A Perfect Paris Christmas

by Mandy Baggot

  ‘What’s up?’ Rach asked, coming up alongside her.

  ‘I… was just thinking about Erica,’ Keeley answered.

  ‘She’s probably snogging that Joe Jonas photo you told me you got her.’

  ‘Nick,’ Keeley said. ‘It was Nick Jonas.’

  ‘Really?’ Rach said with a frown. ‘Oh well, I guess we can’t all have the same taste in Jonas Brothers.’

  Keeley let out a sigh. ‘I need to start making decisions about my future, don’t I?’

  It had been Erica’s pep talk the other day. Or maybe it had been earlier this morning with the girl and her beloved dog? Or perhaps it was meeting the mysterious Ethan? All Keeley knew was for the first time in so long, she was starting to think about reaching out towards a future. Yes, she had only made a few tentative steps – coming here to France to meet Silvie, a cosy dinner with a handsome companion, accepting an invitation to jog at sunrise – but they were somehow the largest strides she had made since the accident. It was acknowledgement that she was here and she wanted to embrace the life she had, for however long it lasted. Because no one knew, did they? She might already know that the longevity of the current oldest person in the world might not be hers to grasp but, just like everyone else, she didn’t have a date in the calendar to plan to. All anyone had was the here and now and the hope of a later.

  ‘I’ve almost wasted the last year,’ Keeley admitted suddenly. ‘Worrying.’

  ‘Well…’ Rach began. ‘We all do that sometimes. Look at me, worrying about how to trump Jamie in the overtime stakes and the buying Roland gifts stakes, all because I know that bribery and corruption will get me ahead at House 2 Home.’

  ‘Well, I’ve let everyone tell me what to do. My mum, the woman in Asda who told me burnt-orange was this season’s colour… I even asked one of Mr Peterson’s dead stoats for advice the last time I was there. What kind of insanity is that?’

  ‘I’ve tried to tell you what to do,’ Rach said, somehow seeming affronted. ‘And you didn’t listen to me. Now you’re telling me you favoured a dead stoat over your alive best friend?’

  ‘Why can’t I start my business over again?’ Keeley asked herself as much as Rach. ‘Why did I let my mum make me give up that dream?’

  ‘Why don’t I just apply for a senior negotiator job at another firm where I might be respected for my skills in negotiating rather than my short skirts and coffee-making?’

  ‘Rach,’ Keeley gasped. ‘You are appreciated for your skills… aren’t you?’

  Rach shrugged. ‘I want more too. I don’t shop at Price Squash because I prefer it to Harrods, you know.’

  There was a Christmas tree in a cobbled pedestrian section now, its decorated fronds swaying gently with the breeze and as they approached it, Keeley marvelled at the multi-coloured décor. There were CDs with writing and drawings on them, like the local children had added wishes for Santa. Wishes and dreams. She deserved them, didn’t she? Rach deserved them too.

  Rach stood next to her. ‘Talking about you… I think we all just thought you probably wanted to do something simpler now. Not have the worries of a business-owner. Let Roland take care of public liability and all that.’

  ‘But why did I do that?’ Now Keeley was almost calling out to the universe for answers. A passer-by gave her an odd look then hurried into an ivy-covered brasserie. ‘Bea would have hated the fact that I’d given up on my dream.’ Her sister had been her biggest supporter, always giving her opinion on fabric and pattern. Bea might have been all the practical and mechanical by nature, but she had also loved a quirky print and the feel of silk under her fingertips. ‘And I hate it too. It’s stupid and… ridiculous.’

  Wherever this wake-up call was coming from, Keeley was embracing it and being mindful in the moment. She grinned at Rach then, suddenly feeling like she could take on the world.

  ‘Rach, we are going to move in together after Christmas,’ she said with utter determination. ‘Like we talked about. You don’t want to live with Bertram anymore and I don’t want to feel like my every decision has a government five-point plan.’ She drew in a breath. ‘And I am going to start my business again. Maybe I’ll have to start working out of home to begin with, maybe those clients I had lined up originally will have gone with someone else but… the one guarantee is, people will always want nice things to… make them happy.’

