A Perfect Paris Christmas

by Mandy Baggot

  Keeley put one foot out of bed and onto the carpet and straightaway the floorboards underneath let out a creak. She gritted her teeth. It was too early to wake Rach up. Rach was never good in the morning until she’d had at least three strong coffees with two sugars. Plus, Rach would ask her where she was going and Keeley still felt a little odd about telling her she was meeting up with a man she had met on the street. Holding her breath, she planted her second foot on the floor and stood up. This time the floorboard groaned like it was a bit-part monster in Doctor Who.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Rach sat bolt upright in bed, even in the dark a large shadow of blonde bed-hair apparent.

  ‘Sorry,’ Keeley whispered. ‘I didn’t mean to wake you, but this old building’s floor had other ideas.’ She crept across the room then, heading for the shower. Why she was showering before going for a run she didn’t really know. Except she didn’t fancy smelling day-old before the real perspiration kicked in. ‘Go back to sleep. I’ll be quiet.’

  Rach’s bedside light flicked on and Keeley could see that her friend’s make-up was all over her face. Literally all over her face.

  ‘Rach, your make-up…’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, I fucking know!’ Rach replied, whipping the covers off her body and leaping out of bed to get to the dressing table mirror. There was no concern for the floorboards and the people sleeping below. ‘This is after I tried to clean it off last night. It’s like… like… I’m Pennywise or something. Bloody Adie at Price Squash. This is supposed to be the best you can get in Bulgaria. They even call it Low Re-al.’ She put fingers to her lipstick-bleeding lips and rubbed to no avail.

  ‘How was the ballet? You should have woken me up when you got back.’ Keeley stepped across the bathroom threshold and looked at herself in the mirror. Not too bad for little sleep. Her eyes went back to Rach when an answer wasn’t immediately forthcoming and she watched her friend’s demeanour transform. The mascara encrusted, eye-liner ringed eyes turned into something from a soft-focus romance movie and her friend let out a breathy sigh.

  ‘Oh, Keeley, the ballet was… the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘Really?’ Keeley answered. This was huge and surprising news coming from someone who didn’t often use the word ‘wonderful’ and, when Rach did use it, it was often about a basement flat that was as far from ‘wonderful’ as cubic zirconia was from diamonds.

  ‘Really,’ Rach insisted. ‘It was amazing. And, Keels, the big news is… I’d met Silvie’s son before. And so have you!’

  ‘What?’ Keeley stopped running the tap and paid proper attention.

  ‘Louis Durand is my hair hero Louis.’

  Keeley didn’t understand.

  ‘Louis!’ Rach said again, all bright eyes despite her make-up spread across her face. ‘Louis who saved me from the revolving door. Louis who we bumped into at the afternoon tea. Louis who actually looked into my eyes last night instead of just staring at my boobs.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Keeley said, palming her face.

  ‘I know, right?! But, instead of looking all the hotness like he looked over the chocolate eclairs… he actually looked terrible,’ Rach carried on.

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘He was covered in blotches. Like seriously huge blotches. I don’t know, like he’d been attacked and stung by a thousand bees.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really,’ Rach continued. ‘The poor guy was obviously a bit embarrassed about it. I don’t know whether it was a food allergy or a reaction to washing detergent or something but—’

  ‘Well, didn’t you ask him what it was?’ Keeley wanted to know. She checked her watch again. She didn’t have that long to get ready and those butterflies weren’t letting up. So much so, she couldn’t really focus on this conversation with Rach.

  ‘I did,’ Rach said. ‘But I’m pretty sure he made up his answer.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said he was allergic to penguins.’ Rach scoffed. ‘I mean, is that even a thing?’ She sighed. ‘It was a shame really, because, like I said, he did look me in the eye when we talked… well, the eye he could properly see out of.’

  Keeley frowned, her thoughts immediately going to Pepe. Where had the animal ended up? And she had never asked Ethan what he had been doing with the creature in the first place.

  ‘I made the same look that you’re making right now,’ Rach said, swiping up one of her wipes from the dressing table. ‘And then I offered him some concealer.’

