Page 40 of Thirty Days in Paris

I glided through the streets on my way to the restaurant. My clothes made me walk taller; my lipstick made me smile wider; my hair made me feel wanton and alluring. I pictured Olivier’s face, his eyes widening in surprise as he saw me. Every time I thought of our next kiss, my heart buckled.

As for the thought of what might come at the end of the evening … I fantasised about him leading me back to his apartment, then running his hands through my hair, down my neck and over my shoulders as he slowly undressed me.

I couldn’t control the heat inside me. No one had ever made me feel like he did. Hux had unravelled me, but there had been something dark in the way he’d made me feel. With Olivier, there was a purity to my lust. I revelled in it. My blood ran around my body like sweet dark wine. Occasionally, a passer-by would catch my eye and smile at the joy spilling out of me. I wanted everyone to feel like this. Electric. Radiant. As I passed the statue of Louis XIV in the Place des Victoires, I felt as powerful and invincible as he must have done.

I turned down the Rue des Petit-Champs, only moments away now, my heart thumping. I counted the restaurants on the left, following Olivier’s instructions – one, two, then came to a halt outside the third. It didn’t look much, with its faded awning and missing letters and the tattered wicker chairs in the glassed-in terrace, but I remembered the scruffy place Olivier had taken me to after our visit to Shakespeare and Company and how wonderful that had been. He was the kind of person who knew the best-kept secrets, the hidden treasures, and he wasn’t one to hide behind showy displays of extravagance. He was more confident and sophisticated than that. I knew he came from a wealthy background, but he showed it by his behaviour rather than any material display. That casual confidence came from privilege, something I didn’t have much experience of.

It was five to eight. I wondered if I should linger outside for a few minutes, as I felt self-conscious about going in on my own, but there was a chill wind tearing up the street, so I braced myself to walk inside. It was full of dark wood tables with red velvet lampshades, the matching carpet worn and threadbare. I peered into the gloom to see if I could spot Olivier anywhere, but there were just a few couples scattered around the room.

A grumpy-looking maître d’ arrived and I managed to explain, in halting French, that I was waiting for my dining companion. He muttered something unintelligible and beckoned me to follow him, placing me at a table near the back. I sat down and he growled something else I didn’t understand, so I just smiled and said, ‘Vin rouge, s’il vous plaît,’ hoping he’d asked what I wanted to drink.

It was bang on eight o’clock.

Five minutes later, the maître d’ returned with a large glass of red wine and plonked it in front of me. I drank gratefully, as my nerves were gathering, now I was sitting down, trying not to look at my watch too often. He had been late last time we met, I reminded myself. Maybe punctuality wasn’t his thing.

I drank my wine very quickly and as soon as my glass was empty, the maître d’ swiped it away and brought me another. By half past eight, I felt a bit drunk and agitated, a horrible combination. Several more people had arrived during this time, and I tried not to look at the door whenever it opened, but every time it wasn’t Olivier, my heart fell a little further.

By a quarter to nine, I knew he wasn’t coming. I summoned the maître d’ and tried to explain, and asked for the bill for my wine, but he waved his hand to tell me it was on the house. I was equally touched and humiliated by his kindness as I left my seat and headed for the door, my cheeks burning with Médoc and embarrassment, wondering if people were nudging each other as I left.

Outside, it was pouring, with determined and cruel rain, the kind that mocked you for forgetting an umbrella and being too vain to have a suitable coat. Before I had got to the Place des Victoires, I was soaked. By the time I got back to the Beauboises’, I was shivering. As I walked in, Jean Louis came out of the kitchen at the sound of the door shutting, not expecting me back so soon. He looked at me in dismay, a sodden mess, mascara running down my cheeks, my previous ebullience washed away somewhere in the gutters of the 2ème.

‘Il vous a posé un lapin?’ he asked. I didn’t understand the idiom. ‘He stood you up?’

I gave the shrug I had seen so many times. ‘J’ai attendu quarante cinq minutes …’

He gave a snort. ‘That is Paris boys for you. There is always someone better.’ He saw me flinch and patted me on the shoulder. ‘Not better than you. Just better in his head. He is a fool.’

