Page 17 of Thirty Days in Paris

I wanted her as my friend.

If I was going to get through the next few months, I needed an ally. I suspected there was nothing much about me that would appeal to her, except maybe the fact that I was English. But as I watched her throughout the rest of the lesson, I decided she was worth the risk of rejection. She was smart, quick, funny, bold – but not unkind. She never made a joke at someone else’s expense, only her own.

At four o’clock, everybody pushed back their chair and stood up ready to go. I could see she was making for the door. I stepped out in front of her.

‘Oh God, sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was going.’ I was gushing. It was excruciating.

‘It’s OK.’ She went to move past me.

‘Hey.’ I reached out and put a hand on her arm. She looked up, surprised. ‘Do you want to get a coffee?’

She stared at me. I blushed.

‘It’s just … it’s so great to speak English. My brain is mush.’

‘Coffee?’ she said. ‘No. I don’t want to get a coffee.’

‘Oh. That’s OK. Fine.’ I felt crushed by her bluntness. This was the rejection I had feared. ‘Sorry.’

Then her face broke into a smile. ‘I don’t want a coffee. I want wine.’ She pointed at me. ‘I know the cutest bar. Let’s go.’

She swept through the doorway and I followed, smitten.

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Nathalie du Chêne. Bold, funny, loyal. The memory of her lingered as long as the heady scent of vanilla she had trailed. If she shut her eyes, Juliet could smell it now, sweet and intoxicating. Traces of it would linger on her own skin if they spent the evening together, for Nathalie kept you close by her side, arms linked.

By six o’clock, having spent the day writing about her friend, Juliet had convinced herself to reach out. What did she have to lose? She could handle rejection, but if her memory of Nathalie was accurate, she was pretty sure she would be delighted to see Juliet. There was nothing wrong with popping in to the bar for a drink on the off chance that her old friend might be there. Satisfied she had made the right decision, Juliet opened the suitcase she hadn’t properly unpacked yet.

What should she wear, to appear as if she hadn’t tried too hard, but also look as if she hadn’t let herself go? By her photograph, Nathalie seemed as if she had achieved the impossible: maintaining her own identity but moving with the times. She looked super cool but recognisably herself.

Juliet knew she had stopped making an effort with her appearance over the past few years. Working from home meant she didn’t try to keep up with fashion like she had when she’d gone to an office every day. Jeans, Converse and sweatshirts were her uniform. In some ways, it was liberating, not to be a slave to hemlines and heels, but just setting foot in Paris gave her an urge to present herself better.

Until she had the chance to go shopping and work her way through her wish list, she would have to make do with what she already had. Of late, she had barely bothered to change if she was going out, unless it was something very dressy. But here; she needed to look pulled together, in the most ‘I haven’t bothered at all’ way.

She pulled her favourite black velvet jeans from her suitcase and put them on with a black polo neck – there were some who said you shouldn’t wear black over a certain age, but Juliet didn’t subscribe to that philosophy – then tied the Hermès scarf in a loose knot. The silk hung just so, reminding her of the day she had bought it.

She slipped on her blazer, ruffled up her hair, put on her red lipstick and smiled at herself in the mirror. Why had she stopped bothering? Because she hadn’t seen the point. Because no one was looking at her anyway. She’d lost her confidence and it seemed easier to make yourself invisible.

Maybe it was no great surprise Stuart had invested so much in his own appearance? Perhaps he’d been horrified by her decline? Had it been her fault, the split? She tutted, realising that yet again she was being too hard on herself. Another habit that came with middle age. She’d never criticised herself in her thirties or forties. It was as if, when you reached a certain age, all those teenage insecurities came flooding back and magnified. That would have to stop. She put her hands on her hips, à la Victoria Beckham, and gave a sultry pout, then laughed.

She looked OK, she thought. She wondered if Nathalie would recognise her as the shy English girl who had hung on her every word. Over the years, she had mused that the loss of her friendship with Nathalie was the biggest price she had paid for what had happened. She’d never had the courage to go back and visit, and it was going to take a bit of nerve now, to see if she could get that friendship back. Thirty years was a long time not to have seen someone, and Nathalie would have packed more into that time than most. She would have made more friends than most people would have had hot dinners. Maybe she didn’t need some random pen-pal from her dim and distant past popping up to say hello?

But Juliet’s urge to see her friend was stronger than her fear of rejection. She wanted to revel in Nathalie’s success. Perhaps some of it would rub off on her? The emotion of the past few months had caught up with her – the decision to separate, the house sale, Izzy leaving for South America, saying goodbye to Stuart – and she needed a shot in the arm. An accomplice. Maybe even a sounding board.

She knew there was another reason too. Maybe Nathalie would know – no, that wasn’t fair, to use her for intel. She should have the bloody nerve to do her own dirty work. Her own digging. She’d been pretending all this time she wasn’t going to look for him, but just the possibility that they were in the same city, breathing the same air, was starting to bring back memories, triggered by the statue early that morning. Perhaps that was why she felt a little high? Was she being drawn back in?

She steadied herself for a moment. She had to protect herself. She didn’t have to revisit the bad bits. She could control this journey if she kept her head screwed on. Going to the Beauboises’ house last night had been foolish, but she could easily relegate them to the past. Setting the record straight with the people she had cared for, however … That wouldn’t do any harm.

She stood for a moment by her laptop, a pulse fluttering at her throat. Of course, she hadn’t been able to stick to her resolve not to connect to the Wi-Fi in the apartment – how on earth was she going to keep on top of her emails otherwise? She hated poking out replies with her forefinger on her phone. She’d never mastered the two-thumb technique the kids used, firing off replies in milliseconds.

She called up her search engine. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, hesitating. The moment she typed his name into the image search, she was crossing a boundary. For if he appeared, what would she do? What was she hoping for? Was she making herself vulnerable – again?

She could handle it, she told herself. She was so much older and wiser than she had been at the time. She was a grown woman. And the need to satisfy her curiosity was greater than her caution. A surge of courage flew to her fingertips as she typed his name.

Olivier Godard.

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