Page 74 of Thirty Days in Paris

Eventually, they turned off into a quieter street, then down a cobbled passageway between two tall, white buildings. It was lined with a jungle of plants: pots of olive trees and planters stuffed with ivy. Then Olivier came to a halt and opened a door, ushering her into a huge room arranged around a magnificent stone fireplace. The floor was hexagonal terracotta tiles worn smooth with age. The exterior walls were pale stone; the rest papered in a deep yellow toile de Jouy. At the far end was a kitchen area with a black range, an assortment of cupboards in dark wood and a long shelf with enough wine glasses to open a restaurant. Lamps and mirrors and three mismatched chandeliers spilled out a warm light. And there were bookcases, of course, with novels and atlases and dictionaries piled right up to the beamed ceiling.

‘This is wonderful.’ Juliet was wide-eyed. Everything felt just so, as if it had been there forever. But there was an underlying luxury. The linen on the sofas was thick and expensive, as were the kelim rugs scattered on the tiles. Olivier moved around the room as she drank everything in, lighting the fire, pulling two glasses off the shelf and opening a bottle of Cognac. He put a record on a turntable, and she recognised it immediately as a winsome saxophone filled the room.

‘Betty Blue!’ she said. It was the soundtrack of the film they’d been obsessed with and for a moment she was back on his bed in the Latin Quarter, under the purple bedcover, amidst the croissant crumbs and chocolate wrappers.

‘37°2 le matin,’ he corrected her, laughingly, using the French title. He was gazing at her. ‘You have not changed.’

‘Nor have you.’

It wasn’t true, of course. They both had lines, a certain softness here and there that lost the definition you need for true beauty, the glint of grey in an eyebrow, a thicker waistline. But they saw their old selves in each other. The faces they had spent hours gazing into. In that moment, they were twenty again.

Juliet stepped forward, leaning into him, breathing in his scent, not the Ralph Lauren she could still remember, but something more sophisticated: clean and modern with a hint of cedar. He reached out a finger and traced it over her collarbone, then down the edge of her neckline, pushing the green satin aside to reveal the pale skin of her breast. She tipped her head back and shut her eyes. She wanted him to go slowly. She wanted him to go fast. She wanted him.

And it didn’t matter, those extra thirty years and the toll it had taken on her body as she peeled away her dress. He made her feel graceful and lithe, and she twisted and writhed above him and below him. She teased and laughed as she made him wait. She took control and held his gaze and when he came, she saw he had tears in his eyes.

‘I didn’t mean to make you cry,’ she whispered.

‘This is the first time,’ he told her, and she understood that she was the first woman he had slept with since his wife left him. And she held him for a while, for he was trembling with emotion, and then he kissed her again, and the next time he didn’t cry, she did, because they were as beautiful as they had been when they were twenty.

Their glasses lay untouched and the turntable played on and the candles shone bright long into the night, until they finally burnt themselves out.

36

Her phone alarm went off at four in the morning. She woke with a start in a tangle of linen sheets and Olivier. They had finally made their way into his bedroom, a vault of bare stone with nothing but a seven-foot bed and an oak wardrobe. She touched him on the shoulder.

‘I have to go,’ she whispered. She was meeting Nathalie at a quarter to five, to go to the market at Rungis. They were starting to put together the proposal, so Juliet was following Nathalie through a working day, making notes and taking rough photos of the shots they would need to brief the photographer.

To her surprise, he sat up and threw back the covers.

‘I’ll make you coffee. Go use the shower – there’ll be a fresh towel in the cupboard.’

She watched as he strode across the room and pulled a blue paisley robe off the back of the door. She ran into the bathroom and had the quickest shower on record, using her finger to brush her teeth, then wrapped herself in a clean towel. She came back into the bedroom to find he’d brought her discarded clothes back upstairs and put them in a neatly folded pile on the bed. She laughed to herself as she pulled them back on. It was hardly the ideal outfit for going to a food market, but, she reminded herself, this was Paris.

Downstairs, Olivier handed her a tiny cup of espresso.

‘Drink that while I get ready,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a lift.’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘I know. But I want to.’ He leaned forward to kiss her. A lingering kiss full of promise and longing, but eventually he pulled himself away. ‘Two minutes,’ he promised, and headed off to get dressed.

Juliet leaned back against the kitchen counter while she sipped her coffee. She hated having to leave, but she had promised Nathalie. Rushing meant there was no time to take stock of their situation or make plans. She thought they were both still reeling from the thrill of it all. Olivier was certainly looking at her with wonder, not doubt, and she thought his chivalry came from consideration, not a desire to see the back of her.

But she had no way of knowing if she was just a one-night stand. Lack of sleep and adrenaline and the sudden intake of intense caffeine made her feel jittery and uncertain. Her stomach looped the loop as he came back in, dressed in jeans and a utility jacket. He had a helmet in his hands which he thrust at her.

‘You’ll need this.’

‘What?’

‘No one sane has a car in Paris.’ He grinned. ‘Allons-y.’

By four-thirty she was on the back of the Vespa he kept in the passageway outside. They rode through the grey pre-dawn of Paris, diving down a warren of backstreets, dodging the garbage trucks and the road sweepers as the cafés and tabacs began to unfurl their iron shutters. They pulled up outside She Cried Champagne just as Nathalie jumped out of her white Citroën van.

‘Salut, mec,’ she said to Olivier, as if she had only seen him the day before. They kissed each other on each cheek, and Nathalie punched his arm. ‘It’s good to see you.’

‘Oui,’ he said, smiling. There was no time for pleasantries, but it was obvious they were pleased to see each other. ‘Look after her for me, please.’ He put his hands on Juliet’s shoulders.

‘Sure thing,’ said Nathalie, eyeing up Juliet’s outfit with doubt. ‘Could you not find a ball gown?’

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