‘Braden,’ Paul supplied.
‘Emily,’ I said, over both of them.
‘… tell Emily what the difference is between Canadians and Americans.’
The bartender looked down at me with a serious expression. ‘The Canadians, Madame, are much more difficult,’ he confided. ‘They are impossible. This one,’ he pointed at Simon, ‘makes always the curtain in his room to fall down, and always I must get the ladder to replace it.’
‘Twice,’ Simon defended himself. ‘I’ve only done it twice. And it’s your own fault for putting a curtain in front of that window to begin with. Windows like that are meant to be opened, to be enjoyed. I can’t help it if your stupid curtain rod gets in the way.’
‘You see?’ Thierry winked again. ‘Most difficult, these Canadians. But you, Madame, you are not Canadian?’
‘Worse.’ I smiled up at him. ‘I’m English.’
‘Non!’ He clapped a hand to his heart in mock agony, but his eyes twinkled at me. ‘You would like a café au lait, Madame? All the English, they enjoy the café au lait.’
Only, I thought, because that’s what we learned to say at school. Until I’d lived in France I hadn’t known there were so many different kinds of coffee, from thickly fragrant café on its own, to the decadent richness of café crème. I considered my options. ‘Could I have a crème instead, please?’
‘Bien sûr,’ he said. ‘With pleasure.’
‘Thierry,’ Simon informed me, as the bartender left to fire up the gleaming monster of a coffee machine sitting behind the bar, ‘is the nephew of the proprietors, Madame and Monsieur Chamond. Have you met them yet? No? Well, don’t worry, you will. They’re terrific people, very easy to talk to. I’m surprised they’re not in here now, they usually are. Anyhow, Thierry’s their nephew. He’s a bit of a drain on them, I think, but he’s lots of fun. Just don’t let him know you speak French,’ was Simon’s advice, ‘or he’ll talk your ear off. He kept Paul going for three hours our first afternoon here.’
‘You don’t speak French?’ I guessed, and Simon shrugged.
‘Just the basics. Hello … where’s the bathroom … I have a blue hat – that sort of thing. Paul’s the expert. He spent a year in Switzerland, on a Rotary exchange.’
I assured Paul that he’d done his sponsors proud. ‘You sounded terribly French, just now.’
He smiled. ‘So did you.’
Thierry had returned with my café crème. He set it with a flourish on the table in front of me, sent me a thoroughly disarming smile, and swept off again to take the order from a clustered group of older tourists – Germans, from the snatches of their conversation I could overhear. It wasn’t easy to hear things at a distance. The radio crooned steadily above our heads, not loudly but persistently, and Edith Piaf had just begun to sing ‘La Vie En Rose’ when my wandering gaze came to rest upon the solitary figure in the far corner.
Had I been drinking anything but coffee I’d have blamed it on the drink – that blinding moment of illumination that made time, for one long heartbeat, cease to be. It was as if my mind said, see now, this must be remembered … this single moment, with Piaf’s voice rasping out the haunting lyrics and the clink of glasses fading to a far-off sound no louder than the trickle of a fountain.
Time blinked. The moment held. There was no reason for it, really – none at all. None, at least, that I was willing to admit. The world, I thought, was full of handsome men.
This one sat close against the tall French windows that opened to the street and fountain square. He looked German too, I thought, or maybe Swedish. His hair was so amazingly fair, the same whitish-gold colour that one sees sometimes on very young children, and where it brushed against the collar of his crisp white cotton shirt it seemed to blend into the fabric. His eyes looked oddly dark in contrast, though of course I couldn’t tell their colour. He looked too handsome to be human, really, sitting there – like some youthful middle-aged pop star, narrow-hipped and long-limbed, his classic face unlined.
Simon Lazarus caught me staring. ‘That’s Neil,’ he told me helpfully. ‘He’s English too, like you. He’s a musician.’
I’m sure my face must have shown my reaction because Paul laughed, a short soft laugh of understanding. ‘No, not that kind of musician,’ he said. ‘He’s a violinist. Plays with a symphony orchestra, I think. You’ll hear him practising if you’re around the hotel in the afternoon.’
So this, I thought, was my mysterious angel with the violin. He certainly looked the part, with that face and his loose white shirt and the sun turning his hair to a halo of light.
‘I think I heard him playing earlier,’ I said, to Paul. ‘I was half asleep at the time. I thought I’d dreamed the music.’
‘He sounds like a recording when he practises,’ Simon put in. ‘He’s that good. His room’s right underneath ours, on the first floor, so we can hear him pretty clearly. Hang on, I’ll introduce you.’
There wasn’t time to voice a protest, he was already taking charge, turning his head to call across the bar, and a moment later I was being introduced. ‘Neil Grantham,’ Simon said, ‘meet Emily …’
‘Braden,’ Paul supplied, for a second time.