Sylvie and Léo kissed four times on alternate cheeks (it was very time-consuming, I’d noticed, this ritual the Parisians had) and then reeled off into fast and furious French. He nodded his head in my direction every so often and Sylvie looked at me with a sort of insouciant suspicion, like she didn’t trust me but also as though she couldn’t care less who I was. Why would I, a mud-stained, curly-haired British girl, have any bearing on her seemingly perfect life?
“Come, Hannah,” said Léo, beckoning me inside.
I slipped off my shoes, bending to wipe the soles of my feet with a crumpled-up tissue I’d found in the bottom of my bag. It was one of those apartments that felt like a show home, like a piece of art that you’d be strung up for getting a speck of dirt on.
“Hi,” I said, waving at Sylvie in an embarrassingly childlike way.
She ignored me completely, anyway, preferring to talk to Léo as though I wasn’t there, using words I had no hope of comprehending. I followed them into the living room, a parquet-floored, minimalistic, French-windowed delight. Whatever she did (modeling, probably, or something equally as glamorous), she was obviously very successful at it because her apartment was huge and bright and in the most unbelievable location, overlooking the boutiques and restaurants on the quayside. Through the leafy sweet chestnut trees, which created a gorgeous shady canopy for the hundreds of people who were now meandering up and down both sides of the canal, I could see the teal façade and blue parasols of the Hôtel du Nord, which I was pretty sure there had been a film about.
“Sylvie will give you some clothes,” called Léo over his shoulder, disappearing off into another room.
I unzipped the wet hoodie, draping it limply over my arm.
“You have a lovely apartment, Sylvie,” I said, wishing I could have come up with something more original to say.
It was true, though. The details were perfect: the quirky leaf-print cushion on the mustard velvet armchair, the framed black-and-white prints of Sylvie posing with her boyfriend. The stack of magazines on the table: American Vogue, Vanity Fair, W. The shiny black upright piano with sheets of music placed neatly on top of it. I wanted to take some photos of my own, some close-ups of light falling on the burnished-copper fruit bowl or of the rail in the corner hung with clothes arranged like a rainbow, going from whites and pastels at the far end to brightest nearest me.
“Merci, Hannah,” she said, brushing imaginary dust off a bookshelf with her finger and then wafting off in the direction of the kitchen. Léo reappeared in a completely different set of clothes—dark blue jeans this time, with a pale gray T-shirt and no socks.
“They belong to Sylvie’s boyfriend, Hugo,” said Léo, noticing my confusion. “Luckily we are the same size.”
He threw himself on the sofa, sticking his feet up on the coffee table.
“Sit,” he said to me, patting the seat next to him. “Relax.”
I could not relax. I perched awkwardly next to him.
Sylvie reappeared carrying a retro tray containing a stainless-steel pot of something hot and steaming and three oversized cups and saucers. She padded barefoot across the floor, revealing perfectly pedicured plum-colored toenails.
“You want tea, Hannah?” she asked.
I nodded. “Sure. Thanks.”
She filled each of our cups. I didn’t dare ask for milk, and dropped a lemon slice on top instead.
“It is your first time in Paris?” she asked, looking bored before I’d even thought about how to answer.
“I’ve been once before,” I said. It would have been rude not to respond, even though I knew she couldn’t care less what I said. “Years ago.”
“Sucre?” asked Sylvie, offering me a delicate china bowl of pale brown sugar.
I shook my head. “No, thanks.”
I took a sip of tea too soon and burned my lips, making my eyes water. I put down the cup, blinking frantically and dabbing the corner of my eyes with my fingertips, hoping they hadn’t noticed.
“So how do you two know each other?” I asked, looking from one to the other.
“Hugo and I were at music college together,” said Léo. “He is a brilliant musician, oui, Sylvie?”
Sylvie almost smiled. “He plays the saxophone,” she said to me. “He is in a very well-known jazz band here in Paris.”
Léo put his hands behind his head, as though he was sunning himself on the beach. I noticed that his feet were tanned, too, just like the rest of him.
