Page 11 of Thirty Days in Paris

‘Allons-y.’ He smiled, allowing me through the door first while he followed with the pushchair.

My A to Z hadn’t told a single lie. Paris was just as it should be, everything was just where it should be, and everything was so close. Within five minutes, we were walking over the pale ground in the Tuileries, the park that ran from the Louvre to the Place de la Concorde. It looked so familiar that I expected Audrey Hepburn to run into shot at any moment, clutching a bunch of balloons, but I tried to keep on top of my excitement and look casual, as if I wandered through these gardens with monotonous regularity. For Charlotte and Hugo, this was their local park, and they jumped onto the low wall of the circular pond to run around it.

‘We have to wait,’ said Jean Louis, rolling his eyes fondly. ‘For them to go all the way round.’

And then we were crossing the Pont Royal, and I knew what that meant. St-Germain-des-Près. Writers, philosophers, actresses, chanteuses. We stopped halfway across and I looked up the river. The sun had dragged itself out of bed and shone a trifle reluctantly, not really able to dredge up much heat, but obliging us by making the water sparkle. I could see so much of the city I’d dreamed of, all its beauty laid out in front of me. I shivered.

‘You are cold?’ Jean Louis was concerned. ‘We are not far.’

I couldn’t tell him it was excitement, the emotion of it all. The pinch-me disbelief that here I was, that I had escaped, that I was heading for lunch where all those icons I’d read about had eaten and drunk and quarrelled and fallen in love and worked out the meaning of life.

The boulevards of St Germain were wider and busier than I had imagined, and I thought that Charlotte and Hugo must be getting tired – any English child worth their salt would have been whining by now – but eventually we turned off and finally arrived at a restaurant on the corner of two cobbled streets. Its double doors were dark red and clad in brass, and between each of its long, tall windows was a panel declaring ‘VINS BISTRO CAFé RESTAURANT PâTISSERIE LIQUEURS’ in art deco writing.

Jean Louis lifted Arthur out of his pushchair, snapped it shut and opened the door. We followed him in. Immediately, I was enveloped in a fug of smoke, garlic, hot butter, vanilla, burnt sugar and coffee. Crowded booths lined the mirrored walls, and a battalion of waiters were debating menus and opening bottles with reverence. The largest waiter of all, his stomach swathed in a snow-white apron, came forward to Jean Louis and kissed him on each cheek before hustling us to an empty table, conjuring up a high chair out of thin air and giving me a nod of welcome.

Paper menus were passed to us, and I looked at a bald list, recognising a few of the words, some of which filled me with dismay. Rognons, I was pretty sure, was kidney; veau was veal and there was no way I was eating that. I was searching for something familiar when Jean Louis took the menu out of my hand.

‘We will have the poulet rôti,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry – no frog legs or snails for you today. Not yet.’

He was teasing me, but kindly, and I felt relieved that I didn’t have to risk being faced with a plate of something I couldn’t stomach.

I sat back and relaxed, looking around at all the other customers, eyeing the plates of food being carried to the tables, listening to the laughter and snippets of the language I was trying to acclimatise to, congratulating myself when I picked out a word or phrase I recognised. Before I knew it, another waiter had appeared with two flutes, one for me and one for Jean Louis.

‘Kir royale,’ he announced, and as I sipped at the pinky-golden bubbles, I was filled with a glow of happiness. This was everything I had dreamed of and more when I’d caught sight of that advert.

While we waited for our lunch, we kept up a lopsided conversation in my bad French and Jean Louis’ perfect English. When I described something to him, he would explain the key words to Charlotte and Hugo, who would repeat them back, and in turn they would give me the French. I told them that my father was a train driver.

‘Train driver!’ said Jean Louis. ‘Every little boy’s dream, eh?’ He ruffled Hugo’s hair. ‘And your mother?’

Mum worked part-time as a cashier at a building society. I had no idea what the French for building society was, or even if they had them, so I told a white lie and said she worked in a bank.

‘Et vous?’ I asked him, emboldened by the Kir royale.

‘Je suis agent immobilier,’ he said. ‘Estate agent?’

I nodded politely. Estate agents in England did not have a good reputation. They were either posh in tweed suits, or dodgy in shiny suits, and either way they were sure to rip you off and tell you lies. Jean Louis didn’t seem to fit in either category.

‘It’s my family business. My father began the company. We have offices here and in the South of France, where my parents live. I am in charge in Paris.’

‘And Corinne? Does she work?’ I was curious about his wife.

‘Corinne has a business doing interiors for our clients. But she has been off for a while.’ He inclined his head towards Arthur with a smile of explanation. ‘She starts back to work tomorrow.’

Jean Louis took another sip of his drink and cleared his throat before leaning towards me. He didn’t want his children to hear what he had to say next.

‘She has found it hard, being a mother of three,’ he confided. ‘I am not so sure about her going back to work yet. But she is determined.’ He pointed at me. ‘Which is why we need some help.’

‘That’s what I’m here for.’ I beamed at him, happy to be useful.

‘It was my idea to have an au pair. She was not so happy with the idea. But I hope she will soon get used to you.’

That probably explained Corinne’s lack of warmth towards me. I could see why you might not want a stranger in your home, especially with a new baby. I thought I could probably win her round, by being helpful and keeping out of her way.

Before I could say anything, the waiter approached the table with a whole roasted chicken. It was laid reverentially in front of us and carved with precision and an extremely deadly knife. With it was a tower of thin, crispy chips and a pile of deep-green watercress. A bottle of red wine was opened too. I loved the theatre of it all; the attention and the anticipation.

If you’d said to me lunch was going to be chicken and chips, I wouldn’t have got excited. But two bites in and I was enraptured. Hot, crisp skin. Melting white meat that held a trace of smoke from the fire it had been cooked over. Salty frites. I couldn’t eat it fast enough but tried to be delicate and not eat like a total savage. I’d never tasted anything like it.

I watched Charlotte and Hugo dig in with gusto, their napkins tucked into their collars. Even Arthur was angelic, as Jean Louis fed him little mouthfuls of creamed spinach the chef had sent for him.

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