Page 3 of Tangled With the Wrong Guy
‘Never mind. I have to …’ She tapped her wrist, even though she wasn’t wearing a watch. ‘Don’t want to get locked in!’
‘Mon Dieu, non –manyfantômes! Bonne soirée, Mademoiselle Anglaise!’
‘Et vous,Monsieur le Security Guard!’
She set off walking again, smiling to herself. Even on this, the second-worst of all days, there were some things to be grateful for.
Chapter Two
Instead of taking her usual route, which bisected the cemetery, Chloe followed the little lane that skirted the eastern boundary. As she had an extra fifteen minutes, she decided to seek out Edith Piaf’s grave. But she’d need to keep an eye on the time; it was easy to lose your bearings in this maze of pathways and tombs.
She didn’t have a map, but after a year she’d developed a good sense of north, south, east and west. The cemetery had no deliberate pattern and little symmetry. Here a bright, open area with a single memorial; there a dark, closed-in huddle of tombs. Paths that ran straight, paths that twisted, paths that led nowhere, and in between and alongside, a glorious jumble of graves, tombs, statues and mausoleums.
She passed a grandiose mini temple stuffed with aristocratic bones, and then a humble row of nobodies. Chloe liked how they were all mixed together.Egalité. A reflection of the French ideal.
Oscar Wilde was over here. She passed the side path to his tomb, and eventually spotted Edith Piaf’s grave in a far corner, identifiable by the red roses strewn across its black marble surface. Looking at those stems, Chloe would take a guess a good number had started their day in a bucket outside Coeurs et Fleurs.
Edith, she remembered, as she gazed at the simple grave, had been raised in a brothel, and with her songs of love and sorrow had become a symbol of passion and perseverance.Judging by the sea of flowers, the singer still held an important place in French hearts.
La vie en rose.Seeing life through a rose-tinted lens. Perhaps there was a lesson to be learned there; perhaps she should be more like Edith, drag herself out of her pity party.
Non, je ne regrette rien. On that, she and Edith definitely differed. Chloe regretted itall. She’d given her heart to Dan, and he’d smashed it to smithereens. This time last year she should’ve been a few hours married. A wife. But instead …
Je regrette it all.
She snapped a photo of the grave. She could upload it to the shop’s Instagram account, with perhaps a pithy caption aboutla mort en rose.Actually,no. That would be disrespectful. Edith was clearly up there with Joan of Arc when it came to French heroines. What was she thinking? This day was turning her into an embittered harpy.
Onwards. Through the trees, the sun was dipping in the sky, and the path she was following began to meander. There was no one else around. But over there …
‘Oh,bonjour!’ She went over to where a small black cat was perched on a white marble tomb. It opened its mouth in a silent meow. Unusually – most of the cemetery cats were skittish – it came to meet her, then rolled onto its back.
She tickled its tum, and for some reason felt compelled to spend the next few minutes talking to it, describing her awful day, explaining why she was in Paris, telling the cat, who was definitely listening, about her temporary pet, Patapouf. ‘Do you know him? Oh, sorry. You probably don’t speak English.’
She laughed to herself. It was fun to act a little crazy when you were alone in a crazy place.Talk to a cat like nobody’s watching.
She straightened and checked the time: 5.40pm. Twenty minutes to closing. ‘Sorry, puss, I–’
But the cat had disappeared. Odd – she hadn’t seen him go. She looked around her, suddenly disorientated. She didn’t know this part of the cemetery at all.
Wait – Google maps! She opened the app and peered at the blue dot, but whatever satellite was meant to be tracking her was clearly malfunctioning. Perhaps it was all this ghostly energy, thefantômesplaying merry hell with the signal. According to the map, she was still at the entrance. She turned round in a circle; the blue dot spun as she did, but it didn’t move.
Pas de problème. Edith’s grave was clearly marked on the map … she’d followed this path, then this one … so she should be quite close to Jim Morrison. She knew that area, and his grave wasn’t too far from the exit. But she’d have to move quickly. Much as she loved this place, the prospect of being locked in here wasnotappealing.
She checked her phone battery. Being locked in here with a dead phone was even less appealing. Ten per cent. Oh dear. And leaving home this morning in her cloud of misery, she’d forgotten her power bank.
A short while later she breathed out in relief as she spotted the barriers and riot of flowers that signposted Jim’s grave. It was more of a shrine, really, she thought as she approached, with its bouquets, candles and photographs. Padlocks with names on were attached to the barriers. The grave itself was a simple thing, its headstone inscribed with the singer’s name, dates, and an epitaph in Greek, something about him being … what was it? True to his own spirit?
The site looked deserted. Propped up on the headstone was that iconic black-and-white image, and as she came close, his intense gaze fixed on her.Oof. She could understand the attraction. Those huge, soulful eyes, the tousled dark locks, that pouting, sensuous mouth. And a poet, to boot. A beautiful man with a sensitive soul.
But also wild, lewd, drunk, unfaithful. Like …
Men. Bastards, the lot of them.
Come On Baby Light My Fire.It was the only Doors song she knew. Seriously? What a cheesy line. So much for the sensitive poet.
Chloe’s fragile good mood – okay,improvedmood – was ebbing. ‘See ya, loser,’ she muttered … and then she froze as she heard raucous laughter coming from beyond the grave.
Whoever was there was hidden from view by one of those mausoleums that looked like a mini Greek temple. She felt a prickle of unease. Perhaps it was a bunch of Jim Morrison ghouls intending to spend the night having wild sex beside their rock god.