  ‘Only you,’ Keeley said, shaking her head.

  ‘But, despite the horrible hives, he was really funny and charming and he gave me tissues when I cried.’

  ‘You cried?’ Keeley remarked.

  ‘Yup, I cried at the ballet. I told you. It was… I don’t know… all kinds of beautiful.’

  What was Paris doing to them both? Rach – strong, ballsy Rach – was crying over a dance performance and Keeley was riding on a too-small extinct animal on a children’s roundabout. And now she was planning to go running…

  ‘And… well… he’s actually suggested dinner one night,’ Rach blurted out. She rubbed at the make-up on her face like she was scrubbing at a grubby oven tainted by ten years of cooking Christmas turkeys. ‘But I didn’t know whether to say yes, because we’re here together, girls united, and I didn’t know if that would be OK with you.’

  Keeley smiled. ‘Say yes to a dinner. Can you text him?’

  Still scrubbing at her face, Rach nodded. ‘We swapped numbers and he asked all about you, but I didn’t tell him that much because, well, he’s going to want to hear it all from Kidney Girl herself, isn’t he?’

  ‘I’m not allowed to be Kidney Girl,’ Keeley reminded.

  ‘That’s right!’ Rach said, pointing with her finger as well as her wipe. ‘That was a test!’ She sniffed. ‘But, you know, you’ll have to go into it a little with Ferne’s fam, won’t you?’

  ‘What did you say about me?’ Keeley asked, checking her reflection again.

  ‘I told him that if there was one person in the whole world who was definitely worthy of one of his sister’s body parts, then it was you. I said you were all the kind and conscientious to a fault when it came to respecting your newly acquired organ… except when I led you astray.’

  ‘What did he say to that?’

  ‘He said,’ Rach began, one of her eyebrows raising, ‘that he could imagine I was very good when it came to leading people astray. Honestly, Keels, it was like an episode of Heist, without the Spanish subtitles.’

  Now was the perfect time to tell Rach about Ethan. Rach had just told her all about her evening with Louis and now it was Keeley’s turn. Her solo walk following the mystery map had led her to a cosy dinner and trying to breathe in the essence of Paris. She took a breath and out came: ‘Well, strange things do seem to happen here.’

  ‘Like you being up at early o’clock. What are you doing awake at this time?’ Rach asked.

  ‘I’m… going for a run.’

  ‘You’re what?’ Rach turned to face her then, her skin still thick with wayward make-up, but now also red raw from all the attempts to take it off. ‘It’s a job to get you down the gym at the best of times and you hate the running machine.’

  ‘I don’t hate it,’ Keeley protested. ‘I just… like doing anything else a lot more. Besides, I’m not running at the gym, I’m going to run through the streets of Paris, taking in the sights and inhaling all the coffee smells.’ Straightaway she was back by the banks of the Seine, Ethan’s hands on her shoulders…

  ‘I thought you couldn’t smell much anymore.’

  ‘I can remember what coffee smells like. I’ll pretend.’

  ‘On your own? It’s not even light.’ Rach’s eyes went to their balcony doors and then her fingers were parting the curtains, revealing a few inches of barely light early morning. ‘I’m not sure you should be running on your own in the dark somewhere you don’t know. Lizzie would have a fit.’
>
  Keeley sighed, turned on the tap again and began splashing water up and over her face. There was no doubt about it, Lizzie would definitely have a fit if she knew she was meeting up with a Frenchman she didn’t even know the surname of and had shared a handhold that was still giving her shivers every time she thought about it. But Rach was her best friend. She would totally get it. Why was she keeping this from her?

  ‘Get back to bed,’ Rach suggested. ‘Let’s have another hour of sleep, then we can get an early breakfast and ask Noel to take us somewhere. Silvie did say he was ours to call whenever we wanted.’ Rach threw the wipe down on the dressing table and clambered back under the covers. ‘How about Christmas shopping? I need to get gifts for my mum and my brother… and Roland if I want my plan to become his senior negotiator to pan out. If Jamie goes all out and buys him something from Sloane Street I’m screwed.’ Rach took a breath. ‘Or how about Notre Dame? I know we can’t go in it, but we can have a look at how the reconstruction is going.’

