The Reliable Narrator [For The Love Of Chéri Epilogue]

Part 3 : Only Me, And The Music

Epilogue

~A reliable narrator Part III ~

~ Cannes, France ~

I had never been to Cannes, and it was breathtaking. Expensive, but breathtaking.

I received a phone call from my mother in law in Poland. I always called her 'Agnes' as her name was impossible to pronounce.

She asked me why I refused to speak to Suzanne, and I explained the basics of it. I explained that she actually married me for residency in Spain, but that she was secretly in love with another man, who was the biological father of River. She sounded surprised and then said that she had actually met that man and then she described Lennon perfectly.

She then started to tell me what happened years ago when they both stayed with her for a very flying visit. These revelations shook me to my core.

Why was Lennon so affectionate with Suzanne? Why was he sleeping in the same bed with her? Without Mercy to ask, I had to reach a conclusion myself.

I believed that Lennon desperately craved affection, not solely in sex, which was all people seemed to want, but with closeness. He was a sensitive person who, I think, desperately wanted to sate his need to be 'normal', which was the only way to quiet the internalised guilt and feelings that he somehow would disappoint his family.

Even though he seemed happy to have thrown off any pretence of being normal in the Bordello, and he very much enjoyed swimming the warm waters of hedonism and excess, and he was happy to be his true self. I personally think his true self scared him, and he knew he had an addictive personality and how that can turn people into monsters.

I was still confused about Lennon, but I told my mother-in-law that I cancelled the lease on the apartment, and that Suzanne's possessions were most likely still on their way to Poland, along with legal documents regarding an annulment. I asked her to formally serve her daughter with the papers, but she refused.

I had to find some other way to formally serve her, even though Ellie said that the chances of her attending any court hearings were slim, in which case a judgement would be issued against her... if she had been legally served in due process.

I needed someone that I could trust implicitly, and who could get close enough to her to legally serve her, but who?

☆

I needed to collect my thoughts, so I stayed in the cheapest place I could find on the outskirts of Cannes, and I spent a couple of days sorting out my things in storage, doing things for work, making myself presentable with a haircut, and receiving angry phone calls from Suzanne.

The times I answered, the conversation quickly deteriorated into a shouting match. She knew how to push all my buttons and trigger me, which is really something as I'm the quietest, easiest going guy there was.

I had difficulty becoming an enforcer in the Bordello, but when you're all fired up and standing in the ranks of a big team with Marcel standing in front of you all... you can do anything, even if it is against your nature.

In the phone calls, Suzanne told me that I would never see Lena and River again, and she would contest any attempt at separation.

I was sick with anxiety. I felt all alone in the world. I had no friends, and I felt used, tainted and cast aside.

Later that afternoon, I decided to take out some cash as I did not want to travel without the capability to fall off the grid.

I walked up to a cash machine and put my Banco Santander card in, and selected my native language over the French default.