Page 80 of Thirty Days in Paris

She remembered the first time she met him. She was in a pub garden near Hammersmith Bridge with friends on a May bank holiday. They were onto their fifth jug of Pimm’s, getting sunburnt, ordering chips and smoking too much. Stuart was with his mates on a nearby table and came over to cadge a cigarette. He wasn’t particularly good-looking, but he had a sunny swagger to him, and a very cool pair of aviator sunglasses. If Paris had taught Juliet anything, it was that smart accessorising went a long way, and she had approved.

‘Oh my God,’ he had said to her as she lit a Marlboro Light for him. ‘You look just like Jane Birkin.’

And it was weird, because normally that would have set her off, but she didn’t have some horrible flashback to what had happened in Paris and start having a panic attack. She had just laughed.

Stuart had dropped to his knees and begun to sing the organ introduction to ‘Je T’aime’, arms outstretched, then serenaded her with the Serge Gainsbourg section. He had a good voice and was hilariously funny, and she had joined in with the Jane Birkin bits, and although they were both pretty drunk, it had actually sounded good and everyone had watched with their mouths open as they reached the breathless climax, hamming it up and gazing at each other with fake wanton lust.

They’d finished to a round of ecstatic applause and wolf whistles, and Stuart had put his arm round her neck and pulled her to him, not in a smarmy way, in a blokey rugby-club sort of a way. More of a headlock than an embrace.

‘I feel like we’re going to be good mates,’ he had said.

Theirs was the perfect friendship, forged on a hot summer’s day in a haze of plastic glasses filled with booze-sodden strawberries, scorching pavements, blaring techno tunes and pink-faced people waving their arms in the air. Louche, unrestrained London at her rowdy bank-holiday best, the antithesis of cool, restrained Paris.

Stuart had jolted her out of her malaise. He made her do things. Life to him was a sweet shop of opportunity, and you had to grab it or lose it. They saw everything, from a shark submerged in a tank of formaldehyde to sweaty bands in a club in Camden to Single White Female and Wayne’s World – after which everything became ‘excellent’. They played Prince and Radiohead and Automatic for the People by R.E.M. over and over and over, and Juliet learned to listen to ‘Everybody Hurts’ without breaking down and remembering Olivier.

She never told Stuart what had happened in Paris. She didn’t want it to define her. She told him she’d been an au pair there for a couple of months and it was cool but she was homesick, and he never asked any more except whether she’d been up the Eiffel Tower and she said no, but she wanted to. One day.

Gradually, Olivier faded in the brightness of Stuart’s ebullience, though for a long time they were just friends. The benefits happened one night, after they each took a tab of ecstasy he’d been given: he wasn’t a big drug user, but his philosophy was that you should try everything once. It was what they needed to move their relationship on, for they were both reticent about making the step from friendship to romance in case they spoiled something perfect. When they woke the next morning in his flat, he was in a daze.

‘Well, that was something else,’ he had said, and she didn’t know if he meant her or the E.

She had murmured a sleepy agreement. ‘Amazing.’

He had hooked his arms behind his head. ‘Does this mean we’re a thing, then, Dusty?’

He called her Dusty because her last name was Miller.

She’d had about five seconds to decide. Stuart was clever. Solvent. Generous. Kind. He made her laugh. He made her feel safe. He didn’t instil in her any kind of fear that he would find someone more beguiling and ditch her. With him, she was living her best London life, and he pushed her, gave her confidence, never let her settle for second best. His room didn’t have the bohemian glamour of Olivier’s, but his sheets smelt nice – of lavender.

‘Yes.’ She had stroked his forehead with her hand. ‘I guess we are a thing.’

39

As the train slid smoothly into St Pancras, Juliet felt a little calmer than she had done when she’d got on. There had been no more phone calls from Matt, so she took no news to be good news. Now she had the ordeal of carting everything across London: getting on the Northern line to Clapham, then taking the overground to Norbiton, where the hospital would only be a few minutes’ walk. She thought about getting another Uber, but she could spend ages standing on the pavement outside the station waiting for someone to pick her up and take her that far.

She sighed as she shuffled onto the Tube platform, trying to keep all her things close to her. Her arms were already aching. She felt her phone go in her handbag as the next train arrived, but she was too laden with baggage to get at it. She hoped it wasn’t bad news.

By the time she found a seat and was able to retrieve her phone, she saw it was Izzy who’d called. By now, there was no signal, so she had to wait until she got to Clapham Junction to call her back. Izzy answered on the first ring.

‘Is Dad OK? Is he going to be OK?’

Juliet could hear the tightness of held-back tears in her daughter’s voice.

‘Darling, I’m sure he will be. I’m on my way to the hospital. I’ve just got off the Tube at Clapham.’

‘Oh God.’ Juliet could imagine her rubbing her face like she always did when agitated. ‘Should I come home?’

‘No!’ Stuart would be furious if he ruined Izzy’s adventure. ‘I’ll text you when I’ve seen him and give you an update.’

‘Is Nate coming back?’

‘I haven’t spoken to him yet.’

‘Only he should. He’s near enough. I think I should too. I’m looking at flights.’

‘Izzy, there’s no point. It’s really sweet of you, but you know Dad wouldn’t expect you to.’

‘But I’m so worried,’ Izzy wailed.

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