“Hannah?” he said, holding out his hand.
I took it and he pulled me up. Except that as we walked back to the bike, he didn’t release me, and I didn’t wriggle free. We let our hands trail between us, mine inside his, his fingers linked through mine. I could tell myself that it was because of what he had just told me, that I was offering him comfort and nothing more. But that wasn’t how it felt. He had turned a terrible day, the worst day, into a series of moments that I would always remember. I’d started to see things more clearly at last, and I thought that part of that might be because of him. We passed a busker playing “La Vie en Rose” on the saxophone. The moment felt surreal, filmic: the Sacré-Coeur behind us, the warm sun on my skin, the music and now Léo not letting me go.
17
Cutting it dangerously fine, we’d arrived back at Gare du Nord at just after 1:30, with ten minutes to spare before the Amsterdam train left the station.
“I can’t believe we were that close to missing it,” I grumbled, striding along the platform and getting on a carriage toward the back of the train.
“Relax, Hannah. We made it, didn’t we?” he said, dragging his bag up the steps behind him.
“Just,” I said, although I knew I shouldn’t be taking my bad mood out on him. He hadn’t forced me to go to any of these places, to keep wandering from one pretty location to another. I had to be responsible for my own actions: I’d made a choice to go with him and now I was more confused than ever. I had nobody to blame but myself.
“You can sit near the window,” said Léo, stretching up to stuff his bag in the overhead rack.
“Thanks,” I said, squeezing past him, sitting down.
The air-conditioning hadn’t kicked in yet and I fanned myself with a walking map I’d picked up in Venice; I’d wanted to keep it as a memento. Léo was rustling about, as though he couldn’t sit still. He took off his jacket, went back to his bag to get out a magazine and then zipped it back up noisily, finally throwing himself down next to me. I rested my head against the window, watching men in fluorescent jackets scuttle up and down the platform.
“What time did they say the train gets in?” I asked.
I’d barely thought about Si for the past couple of hours, which was worrying, given that when I arrived in Amsterdam, there was a chance he could propose to me at any second. Reality was edging ever closer and this bubble I’d been in, here with Léo, the two of us meandering across Paris as though we were extras in a remake of Amélie, was about to pop.
“At 4:57. The wedding is at 5:30, right?” he said.
“Yep,” I said, feeling sick at the thought of it.
A whistle blew and somebody in a blue uniform waved a placard and the train began to move, juddering to life, slipping out from underneath the glass canopy of Gare du Nord, carving its way through the outskirts of the city. I dug my thumbnail into the fleshy part of my palm. Soon, Paris would be behind us, and the last few hours would feel like nothing more than a glitch in my otherwise very ordinary life. I wondered whether I would forget about Léo, eventually. Whether I’d struggle to remember the timbre of his voice, the exact features of his face. How happy he’d made me, how frequently he’d made me laugh.
“Need to look at anything?” said Léo, offering me his phone.
I shrugged, lost in thought, holding out my palm for the phone and then nearly dropping it. We went to save it at the same time, our heads clashing together.
“Ow,” I said, rubbing my forehead.
“And you tell me you are not clumsy,” he said.
He rubbed his thumb across the exact spot near my temple where it hurt. “I hope you do not have a bruise there tomorrow,” he said, stroking my skin for what felt like ages. When he stopped, I wanted to take his hand and press it back there again.
“Right,” I said, trying to pull myself together and focus as I searched directions from Centraal station to the Lux Hotel, which apparently would take approximately nineteen minutes by car. I’d be lucky if I made the ceremony, then; there would have to be absolutely no holdups. Then I logged into my e-mail account to see whether either Mum or Ellie had responded to my messages. I was pretty sure that Mum wouldn’t have done, because whenever I sent her an e-mail, I would first have to prompt her with a text saying Check your e-mails, which usually caused great excitement, even though the content of the message was almost always very dull.
I scrolled through my in-box, only half concentrating. There was an article about how to lose an inch of belly fat in four weeks; a 40 percent off Gap offer that was useless because I couldn’t afford the remaining 60 percent. And then I noticed an e-mail from Central Saint Martins. My finger hovered over the open button and I pressed it. It was a reminder about the pre-degree course. A prompt to upload my portfolio and get my application form in by the following Wednesday, which was less than a week away now. I knew exactly why I’d left it this late: I’d been going back and forth with it, wondering whether I could commit to the time, whether I’d be good enough to be accepted, worrying about how I’d feel if I didn’t get a place.
“What is that?” asked Léo, looking over my shoulder.
I showed him.
“This is your course, the one you will apply for?” he asked.
I nodded. “If I can get the application together in time, that is.”
“Why would you not get it ready on time?” he asked.
I ran my thumbnail backward and forward across my bottom lip.
“I’d need to get all my film processed and digitized when I’m back in London. Think really carefully about which images to upload,” I said, his hair tickling my cheek as we read the e-mail again together.
“You have taken lots of photographs, Hannah. I do not believe that it will be difficult to find the right ones to send.”
