PORTRAIT OF A MODERN DAY BOHEMIAN

CHAPTER 1 AN EXUBERANT BEGINNING


I remember the first day I saw Elodie. Everything about her stood out, her 70’s Saint Tropez beach disco attire, the white husky dog that looked like a wolf, with his one blue eye standing beside her, and the fact that she was a French girl speaking fluent English with her French boyfriend Florian a young extremely tall photographer from the squat.

The next time I saw her was at my 29th birthday, already feeling worn out from a recent disastrous relationship that had ended only three days before I put on a brave face and tried to enjoy the night.

Most people arrived late, and a few extras arrived uninvited. Elodie was one of them. She again arrived with her big white dog Masha and crazy clothing and in her own way made a kind of disheveled bright entrance.

While I hastily rearranged seats and made way for guests like her, and contemplated basic manners and how so many people lacked them she surprised me with a small act of generosity.

Elodie demanded to see the birthday girl which was Bell and I, but somebody who didn’t know Bell pointed her in my direction. She came up to me with a wide smile and a little box of Turkish delights.
“For the birthday girl.” she said placing the box in front of me.
I was charmed.

The week after she came to pick me up from my studio, and we went for a drive in her purple mini with the top down. It was the beginning of spring, Paris was blossoming and after the dour presence of winter and more precisely winter in a squat, her company seemed to be a breath of fresh air

She said that day as we pulled into the decadent gardens of Versailles that she wanted to create an art movement for dilettantes and that art should be exuberant and extravagant. Mmmm exuberance, extravagance, these were 2 words that had been missing from the severe repertoire of the “serious artists’ at the squat, and 2 words that had been missing from my life for some time. I was hooked.





She invited me to Stay over at her house that night and have dinner. It was getting dark when pulled up alongside a grocery store in Belleville.
“What should we buy for dinner?” I asked
“Buy whatever you like my dear, I don’t have a penny, I’ve spent all of my money for the month already.” she said with a laugh
“Don’t worry I’ll pay for the groceries tonight,” I said genuinely concerned.

Later that night we went to back her doll like cottage In Saint Cloud. While gypsy music blared in the background and Elodie danced around the Kitchen I prepared the dinner.

She said that she had a 2 year old daughter, and that she was with her mother for the day. I wandered how a single mum could afford a three story apartment in Saint Cloud who didn’t appear to be working.

As if reading my mind she said that she lived off a single mother’s pension. I imagined life to be very difficult for her, and admired her for having the courage to bring up small girl basically alone and with very little money.

She also complained that it was difficult for her to find the space to paint in her cluttered home so I invited her to make work in my relatively roomy studio at the squat.

She sat down like an Indian squaw on the floor and began making a portrait of me. I couldn’t exactly see what she was making just that her hands were flying all over the place in frenzied gestures and her red pants were becoming covered in smears of deep blue paint.

When she finished she held up a portrait that looked like it had been executed by an 11 year old child. All of the bright colours she had been using had mixed into a muddy brown and my head looked like a pin stuck onto a blubbery and out of proportion body. Before I could force a response she wiped off the whole image with her left hand and discarded it into the corner.

Yet it didn’t really matter to me. I didn’t need talented friends at the time I just needed the sense of joy and feeling of freedom that seemed to accompany her.

Only several months after meeting her I went back to Australia to have an exhibition and ended up staying there for six months. We corresponded from time to time and in her one of her emails she invited me to come and stay with her. After making some money from my exhibition I realized that I wanted to return to Paris. Partly to see a guy called Oliver that I had had a brief affair with and partly to continue the series of paintings that I had been working on when I left.




During my absence Elodie and Oliver had become friends, She had mentioned in an email that she had been seeing ‘my friend Oliver’, and that she was tired of Florian in fact breaking up with him and wanted only to meet men like Oliver. I felt a rising panic as I read the words.

Other friends advised me that she would never have meant to make me feel threatened and I shouldn’t worry about it. She also asked if I could pay rent to help her out with the new apartment she was renting in Belleville. I was happy to pay rent, this was better than just staying with a friend then having to look for another place. This meant my own floor on one of the three stories.

She mentioned that she was planning to turn the living room into a studio for both of us. Everything sounded ideal from 22,000 kilometers away and I was glad to be leaving Sydney and returning to Paris again.




