What became of us

unexamined. Had she really convinced herself of something that was not true in order to excuse her own weakness or laziness? Tears were rolling down her cheeks. She did not bother to wipe them away.
    ‘When you came to Rome that time...’ she began again, trying now to convince herself as much as him.
    ‘Our honeymoon,’ he said.
    Yes, honeymoon. Why had she avoided saying the word?
    ‘Yes. Your honeymoon!’ she said, exasperated. ‘Why did you have to come to Rome for your honeymoon, for God’s sake?’
    ‘Because we wanted to see Italy. And Penny wanted to see you, she was really upset that you didn’t come to the wedding,’ he said.
    ‘There was one moment in the Piazza Navona when Rodolfo and Penny went to buy ice cream,’ Manon pressed on, ‘one moment when you and I were alone, and you looked at me, and I knew that you still loved me .’
    ‘That’s not true,’ he protested, ‘it’s just not true. I didn’t even want to come to Rome. I thought it might be awkward...’
    ‘There!’ she said, as if that proved her argument.
    ‘It wasn’t like that,’ he said defeatedly, ‘it just wasn’t like that.’

    He remembered the moment. Everything about that evening had been shrouded in softness: the warm damp air, the golden lamplight in the square, a group of Scandinavian teenagers strumming guitars quietly. The constant scream of brakes and drone of mopeds seemed to have faded into the distance. The air was scented with pizza ovens and rosemary.
    Penny had formed a friendship with the saturnine Rodolfo solely on the basis that they both liked ice cream, he remembered with a sudden feeling of enormous affection for her. She had been brilliant at finding trivial threads of connection on which to hang a relationship. It was her great gift to make every individual think that they were special to her. It was what had made her such a good teacher, and it was why Saskia and Lily were so free from sibling rivalry.
    It had been their last evening in Rome. The next day they were off to Venice. Rodolfo suddenly remembered that they had not yet tried the gelati at Gioliti, and had wanted to drive all of them across town, but the Piazza Navona had been so idyllic that evening, both Roy and Manon had resisted moving from the pavement table where they were drinking tiny china cups of espresso.
    ‘Oh, never mind,’ Penny had said, ‘let’s just have an ice cream here.’
    But Rodolfo wouldn’t hear of it.

    ‘What?’ Manon’s question interrupted his thoughts, and he realized he was smiling.
    ‘What differentiates the English from other Europeans is that they are so proud of their cuisine,’ he said, as if that explained everything.
    ‘What?’ she asked again, amused because his mind seemed to have strayed so very far from what they had been talking about, she couldn’t imagine how it had got there.
    ‘I was just thinking of Rodolfo’s insistence that Penny sample ice cream from a particular place. Can you imagine an Englishman caring one way or the other?’
    ‘He probably just wanted to fuck her,’ Manon said.
    ‘Oh?’ Roy was embarrassed by her sudden crudeness. He stumbled for words. ‘I thought you were happy together?’
    ‘Did you really?’ She inclined her head in the knowing Gallic way she had, immediately seeing through his attempt to lie.
    In the golden softness of the Piazza Navona that balmy evening so many summers ago, Manon’s misery had been starkly apparent. And the look that they had exchanged, which she had mistaken for his love, had not been that. Or perhaps it had. He only remembered feeling desperately sorry for her, and wanting to ask why, why she lived in the thrall of this shallow rich man, this playboy, when she could do anything, be with anyone, she wanted.

    The next day, sitting on the train, waiting for it to leave Termini station, Penny had sighed.
    ‘Poor Manon!’
    And her sympathy had ignited irrational fury in him.
    ‘Why poor?’ he remembered shouting. ‘I’d have thought poor is the one thing she isn’t. She doesn’t have to live with some fabulously rich count, or whatever he is, does she?’
    Penny looked momentarily shocked by his outburst.
    ‘She feels safe with him,’ she said.
    Then the train jolted, hissed, and began to pull out of the station. Penny had given him a little excited smile, and it was only then, several days after their wedding, that he had felt that they were starting their married life together.

    In a way, Manon was