  ‘That sounds like a good idea,’ Keeley agreed, sweeping her hair back from her face and tying it into a ponytail. ‘After I’ve been for a run. I’ll only be an hour or so.’ And she still hadn’t mentioned she wasn’t going alone.

  ‘Ugh, really? You really want to run?’

  ‘I really want to run,’ Keeley answered.

  ‘Well… do you want me to come with you?’ Rach asked, eyes already closed, yawning as if she was going to drop back off to sleep again at any moment. ‘I will if you want me to. I don’t want your mum blaming me if you get kidnapped by an onion seller on a bicycle.’

  ‘Go to sleep, Rach,’ Keeley urged, checking her reflection in the mirror again. She definitely didn’t have time for a shower now.

  ‘OK, Paula Radcliffe, just don’t do an inappropriate piss and get arrested. And don’t get abducted. Text me if you’re going to be longer than an hour.’

  ‘Yes, Mum,’ Keeley replied.

  Twenty-Nine

  L’Hotel Paris Parfait, Tour Eiffel, Paris

  Ethan checked his watch. What was he doing? When had he last run through the streets of Paris? He never really had the time. What he should be doing was preparing for this meeting with Silvie, Louis and Ferne’s solicitor this afternoon. He had received an email late last night with only the vaguest of details, but it had said enough to get him worried. Where exactly did he stand? Was there some loophole he had missed with regard to his part-ownership of Perfect Paris? Had his grief veiled the nuts and bolts of things he should have paid more attention to? Perhaps, while Louis was rushing back across the ocean to get away from the desperate loss felt by pretty much everyone except him, it seemed, Ethan had overlooked details that were going to determine his future here. And, if something had happened to shake his foundations within the company, it might mean he couldn’t be at the centre of making sure Ferne’s hotels didn’t become an anonymous part of a bigger corporation. Who else was going to stand up for Ferne if he didn’t?

  The door of the hotel revolved and there Keeley was coming out onto the street. This woman who gave him goose bumps simply by being in his orbit. His skin was already reacting underneath the long-sleeved tight-fitting sports top he was wearing. He had gone for joggers instead of shorts as there was frost on the ground and the air was just as cold. She was wearing leggings, trainers and a sweatshirt bearing a picture of a dartboard and, with her hair tied back from her face, she still looked adorable.

  ‘Bonjour,’ he greeted.

  ‘Good morning,’ she answered. ‘I’m sorry I’m a bit late. I—’

  ‘Not at all,’ Ethan said. ‘I… like your sweater.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, looking down at it. ‘Yes, well, I didn’t bring any running stuff with me so…’ She laughed a little. ‘It’s my dad’s. He’s part of a darts team back in England.’

  ‘Ah,’ Ethan replied. ‘In France we prefer to play petanque.’

  ‘My dad’s never been good with sports involving balls,’ she replied. ‘He once played cricket in the back garden with one of our neighbours and ended up breaking three windows with the one shot. Not a greenhouse. Don’t ask. It involved a budgie.’

  He couldn’t help but laugh.

  ‘Could we start running now?’ she asked him, pulling the hem of the sweater down a little and starting to shiver.

  ‘You are cold?’ Ethan said.

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘It’s just, if we don’t start running now I might go off the idea and suggest coffee and a croissant instead.’

  He could give in. He could easily swap the frozen streets of the capital for the cosy warmth and early-morning ambience of a coffee shop. But he needed the exercise, the blood pumping around his body to ready himself for whatever the day held. Plus, he really wanted to show her a little more of Paris. His Paris.

  ‘OK,’ he answered. ‘We will go.’ He started to jog, checking over his shoulder to see if she was following.

  *

  Keeley’s ribs were already hurting a little. She had inspected her bruises from the Pepe fall again when she’d got dressed this morning and they were still that initial wondering-what-colour-they were-going-to-grow-up-to-be-blue, lined up alongside the still-red scars from her operation and her ordeal. The running motion was definitely not helping. Not that she was going to let that show on her face. She was also not going to show the fact that street running was very different to running on a treadmill and her knees were partially jarring over every piece of solid pavement.