“But now I’m doubting that they’re good enough.”
I could feel my heart starting to race. It felt as if I had this narrow window of opportunity to change things. That this was it, the moment I’d been waiting for. I’d just taken two rolls of film in Paris: there was bound to be a story there, a theme to base my portfolio around. I gave him back his phone and rummaged under my seat for my bag, pulling out the wine and the plastic cups.
“Let’s finish this,” I said.
He pulled down our tables and poured us a glass each. “See? I did not get you drunk before the wedding.”
“I feel as though I need to be drunk now, as it happens,” I said, trying to restrain myself from gulping the whole thing down in one.
I’d been dreaming of becoming a photographer for years. What if somebody now came along, rejected my application, told me my photos were terrible and shattered my dreams? What would I do then? And going to the open house hadn’t helped. I mean, it had sounded amazing, and their facilities were out of this world, but I’d been massively out of my comfort zone in their high-concept building in Kings Cross, which was full of trendy, very young artists looking serious and creative in the foyer. But then, I’d been out of my comfort zone in Paris at first, and now look.
“Did you go through any of this, with your music?” I asked him. “This insecurity. This constant feeling that you’d been kidding yourself the whole time?”
“I still go through it,” he said. “Tonight, in Amsterdam, I must convince them that my song is good enough, that my track is worthy of launching someone’s career. And in the back of my mind I am starting to doubt myself, too, but I do not let it take over. I must continue to believe in myself and my work, because if I do not, then who else will do it for me?”
“I wish I had half your confidence,” I said.
“You do have it. It is hidden somewhere, that is all, because of all these different experiences that you have had. But it will be there, you just need to find it.”
“How do I do that?”
“Throw yourself off the edge,” h
e said, making a diving motion with his hand. “Take a chance on something.”
Or somebody, I thought. I propped my chin on the heel of my hand, looking out the window. I remembered how Ellie had said the same thing to me the day I’d met Si, when I’d told her what had happened at the Tube station and had been bemoaning the fact that he probably wouldn’t call.
“Let me get this straight,” Ellie had said. “He ran after you. He asked you to go for a drink. And then he took your number. Why on earth would he bother with all that if he wasn’t interested, Han?”
She’d flung open the freezer, pulling out a shocking-pink tray of ice, each “cube” shaped like a flamingo.
“Hmm,” I’d replied, “the eternal question.”
“You need to believe in yourself a bit more,” said Ellie, shoving several heaped teaspoons of sugar into her NutriBullet.
I shrugged.
“And when he calls, you’ll say yes, right?” she said.
“Maybe, but he won’t,” I said, sliding onto a stool, watching Ellie frenetically chop a bunch of mint.
“But if he does?”
She flung the mint into the blender, followed by an entire trayful of ice.
I sighed. “I don’t know. He’s not really my type.”
Ellie went to the fridge, retrieved a large bottle of white rum and poured at least a third of it into the blender. “You mean he’s not monosyllabic, unemployed and completely clueless about how to navigate an actual grown-up relationship?”
I knew she was joking, but there was also the tiniest grain of truth in what she’d said. My track record with men was atrocious. It was as though I purposely sought out guys who had a huge amount of baggage and an aversion to monogamous relationships. There was something about the inevitability of it that felt familiar and safe. Like, it obviously had to end, so it made it less devastating if I knew that from the beginning. Letting myself believe that someone like Si might like me did not feel safe.
I heard my phone buzz. My heart skipped a beat. There was no way it could be him already, was there? I pulled it out of my pocket, sliding my thumb across the screen. I had a text from a number I didn’t recognize.
Hey, it’s Si. Really nice to meet you just now. Wondering if you’re free for drinks next Thursday?
I squinted at the screen to see whether I’d misread something, or misconstrued its meaning.
“Is it him?” asked Ellie, her eager face looming at me. “It is, isn’t it?”
She started up the blender, sending vibrations rattling through my body. A few seconds later, she took the jug off the base, gave it a shake and split the icy liquid between the two ruby-red cocktail glasses I’d bought her for her twenty-fifth birthday.
“All right, calm down. Yes, it’s him,” I said, unsure now what to do. I’d done such a good job of convincing myself that he wouldn’t get in touch that I hadn’t considered what I’d do if he actually did.
“What did he say?” asked Ellie. “Come on, spill.”
I read the text to her. It sounded even stranger when I said the words out loud.
“Well, I think he sounds great,” she said, sliding a cocktail in my direction. “Voilà!”
I took a sip and gave her a thumbs-up.
She would think that, because he was much more her type. She’d always gone for the good guys, shunning excitement for stability, which was almost certainly why her relationships had been infinitely more successful than mine.
“I’m not sure what to do,” I said, turning the phone over so that I wouldn’t have to keep looking at the screen.
“Don’t, Han,” said Ellie, suddenly all serious.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t do what you always do, lately. Talk yourself out of it before you’ve given it a chance.”
I frowned. “Do I?”