  And by nice she really didn’t mean expensive. Maybe that could be her USP. Most interior designers she had worked with before, had focused on the elite clients, the ones who wanted slightly mad things like a coffee table combined with an aquarium full of lionhead goldfish or curtains made from their children’s handprints. Perhaps Keeley could focus on her type of ‘nice’. The relaxed and comfortable that made her heart sing, but something a step up from rearranging lounge furniture and choosing travel books as props. Practical, yet beautiful solutions for modern day family living…

  When Keeley turned away from the Christmas tree and back to Rach, her best friend was looking at her a little differently.

  ‘What?’ Keeley asked, following the question up with a nervous swallow. ‘Do you think I’m completely mad? To be getting this all off my chest now. When we’re supposed to be sightseeing?’

  ‘No, I don’t think that,’ Rach whispered, darting what looked like tears away from her eyes. ‘It’s just… I haven’t seen you look that way since…’

  She didn’t need to finish the sentence for Keeley’s benefit. She knew. And she could feel it too. Coming here had been a kickstart she badly needed. The comfort zone of protection her mum had wrapped around her was understandable, but only when she had broken out of that did she see all the implications of its limitations. She was living but she wasn’t living. And that had to stop.

  Keeley threw her arms around Rach and gathered her close, closing her eyes and trying to isolate her senses from each other like Ethan had got her to do. What had Rach used to smell like when smelling had been so easy to do? Keeley smiled to herself, recalling memories of bags of goodies from Price Squash – half-price Milka chocolate (the one with the strawberry bits in), toothpaste, pork scratchings, this bloody hair dye and the tin of red paint they’d first bonded over cleaning up on a bus eight years ago. Rach had been carrying six tins of it and trying to press the button to alert the driver to stop, one had slipped from her grasp and rolled down onto the floor, spilling open on its journey. Within milliseconds the whole of the 328 was filling up with fumes and everyone was coughing. Only Keeley hadn’t run for the exit door as soon as the driver ordered everyone off, instead choosing to offer Rach her large pack of handwipes and help remove the mess.

  Keeley laughed then. ‘Did they ever get that paint off the floor of the bus?’

  ‘What?’ Rach asked, stepping back from her friend’s embrace and looking like she had no idea what Keeley was talking about.

  ‘The 328 bus. Where we met. The bus covered in… what was the name of that horrible paint again?’

  ‘Hickory Smoke,’ Rach said, laughing. ‘It never covered properly either! Apart from the bus floor. My dad did six coats on the lounge wall before he gave up on it. Bloody Adie!’ She shook her head. ‘Lucky it was cheap.’

  Keeley put her arm through her friend’s and turned them towards the street and their proposed incline to take in the view of the golden dome of Les Invalides. ‘You do deserve more, Rach. You are an amazing negotiator.’

  ‘I know,’ Rach said with positivity. ‘But perhaps I need to think about a change in agency… or at least put the frighteners on Roland. Make him realise he would be lost without me.’

  ‘I’ll help you,’ Keeley said, giving her arm a squeeze. ‘We’ll work out a strategy so he can’t fail to realise.’ She shrugged. ‘And if he doesn’t, then House 2 Home’s loss will be someone else’s gain.’

  ‘Right there with you,’ Rach said.

  ‘So, shall we do a little more shopping? I ought to make a start on Christmas while I’m here. I need to find something
for my mum that she’s going to love so much she won’t worry when I tell her I’m moving out and giving my business another shot.’ Keeley took a deep breath. She wasn’t sure even something by Coco Chanel was going to do the trick there. ‘And we can discuss Louis. Has he texted you yet?’

  Rach hugged Keeley’s arm. ‘He did but… I don’t know.’

  ‘What don’t you know?’

  ‘I don’t know if he’s really my Pyjama Man,’ Rach said with a sigh.

  ‘Well,’ Keeley said, ‘there’s only one way to find out.’