I managed a smile. I was shivering hard by now, from the rain and the distress and the humiliation.

‘Go take a bath,’ said Jean Louis. ‘I will cook for you.’

‘No, no, you don’t have to do that. I’ll just go to bed.’

‘I am cooking for myself. So a little extra is no problem. Fifteen minutes.’

He smiled at me. All I wanted to do was to hide under the covers and cry myself to sleep, but Jean Louis was being so kind. Even though the last thing I wanted was food, I couldn’t refuse. And I figured that after Corinne’s display earlier, maybe he could use some company. So I thanked him and headed to the bathroom, filling up the tub and peeling off my wet clothes.

I lay in the bath for fifteen minutes. Gradually, the heat of the water warmed my skin and then my bones, and I stopped shivering. But nothing would warm the chill in my heart. I couldn’t stop wondering where Olivier was, or what had been more enticing than an evening with me. I had misjudged him. I’d thought he was caring and considerate, but it seemed he put himself first without giving a moment’s thought to me or how I might feel at being stood up. I supposed it was better for me to find out now, at the beginning, than to invest too much time in a relationship. It was crushing, though. The hollowness inside me was the complete opposite of the delicious warmth I’d felt earlier. My heart was a hard lump that was barely beating at all. I was hardly able to drag myself out of the water and dry myself with a towel.

I wanted to crawl into bed. Black velvet sleep would bring me respite. But Jean Louis was cooking for me, and it would be rude to refuse, and I had to admit that part of my hollow feeling was hunger, for I’d had nothing since lunchtime. So I pulled on some jeans, and my favourite fleecy sweatshirt with Snoopy on the front and a pair of thick socks. I combed my damp hair and didn’t bother putting on any make-up. I couldn’t bear to look at myself in the mirror.

All I wanted was to be on the sofa in Mum and Dad’s sitting room, waiting for Dad to get back from the chip shop. I longed for the vinegar-scented steam, and the awful trashy telly we watched: Noel’s House Party and Blind Date and Stars in their Eyes. I hadn’t felt homesick until now. It had all been too exciting, and I’d been proud of myself for being independent, but now I’d have given anything to be transported back to Worcester.

But that wasn’t an option, so I ventured into the kitchen. Jean Louis was clattering about, an apron on over his chambray shirt and jeans. The kitchen smelt of hot butter and garlic and frying chicken. He poured me a glass of pale gold wine.

‘Viognier,’ he told me, and I tasted peaches and apricots and sunshine. It lifted my spirits a little and took the edge off the ache in my chest.

‘Je peux vous aider?’ I asked, wanting to help, but he shook his head as he ran his knife expertly through a pile of mushrooms and tossed them in the pan, then threw several handfuls of spinach into a pan of water.

‘Maybe the table?’ he said, and so I laid it carefully. Everything they had was heavy with quality but soft with use, the bone-handled cutlery worn from years of being held, the linen of the napkins falling into gentle folds. Everything I touched, I wanted, from the etched wine glasses to the marble pot of salt. It wasn’t fair to compare it with home. My parents were simple, ordinary, hardworking and down to earth, not wealthy Parisians who’d had generations of grandeur and luxury handed down to them. And, I reminded myself, it was Corinne’s job to make everything look covetable.

After a second glass of wine, the trauma of the evening began to fade a little. Besides, Jean Louis was being so kind, I couldn’t be churlish and sulk. And the food was as good as anything in a restaurant: plump, golden chicken breasts, the mushrooms mixed with a spoonful of crème fraîche, with a little spinach on the side.

‘The crème fraîche is from a farm near my parents,’ Jean Louis told me with pride.

I was starting to understand the French way of cooking. It was attention rather than fuss that made the difference: attention to where the food had come from, attention to what went with what, a certain simplicity – in England this meal would have come with a mound of potato and piles of vegetables – and precision timing. Nothing was left in a pan longer than necessary – though if it did need time, that was OK too. Each ingredient was treated with reverence and given its own place on the plate.

‘I hope I can cook like you one day,’ I told him, my knife cutting through the chicken as if it was a pat of butter.

---