CHAPTER 2 STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND


I arrived in Paris on an overcast winter’s evening. Bright neon’s shone on the wet pavement, and people huddled under shop awnings waiting for a break in the rain.
As the taxi pulled into rue Des Oubliettes I recognized everything from when I was there last June. Yet it was different now. All of The light and joy from the summer had been replaced with the severity and somberness of winter.

That first night, Elodie was out and I was shown to my room by her Italian friend. The room was a pigsty, full of baby cots, clothing and junk piled on junk, I couldn’t decipher what had been rearranged as she had remarked in her email. I went to bed in dirty sheets, and lay awake all night fretting about my decision to return.

I think it was in the first week that I was to experience her chaos and disorder, and be directly affected by it. I hadn’t had a set of keys made up yet, so I asked her to wait for me to return from the doctors before she left the apartment.

As far as I could see her normal day involved getting out of bed at 11 or 12 and sometimes not at all, so I thought I would probably be back at 11:30, good timing for her ‘routine,’ but when I returned she wasn’t at home as she had promised. I called and called her phone, and received no response. I felt the frustratingly insane feeling of one who is locked out with nowhere to go.

I decided to see if she was at her studio, a gallery space she had rented out for a month, but was also painting in. There she was blissfully chatting away with some hippie couple while painting their portrait. She smiled warmly when I entered and remarked
“Ah finally you are here”, as if the prior arrangement had never been made.

When I confronted her about not waiting for me at home she said that I had taken too long and that she had felt like leaving. At the same time as I chanted a mantra to myself to calm down and not explode, she pulled out some canvases and told me to
“Paint darling paint, feel free”.

Although I was quickly pacified by making art, the inescapable sound of bright red alarm bells rang in my head, Suddenly the fact that Elodie did whatever she wanted whenever she wanted wasn’t nearly so charming when it was at my expense.

Friends came to visit me in my new place and nearly all remarked on the extraordinary amount of junk she had left in my room. I had never before and still haven’t met someone who owned so much stuff.

The cave under the house was so full of half finished paintings and discarded possessions that the door needed to be yanked shut in order to keep everything from spilling out into

the next room. Make shelf bookcases bowed and threatened to collapse under the weight of hundreds of books while dozens of ethnic trinkets and odd bits of mismatching furniture were piled into every last available bit of floor space.

The room I was sleeping in was crammed with enough clothes to clothe four girls not one. There were rugs, pots pans baby cot’s, all in every colour of the rainbow. It was a bohemian techno colour vomit. Other friends agreed that it was unfair that whilst I pay rent she hoard all of her things in my room.

By now I was beginning to understand that I would have to approach this subject in a thoughtful way. “But that’s Sasha’s bedroom” she said aghast, “yes technically it is but while she lives with your mother and I pay rent on the room I think it’s fair that you can store your possessions in the cave or your own bedroom.”

The blank stare that came over her face was troubling. She was leaving to visit her grandmother in the countryside and said she would think it over. She sent a text saying “mess is a big part of me, and if you can’t learn to live with it then maybe you should leave”.

More alarm bells went off and I was furiously leafing through the apartment section in the paper when I got a call from Elodie,
“Coo Coo cheri, it’s me, listen I just spoke to Granny and she said it’s fair for me to move my stuff if you pay rent” I went to sleep sending a silent thank you prayer to granny.

To be on the safe side I begun to look for new places to live, although those that were in my price range were either painfully small and I wouldn’t be able to paint there or bleakly depressing. So I guess I kind of gave up for a while and prayed things would work out, and despite some of her obvious faults she was still capable of being highly entertaining. Who needed television when Elodie was around?




CHAPTER 3 ALL JUICED UP AND NOWHERE TO GO


When Elodie was ‘Juiced up’ she was at her most unpredictable and entertaining.
One night after dinner she was humming Paris Hilton’s latest song, while uncorking her second bottle of red wine.
“ I’m a genius you know,’ she slurred “we should make a new art movement together, art with no taste, authentic art.”
“Of course I will be the leader.” She said her eyes shining and going slightly crossed.
“I know I’m going to be a famous artist.” She mumbled just before passing out cold on the dining room table.

We used to have a lot of dinner parties. I usually did the cooking and a bevy of guests invited and uninvited turned up to partake in the festivities. I felt a bit like Jesus who broke the bread and then had to turn a fish and one bottle of wine into a feast for the starving masses.