  Thirty-Three

  L’Hotel Paris Parfait, Opera District, Paris

  Ethan burst into his office knowing he needed to freshen up before he met with Louis, Silvie and Ferne’s solicitor. Somehow, even though he had changed, he smelled of street-kid, dog and coffee. It was the exact combination of things he had once smelled of each and every day up until he had met the Durand family. Except his plan for a quick shower at the hotel was thwarted by the fact that the three of them were already sat in the room adjacent, around the boardroom table and Noel was collating papers on his desk.

  ‘What is going on?’ Ethan hissed at his assistant. ‘I am not late.’

  ‘Non,’ Noel agreed. ‘They are early. I sent you three messages.’

  He’d seen Noel’s messages and ignored them. The vet had called and he had rushed to the surgery with Jeanne, expecting the worst but… it hadn’t been the worst. Bo-Bo was apparently in a deep sense of shock as well as having an injured foot. He was currently sleeping off the medication in the garage of the hotel at Tour Eiffel. It had been all he could do to get Jeanne into a hotel room there rather than have her rest alongside the dog in the loading bay.

  He let out a sigh. So, he was a little dishevelled? Who needed to be in an uncreased business suit to exude professionalism? Self-belief came from inside not from power-clothes. At least he wasn’t in his running gear…

  ‘Order the coffee Silvie likes,’ Ethan said, straightening the collar of his shirt. ‘And something American for Louis. A hot dog perhaps?’ He smiled. ‘Nothing connected to penguins.’

  ‘Monsieur Durand has already ordered. Honeyed coffee and coconut biscuits.’

  Ethan scoffed. ‘He orders this yet he wants to—’ He stopped himself short. He had been about to say that Louis wanted to sell the hotels, but that wasn’t the kind of information you should be imparting to your staff, even your closest confidante.

  ‘He wants to…?’ Noel inquired.

  ‘Change the menu,’ Ethan said.

  ‘He wants to change the menu?’ Noel asked, now looking confused.

  ‘Non,’ Ethan said. ‘I think we should look at changing the menu.’ He took the papers from Noel and hoped it was the information he had asked him for. Details of how well the brand was performing despite the global difficulties of earlier that year. ‘The menu has not been changed since the hotels were formed.’

  ‘That is because a long time was taken to perfect a core menu that was, if you remember, almost scientifically devised,’ Noel said to him.

  Ethan knew that. He had listened to Ferne talk about it, plus two experts she had employed to deliver on it. Ferne had wanted the restaurants of the hotels to be in sync with one another and all the dishes had to be a surprise for the palate with delicate nuances taking well-known French cuisine to another level. The science said that diners were seeking ‘different’ with a touch of ‘unexpected’. But did science really know about everyone? And shouldn’t food be more about a ‘feeling’? Ethan held his breath then, thinking about Keeley. What she had said about ‘feelings’ had really resonated with him.

  ‘I want a new menu before Christmas,’ Ethan blurted out. ‘I want you to look at what the other hotels have planned for their festive lunches and Christmas party evenings and then I want you to think the complete opposite.’

  ‘I do not understand,’ Noel said. ‘The other day you tell me to see what other hotels and restaurants are doing with their decorations so we might create something similar. Now you are—’

  ‘Now I am asking you, Noel, to do something else.’ Ethan hadn’t meant his tone to be so sharp, but it was important for him to be in charge when Silvie and Louis seemed desperate to strip him away from that role. Ferne had trusted his judgement. Always. ‘Think… home comforts. Not everyone who comes away for Christmas is doing that because they want to get away from home.’ He mused on this anew as the words fell into the air. ‘Some people will have to be away from home, or perhaps they simply cannot be with their loved ones. They may well want reminders of those Christmases.’

  He took a moment to remember the best Christmas dinner he had ever eaten. Not in a restaurant. Not even with the Durands. It had been at a shelter where the goose had been cut thick and served with crispy roasted potatoes, hot and fluffy in the centre, a menagerie of vegetables served with a dark, rich gravy. Ethan could recall just how full his stomach had felt after eating that feast next to other people like him. People with nothing and no one. People who relied on the kindness of others.

