Page 32 of Midnight in Paris

Sam knew the truth but had been sworn to secrecy.

‘Bye!’ Sophie pulled the door closed behind her and wheeled her suitcase to the waiting driver.

Two hours later, she was feeling (and no doubt looking) overheated and dishevelled as she made her way through the glass doors into St Pancras station. As always, the space teemed with life; everyone in a hurry, streaming towards or out of trains,running to platforms, walking while talking loudly, mobile phones clamped to ears.

The statue caught her eye as it always did, the bronze of a couple, clasped together, noses touching, lips close – the perfect piece of art for the space. A scene that had perhaps been played out many times over the years in St Pancras – a place where people reunited and said goodbye hour after hour, day after day. She paused briefly, the rumble of her wheeled suitcase on the smooth floor stopping, and looked at the pair. Their foreheads were touching and their eyes stared into each others’ intensely. It was impossible to tell if it was a scene of relief or sorrow – reuniting or parting.

‘For God’s sake, woman, it’s not theMona Lisa!’ came a voice at her ear.

She jumped, then turned around and beamed. ‘Tom!’ she said.

He was altogether the same and yet different from when they’d last seen each other in person. Gone were the baggy jeans he’d favoured at university and in their place, smarter, more fitted trousers in grey cotton, and a simple T-shirt – white with a single navy stripe. His trainers looked new – a world away from the battered pair he’d often donned back in the day. Had he smartened up his look for her? Or was this how he dressed now? What else had changed?

She saw in his eyes that he was appraising her in the same way. She’d definitely been more casual – bordering on a complete and utter mess – at university, squeezing the life out of her favourite jeans and trousers, wearing plain T-shirts and cheap jumpers. Other than at the ball, he’d probably never seen her in a dress, let alone the smart, belted one she’d picked out from New Look.

‘I like your hair,’ he said at last.

‘Thanks.’

They fell into step together and there it was, that feeling of comfort that always seemed to settle over her when they were together. But behind that, this time, was something else. A feeling of being desperate to ask:So? Do you still want to be together?But an inability to express that.

She glanced at him as they walked towards the Eurostar check-in. But his expression was unreadable.

13

TWO WEEKS AGO

‘I thought you were going to dump me again, you know,’ Tom said out of the blue. ‘Back in the day.’ He leant back on her bed, arms behind his head, and not for the first time Sophie wondered what Will would say if he knew. But they’d done nothing wrong. And there wasn’t anywhere else to sit, really, in the hotel room.

‘Dump you?’ She repeated, incredulous. ‘What? After uni?’

‘On that second trip. You know when we’d agreed to go as friends, to see what happened? I was terrified the entire time.’

‘You didn’tseemterrified. Anyway, can you even dump someone when you’re not officially together?’

‘Well, shatter my dreams, then.’

She laughed softly. ‘So dramatic.’

‘Everythingdidfeel quite dramatic in those days. All or nothing.’

‘We were kids, really.’

He nodded. ‘Yeah.’

He’d turned up at her hotel room this morning after she’d returned from breakfast, and was now lying on her bed as shebrushed her hair and added a slick of mascara to her lashes. She was glad – relieved even – that he’d decided to come back.

Closing her eyes now she pictured that day, so many years ago. When she’d taken him to the bridge and he’d looked at her. And they’d both just known. The kiss under the stars, the water running beneath. That magical midnight hour where heaven had seemed to come down to earth and they’d felt part of something enormous, bigger than themselves.

Last night she’d been uncomfortable on her basic mattress at the Cler, and had woken with the realisation that either she had got used to slightly better things, or her body was a decade older than when she was last here and felt the bumps and hard areas of the mattress more keenly than its younger self.

Tom hadn’t tried to come in when they’d returned, just after midnight. And she hadn’t felt able to ask. Instead, they’d said goodbye chastely outside the double doors, and she’d been left to return to her room and sink into sleep. She’d been both glad and disappointed at his absence – feeling better when texting Will, but also being aware of the emptiness of the room with its impersonal beige and brown colour theme and basic, laminated furniture, without Tom’s easy smile to make it seem like the best place on earth.

There was only one more day before she left – one more night to sleep. And then she’d be home, two weeks away from becoming Mrs Will Baxter, and it would all be over.

She was ready for this new time in her life, to walk down the aisle towards a man who’d not only been there for her as a friend, but had literally saved her in recent years.

But saying a finalau revoirto Tom? It was too soon. It would always be too soon. Yet what choice did she have?

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