Page 17 of A Lot to Unpack
I guess I need to look at it this way: I’m in Paris, I’m on a dream date, with a really nice man. If not now, then when, right? Plus, I don’t need to worry too much, because I’ll be back in London soon enough, and Henri will stay here, so what does it matter if it goes disastrously…
‘I’d love that,’ I blurt in a breathy voice.
Theoretically, I would. So maybe a little fake confidence is what I need for the real deal to kick in.
‘Allez. Let us go inside.’
Henri steps aside to allow me to walk through the door first, I’d imagine so that he can keep an eye on me, to make sure that no one or nothing gets to take off my skirt before he does. Inside the lobby, he takes me by the hand and leads me towards the lifts.
‘Henry… Henry… Oi, Henry… Henry… Henry, oi, are you deaf, pal?’
Henri keeps walking but I turn my head and see that there’s an Englishman hot on our heels.
‘Erm, I think someone wants you,’ I tell him.
‘No, no, it can’t be me,’ Henri says, picking up the pace.
‘Henry, pal,’ the voice says, getting louder.
I notice a hand reach for Henri’s shoulder. Henri stops and turns around.
‘Deaf git,’ the man says, laughing. ‘I was going to say where were you, you missed half the conference, but suddenly it all makes sense. You pulled a French bird, eh?’
I can’t help but cock my head as I stare at the man.
‘Sorry, love, no offence, but they don’t make ’em like you back in Milton Keynes, where we’re from,’ he tells me. He turns his attention back to Henri. ‘Is this why you ducked out early? Did you plan this?’
I look to Henri. He’s ghostly pale right now.
‘Ehhh… no, I went for a cigarette,’ he replies.
The man cracks up.
‘Give over with the fake French accent, you’ll offend your bird,’ the man ticks him off.
I look to Henri but he can’t return my gaze.
‘Yeah, no, sorry, I bobbed out, but me and her just met,’ Henri – well, Henry – explains.
Oh, my good God. Henry’s voice is much higher pitched than he’s been letting on – which hardly seems worth mentioning, given that he’s clearly been pretending to be bloody French this entire time. His real accent is much different.
‘I’ll leave you to it, pal,’ the man says, slapping Henry on the back. ‘But have you still got your guidebook? I’ve lost mine. I want to go out, and it looks like you’ll be staying in…’
He wiggles his eyebrows.
Henry says nothing. He takes the guidebook from his pocket and hands it to his friend, who soon makes himself scarce.
Okay, that’s why the tour seemed like something out of a guidebook, because presumably that’s exactly where it camefrom. Not from Henri, the sexy Frenchman, but from Henry, Milton fucking Keynes born and fucking bred, who obviously clocked me as a ditzy English bird and thought he’d try his luck.
‘Liberty, I’m so sorry,’ he says, his real accent still completely alarming to my ears.
Oh, God, this is why he sounded so French before. And why everything he said felt like, I don’t know, like something you’d hear in a movie. I kept thinking to myself: wow, I can’t believe the French actually talk like this, and now I know – they don’t. They absolutely don’t.
‘I thought maybe, if you were English, you’d be looking for a Frenchman, and you wouldn’t be arsed about some businessman from Milton Keynes, but we’ve had such a good time, haven’t we?’
I mean, yeah, we have had a good time. It’s been a lovely day, the food was good, the kiss was amazing, and Henri – I mean Henry – is a good-looking guy. But does any of that matter if he’s a liar?
‘What do we say we still go up ze stairs?’ he says, playfully adopting his French accent at the end – which, now that I think about it, sounds so, so fake.
