The hotel, which is situated on the Avenue Montaigne, the most exclusive shopping street in Paris, is a favourite of the Sultan of Brunei, Russian billionaires and top models. I am here to write a travel piece for a British newspaper and, such is the clout of the newspaper in question, I have been given the newly decorated €6,600 Eiffel penthouse suite, the best suite in the hotel. After months of roughing it in rural France I cannot believe my luck. Only three people have stayed in this suite so far and, unbelievably, I am one of them. Decorated in a modern art deco style – all dark woods and powdery blues – it is more like a hip Parisian apartment or private club than a hotel room. It has a separate lounge and dining area, two enormous bedrooms and huge wraparound window, from which the Eiffel Tower appears close enough to reach out and touch. And for just ten minutes every evening, the famous landmark is transformed into a glittering tower of light, thanks to 20,000 strobe bulbs. It is like having my own private light show cum art installation just outside the window.
It is February, a week before the couture shows in Paris and there is a definite buzz in the air. Patrolled as it is by mesdames in mink bomber jackets and their miniature dogs, the air on the Avenue Montaigne is scented with puffs of expensive Guerlain or Caron perfume. It looks, feels and smells expensive. And with so many top models and fashion editors in town for the shows, the glamour quotient has been upped. Earlier today, I spotted top fashion photographer Patrick Demarchelier taking pictures of a well-known model striding down the Avenue, while outside the Dior boutique paparazzi on mopeds lay in wait, fat lenses at the ready, for a well-known American actress. In my former life as fashion editor of a well-known newspaper, I’d have felt obliged to wait with the photographers in the hope of a story. Today I kept walking and it felt good.
As I lay out an embroidered black dress on the bed, I think how nice it is not to be surrounded by unpacked boxes, plastic crates and cans of paint. For months my daily uniform has consisted of jeans and a tatty old pair of Ugg boots spattered in battleship-grey paint, as I spend my days sanding and varnishing floors and painting skirting boards. So, as always, I am really looking forward to an opportunity to dress up. I climb into the bathtub – so big you almost need a ladder – and lie back in the scented water, soaking up the luxury around me: the smooth marble floor, the clouds of white towels, the walk-in sauna and steam room and the shower big enough to accommodate a football team. Even from the bathtub I have a superb view of the Eiffel Tower by pressing a button that turns the window from opaque to clear.
It’s all in sharp contrast to my dingy bathroom in Villiers, which has no bath or shower cubicle, just a grimy old shower tray with fungus growing in the grout. Taking a shower is, by necessity, a very precise ritual that involves holding the hand-held attachment as close as possible to the body in order to avoid flooding the bathroom. And just to add a frisson of excitement, because the shower tray empties very slowly, I have approximately three minutes before it starts to overflow. No matter how often I scrub it down with bleach, it’s the sort of bathroom where you emerge feeling less clean than when you went in.
I am leading a very schizophrenic life. I write about luxury goods from very unluxurious surroundings. At home in Villiers it still feels like I am camping out. I don’t even have a wardrobe or a chest of drawers but am forced to pile up clothes on a chair, whereas here, in the Plaza Athenée, I have a whole wall of walnut closets. I have been living on bread and cheese and coffee for what seems like forever, but suddenly delicious, gourmet food is only a telephone call away. This morning I had a cooked breakfast of scrambled eggs and smoked salmon under the dazzling chandeliers of the Alain Ducasse restaurant downstairs, while yesterday, for lunch with the hotel’s directrice of communications, I had a delicious mushroom risotto. And just in case I get hungry before dinner, a plate of hors d’oeuvres has been delivered (without my asking) and left on the glass dining table, along with a basket of fresh fruit and a box of chocolates by the famous Parisian pâtissier Pierre Hermé.
Ever since I moved to France, life has been a series of goals and decisions – from the colour of the paint for the spare room, to the make of fridge and the height of the kitchen sink. When you are in an unfinished house, there is always some small achievement to look forward to, even if it is just putting up a light fitting. Concentrating on small steps to improve everyday life has helped focus my mind somewhere other than on Eric, though thoughts of him are never, if I’m truthful, very far away. Part of the reason for this, I think, is that I have not found anyone to replace him, and for at least a year after he left I still believed that he would come back to me.