  ‘This is the best time to run,’ Ethan told her. ‘No one much around.’

  They had passed along by the Seine, a cold mist settling over the water and they were now heading off the tourist beaten track from what Keeley could tell. The Christmas decorations on the buildings had changed a little from garish bright lights and sparkle to more gently traditional and home-made. Garlands of ivy and fir, painted wooden effigies, silver stars that looked well-used. All much swankier than Grandma Joan’s stash of Woolworths’ finest, as much as she was fond of them.

  Ethan’s words were coming out level and even. Like the effort of running was having zero effect. Meanwhile, Keeley’s heart felt like it was the prominent bassline in a dance track. ‘Yes,’ she squeaked. She cleared her throat.

  ‘You are OK?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘Yep.’ She wasn’t. This was such a bad idea. She never looked attractive during or after exercise. Why would she agree to this?

  ‘We can slow down a little if…’

  ‘No… I’m fine.’ She let out a raspy cough then hastily sucked in vital air. She wasn’t someone who gave in easily. Her still being here was the ultimate testament to that.

  ‘This is Passy,’ Ethan informed, keeping pace beside her. ‘Personally, I think it is one of the most overlooked areas of Paris.’

  ‘Is it an area for… rich people?’ Keeley replied. ‘It looks… affluent.’

  ‘Un peu,’ he answered. ‘But that is not why I like it.’ He turned his head to look at her. ‘Come this way.’ He sped up just a little so he was dictating the direction.

  Keeley gritted her teeth and willed herself to dig into special reserves. They had run maybe just over a kilometre. She hoped he wasn’t going to suggest more than three or four more of them…

  They rounded a corner and Keeley let out a gasp. This time it wasn’t from the exercise, but because of the view ahead. A cobbled street had appeared like someone had just drawn away a curtain of modern times and revealed a scene from yesteryear. There were thick stone walls and iron gates, lumps of rock attached to the base of houses and old-fashioned gas-style lampposts glistening with frost. This didn’t look like the previous rich person’s city paradise, it seemed as if something rustic and ancient had been plopped right into the centre of Paris’s metropolis.

  Keeley slowed her run to take it all in. ‘What is this road called?’ she asked.

  ‘Rue Berton,’ Ethan answered. He was back alongside her now, matching her running rhythm. ‘Do you like it
?’

  ‘It’s like nothing I would have imagined finding in the middle of Paris, so close to the Eiffel Tower.’

  ‘I know,’ Ethan replied. ‘You can imagine how things were years ago, n’est-ce pas?’

  ‘Monks,’ Keeley answered, continuing to jog, being careful with the sheen on the cobbles here. Slipping for the second time this break wouldn’t be ideal.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Keeley said. ‘I just imagined monks walking down the narrow lanes, whispering in prayer or something. It’s so… atmospheric.’

  *

  Ethan had always thought it was atmospheric. The place of daydreams. When he was younger, when he used to escape, he’d made his way down here to roam the alleyways and paths imagining he was someone else. Not a monk perhaps, but someone who wasn’t a street kid from the orphanage. Someone who could be anyone he wanted to be. And that chance had come… in the shape of Ferne.

  ‘Do you live near here?’ Keeley asked him as they picked their way up the street. The road narrowed significantly, until it was all but a pathway. She dropped in behind him.

  ‘I live in the Opera District,’ he answered. ‘I have a small apartment above a bakery. I rented it simply because of the aromas.’ He stalled suddenly, acutely aware he had just said something wrong. ‘Oh… I am so sorry. I did not mean to mention the smell. I—’

  ‘It’s OK,’ she answered. ‘I recall the amazing scent of fresh bread.’

  ‘It was a ridiculous thing to say. Thoughtless!’

  ‘It’s OK,’ she insisted again. ‘Honestly.’

  He kept running, passing flashes of festive in the windows of the houses not knowing how to pick the conversation back up after that faux pas.