Elodie’s ex boyfriends, current boyfriends and future love interests all used to sit around the table chewing the fat together. Her latest fancy was a guy named Sebastian, an ex junky with acting and writing aspirations, temporarily homeless and living in the squat next door and in Melanie’s own words a rat.

Sebastian began giving us a long sermon on his personal development into a centered and peaceful individual. When he elaborated telling us that he was the only true artist sitting at the table I was bored. I had taken on 2 jobs in order to make my painting, and being a foreigner wasn’t being giving any help from the government or my parents like these people.

“Wow if only I knew how to be a true artist like you Sebastian” I said with more than a hint of Sarcasm in my voice.
“Fuck you.” He said turning to glower at me his black eyes full of rage.

“You know Sebastian its bad manner’s to speak to the person who just cooked you dinner, probably your only meal of the day like that, so FUCK YOU and close the door on your way out.”
Everyone looked delighted with the latest piece of theatre as I left to go upstairs and Sebastian slunk out the door.

.




The next morning I went down to have breakfast and was stunned by the sight that lay before me. Broken plates had been used as spoons to scoop up the last of the sauce and then used as temporary ashtrays. All of the walls had been painted and written on, Dip and the deep red bolinagse sauce from the dinner had splattered all over the floor. This was a dinner party that Conan and the Barbarians would not have felt out of place at.

I went looking for Elodie and found her laying passed out in her bedroom, She was snoring deeply through teeth stained blood red from wine while her huge womanly breasts were draped over Sebastian’s naked body. Sasha was sitting in between them, thumb in mouth watching the French version of Beauty and the Beast.


I initially thought that Sasha had just being staying with Elodie’s parents for the holiday period, but it soon became obvious that Sasha was really living with her grandparents and only came home to stay with Elodie on weekends.

Like most little children Sasha would wake up early and demand her breakfast. Elodie would go down stairs and bring her up some chocolate then go back to sleep until 12 while the little girl destroyed the room, drawing on the walls, anything from the sheer boredom of waiting up to 6 hours before her mum would finally wake up and play with her.

Everything had to suit Elodie’s first, even Sasha’s 3rd birthday.
“Sasha’s turning three so we’re going to have a little party for her.” She said while rolling a cigarette.
“How sweet are you going to invite her little friends?”
“No I don’t feel like doing that, we’re going to Chez Lipp and you can come too”

We arrived at Chez Lipp in Saint Germaine Des pres the most expensive and traditionally bourgeois Brasserie in Paris a little after 9.00pm.
While the adults smoked, drank and told dirty jokes little Sasha passed out from exhaustion before the entrees were even served. After dinner Elodie woke up a tired and very grumpy Sasha to blow out the candles on her birthday cake.




CHAPTER 4 DOWN WITH THE BORGEOIUS CAPITALIST PIGS


Christmas time swung around and I began to wonder what I would do. Elodie invited me and a friend of mine to her family Christmas which I thought was nice of her.

Elodie’s parents lived on Avenue Foche an extremely wealthy and prestigious part of Paris, the equivalent to living on 5th Avenue in New York. I couldn’t believe it when the door opened.

An enormous 18th century apartment opened up before us. As we walked over polished teak floorboards and crossed into the living room I recognized paintings from famous artists living and dead. “I think that’s a real Picasso” I said nudging my friend.

Elodie’s fifteen year old sister announced to the friend she was speaking to on the phone that she was bored out of her mind with Christmas, rolling her eyes in the direction of the table and stalked out of the room, while Melanie spent the entire evening sulking, probably because her “poor” boho cover had been well and truly blown.

Elodie’s mother Marie on the other hand out talked everyone and seemed to be having a ball. She was gregarious and entertaining.
Marie worked in Fashion, so everything was ‘darling or fabulous’. She was petite like Elodie but twice the size.
In that house she was the ruling Patriarch, bossing around her defeated flabby husband and three children.

Because she paid for Elodie’s rent, Marie called the shots. They would have titanic battles on the phone, but as Marie doled out the money she always got her own way. Elodie had become completely dependant on her mother for this very reason.

While Elodie outwardly said that she despised working, and “Picasso never had another job,” I saw the fear that in her own words the “capitalist pig world’ conjured in her.

Once she saw an add to work in a flower shop. I encouraged her to apply. Explaining that the money would give her some freedom from her mother’s vice like grip and as it was casual wouldn’t interfere much with her free schedule. In the end she said she didn’t think she was capable to do it, and there was genuine uncertainty in her voice.

