(Unfinished, and it's already been an hour. I think I'm trying to get too much in and yet there's so much that's missing. This game is so frustrating. Also I'm still writing on my kindle which disagrees with all my words.)
She watched him top up the two glasses from the carafe and the sense of unease she'd been feeling all week swirled and turned opaque along with their drinks. It had always seemed wrong to her that the sharp clear flavour of anise should exist in that sweet, milky-yellow form. She felt nauseous.
"He doesn't want to know," Anne-Lise was saying in her deep voice with a lungful of smoke. "He wants to stay in this purgatoire state until he is dead. Your father will never open that letter. It makes me crazy." She blew the smoke neatly from the edge of her mouth, over her left shoulder.
"No, no. You don't understand," said Gildas. "Are you sure you don't want something, my love?"
She shook her head. He never drank pastis at home. Years ago she'd brought a bottle back from one of their visits, thinking it would please him, but it stayed in the cabinet in their home in Kent for years, aired only as an occasional novelty for guests. He drank it with his father and that was all, he'd said.
"Would it make a difference to your thesis?" she ventured.
Anne-lise stubbed out her cigarette. Her bracelets jangled. "No."
Gildas said something in French then and the girl laughed. They continued for a while like that and although she could have made the effort to follow the conversation, she didn't. When Gildas turned to her and translated a story about Anne- lise' s grandfather, she kept her face blank.
"He refused to take up arms!" Anne-Lise said. "Can you believe it? He refused, he would not take a gun."
"Your father's side or your mother's?" Gildas asked.
"My mother's"
"It's not such a big surprise to me," he said, teasing. "It's where you get it from."
"I was so proud to know this, I - Est-ce que ca va, monsieur Lemaire?"
She turned along with her husband to see the old man in his nightshirt entering the kitchen. He looked half-crazed. He limped over to the hearth and snatched the envelope from the mantlepiece.
"Je vous entends," he said, staring at Anne-Lise, who looked utterly unmoved.
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