“They have just this month signed a recording deal with one of the biggest labels in France,” he said. I could tell he was impressed but trying to play it cool.
“You must be so proud of him,” I said, turning to Sylvie.
She shrugged.
Léo laughed. “That is Sylvie’s way of saying that yes, she is very proud.”
“Oh, right,” I said, pretending to understand why she couldn’t just say it.
“You are not doing so badly yourself, eh, Léo?” said Sylvie.
“Really?” I said, perking up, wondering why he was so reluctant to talk about his job, then, if things were going so well.
He didn’t look pleased and said something to Sylvie in French. I glared at him, annoyed that he’d done it purposely so that I couldn’t understand.
“You want to come and look in my closet?” said Sylvie. “What size are you, Hannah?”
“A twelve,” I said. “Sometimes a ten on the top.”
“Come, then,” she said.
I shot off the sofa, following her, determined to keep out the negative thoughts that were threatening to start nagging away in the back of my mind. So what if she was at least two dress sizes smaller than me and about four inches taller? In general, I was happy with the way my body looked. I’d long ago come to terms with what it was and what it would not be; my stomach would never be flat; my thighs would never have a gap between them, and that was okay. But there was something about Sylvie that brought back all the insecurities I’d had when I was younger, when I’d never felt good enough, when I’d longed to be like the pale, thin, popular girls that the boys from round our way had seemed to prefer.
Sylvie’s bedroom was awash with color, from the pop art propped casually against the walls to the deep purple rug and the red velvet armchair. Her bed was unmade, as though she’d only just rolled out of it, fresh from a romantic tryst with her musician lover.
“Nice room,” I said.
She threw open the doors of an antique wooden wardrobe and began to flick through the hangers with a frightening intensity.
“What do you want, a dress? Some jeans?” She glanced at me. “Non. My trousers are too small for you. I have some skirts that are stretchy here.”
She made a circular movement around her waist.
“Great,” I said, trying not to feel deflated.
She threw a black elastic-waistbanded miniskirt and a white oversized T-shirt in my direction.
“Léo said you met on the train,” said Sylvie, putting the things I wouldn’t have a hope of squeezing into back in the wardrobe.
“Yeah,” I said, stroking the satin label on the inside collar of the T-shirt. It was from Sandro, the chic French clothing line I’d only ever peered longingly at through a shop window because I wasn’t into torturing myself by trying on things I couldn’t afford. I’d looked on the website once and even a pair of socks had been over my budget.
“You two seem very—how do you say?—cozy,” said Sylvie, folding a pair of indigo jeans and placing them on a shelf full of other tiny, skinny trousers.
“Hardly,” I said, leaning against the foot of her bed. “We’ve been at each other’s throats all day. I think he’s only sticking around because he felt too guilty to leave me at Gare du Nord after I fell over his stupid bag.”
Sylvie turned to look at me, nodding knowingly. “He felt responsible f
or you. He is like that.”
She swanned over to her bedside table, where she straightened yet another stunning photo of her and Hugo, this time on a beach, the pair of them sitting cross-legged under a palm tree. Sylvie was actually smiling in this one.
“Do you need anything else?” she asked, going over to a shabby-chic chest of drawers and opening the top one. “You want underwear?”
“Um . . .”
“Here,” she said, lobbing a pair of pristine white briefs in my direction. “Do not worry, I have not worn them.”
I wondered what kind of person owned a drawer full of knickers they didn’t wear. I was lucky if I could find a clean pair with the elastic intact.
“I will leave you to dress. There are things in the bathroom, soap and perfume, makeup. There is a towel you can use, the blue one. Take whatever you need.”
I nodded. “Thanks, Sylvie, I really appreciate this,” I called after her as she marched out of the room looking all sulky. I’d thought Léo was hard work, but she stormed around as though she was constantly on the brink of having an almighty meltdown. That all it might take would be for someone to say the wrong thing, or even look at her in the wrong way. There must be many advantages to being beautiful, but I imagined that being able to behave badly and get away with it was probably one of them.