One evening Melanie had a friend over and they were deep in conversation when I arrived home from the studio.
“I’m sick of bourgeois fascist pigs, they are so unauthentic” she sighed.
“How’s your painting going” her friend enquired.
“I don’t care weather it looks good or bad it’s not the point, but the fact is I am so busy these days with Sasha and organizing my mess. That I just don’t have time.”

There was a knock at the door, It was Sebastian returning Masha from a walk. “Shankyou a lot can you walk him tomorrow as well? She said dragging deeply on her cigarette.

When her friend left we were putting a few dishes away, she seemed to have something on her mind.
“You know I’m thinking of getting a maid to clean this house, I feel like cleaning interrupts my creative flow!


CHAPTER 5 COME TO DADDY


When Elodie was 23 and pregnant she got married to a mild mannered English guy named Mathew. He wasn’t Sasha’s father, but took on the role and title of Daddy nonetheless. Sasha has no idea that her Biological father is actually a guy called Pier Louis, who disappeared before she was even born.

I had read some of Mathew’s poetry about Sasha, something about her galloping out of the womb, and storm clouds and rainbow’s. He was a romantic, even Romanizing Elodie’s’ infidelities writing in a song “for a woman with three hearts one man is not enough.”

Sometime before I met them this relationship had gone very sour and the only times I saw Mathew was at Sunday morning breakfast when he would come to pick up Sasha.
“Just d d don’t call me darling.” He would stammer turning red in front of 2 of Elodie’s other lover’s past and present also sitting at the table.

Another morning I heard them arguing
“You don’t give any help to us.” She screamed meaning money. Mathew who was normally mild mannered raised his voice,
“You get help from EVERYONE Elodie, from your parents from your grandmother, from the government. You even rent Sasha’s room to somebody and now you w waant more from from me.” he stammered exasperated and furious.
As he closed the front door on the way out I heard her scream out
“Fuck you motherfucker.”
I couldn’t help sympathizing with him.

“I’m going to the countryside to visit my grandmother Mimi next week; you can come too if you like. I think you would really like Mimi, she does Yoga everyday, and is really into natural remedies” Elodie announced over breakfast one morning.

Mimi lived in a medieval village in Burgundy. The place was as charming as Mimi, although looking at her hunched and frail body I found it hard to imagine her getting up the stairs let alone doing a session of yoga, but she certainly did have a lot of energy, singing Edith Piaf through false teeth, and spending all day cooking us sumptuous feasts.

After one such feast Elodie and I went for a walk into the surrounding countryside.“ I’m feeling stressed out and I need to take a holiday”, she sighed.
“I’m thinking of taking a walking holiday, you know just walking around Europe for a couple of months .”
I stifled a laugh as Elodie didn’t even take her own dog for a walk.
“Would you take Sasha”, I probed.
“No I just need to feel free, be free”
Wouldn’t your parents be annoyed if just took off for a few months leaving them to look after Sasha”
“I just wouldn’t tell them, just wait till I was far away then give a call to them, I’ve done it before”, she laughed.

The next day when we were back in Paris she had begun drinking early, and was entertaining her lover Sebastian, a guy who I personally couldn’t stand.
In order to keep living his free existence he had lied to his Grandmother and said that his computer had been stolen and could she send some money to buy another .It was of course a fabrication, but somehow Elodie was willing to risk her relationship with Florian her gentle and devoted boyfriend for this fraud.

As I knew that Florian was coming over later that night I asked her if she wasn’t worried that her duplicity may be discovered. By now she had downed a whole bottle of red wine to herself and said red wine staining the `corners of her mouth and an unmistakable glint in her eye “that now the real drama would begin”

What unfolded wouldn’t have been out of place on a day time soap episode. After a minor dispute the lover was wrestled to the door. She stood on the top of the steps which led to the courtyard and pushed him out, screaming ‘get out, get out’ with enough volume so that the neighbors from all three surrounding buildings would hear. The guy made a speedy exit.

Much later in the night Florian came over with a beautiful white orchid as a present, a makeup for one of their fights which were now every time they saw each other.
I was in the kitchen when I heard the beginnings of their argument. Elodie was berating him for taking paid artistic work.
“You’re a sell out I want to be with a genius, someone who can actually inspire me”.

When their argument became physical I fled to the safety of my upstairs quarter. The fight had progressed into the courtyard again, and it occurred to me that perhaps she wanted the neighbors’ to hear.