Ellie leaned on the counter, looking uncomfortable. “Well, you’ve become a lot more wary of people, haven’t you, over the last few years? Sort of given up a bit. It feels like you expect the worst all the time.”
I laughed hollowly. She’d never mentioned anything before.
“What do you mean?” I asked, gulping down my cocktail, not sure if I really wanted to know.
“You used to take risks all the time, Han. Don’t you remember? You’d be the one with all the chat, getting us into clubs when we were underage. Gate-crashing parties we hadn’t been invited to. Buying cigarettes from the corner shop because you weren’t the tallest, but you were the only one who had the balls to try. And then, I don’t know . . . something happened. Just before I started uni. You changed, and I never really understood why.”
“I didn’t,” I protested. “I’m exactly the same person I always was.”
“Prove it, then. Say yes, you’d love to go out with him. What have you got to lose?”
* * *
• • •
There had been something different about Si. A sort of intoxicating stability; just the right amount of self-assuredness. I’d imagined what it would be like to have someone like that in my life, and now I knew. In the space of a year, my life had changed beyond recognition. But I wondered, suddenly, what his motives were for moving so fast. If he’d been hurt before, by his ex, then perhaps he was looking for something easier this time around. Someone who wouldn’t present a challenge, who would never leave him because she needed him too much. Had he chosen me because with my low self-esteem and my inability to do anything productive with my life, I was the ultimate safe bet?
We’d stopped at a station, which I thought must be somewhere in Belgium. I watched passengers getting on and off the train, thinking about cameras and portfolios and what my fellow students might be like if I did get a place on the course and how I was going to cobble together the money for fees. And then I wondered what Si would say when I told him I was definitely going to apply. And I thought that perhaps I wouldn’t let him influence me so much anymore. That it was about time I put my stamp on things; made my own decisions, did things without him, things he didn’t approve of, if I felt passionately enough about it.
Ten or twelve people joined our carriage and there was a flurry of seat-finding and the ramming of luggage into already-full racks and the sliding of laptops out of bags. The train pulled off again, its wheels squealing on the track, the usual run of flat green fields coming into view. Léo had been scrolling through his phone for a while and, like a child, I wanted his full attention again. I wanted to listen to him talk. I wanted to know everything I could about him in the short space of time that we had left.
I nudged him. “What are you thinking about?”
He put his phone on his lap.
“I was thinking,” he said, clasping his hands in front of his mouth, “about many things. But one of them was about whether we will remember this day. In five years’ time, or in ten. Do you think we will, Hannah?”
I tucked a loose curl behind my ear. “I think so,” I said, turning to look out the window.
The train plunged into a tunnel. I took a mouthful of wine. I could see my reflection very clearly because of the darkness. My eyes were bright and alert, even though I’d had very little sleep. I could see Léo’s arm resting on his thigh. And then he leaned forward, and I could see that he was looking at me. He reached out to brush my hair off my shoulder with his hand, trailing his fingers across the back of my neck. When we emerged on the other side, and the carriage became bright again, he dropped his hand away, settling back in his seat.
“Want something from the buffet car?” he asked.
I nodded overenthusiastically. “Sure. Anything.”
I watched him making his way along the aisle, his jeans hanging loosely on his hips, his Calvin Klein boxers on show. I was relieved when he disappeared through to the next carriage and I didn’t have to look at him anymore. I might be able to think more clearly now he was out
of sight. But then my mind drifted back to him, another vivid daydream, an extension of my Paris apartment one. This time, we’d moved away from the window. We could still hear the accordion playing, feel the soft breeze. He pressed me up against a wall, his hands on my waist, his face close to mine, his lips parted, and I knew he was going to kiss me and that I wanted him to more than anything.
“Ça va?” he said, appearing beside me, putting an end to my daydream.
“That was quick,” I said, taking a sip of wine and then spluttering it all over my lap when it went down the wrong way.
It was as though I suddenly had no control over what was going on in my head. Si was the one I cared about, the man I loved and wanted to spend the rest of my life with, wasn’t he? Had my head really been turned by Léo and all his French charm, just because I felt listened to, because I thought he already understood me more than anyone ever really had, after less than a day together?
He passed me a paper cup of tea.
“You have it black, right?” he said, offering me a little sealed pot of milk.
“Actually, I don’t,” I said with a wry smile. “I was just too scared to ask Sylvie for some.”
He tutted. “She is very softhearted underneath. She is not as tough as she makes out.”
I nodded. “Your friends are important to you, aren’t they?”
He thought about it for a second or two. “You know, in a way they saved me. When I first came to Paris, my head was all over the place. I could not play my instruments, I could not apply myself to anything. My father was falling apart, already dating other women only a month after my mother had died.”
“That must have been tough.”
He shrugged. “But then I met Hugo and some of the others and we had the same interests, the same outlook on life. Similar hopes for the future. And I know what you might think of them, that they are very cool, a little too Parisian, not very welcoming, perhaps. And that is true. But these friends became my family, at a time when that was what I needed in my life.”
The Paris Connection Page 20