Page 3 of Thirty Days in Paris

She grabbed her luggage and ran down the stairs. She slung on her cross-body bag – purse, phone, passport – and left the house. There was no time to get emotional. The cab was waiting. She couldn’t waste precious moments saying farewell to the place that had held her for so long. A clean break was the only solution.

Outside, she opened the door of the car and smiled in at the driver.

‘St Pancras?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Thank you,’ she said, sliding into the back seat, dragging her case in after her.

It was only small. If her time on women’s magazines had taught her anything, it was how to put together a capsule wardrobe. She could get anything else she needed when she got there.

Paris.

She was going to Paris.

Because Paris was always a good idea.

3

Two hours later, Juliet had checked herself through departures at St Pancras and climbed on board the train. She still found it incredible that in another two hours she would find herself right in the middle of the beating heart of the city. The last time she had been there, the Eurostar had been on the horizon, an exciting new possibility that no one could quite believe would really happen. A train all the way to Paris! It had seemed like a dream.

She settled herself in her seat, spreading her hands out on the tabletop. Pale, marbled with the occasional bump of a Roquefort-blue vein, a sprinkling of sun spots, her knuckles like wrinkly knees. She had two stacking rings on the third finger of her right hand, each with a diamond to represent Nathan and Izzy, given to her by Stuart after their births – she never took them off.

Her wedding ring was in a secret compartment in her handbag. She didn’t quite feel comfortable abandoning it altogether. She would always be proud of being Mrs Hiscox, whose name had been called out in the doctors’ surgery and at parents’ evening. For work, she had always used her maiden name. It was useful, having two identities. Mrs Hiscox did the nit checks and had the boiler serviced. Juliet Miller missed the last Tube home and had to get a cab she couldn’t afford. Now she would use Juliet Miller full-time. She only needed one identity now.

And here Juliet Miller was, going back to Paris to try to recapture her past, hoping it would kick-start her future. So often over the years, she had thought about going back, but she hadn’t wanted to complicate things, not while she was a wife and mum. She hadn’t wanted to revisit the memories, good and bad, with her family in tow, because she wasn’t sure what her reaction would be. Even now, her tummy flittered at the recollection of both the best and the worst of times.

At twenty, Paris had been her dream. It had changed her. It had shaped her. It had taken a naïve and unsophisticated girl and set her on the path to womanhood. So much of what had happened was wonderful. She had learned things she had never forgotten, found so many passions, discovered a whole new world. She carried all of that with her, still. But she carried the scars too, which was why she’d never gone back.

Until now. She knew Paris was waiting, ready to help her with her next metamorphosis. All of the things she had adored would still be there, to be explored anew, to help her find her new self and the person she wanted to become. Smart, sexy, chic, successful, interesting and interested, adventurous, playful, experimental – she thought of all the words she’d put down to try to manifest this new Juliet. Not that she wasn’t already lots of those things, but she needed to recalibrate. Maybe take some risks.

Like many people, Covid had chipped away at her and ground her down. The strain of having one child away at uni, bewildered and isolated, and another battling the on–off uncertainty of exams, had been enervating. She was used to working from home, but having Stuart there too had clipped her wings rather, and she’d hated having to actually think about lunch rather than idly dipping pitta bread into some ready-made hummus at her desk. And she’d missed trooping into the centre of London a couple of times a week, realised that her social life was a vital part of her identity, and no live screening was going to replace the buzz of queuing for a plastic beaker of wine during the interval. They’d had it lucky, emerging with their health and careers intact, but lockdown had diminished her more than she realised.

Lockdown. Menopause. Empty nest. The end of her marriage. It could have been a deadly cocktail, but Juliet was determined to rise from the ashes. She had no responsibility and no ties. No real money worries, thanks to the sale of the house. No work commitments, thanks to being freelance: for the whole of November, the next thirty days, she wasn’t taking on any commissions. No magazine articles, no ghostwriting. She had doubled up her workload the month before to make up for it, typing long into the night to hit deadlines and file features and keep the cash flow buoyant.