From my window I saw her pummeling him with her fists and shouting “You’re just a stupid fucking bobo”. (which is someone who is living the life of a Bohemian, but is cushioned with money from wealthy parents) It appeared to be the gravest insult from all of the artists in the area, and also the biggest contradiction as most of them were in fact being supported to a degree by their parents including Elodie.

The next Morning When I came downstairs the beautiful white orchid lay strewn across the floor, red wine bottles were upturned and had leaked all over the white tablecloth, the ashtray had been knocked over and dozens of cigarettes were scattered on the beautiful Persian rug. It was indeed a battle field. I reflected sadly on the beautiful flower that had been destroyed for such a senseless argument then left to go to work.



CHAPTER 6 DRAMA RAMA


Elodie had made a point of staying friends with my ex boyfriend Jean Philippe, an erratic insecure artist that was prone to fits of violence. At the time I had begged her not to bring him into the home.

I can’t blame her for the fact that I began to see him again, but the fact that she welcomed him back into my life through proximity didn’t help. I would come down and find him eating at the breakfast table, and when I told him to leave he would give me an insidious smirk and say “Elodie invited me.”

When I began to see this man again my life went downhill. It became a depressing series of dramas. In a sense my own life began to echo the disorder of Elodie’s life.

As I sat at the breakfast table recounting the most recent drama with tears spilling from my eyes she would look at me with admiration, and say that she only wished she had something as passionate with Florian.

This was the point when I really should have packed and left, but was so drained and depressed from all of the drama, hers and mine, that I just didn’t have the energy.
After he was particularly violent I made concerted efforts to get him out of my life, but every effort seemed to be thwarted by Elodie.

When I had finally broken up with him, I came back home one night to find my bed had been slept in and my things were in disarray. I went white with fury. I heard my heart pumping audibly in my chest adrenaline surging through me.

Suddenly I recalled Elodie asking weather I was going to stay out all night.
“Maybe” I said laughing off her bizarre question.
I recalled a conversation we had had earlier on in the day, where she mentioned that Jean Philippe was coming to dinner and it became immediately obvious to me who had slept in my bed. I dragged the information out of her, and finally she delivered the answer delightedly clapping her hands together “You zee zis is really true love”

It wasn’t until Jean Philippe broke the mirror in my bedroom in a jealous rage, that she banned him from the house. So I could barely believe when in the same week she showed me a soft fluffy toy that she had bought for him.
“It looks zust like im don’t you zink” she said giggling
“Not really” I said through gritted teeth.
I felt betrayed and realized I would have to do something about my living arrangements ASAP.



CHAPTER 7 EXIT STAGE LEFT


The next day she announced that she needed a holiday and was going to the south of France, and that she would return for 2 days before again departing to Portugal. All up she would be gone for a month. She also had a friend coming from South America and was not sure what to do with him, as he had declined her offer to pay rent.

I sensed that this was now a fiscal dilemma for her. She was hoping that it would be a clean exit, out with me…….time up and onto the next rent paying guest for her to “host”.
However the fact that her friend wanted to stay for free put a dent in her plan, perhaps she said “you can stay for another few months, and we can put Pedro on a mattress downstairs.”

Mmm I think it’s time for me to move out. So a new plan was hatched where I would live at the grandmother’s empty Parisian apartment for 2 months paying rent which would probably be passed onto Elodie. I knew already from my previous searches that it takes time to find a decent apartment in Paris so I thought this was decent of her and would allow me time to find somewhere else.

Before she left she borrowed some money from me to pay for her ticket ‘No pennies” and left me in charge of her dog, who she also left no food for. I passed a blissful and drama free month in her absence and realized truly how much better life was without Elodie’s “friendship” I felt inspired, and spent my time painting all day without interruption, and even managed to find a Gallery that was interested in exhibiting my work.

By the time Elodie arrived home the dog had never looked better, and the house was tidy and in order.
Everything was going well. The next day was the scheduled move to Grannies and she seemed relaxed until I mentioned that a gallery in Paris was interested in giving me an exhibition. Her eyes glazed over, and she could barely move her mouth when she went to congratulate me, it was forced into such a tightlipped smile that it forced the veins on her neck to pop out.

