Dexter visits Emma in Paris

Dexter Mayhew visits Emma Morley in Paris on 15 July 2001, turning a long-awaited arrival into a reunion shaped by an unresolved past. Emma waits at the Gare du Nord for the 15:55 train from Waterloo; Dexter, carrying her novel and facing the end of his marriage, waits until the last carriage has emptied before joining her. Neither knows what the other will say. Their embrace brings them together physically, but the distance between them remains charged with the possibility of rejection and the knowledge that their previous meeting changed something.

Arrival and Anticipation

Emma reaches the arrival gate in good time and joins a crowd of lovers with flowers and chauffeurs holding handwritten signs. She considers making a joke of her own greeting by displaying Dexter’s name, perhaps misspelt, but abandons the idea as the train pulls in. The waiting crowd presses towards the doors; passengers spill onto the platform, and Emma searches their faces. The comedy she briefly imagines cannot settle the question underneath the wait: she is not sure what welcome this meeting can bear.

The scene gives both friends the same point of uncertainty from opposite sides. Emma recalls that the last time they saw each other, things had been said and something had happened. Dexter, still seated in the last carriage after the other passengers have left, asks himself what he will tell her and what she will say. The narration withholds the nature of that prior event here, making the approaching reunion carry suspense without explaining away the history that weighs on it.

Emma tries to manage the wait through her appearance. In the three weeks since arriving in Paris, she has had her hair cut very short, hoping for the look of Jean Seberg in A Bout de Souffle; now she keeps touching her fringe as if she might undo the decision. She adjusts the buttons of a new dove-grey shirt bought that morning on Rue de Grenelle, settling on a balance between primness and showing too much. These small choices register her self-consciousness as she prepares to see Dexter, and contrast with the composed figure she wants to present.

The Reunion at the Station

Dexter has a small overnight bag rather than a suitcase. On the table before him lies a brightly coloured paperback, Big Julie Criscoll Versus the Whole Wide World. He has just finished it on the train, his first completed novel in months, though he recognizes that it is intended for readers aged eleven to fourteen and includes pictures. Before leaving the carriage, he studies the black-and-white photograph of the author inside the back cover. He recognizes Emma in the expression and gesture captured as she laughs, then puts the book in his bag. The novel makes her presence part of his journey before they meet face to face.

When Emma finally sees him, he looks broken: gaunt, tired, and unshaven. His appearance recalls to her the potential for disaster in his visit. He, meanwhile, notices how much she has changed in the eight weeks since they last met: her cropped hair, colour in her face, smart clothes, and the freckles visible at her open collar. Their attention to one another is immediate, but neither knows what to do with hands or eyes. The narrative counts down the distance between them in shrinking measures, stretching a short walk into an awkward interval in which each anticipates a yes or no.

Dexter quickens his pace, and they embrace. He remarks that she did not have to meet him; Emma answers that of course she had to, then takes his hand and leads him away. Her playful address to him as a tourist gives the greeting a familiar ease, but the earlier hesitation has not disappeared. Their contact offers a way to cross the space between them without resolving, at the station gate, what the visit means.

A Visit Around an Unspoken Subject

Outside the Gare du Nord, they step into muggy, fume-filled air beneath thick grey clouds threatening rain. Emma proposes coffee near the canal, a fifteen-minute walk, followed by another fifteen minutes to her flat. She warns Dexter that it is only two rooms over a courtyard, not the romantic Parisian garret he might imagine. The practical route and modest description establish the visit on Emma’s terms: she is showing him the city and her present life, rather than promising a grand setting for their reunion.

At the café, Dexter suggests spending the next couple of days with Emma showing him the sights while he mopes and makes stupid remarks. She acknowledges that what he has been through, and is going through, makes his state unsurprising. Their hands meet in a repeated, playful covering gesture that becomes increasingly quick; the narration also identifies it as self-conscious acting. The movement supplies a brief language of touch while the harder conversation remains postponed. Emma excuses herself to the bathroom, where she looks at her haircut and reminds herself that the thing that happened was a one-off and that Dexter is an old friend. Her effort to reduce the significance of the encounter reveals how much it still unsettles her.

The Novel and the First Direct Questions

When Emma returns, she sees her own novel on the table and asks Dexter where it came from. He explains that he bought it at the train station, where there were great piles of copies and the book was everywhere. Its presence changes the terms of the meeting: Dexter has not merely arrived to see an old friend but has travelled with a work that makes Emma’s writing life tangible to him. She is wary when she sits down beside it, and when he tries to read the dedication she covers the book, asking him to wait until she is not there. Even this small exchange preserves a boundary between the author’s private address and the conversation she is ready to have.

After a parallel pause in a public toilet, Dexter returns and puts the book away. Emma leans across the table as if resuming business and asks how things are. Dexter answers that they are fantastic, then explains the contradiction: his divorce will go through in September, just before his wedding anniversary, bringing almost two years of marriage to an end. Emma asks whether he has spoken much with his wife. The visit has therefore moved from nervous reunion and joking evasions to a concrete account of Dexter’s marital collapse. It ends in this evidence with Emma opening the subject through a question, not with the question settled: the meeting has begun, the divorce is imminent, and the meaning of what previously happened between them remains unresolved.