Plan B by Emily Barr Page A

a bag and take her home. But I couldn’t.
    I dozed and fretted for hours, then fell into a deep sleep at around half past six. Suddenly Alice pulled my nose with one hand and flung the other arm round my neck.
    ‘Mummy, I’m awake,’ she announced unnecessarily.
    I was heavy and uncoordinated. I removed her fingers from my nostrils and closed my eyes again, but Alice put a finger on each eyelid and pulled them open.
    ‘Me too,’ I told her, reluctantly.
    ‘Please fetch mine milk. Read a book with me. Where’s Daddy? I want Daddy.’
    I stood up, drenched with exhaustion. I could not wait to sleep in a real bed, my own bed. ‘I want Daddy, too,’ I agreed wearily. ‘He’s in London, at work. We’ll ring him in a bit, shall we?’ I looked at my watch once again. ‘Christ, Alice, it’s five to seven.’ I managed a small laugh. I hoped my sleep had been deep, because it certainly had not been long. ‘That means it’s five to six where Daddy is. We’ll give him a chance to wake up before we call him.’ I had never envied Matt’s job before. Even though I had yet to work out what a project manager actually did, I would have done anything to have swapped places with him now, to have been slumbering peacefully in a bed in a quiet flat, with clean sheets, central heating, and shops on my doorstep. I was certain I could manage a project or two. My own project was surely more complicated than whatever it was that Matt was working on.
    I stumbled into the kitchen, opened a carton of UHT milk, and poured it into Alice’s beaker. I set a pan of water on the stove, yawned, and instructed myself to rally.

    The café was a small, busy establishment. The air was thick with smoke, but I refused to allow myself to find this objectionable, because I had known it would be like that before I moved here. I had no right to be sanctimonious. France, I thought, would surely be the very last country to ban smoking. Everyone seemed to have a cigarette in their hand.
    The tables were battered, with rickety metal legs and formica tops. Alice and I were sitting opposite each other. She drank apple juice from a small glass bottle, through a straw. I was on my third cup of coffee, and was contemplating a fourth. Gradually, I was beginning to feel human again, if in a slightly jittery way. The table top was covered with croissant crumbs.
    Every other customer but one was a man. They sat at the bar and drank what looked like alcohol. Some of it was bright red and I was curious as to what, exactly, it could be. At ten o’clock in the morning, it could not possibly be a liqueur. The men had looked at Alice and me with unabashed curiosity when we came in, and every time anyone new came through the door, he looked at us too. I smiled. After a few seconds’ delay, they would smile back. They said, ‘Bonjour.’ I felt a small but unmistakable glow of satisfaction every time this happened.
    Alice was the only child there. This was a huge contrast to the cafés of Brighton, which were jammed with three-wheeler pushchairs and NCT group outings. In Brighton cafés, there were often baby-changing rooms and boxes of toys. I decided that I had to find out, when I dared, where the mothers went. There had to be a child-friendly café somewhere in this town. If I couldn’t find it, I would have to try Villeneuve, the regional centre, which was further away.
    I looked at Alice. Her hair was in desperate need of a wash. She was swinging her legs and gazing around. I licked my finger and reached forward to wipe a pain au chocolat smear from her cheek.
    ‘This is fun, isn’t it?’ I asked her cheerfully, and firmly. She looked at me sceptically. She realised that she was not allowed to say no, so she said nothing. I was relaxed with Alice. If Matt had been there, I would have put on more of a show, but since he wasn’t, I was allowing myself to linger in the café with my daughter, gathering my strength. Soon I would become brisk and businesslike