I went into the bathroom, where Sylvie’s huge collection of products were placed artfully around the sink. Careful not to knock anything over, I peered at labels, trying to work out what was what. I had a quick wash, never having enjoyed the feel of warm, soapy water on my face quite as much. Then I picked through Sylvie’s toiletries bag and applied some of her makeup; her foundation was too pale for me, but the powder was fine. I was ecstatic to find a bottle of detangling serum that looked like it cost a fortune and used a ton of it to give my curls some definition, pulling the front off my face so that my hair was half up, half down. I squeezed toothpaste onto my middle finger and scrubbed at my teeth. And then I dressed in the outfit Sylvie had selected for me, tying the hoodie around my waist, because I’d got quite used to wearing it and thought I might need it later, when the weather inevitably turned chilly again. I examined myself in the full-length free-standing mirror at the end of her bed, relieved that I was looking halfway decent for the first time since leaving Venice. Before I went to find Léo, I doused myself in Sylvie’s Diptyque Eau des Sens, leaving a trail of orange and patchouli behind me in the room.
I couldn’t see them immediately, but I could hear someone playing the piano, a slow, romantic piece I wasn’t familiar with. I followed the sound into Sylvie’s living room, stopping dead in the doorway when I saw Léo sitting at the piano. He was curved over the keys with his back to me, his elbows rising and falling as he moved them from the lower register to the higher one. When he’d said he played the piano, I hadn’t imagined him to be anywhere near this good. How could such an insensitive guy produce a sound as tender and beautiful as this? I leaned against the door frame, closing my eyes, enjoying the music, wondering why he hadn’t told me how talented he was. He ended the piece on an exquisite run of notes that actually sounded the tiniest bit familiar, pausing with his hands on the keys before swiveling round on the stool.
He almost jumped when he saw me. “Fuck, Hannah. I thought you were still getting changed.”
I shrugged.
“You’re really good,” I said, reluctant to rub his ego even more, but feeling the need to say something. How could I not?
He slammed the lid on the keys and shot out of his seat.
“What was that piece of music?” I said. “I feel like I’ve heard it before.”
He flung himself onto the sofa, refusing to look at me. “It is something I wrote.”
“Tell her more, Léo,” said Sylvie, appearing in the room and sitting cross-legged on her exquisite duck-egg-blue chaise longue. She looked all neat and compact, like a curled-up cat.
“It is for the project I am working on in Amsterdam,” he said, pretending there was something on his phone that urgently needed attending to.
“He has written a song for an up-and-coming Dutch pop singer,” said Sylvie, jumping in. “And that piece you heard was sampled for the track.”
It dawned on me then, where I’d heard it before.
“That’s what you were listening to on the train, wasn’t it?” I said to Léo, who was now looking to be in a darker mood than ever.
“Terrible dance music, I think you called it,” he said, glancing up at me.
I grimaced. “Sorry. I could only hear the bass, and in my defense I was so tired, the slightest noise would have set me off.”
“No, Hannah. You are right. Terrible is exactly what it is.”
“I know nothing about music, anyway,” I added, looking nervously at Sylvie, who started speaking French to him again and then, as though remembering I was there, switched to English.
“It is not the decision of that silly girl, it is for the record company to decide,” she was saying. “She is a teenager, Léo. What does she know?”
This was too intriguing, I had to know what they were talking about. “What’s going on?” I asked, as casually as I could manage.
Léo waved his hand dismissively. “They hate it, Hannah, that is all.”
Sylvie rolled her eyes and looked at me. “They do not hate it. The pop star, who is a brat, by the way, performed Léo’s song on television in Amsterdam and she did not feel it went well. The record company has asked Léo to make some small changes, that is all.”
“And that’s what your meeting was about?” I asked.
“Exactly. Now I have missed the meeting and instead must go straight to the concert of this girl tonight.”
“Maybe it’s one of those songs that grows on you,” I suggested, terrified of saying the wrong thing and still mortified that I’d called his work terrible. “I bet she’ll love it eventually.”