  ‘Home comforts?’ Noel mused, as if the phrase was alien to him.

  ‘Yes,’ Ethan answered. ‘Like… all the things you think you should not have, but secretly crave because they remind you of… a happier time or… a special place or moment.’

  As he spoke he was filled with the most intense feeling. This was exactly what was missing from the Perfect Paris mission statement. There had been nothing wrong with Ferne’s quest for luxury, but perhaps the world had changed. And Ethan couldn’t help thinking that the other part of his friend – the part who had cared for strays and given money to beggars on the Metro – would have approved of the shift.

  Noel was still looking a little out of sorts, like Ethan had shot down his large, glittery, festive balloon with a catapult. But Ethan was buzzing now. He didn’t care if his suit was creased or not. He was going to save the hotels and he wasn’t going to let Louis stop him.

  Thirty-Four

  ‘Bernard,’ Silvie started, ‘we have had some coffee and you have eaten three coconut biscuits. The time for small talk about what we are all planning for Christmas is over. We want to know why you have asked for this meeting.’

  This was a little news to Ethan. He had assumed that Silvie and Louis had requested this meeting with Ferne’s solicitor. Her estate was not completely settled. With business interests in France, it was not always so straightforward. Was the idea of a sale of the hotel business causing Bernard some issues in finalising things? Perhaps this could be a good thing…

  ‘Of course, Silvie,’ Bernard answered, picking his small glasses out of the pocket of his suit and putting them on his face. He opened the faded leather folio that had been on the table between them all from the moment Ethan had joined the meeting. The solicitor looked down at the paperwork then looked back up again, then down, then up for a second time.

  ‘Bernard!’ It was Louis who had exclaimed. ‘Please tell us why we are here. We contacted you regarding the finalisation of my sister’s affairs as her will directed. Can we cut to the chase on that if we must be here in person?’

  Although the swelling and bumps on Louis’s face had decreased in size, the man was still sporting an unusual colour. Ethan ordered himself not to laugh. It must be so frustrating for Louis to have to be here, away from the management of his minions and his money.

  ‘Very well,’ Bernard said. ‘Of course.’ The solicitor drew in the kind of breath a doctor might take should he be about to deliver horrendous news to a waiting family.

  It was the kind of breath Silvie had taken on the telephone when she had told him the heart-breaking news about Ferne. Ethan blinked and blinked again, his heart thumping hard as his memories took him back. Silvie telling him Ferne’s brain had no response. That the doctors wanted her to give permission to turn off the machine. His instant reaction had been ‘no’. Ferne was young and strong and there was no way she would want anyone to give up on her. But then Silvi
e had described how Ferne looked, how damaged she was on the outside, what the medics were saying about the inside, and how it was a miracle that she had even made it to hospital to be on the machine that was helping her to breathe. And then there had been the transplant. One kidney. That’s what Ferne’s life had come down to. One kidney that was taken for someone else before they pulled the plug. He had hated the idea of that. The truth was, Ethan had never got to say a goodbye because, perhaps selfishly, he was too afraid to see Ferne that way. To him she would always remain bright, vibrant and alive. And he never wanted to know of that moment when Silvie had held her hand as she slipped away.

  Bernard cleared his throat and Ethan dragged his mind back into the room.

  ‘It is my understanding that you are looking into the sale of Perfect Paris,’ Bernard stated.

  So Silvie or Louis or both of them had told the lawyer their intentions. When, Ethan wondered? Before they had mentioned it to him? He gritted his teeth.

  ‘Nothing has been decided yet, Bernard,’ Silvie insisted. Was it Ethan’s imagination or did she look a little less than comfortable?

  ‘It is a formality, Bernard,’ Louis disagreed with his mother. ‘We all know that it has to be done.’

  Ethan couldn’t sit still and say nothing any longer. ‘Wait a moment,’ he interrupted. ‘It is not a formality. It does not have to be done. Show me how this decision has been reached with regard to logic and projections.’

  ‘Ethan,’ Silvie said calmly, casting a look of concern his way. ‘Please, let us hear what Bernard has to say with regard to our idea and—’