As I climb out of the enormous bath, it occurs to me that anyone suffering from sadness at the break up of a relationship should ditch their creature comforts and rough it a little. The desire for hot water, a bed, a bathtub and cooking facilities, I have discovered, takes precedence over yearning for lost love. Wonderful though it is to be living in such opulence and sleeping in 400-thread-count sheets, my short stay at the Plaza Athenée also serves to underline the threadbare nature of my emotional life. The point of a huge bathtub with a view of the Eiffel Tower, subdued lighting and a big bed with layers of starched white linen is to share it with someone else.
The phone rings. It is Olivier and his boyfriend Christian, to tell me they are waiting in the bar downstairs. By a stroke of luck they happen to be in Paris on a buying trip for their Notting Hill boutique and so I have arranged to meet them for drinks and dinner. At least I will have someone to show this amazing hotel suite to. I quickly get dressed, take my private lift to the ground floor and walk through the hotel’s amber-scented corridors to the bar, where I find them sitting in a highly prized alcove table.
The bar at the Plaza Athenée, with its traditional oak panelling, ice-blue Murano chandeliers and a bar modelled on a giant iceberg, is quite simply the place to be seen in Paris, coup de champagne in hand, come cocktail hour. The clientele consists of a mixture of louche but powerful-looking men puffing cigars, chic Parisians, some mega-rich Russians and a sprinkling of top models. Olivier spots a well-known footballer sitting in one corner, and a famous French actress huddled up with a younger man in another.
‘Wow,’ says Christian. ‘I can’t believe you are staying here.’
‘Me neither.’
Over champagne we discuss the latest shops and places to go in Paris. Then the barman sends over a selection of avant-garde cocktails for us to try including a pina colada ice lolly served on a bed of startling pink ice. It is absolutely and immediately lethal. A few licks and I am giggling helplessly.
‘So how’s the house going?’ asks Christian. ‘And more importantly have you met a man yet?’
‘The house is getting there slowly,’ I say. In fact, I had ticked another room off the ‘to-do’ list – the petit salon. It was a monster job to tint the floorboards dark chestnut and apply three coats of satin-finish varnish single-handedly, but it meant that I could retrieve my sofas from storage at the Liberty Bookshop and finally have another room to live in other than my bedroom.
‘And yes, I’ve met several men, but they’ve all been a little unbalanced.’ I tell them about Victor the estate agent and Henri the poet, who in the aftermath of Miranda’s birthday bombarded me with emails and phone calls. He even phoned Elinor to request copies of pictures that she had taken of me over lunch. Thankfully, she thought to ask my permission first. And then shortly after Christmas, I received a letter from him, written in near perfect English.
Dear K,
I hope you received my emails and best wishes card. I also want to apologise. I’ve been quick with you, almost brutal. I hope you don’t take me for a lunatic or a mad man. I’m sorry I shocked you by proposing so fast. Are you angry? I have no news of you. Could you please write? Life away from you tastes [sic] so dull. Anyway, I won’t bother you again by reasserting the truthfulness of my feelings; Hamlet will do it so much better than I:
/>
‘Doubt thou the stars are fire.
Doubt thou that the son doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.’
And if I should sound excessive, then remember:
To be wise and love
Exceeds man’s might.’ [Troilus and Cressida]
Love,
Henri.
Shortly afterwards, I mentioned what had happened to Mathilde. ‘I am so sorry, but Henri is very immature as far as women are concerned,’ she said, before promising to have a word with him. And after that, fortunately, he stopped phoning and emailing.
‘It was a relief,’ I say. ‘I was worried he might turn into a stalker.’
‘He still might,’ says Christian.
‘Are you ex-directory?’ asks Olivier.
‘No.’
‘Well, in that case he can find your address very easily. If he goes to Les Pages Blanches and types in your name and area, he will get your full address and even a map of how to get there.’
