Page 54 of Thirty Days in Paris

I was grabbing my coat from the hook by the front door when Jean Louis appeared.

‘Juliet. I have something for you.’

‘Oh.’

‘An early Christmas present.’

‘You don’t have to give me a present.’

‘I want you to have these, as a thank-you. A keepsake.’

A keepsake? I looked at him doubtfully. I felt awkward as I took the little box from him. It was old, made from thin shiny red leather with the jeweller’s name embossed in gold on the top. Cartier.

I gasped as soon as I opened the lid. There, inside, was the most stunning pair of earrings I had ever seen. I had no great experience of real jewels, but I knew just by looking that these were real: two teardrop-shaped sapphires surrounded by a cluster of diamonds. I had no idea what they were worth, but holding them in my hand made me panic.

‘I can’t take these.’ I held them out to him.

He put his hands behind his back. ‘They are yours. That’s the end of it.’

I stared at them.

‘They belonged to my grandmother. She told me to give them to someone special.’

‘You should give them to Corinne.’

He shook his head. ‘They’re not her style. She wouldn’t appreciate them. She has enough already.’

‘But when would I wear them?’ I was stammering. ‘I’m not a diamond kind of person.’

‘Oh, but you are,’ said Jean Louis. ‘Every woman is.’

I tried to think. ‘Charlotte,’ I said. ‘Save them for Charlotte.’

‘I have decided.’ There was firmness in his voice. ‘They are yours. Forever. To remember us.’

Us? I swallowed. What did he mean?

‘The family,’ he clarified, seeing the look on my face. ‘It’s the only way I can thank you, for what you have done.’

I had looked after Corinne for three days after I found her in the bath. She’d slept and slept, and I’d made soup and coq au vin and omelettes, under Jean Louis’ instruction and to his grandmother’s recipes, while he sat by her bed. And afterwards, she seemed a little better. Perhaps she was just exhausted, taking on too much work and trying to be perfect.

At the back of my mind, though, something felt a little off. I couldn’t help thinking that this was his way of rewarding me for keeping quiet about what had happened between us. I didn’t need to be rewarded. Not when I’d been complicit. Somehow taking the earrings meant admitting what had happened, and keeping the memory of it alive, when all I wanted to do was forget. But I decided that the easiest thing for now was to play along. Protest would end in an argument. I would find a way to give them back, eventually.

‘Thank you. They’re beautiful.’ They were dazzling. So dazzling I couldn’t ever imagine wearing them.

‘Don’t lose them,’ he said. ‘If you lose them, it will bring you bad luck.’

‘Of course I won’t.’

I stuffed them into my pocket. The sharp edges of the box dug into my thigh. Whatever I did with them, the earrings were going to make me feel uncomfortable.

I rushed to meet Nathalie in the restaurant at Printemps, underneath the stained-glass cupola that threw shards of blue and red light onto our faces. I’d been so excited about our shopping trip, and the shop was so glamorous. All the Christmas lights and the glitter and the smell of a hundred perfumes and the gorgeous clothes: black velvet and red silk and diamanté. But I felt a bit sick. I’d taken the earring box out of my pocket and put it into my handbag, and I was tempted to show them to her and ask what I should do. But I couldn’t do that without telling her the whole story. Instead, we ordered crèpes suzettes and talked about all the parties we were going to and eventually I felt my anxiety melt away. I resolved to hide the earrings in my drawer and forget about them.

Nothing was going to spoil my first Christmas in Paris.

27

The next morning, Juliet joined a dozen students seated around the stainless-steel island of the cookery school. She sat at the far end by the window that overlooked the Seine, observing them all with a writer’s eye, working out what they were doing here, in Paris, learning to make canapés. Like her, most of them were women of a certain age, but there were a couple of men too, and a trio of what were probably hens.

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