Page 27 of Thirty Days in Paris

She thought of her own mother, and what she’d have felt if she had known what twenty-year-old Juliet had got up to. She wouldn’t have slept a wink.

‘Right. I’ll leave you to it, then.’ Stuart broke her reverie. ‘Speak soon.’

‘Speak soon,’ Juliet echoed.

He sounded very happy, she thought as she hung up. He was obviously relishing singledom. Or was there a hot date on the horizon? It was possible, in this day and age, to fix yourself up almost immediately should you feel like it. She wasn’t quite sure how she felt, about Stuart hitting the dating scene. She wouldn’t be jealous, but it would be strange.

She had asked him, when they’d first discussed their possible separation, if there was someone else.

‘Because I’d much rather know,’ she had told him. ‘And I wouldn’t blame you if there was. I know I haven’t been very …’ What was the right word? ‘Attentive’ seemed horribly euphemistic. ‘You know. It’s not exactly Fifty Shades of Grey in the bedroom these days. It’s not your fault, by the way. Or anything to do with you. It’s me.’

‘Don’t apologise.’ He had looked upset on her behalf. ‘I know you’re finding it difficult. Please don’t blame yourself. And I promise there’s no one else,’ he’d assured her. ‘But I’m worried that one day there might be. And I don’t ever want to hurt you. I don’t ever want to betray you.’

She’d admired his honesty. She’d appreciated the fact that he hadn’t made her feel bad for her lack of enthusiasm where sex was concerned. She’d spoken to him about the menopause; about how negative she felt about herself, and about how it was normal for women of her age to go through this. She’d done loads of research for features she’d written, and she wanted him to understand the effect the change in hormones was having on her so he wouldn’t take it personally.

She’d been braced for it for years before it arrived, in all its sweaty, mood-swinging, waist-thickening glory. She felt like an imposter in her own skin, dreary and sluggish where once she had been vibrant. The nights were the worst: she lay, overheated, teeth gritted with raging insomnia as the hours dragged by. In the end, she had gone into the spare room to try to get a night’s sleep, unable to bear the heat of Stuart’s body next to her, let alone the sound of his stertorous breathing that wasn’t quite snoring.

And that was how they’d come to have separate rooms.

‘Oh God,’ her friends would say. ‘What bliss.’

Somehow, they had all forgotten the intimacy they’d once craved, sleeping tangled up in their partners; those days when you were almost as one, unable to get close enough. With middle age, distance was the holy grail.

And separate rooms had led to separate lives. Had she subconsciously pushed Stuart to their decision? Could she have done something to prevent it? She could have forced herself to pretend to be enthusiastic. Kitted herself out in some new knickerage and engaged him in a bit of adventurous role play. But she had felt self-conscious about gaining weight when he was losing so much, and wouldn’t have felt confident strutting about in black satin Coco de Mer wielding a spanking paddle. Not that she was enormous, but she’d always been able to wear what she wanted and now, with that extra half a stone mostly settling around her middle, she felt her choice was restricted, and she was much more comfortable covering up and not drawing attention to herself. Once, a few weeks’ calorie counting and a couple of swims a week at the local pool would have seen off those unwanted pounds, but she needed the comfort of carbs and couldn’t be bothered to put more exercise into her diary. She didn’t care enough about herself to take control. She knew full well this was symptomatic of the menopause, and hoped that one day she might get her mojo back.

Strangely, now she was in Paris, the city of the thin, she felt liberated, and much more willing to dress up, albeit it for herself. And there seemed to be a point to self-care and exercise. As if somewhere between St Pancras and the Gare du Nord, she had stepped back into her old self and rediscovered a lightness of heart. Had the weight of her marriage been that inhibiting? Had Stuart been burdened by it too, the strain of operating as a twosome?

As their nest emptied, marriage felt cumbersome, riddled with compromise, from what they had for supper to what they watched on telly – in the end, they had bought two: the big screen for Stuart’s sport and a little one for Juliet’s occasional box-set binges. You could never truly be yourself, always bowing to the other’s desires or feeling guilty because you’d won the toss to eat the wild mushrooms with pappardelle rather than risotto. They were tenants in common: in the past couple of years, they had felt like lodgers, passing like ships in the night, nodding at each other by the fridge or bumping into each other outside the bathroom.

Now, they could both do exactly as they pleased. And Juliet was determined to lean into it. She lay there for a few more moments, dozing. She could sense the sunlight on the other side of the grey linen curtains but didn’t quite have the energy to get up and open them yet. Her dreams, once she had finally climbed into bed, had been torrid. Olivier’s presence had been there on the edge of it all, and she could still feel him there now she was awake, so real that she had thought she might see him standing next to the bed when she opened her eyes again.