“Can we talk about something else?” he asked, rubbing his face with both hands. “You want to use the computer?” he said, turning to me.
“I guess I could check my e-mails, if that would be okay?”
“Of course,” said Sylvie.
Léo moved over to make room for me on the sofa. “Here, let me write my phone number down for you. In case there is somebody you would like to give it to.”
“Thanks,” I said, admiring his twirly handwriting, which was neater and more ornate than I would have expected. Did this mean we’d be sticking together for the entire journey, then? I hadn’t thought that far ahead. And I had to admit, I didn’t hate the idea. It was handy to have a translator on tap, and I was kind of enjoying winding him up about being so closed off. Time was passing more quickly, anyway, so that had to be a good thing.
I opened Sylvie’s laptop. It didn’t seem right that I was sitting in a gorgeous Parisian apartment drinking tea out of a ceramic mug that probably cost more than all our crockery put together while Si’s family flew around the wedding venue covering all the jobs that I should have been doing. Catherine would be a nervous wreck, I knew that. She had her bridesmaids with her, but still; we’d spent a lot of time together lately, and I thought she’d quite liked using me as a sounding board for all her anxieties about the wedding. Despite everything, I wanted her wedding day to be everything she’d dreamed of. I wondered whether I should send her an e-mail, tell her I was thinking about her, that I would get there as soon as I could. I supposed she wouldn’t get around to reading it, anyway.
I finished my lemon tea and half listened to Léo and Sylvie, who had moved into the kitchen and were chatting away animatedly about something in lyrical French, his voice low and melodic, Sylvie’s soft and breathy. I could listen to the way they rolled their r’s all day. I logged into my e-mail account and scrolled through my in-box. I probably wouldn’t bother messaging Si, because I was basically doing everything he’d told me not to do
: I had left the station, despite his warnings not to. I’d got on the back of a motorbike, I’d had lunch with a stranger and had told him stuff about our lives. He’d be livid if he knew the half of it. So instead I e-mailed Ellie, struggling to explain what had happened. I told her briefly how Léo and I had met, about everything that had gone wrong. How a terrible start to the day had turned into something quite different: I was starting to see Paris in a different light, I told her. It was beginning to feel cathartic being here again, seeing it through the eyes of someone who loved his city and who could show me places and tell me facts about it that made it come alive. I gave Ellie Léo’s number, playing it down, mentioning Sylvie. It felt strange putting it into words, even though theoretically I hadn’t done anything wrong. So why did it feel like I had?
I briefly messaged Mum, leaving out any mention of Léo, and just letting her know that I was all right and heading to Amsterdam in a matter of hours. And then, before I could overthink it and talk myself out of it, I opened a new tab and logged in to Si’s Gmail account. As soon as his in-box appeared on the screen, I felt bad. I’d never done anything like this before, partly because I’d always assumed I couldn’t trust people anyway, so why bother to check? But it was different with Si; I trusted him more than anyone I’d ever met. Except that suddenly I’d started not to. We were both in our thirties now and living together. It would be marriage next, and then possibly a baby. I didn’t think I’d be able to do any of that until I was completely sure he meant it when he told me that he wanted us to be together forever. And if snooping in his e-mails put my mind at rest, then surely it was worth the guilt I’d probably feel once I realized I had absolutely nothing to worry about.
The only reason I knew his password was that just after we’d moved in to the flat, when the weather was still all over the place and had been mild one minute and freezing the next, he’d called me from a conference and had instructed me to go into his e-mails to look for some details about a boiler service. I’d had the day off work and had been lying on the sofa watching Netflix when what I should have been doing was polishing my CV so that I could start looking for a new job. He’d told me his password was Gameofthrones. I’d wound him up about that for weeks afterward and as a result had never forgotten it. I was surprised he hadn’t changed it, actually. Proof, perhaps, that there was nothing untoward going on—he wouldn’t be that stupid, surely.
The Paris Connection Page 15