Directly after lunch she began walking around the house and half finishing her sentences, “It’s just so………oh never mind she would say running her hand along the banister and clicking her teeth at imaginary grime. ‘ It’s just so dusty, filthy in fact,
“I leave you here for a month and you don’t even have the decency to clean the house”
I glanced around the spotless house and laughed thinking perhaps she was joking until I realized as her face contracted into a tight grimace that she meant it.

She continued to pick at imaginary things all morning, until finally I snapped, and said a thank you would be more appropriate. I pointed out that her holiday wouldn’t have been at all possible if I hadn’t of been there to look after everything including her ticket fare.


This is really where everything went really sour. She came storming up the stairs and burst into my room.
“I want you out of my house NOW.” She said with a sadistic smile.
“It’s impossible, I’m going to work NOW, it has to be later when I return”
I added that it would be impossible for me to move my paintings that night which were stored in her cave.
“All you ever zink about is your art.” She hissed spitefully.

At 4’oclock that afternoon I was at my afternoon nanny job. I was bringing the girls home on a crowded afternoon bus while comforting the oldest one who was crying because her teacher had hurt her feelings when I received a telephone call from Elodie.

“I’ve packed your bags and put them into the Communal courtyard”.
“WHAT” I struggled to hear her over the roar of the engine and chatter of the school kids.
“Elodie, I told you I would be home this afternoon to do it”

By the time I had dropped one of the other girls home and taken the other to Ballet I had managed to convince her to put my computer back inside the house, but the rest of my things remained in the courtyard.

I got home late after having an emergency interview with my future landlord, and found my things shoved into plastic bags and boxes in such a disorganized mess that I wondered how I would ever find anything. I was furious and exhausted. It was now 12 o’clock at night and not having a truck I took the most important things with me by hand and carried them to the taxi rank. I finally arrived at my friend’s apartment at 1.00am where I was to stay on her couch until I found somewhere else to live.

I left Elodie a note saying it was impossible to take all of my things, and told her not to dare put my paintings into the courtyard. Just to leave them in the cave and I would come for them with a truck. They were the most important things to me and it agonized me to leave them behind. I kept her keys as I wouldn’t be giving them back until I had my paintings.

Marie called me around midday to ask me for the keys to the apartment. I said that she could have them when the remaining paintings were exchanged and only then. She started yelling
“If you don’t hand over the keys immediately I will have you thrown out of this country for being an illegal immigrant”……… “I’m not illegal” I explained as calmly as possible.

She began raving at me “You think you’re better than Elodie for having a gallery” “Elodie has no need to be jealous of someone like you. You are NOTHING NOTHING.
You know Elodie doesn’t need to work. It’s unnecessary we have plenty of money. If I wanted to get Elodie a gallery I could get her one tomorrow.”

“Why don’t you then, it would be better for her self esteem.”
She suddenly sounded slightly unsure of herself “because, because It’s not what Elodie wants.”

The next day I arranged for a truck to collect my paintings for 5.00 in the afternoon. In the morning the Polish truck driver decided that it fitted his schedule better to pick up my painting at 10.00 in the morning instead.

We arrived at Elodie’s house at 10.30 and fortunately she wasn’t there. We had just carried the last of the big paintings upstairs to my friend’s place where I was storing the work when I received a message from her.

She had the same coldness in her voice.
“If your paintings aren’t out of here by 11.00am and the keys aren’t returned then I won’t hesitate in slicing your paintings up one by one with a knife” I looked around at my paintings which had been saved from their cruel fate by a chance cancellation in the driver’s schedule and blessed my good fortune.

Soon after this event I ran into Mathew who told me a story about the family. He said that after He and Elodie were first married they lived in Prague where he was teaching English. They used Mimi’s Parisian flat as their permanent address for documents and mail to be sent to.

Because the house was viewed as income for the family they were charged tax on it. The father then passed this $6000 tax bill to Mathew. The money was then directly debited from his account, even though another member of Elodie’s family was actually living there at the time.

“You know, if we didn’t share a child together I wouldn’t even stop to talk to her if I saw her on the street.” He said with rising emotion. “She’s just a very sad, mean person, who’s going to end up all alone one day.”

I never thought I would hear from Elodie again until I received a group email 5 months after the incident, maybe she had forgotten to take me off her list or maybe not. She explained that she was having an exhibition with her Italain friend in Berlin, using Sasha as a subject. my baby, our baby, whatever Darling…………trahlala. I briefly contemplated Sasha’s future sessions in therapy before deleting the file and removing Elodie’s name from my list of contacts.