Page 60 of Thirty Days in Paris

By next morning, there was no word from Olivier.

Juliet couldn’t pretend that she hadn’t spent all night imagining him wherever he lived, leafing through the pages. She tried to picture his face as he read. Would there be sympathy or horror spread across his features? How would he feel about her now? Or maybe he hadn’t read it. Maybe he’d got home from work and flopped, tossing the envelope onto a coffee table and putting on the television?

She told herself there was no point in trying to second-guess his reaction, or be a slave to the phone all day. She messaged Nathalie instead, checking she was still OK to come over for drinks. She definitely needed moral support.

Of course! I can’t wait to see Olivier again. The Three Musketeers!

Juliet had told her he’d said he was coming, but not what she’d done that morning. She needed to tell Nathalie the story face to face. Or maybe she should already have told her? Juliet sighed. It was a delicate situation, and sometimes she felt that whatever she did, it would be wrong and someone would get hurt. On the other hand, they were all grown-up now, and maybe she was overthinking it and it was water under the bridge to both Nathalie and Olivier? Maybe she was alone in worrying about the past?

To distract herself, she went out to buy wine from the nearby cave on the Rue Saint-Honoré, and managed to have a halting conversation with the assistant about the best vintage to serve, then lugged it back and stored the bottles in the fridge. Then she made two batches of savoury madeleines with her new tin in the tiny oven in her kitchen. She scoured the cupboards for glasses – they were mismatched, but it didn’t matter; it was a look – and pulled out dishes and chopping boards and trays to serve the food on.

Then she headed for Plisson, the incredibly chic foodstore on the Place du Marché Saint-Honoré. With its snow-white walls and pale wooden floor, it was filled with every delicacy you could possibly wish for, beautifully packaged and stored in ranks of pristine refrigerators. In the centre of the store, wooden vegetable boxes were piled high with fresh produce. She bought a selection of saucisson and some cheeses and some very expensive biscuits, as well as little cornichons, then added rocket and radishes and cherry tomatoes.

It was still only two o’clock. Too early to lay everything out. She couldn’t sit here alone with her thoughts, checking her phone every two minutes.

Now all she needed was something to wear. Something fitting for her first occasion as a hostess in Paris. She knew exactly where she would get something and headed straight for the glass frontage of Zadig and Voltaire in the Marais. Normally, she wouldn’t have the courage to darken its door, but she felt empowered by her new life, and inspired by the style of the women she saw in the streets every day. She had lost her way of late, hiding under big jumpers and baggy shirts, never wearing anything that invited attention, but she was determined to get her fashion mojo back. She would never have the daring of her twenties and thirties, but she could still make a statement.

Undaunted, she flipped through the racks of dresses, knowing she would find the right one. And there it was, a dark green satin shirt dress, its colour reminding her of the Monets, with very long sleeves, a plunging neckline and a knot at the waist which meant the fabric draped flatteringly and fell to just above the knee. The clever tailoring gave a softness to its military feel.

‘Je peux essayer?’ she asked the assistant, who showed her to a changing room.

She stared in disbelief at the woman she saw in the mirror. How could the right dress do that, turn you into who you wanted to be? She looked sophisticated, edgy, sexy, yet also comfortable. It felt as if it had been made for her. The perfect outfit to feel strong but not overpowering.

She took it to the counter to pay. She hesitated for a moment before handing over her card: was she overinvesting? Was the dress too much for what was just supposed to be a casual drinks party? Of course, a little voice in her head reminded her that the dress was for Olivier, but she managed to ignore it. In the end, Juliet decided she deserved to dress up and feel good, so she handed over her card.

The assistant wrapped the dress in tissue and put it into a sleek carrier bag, passing it over to Juliet with a wink.

‘You will have a good time in this dress,’ she said. It felt like an omen.

On the way back, she stopped at Frederic Malle to choose herself a perfume, overwhelmed by the array of squat, round bottles with their black lids, the names so tantalising, the scents so intoxicating. She thought about who she was, and who she wanted to become. She wanted to keep the things she liked about herself, but mix in her fantasy ego: someone more sensual and daring and impulsive.

In the end, she chose French Lover: spicy, powdery, musky and warm on her skin. It gave her the confidence to take on an air of allure; a movie-star magnetism. It was like a talisman. She pressed her wrist to her nose and breathed it in.

She strode back through the streets, delighted with her purchases. Even if it was only for a short time, she was a chic, sophisticated Parisian woman, independent, glamorous, in charge of her future.

And then, as she came towards the end of a small cobbled street, she saw something that made her stop in her tracks. A sign in the French windows behind a wrought-iron balcony. À vendre – for sale. And underneath, the name of the immobilier:

Jean Louis Beaubois.

She had known she might come up against his name at some point, and she’d tried to prepare herself for it, but seeing it, so bold and brazen and smug, almost, made something boil up inside her. A mixture of panic and anger and the bewilderment she had felt at the time, a bewilderment that had made her feel powerless. She’d thought the fact that she was now a grown woman with years of life experience would have made her a touch more blasé, that she might even have laughed it off, but she stood there, staring, a lump in her throat and tears in her eyes, remembering her twenty-year-old self huddled up in her coat, tears streaming down her face, staring into the icy depths of the Channel, her fingers white on the handrail as her world collapsed around her.

She hurried on, swapping her bags from one hand to the other, eager to leave behind what she had seen before she had any foolish ideas about taking down the number. She felt exposed, as if layers of skin and bone had been peeled away to reveal her bruised and battered heart. She’d spent years carefully wrapping it, protecting it from further harm, but the damage was still there. Her earlier confidence evaporated. Would she never be able to escape from what she’d done?

It was dark by the time she got back to the apartment. She had just over an hour before everyone arrived. It meant she couldn’t brood over what had happened, but had to throw herself into the preparations, leaving just enough time to get changed and put some make-up on.

By six o’clock, everything was perfect. The saucisson and the cheese were laid out, the madeleines piled high, the radishes and cornichons and tomatoes in bowls. The glasses were polished and the bottles were chilling. She folded up a white linen cloth to wrap around them while pouring.

She slipped into the new dress, pleased that it hadn’t done that awful trick of not looking nearly as good now she had got it home. If anything, it looked better, especially once she had put on her make-up and fluffed up her hair. As she stared at herself in the mirror, she thought that if she caught sight of herself, at a book launch or a private view, she would want to know who she was.

The last thing she did was to put Melody Gardot on the speaker. She tried not to think about the two tickets she’d bought to see her in two days’ time. She loved Melody’s music, the laid-back smoky jazz, her sexy, sultry voice, the romantic lyrics, and, seeing that she was performing in Paris, had decided to treat herself. Who the other ticket was for, she couldn’t yet be sure.

The doorbell buzzed. Juliet realised it was going to be down to her to do everything – from answering the door to opening wine to introductions – and she had a moment of panic. Stuart had always been brilliant at parties. Endlessly amiable and patient, happy to be bossed about, content to do the less glamorous chores while Juliet sparkled. In that moment, she wished he was there, to get the wine out of the fridge while she answered the door. But he wasn’t.

Melissa and Bernard were the first to arrive, and Bernard very sweetly offered to be in charge of drinks.

‘It is very difficult, when there is just one of you,’ he told her, undoing the wire cage on the first bottle. ‘It is better that you speak to your guests.’

Juliet was charmed by his understanding.

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