‘Oh really?’ I say. ‘You can find someone’s address in Les Pages Blanches?’
‘Yes,’ says Olivier. ‘Even if you only have a rough idea where they live.’
I put down my ice-lolly cocktail, the significance of this piece of information hitting me like a lightning rod.
Later, we head for dinner in the Marais, and afterwards take a taxi back to the Plaza Athenée, past the illuminated fountains of the Place du Concorde and the glittering trees threaded with white lights on the Champs-Elysées. Olivier and Christian come up to my suite for a nightcap. They stop dead in their tracks when I open the door. ‘OH. MY. GOD,’ says Christian, taking in the looming shape of the Eiffel Tower, the vast expanse of walnut floor and the huge white L-shaped sofa.
It’s fun giving them the tour, my high heels clacking on the parquet corridors as we go from room to room (six in total, including bathrooms). Christian is blown away by the bar. He stands behind the walnut counter top, with its selection of wine and champagne glasses, and does a very camp impersonation of Tom Cruise in Cocktail.
Olivier sticks his head in the fridge. There are three different types of pink champagne alone. ‘Let’s open one,’ says Olivier. ‘My treat. It’s a shame to stay in this room and not drink champagne.’ He calls room service to request a bucket of ice, while Christian figures out how to play the music system. The three of us then dance around the vast space with its amazing view of the Paris skyline until nearly 1.00 a.m. But after Christian and Olivier have gone, I survey the enormous sitting room and wonder what to do with myself. The bottle of champagne, I notice, is still half-full and it seems like a waste, so I pour myself another glass.
I’ve had a wonderful evening, eaten fabulous food in fabulous surroundings with two friends that I love dearly and now here I am about to sleep in five-star luxury. Life doesn’t get much better than this, does it? Well… actually it does. I try to push thoughts of Eric out of my head, but two of those thoughts are very persistent: the first is that I wish he was here; the second is that, if I wanted to, I could find out if Eric is in France. The truth is that I have no idea as to his whereabouts. He could still be in London, or he could be working as a marine biologist in Scotland for all I know, or fighting coastal erosion in New Zealand. I look at the keyboard that connects to the huge flat-screen TV. I know it’s a bad idea, that nothing good will come from this. It’s the sort of thing that a stalker would do. But I’m not a stalker. I’m a perfectly sane individual (or as sane as I’ve ever been). And surely most people in my situation wouldn’t be able to resist?
‘Nothing good will come of this,’ I say, draining my glass of champagne and kicking off my silver shoes. ‘Nothing good at all.’
And so I reach for the keyboard that controls the huge plasma screen, click onto the Internet and download Les Pages Blanches. Guilt-ridden, I type in Eric’s name and I take a guess that he is living on the Île de Ré. Just typing in the words ‘Île de Ré’ causes me pain like a punch in the solar plexus – writing up the perfume article caused me similar pain – as it all comes flooding back. I feel sick with a horrible mix of nostalgia and excitement (although the combination of frozen pina coladas, red wine and pink champagne could also have something to do with it), as I watch the information unfold on the enormous flat-screen TV. A telephone number for Eric Paul Arnault comes up immediately, along with an address, a map of how to find it and even an aerial view. And so, in the early hours of a cold Saturday morning in February, in a luxury hotel in Paris, I discover that Eric is living in La Flotte, a little port on the Île de Ré. I discover from the map that he lives just one road back from the sea. After all this time, I finally know where he is.
I wait until I am back in Villiers to phone. I’m not sure what I hope to achieve; certainly not a conversation with him. I am not ready for that. I phone out of curiosity more than anything. In less than three rings a female voice answers. She is French and sounds young – perhaps in her twenties – and slightly breathless.
‘Can I speak to Eric please?’ I ask (in French).
‘I’m sorry. He’s not here at the moment. Can I take a message?’
I resist the temptation to ask where he is and when he will be back. Instead, I say, ‘No it’s fine. I will call back later, thank you.’
