The Reinvention of Love

glass window shuffles its colours over the grey stone and dark wood interior.
    I like arriving first. I like the anticipation of waiting for Adèle, the sound of the heavy doors creaking open, her quick footsteps on the stone floor. I like watching her walk down the aisle towards me, her face flushed from hurrying. That first moment, when she looks for me and finds me is a moment I never tire of witnessing. That moment of recognition is one of the most satisfying in life. The instant that a lover seeks you out. The instant of understanding something, of working out the answer to a problem that has been puzzling you for some time. The moment when something suddenly becomes clear.
    This church is not the closest one to Notre-Dame-des-Champs where Adèle and I live. We cannot risk going to the church in our own neighbourhood. It is not that we fearmeeting Victor, as he is rarely inside a church, but more that we fear meeting someone who knows Victor and Adèle. And that church is the one in which Victor and Adèle were married. So we frequent this modest church, many streets away, where we are fairly certain we will not be discovered. But even then, we take precautions. We come in the middle of the afternoon when the church will be empty. And I come dressed as a woman.
    You might think this is the secret I was referring to earlier, but this is not it. Dressing as a woman to rendezvous with Adèle is simply strategy. Two women in a church are not given a second thought, a second glance. Two women can sit close together on the same pew, can walk down the street with their arms linked, and arouse no suspicion. They will not be thought of as lovers. They will merely be two friends who are out enjoying the city together.
    I borrow my mother’s clothes. As she lives temporarily with me, it is not difficult for me to take a dress or two from her wardrobe and return them before she has noticed their absence. I look remarkably like my mother, with my high forehead and my delicate features, and I make a convincing woman. Sometimes I wonder if Victor did see us together, whether he would be able to tell that his wife’s new friend was, in fact, his old friend. It is tempting to put this to the test, but part of my being a convincing woman is that I act the role with confidence and I fear that I would lose my nerve in the presence of Victor, that I would falter, and that he would discover my true identity.
    I like being a woman. There is a freedom in it that I find a relief. No one is going to challenge me to a duel. If I say something out of turn I will be ignored or forgiven for my outburst, not expected to pace twenty steps into the under-growth with a loaded pistol. I like walking on the inside of the street, not out by the gutter which runs with sewage. I like being helped up into a cab, having doors held open forme, having men doff their hats to me in the avenue. I like the whisper of my skirts, the feel of them in my hands when I gather them up in a knot to step over a muddy patch of ground. I look much better in a woman’s hat than I do in a man’s. My small hands were made for soft leather gloves that button up the forearm with tiny pearl buttons.
    Often I prefer being Charlotte to Charles, and the surprising thing is that I think Adèle prefers this too. With Charles she has to feel the guilt of adultery, the shame that she is cuckolding her husband, breaching her marriage vows. With Charlotte she can pretend that theirs is simply an innocent friendship. She is sometimes much more light-hearted with Charlotte.
    There is the heavy toll of the church door swinging shut. I turn in my seat and see Adèle. She stands there for a moment, at the back of the church, with the last bit of light from the day outside fleeing behind her. She is dressed in dark colours, as she frequently is when she meets me here, as though simply to enter the church is an act of mourning.
    It does not take her long to find me in the dim interior. She hurries up the aisle and slides into the pew where I am sitting, hurling herself towards me with a recklessness that I find so touching. All my words dissolve to feeling and it takes ages for them to struggle back into shape.
    “Charlotte,” she says, “you look so lovely. I have missed you so much.”
    We haven’t seen each other for five full days. The separation has seemed eternal.
    “Charlotte,” she says. “I want you so badly. I could take you right here, right now.” She runs a hand