Now the only deadline she had was the one she had set herself. After ten years of writing books for other people, she was ready to write her own. And she knew that would be a lot harder. With ghostwriting, she always had source material to give her inspiration and structure and motivation. She would immerse herself in her client’s life, whether they were a celebrity or a member of the public with a compelling story, often living with them for a few days while they talked and talked about their experiences, answering her questions, reliving the lives that Juliet would put down into written words to give them a shape.

Some clients were more forthcoming than others. Some were difficult to draw out and she would have to find a way to make them trust her. More often than not, that involved breaking open a bottle of wine or two. Others were impossible to stop: once they had begun their confessions, an endless diatribe would spill out. Then it was up to Juliet to work out what to keep and what to throw out. Which anecdotes provided colour and which provided confusion. And which might end up in a lawsuit! Some of the stories she heard would never be printed; they were unfit for public consumption.

She would take those to her grave, for her greatest weapon was her discretion. The people she wrote for knew she was a consummate professional and that if, after a few glasses of vino, they did let something slip that they regretted later, it would go no further. She never told her friends and family who she was writing for. She never revealed any titbits of gossip or personal details: which famous actress wore no knickers; which celebrity had a secret cocaine habit. Anything they wanted to know, they could read in the books she wrote. More often than not, they were bestsellers. It was strange, seeing something you had poured your heart and soul into on the shelves of a supermarket or bookshop, with someone else’s name on the front. Sometimes she had an acknowledgement, sometimes no reference at all. You didn’t become a ghostwriter for the pleasure of seeing your name on the cover of a book.

‘Doesn’t it annoy you, not getting the credit?’ people often asked her, but that was the deal. And it had given her a good living, a good life. Money and, more importantly, flexibility; the chance to work from home most of the time, which had been invaluable when the kids were teenagers. Somehow, they had needed her there more as adolescents than when they were small, and she had wanted to keep them close as the perils of puberty had started creeping in. They’d always known she’d be up there in the attic, tapping away at her laptop, not like some of her friends who were still slaves to their jobs, not getting back until gone seven, by which time both they and their offspring were too tired and hungry to enjoy each other’s company. Whereas Juliet could break off from her work to make Nate and Izzy a quick cheese toastie or bagel and Marmite when they got in from school, listen to their gossip and complaints, then send them off to do their homework, so that by the time supper came around it was all done and they could relax and laugh.

Now, it was her turn to write her own story. Whether it would be of any interest to anyone other than herself was another thing, but she had spent her whole life wanting to write about what had happened. And even if it ended up in her bottom drawer, it would be a good exercise in seeing what she was capable of. A chance to find her own voice, instead of imitating someone else’s. She had a title – The Ingénue – for that was what she had been: a naïve young girl navigating a strange city. And a notebook of scribbled memories.

She was giving herself thirty days in Paris to dedicate herself to her own writing. To immerse herself in the place that had changed her so much, and to give the city a second chance. To put the bad memories behind her, and make some new ones. To walk along the banks of the Seine as the leaves fell, cross every bridge and look down at the glittering water, drink a glass of red wine on every pavement … see all the paintings, eat all the food, watch all the people she had missed over the past thirty – thirty! – years.

She reached into her bag to get her laptop, but the paperback she had tucked on top caught her eye and she pulled it out. As she leafed through the pages, the memories seeped back in through her fingertips. She remembered the very moment the book had been handed to her. Her knowledge of how precious it was. Her guilt at never having the chance to give it back …

‘I remember reading that in sixth form.’

The man’s voice made her jump. He was sitting opposite and she blushed, wondering how long he’d been watching her. She’d been so wrapped up in herself, she hadn’t noticed him. He was probably five or so years younger than she was, with close-cropped grey hair and a merino polo neck.

‘Did you like it?’ she asked.

‘How could you not?’ His right eyebrow twitched in query. ‘Le Grand Meaulnes is a classic. The ultimate tale of unrequited love.’

The irony of his observation wasn’t wasted on her. She smiled. ‘Well, quite.’

‘And I always feel it’s a warning not to revisit the past.’

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