From this short exchange I have learnt a lot. She sounded upbeat, happy, unbothered by another woman phoning to ask for Eric – in other words, secure. Secondly, I know that Eric is living with a French woman. This gives me some solace as it means he did not leave me for Suzanne Dance, the American woman whose emails I found. Or if he did, he is not still with her. Thirdly, I now know that Eric is living less than 100 kilometres away from me. I did not know this when I bought my house, but thanks to a strange twist of fate, I am now living just over an hour’s drive from where he lives.
I hang up, feeling very alone. I wish I could talk it through with Dave. But Dave is in Hong Kong and even if he was here, he wouldn’t want to talk to me. On the floor next to my desk lies the carrier bag containing my new silver shoes. Now, rather than winking at me flirtatiously, those shoes have become a form of recrimination. A pair of shoes cannot keep you warm at night. They cannot tell you that they love you, stroke your hair when you are ill or bring you coffee in bed on a Sunday morning. Happiness really does not lie in a new pair of shoes.
Chapter 13
Progress
By mid-March – after another mammoth session with methylated spirits and vitrificateur – the kitchen floor is finished. Although the kitchen lacks shelving and storage and most of my culinary equipment is still packed away in boxes in the spare room, at least I have a fridge and a sink and (hurrah!) an oven with a gas bottle. This particular hurdle was overcome with the help of Claudette’s husband who came to Intermarché with me to collect it and Dylan who gave me a lesson in how to connect it without blowing myself up (although there was a delay of a few days between buying the gas bottle and connecting it, since on getting it home I realised, annoyingly, the necessary ‘adapteur’ to connect it to the oven had to be bought separately). But the fact I’m able to cook hot meals and have got three rooms into a habitable condition means that I can now concentrate a little more on pitching ideas for articles, which has taken a back seat to floor-polishing of late.
Life at Maison Coquelicot is really looking up. I notice that little green shoots – which Claudette identifies as hyacinths – have appeared among the mass of weeds in the stone flowerbed. I am thrilled by their unexpected appearance and take it as the cue to tackle the courtyard. With spring on its way (early thanks to the shifting seasons), it would be nice to look out of the window and see flowers growing in terracotta pots rather than a rubble mountain.
Desmond kindly volunteers both himself and Miranda for the job. ‘Miranda?’ I say. ‘Are you sure?’
Not only am I worried that it will
be awkward after the events of her birthday, but nearly every time I have seen Miranda, she has been dressed in sequins and high heels with full maquillage. And given her bird-like frame, I can’t quite see her shovelling rubble.
‘Don’t worry, she’s a good little worker,’ says Desmond. ‘She’s helping me to build a garden fence. And in return, I’m going to mend her roof. We help each other out all the time.’
Miranda arrives with Desmond on the designated day, dressed in tracksuit bottoms, rubber boots and a little woolly hat. I hardly recognise her without the usual war paint, but thankfully she is in an upbeat rather than antagonistic mood. Surprisingly, she makes no mention of her birthday and she doesn’t seem at all embarrassed (which makes me think she probably doesn’t remember much of it). ‘Don’t worry, darling girl,’ she declares as she walks through the door. ‘I’m very agile, you know, and quite a good little grafter.’ She is as good as her word. Donning a pair of heavy rubber gloves, she gets stuck into the rubble straight away, sorting plastics, woods and metals into separate piles – the French are very organised about recycling and different materials have to be disposed of separately at the tip. Using spades, we shovel the different piles into Desmond’s trailer and ferry them to the déchetterie. It’s hard physical work and it takes an entire morning and several trips to the tip to clear the rubbish, but there is a huge sense of accomplishment when the job is finished.
‘Have you got a broom?’ asks Miranda, when we return to the house. ‘I’ll sweep the yard.’
‘And we might as well get this table up while we’re here,’ says Desmond, referring to the enormous Laura Ashley oak dining table, currently lying against a wall in the petit salon, too heavy to move unaided. We unwrap it from its protective plastic and assemble it on its side, screwing the legs into the enormous tabletop using Allen keys. Then between the three of us we turn the heavy oak table upright and manoeuvre it into position. We add the two oak benches and then Desmond and Miranda sit down at the new table, while I make coffee.
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