Paris and Brussels. Coauthor of Le modèle et l’invention: Messiaen et la technique de l’emprunt and coeditor of Musical Life in Belgium During the Second World War, he is also the translator of The Gardener of Versailles by Alain Baraton, American Lady by Sophie-Caroline de Margerie, and All Those Things We Never Said by Marc Levy.