She's Still My Affinity

Doubts

"Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt."

Catherine had promised to return early Sunday, but the hours disappeared, bringing a dark noon.

Lunch came and went without Catherine coming home, and when Fanny went to sleep she was not back yet.

Suddenly the situation was all too familiar. All the times François had not come home overnight, she remembered. When he had apologized for work, when she was still young and hoping to love the man she had chosen out of prudent care one day as passionately as the man she out of nowhere lost.

She thought about the pain and the extreme disappointment when she was told about his affair with his secretary, then the next affair with the wife of a business partner or the little waitress down the village.

At first she had cried and raved, accusing François and demanding excuses he almost never admitted. At some point not anymore. At some point she not longer cared, and she had move on.

And now she was back here waiting for someone to come home so the bed would not feel so cold and empty. Because she'd fallen for a pledge again, though she should have known better.

'She will always have her little secrets and never belong to any of us.' Isabelle had said to her long time ago, but the words still echoed in the back of Fanny's mind and she frowned.

She fooled herself, because she attached so much importance to this thoughtless remark.

Catherine would come home late, well, what did that matter? But it was still there, the little piercing sting of doubt, all the more so that she had once taken care of the doubts before Catherine started talking about love and kidnapped her into this new, exciting life in Paris.

But maybe she had been right then and now let herself be lulled again, because she wanted to believe in her vanity was enough? But when had she ever have been enough? François? Fabio? Dominique, maybe, but what did she know, after all, she had only known him for a summer.

And Catherine, this woman who had walk away so many times, who had betrayed Marcello, Jane and Isabelle, and who knows how many before them?

'She will always have her little secrets and never belong to any of us.'

And so, with those words so designed to harm, she was defeated by sleep.

She woke as the mattress moved under her.

"Catherine?" - She mumbled drowsily, squinting into the darkness.

"Yes, it's me. Go back to sleep."

"Where have you been?"

"Nowhere."

A warm body snuggled against her, and strange smells of cigarsmoke, alcohol, and some scented water rose in her nostrils. She tried to capture that realization, but her head was still too lazy to respond appropriately.

"Catherine..."

"Sleep, Fanny. There is nothing."

She fell asleep again and when she awoke in the early morning light, hundreds of questions on the lips, the bed next to her was empty and Catherine disappeared again.

She didn't have to go back to the set till Tuesday.

Against her best judgment Alexandre and Phil dragged her to their new apartment, of which they were very proud. 'oh lucky young love', Fanny thought.

Fanny flipped through a magazine, trying hard to emit so much unsociality that no one had the idea of ​​engaging her in conversation. She was furious, suspicious, and at the same time worried that this behavior was beginning to be out of place with normal or commonplace. And besides, she wished this damn visit to be over.