He wasn’t, of course.

She threw back the covers and jumped out of bed. She needed to go shopping. The little supermarket round the corner was convenient, but she wanted to stock up on real food, and that meant the market in the Place de la Bastille, which took place on a Thursday. She pulled on jeans and a sweater and grabbed her basket, heading out into the street.

She was a little later than she’d intended to be, so she plucked up the courage to take one of the bicycles available for anyone to use. She’d downloaded the app and unlocked a bike with the barcode. Paris was full of cyclists nowadays. She’d seen women dressed in skirts and high heels pedalling off to work with not a hair out of place; men in pristine suits and shining brogues with their briefcases strapped behind them. You needed a little bit of nerve and to stay alert, but it seemed the most practical way to get around if you were in a hurry.

It took a few minutes for her to get accustomed to riding a bike again, but before long she was sailing happily along the Rue de Rivoli and had soon arrived in the Place de la Bastille. She docked her bike, feeling very pleased with herself, then wandered amidst the stalls sprawling up the middle of the Boulevard Richard Lenoir, feasting her eyes on the extravagant displays, resisting the urge to buy everything. She was here for four weeks. She would have enough time to work her way through all the temptations.

She stopped in front of a tomato stall, marvelling at the shapes and sizes and colours, from deep purple to blood-red to citrine-yellow. Next door, lettuces were piled up, from pointed and pale green to frizzy mop heads in incarnadine red, and next to them were radishes, plumply pink and white.

The neighbouring cheese stall lured her with its scent of stable floor. Tiny milk-white goat’s cheese sat next to slabs of golden Comté and wedges of marbled Roquefort – there must have been fifty, a hundred, to choose from, their names and prices displayed in curly black writing. A flower stall was crammed with bunches of winter blooms wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. The salty brine of the sea drifted over from an oyster stall. A tower of freshly baked boules was gradually shrinking and she snapped one up before they all disappeared.

There were queues everywhere, each customer talking earnestly to the stallholder about their purchase, taking a sample from a proffered knife before committing. Tasting and choosing was a serious business, and no one got impatient, no matter how in-depth the conversation between shopper and seller.

After making her way down one side of the market and up the other, Juliet decided on a rotisserie chicken, spatch-cocked and roasted in harissa until the skin turned red-gold. With that went salad things, some saucisson sec, a slab of duck rillette. With care, this haul should last her a few days for lunch and dinner, supplemented by daily bread. She also bought fat lemons, a packet of butter studded with salt crystals from the Camargue and some coffee beans.

And then she hovered in front of the rows of pastries, each a work of art. Un plaisir coupable – a guilty pleasure – to have as a reward when she had finished two more chapters. Tarte aux pommes, mille-feuilles, religieuses, èclairs, babas au rhum, Mont Blancs, a coffee-soaked opéra … In the end, she chose a praline-stuffed Paris-Brest, and a bag of madeleines to dip into her coffee.

Her bulging basket was heavy as she made her way back, and she decided not to risk her luck putting it on the back of a bicycle. Instead, she meandered home through the Marais. The little streets were thick with tourists and Parisiennes alike, heading for the bustling cafés and restaurants offering bagels and falafel and spicy kebabs.

She passed the little café where she and Nathalie had hung out. Where she had met Olivier for the first time. It hadn’t changed a bit. If she stepped towards the door and breathed in, it even smelled the same, minus the cigarette smoke. She could see the table they used to commandeer. For a moment, she was tempted to go in and have a coffee, telling herself it was research so she could get everything right – the colour of the paint, the etchings on the glass. But she didn’t have time now. Nathalie had messaged Juliet to meet her at a restaurant called Pink Mama up in the 9ème, so she had to get back, contort herself into the bath and get dressed up. She would come back later in the week to try on unsuitable shoes, and exotic perfume, and buy something from Mariage Frères, the tea merchants, with its tantalising display of tins inscribed with exotic names.

An hour later, she was bathed, coiffed and had put on the one little black dress she’d brought with her. With her flat black boots, it didn’t look too formal, but she felt as if she was making an effort. Once she’d put her blazer over it with the sleeves pushed up, and knotted her trusty scarf at her throat, she felt confident.

On her way out, she met Melissa again in the foyer, and told her where she was going.

‘Pink Mama’s amazing. It’s an Instagram dream,’ Melissa told her. ‘It’s perfect for a girls’ lunch. You’ll love it.’

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