“How will you get home?”
“I’ll find a cab,” I said boldly. I had no idea how I’d get home.
Sami waved a lazy hand. “All right, my petite anglaise who works so hard. Everyone say good night to Anna.”
A man was standing there who had just arrived, to whom I hadn’t been introduced. He turned to Sami and said something in a low voice.
“Of course she will,” said Sami crossly. “Darling. More martinis please.”
Then he blinked.
“Of course. You two have to meet.” He grabbed the man, who was tall and slightly thicker-set than most of the good-looking young beau monde around, by the arm. The man had been draped around one of the very skinny model-looking types and looked rather annoyed at being disturbed.
“Laurent! It’s Anna.”
Laurent, whoever he was, looked completely nonplussed by this information. Rather than kiss me on both cheeks or say “enchanté” like most of the other people I’d met, he thrust out a hand rather brusquely without looking me in the eye.
“Well, hello,” I said, taken aback.
He was still talking, crossly, to Sami.
“She’ll never find a taxi,” he was saying.
“Of course she will,” said Sami. “Or a bus, or a friend.”
Laurent rolled his eyes.
“I’ll be fine,” I said. I was tired and a bit drunk and cross from the martinis and I suddenly wanted very much to be in my bed. I didn’t like these strangers discussing me like a piece of furniture. The subways were probably still running anyway. I stood up and smiled shortly.
“Good night.”
- - -
As it turned out, the rather grumpy young man had turned out to be right. It was far later than I had thought, and the streets were completely deserted. So much, I thought, for this being a big all-night party town. I’d been to London twice, and as far as I could tell, Soho and Trafalgar Square kept going all night every night. Here, though, it was practically silent.
All the taxis cruising the streets seemed to have lights on but didn’t stop. My heart started to jump a bit. Maybe the system was different here. Maybe if you had a light on that meant you weren’t free. So I tried hailing a few cars without lights, but that didn’t do me any good either, until one car with one man in it started slowing down a bit close to me and I turned tail and scampered up some steps. Then I turned around, worrying a bit about the sound of my shoes on the steps and wondering exactly how safe Paris was, after all. About ten people had warned me already about pickpockets. What about muggers?
I heard a footfall somewhere behind me. The streetlights, utterly charming though they were, wrought iron in the old-fashioned style, gave out picturesque circles of light. At the moment, though, I would have liked full-beam motorway service station blindingness. I could barely see my way ahead and hadn’t a clue where I was going. I started walking up the church steps a little faster. The footsteps behind me sped up.
Oh crap, I thought to myself. Oh god. I was stupid, after all, coming out by myself. I was stupid coming out at all, full stop, with a new flatmate I barely knew. I should have stayed inside and eaten packet noodles and, I don’t know, had a good cry or something. I moved faster, trying to see a street that led somewhere more wide open with more chance of company, but all the roads ahead seemed equally tiny and mysterious. Oh bugger.
Straight ahead was the outline of the huge church, the Sacré-Coeur. I decided to head for that, from some old-fashioned idea about sanctuary, but truly from the expectation that it would have some kind of big courtyard, somewhere with lights—you could see the floodlighting right across the city. I ran up more steps, and behind me, the feet were faster too, closing and closing, my heart pounding in my mouth, my hand searching in my bag for something I could use as a weapon. I closed on the great big old-fashioned iron key that opened the building door and told myself to aim for his eye.
“HÉ!”
The voice was deep and throaty, and I could tell by the tread that it was someone heavy. Shit. Right. This was it. The steps were closing in. I was in a small cobbled courtyard nowhere near the church, surrounded by boarded-up shops and tightly shuttered flats. Would they open up their shutters for me? I doubted it. Never mind, there were plenty of quiet-looking alleyways nearby.
“AAARRRRGH!!!!!”
I screamed with all my might and leapt on the dark shadowy figure, the keys outstretched in my hand, trying to stab them into his face. I caught him off guard, and he toppled over hard on the cobblestones, me coming down on top of him, still trying to get at him with the keys and screaming the worst obscenities I could think of.
I didn’t realize at first that there was an equally terrified screaming coming from underneath me. A pair of extremely strong arms was trying to keep me away from his face. I had reverted to English—extremely Anglo-Saxon—and was trying to whack him; he suddenly spoke in English too.
“Pleeze, pleeze stop…pleeze…I don’t mean harm. Any harm. Pleeze.”
The meaning didn’t filter through straightaway, and I was so crazy with adrenalin, I’m not sure when exactly I would have stopped, if a shutter at the top of the apartment block we were underneath hadn’t suddenly opened, and, without warning, a bucket of water poured down on our heads.
That stopped us. Panting, I realized I was sitting on top of the grumpy man from the bar. He was holding my hand in a vice grip at arm’s length, but I had already managed, I saw, to make a good bloody cut in his forehead. Seeing the blood, now being washed by the water, suddenly made me wobble.
“Oh,” I said, shock and faintness washing over me. I wobbled and nearly collapsed on top of him. He quickly moved his hands to my waist, holding me up.
“What the…what the HELL did you think you were doing?” I finally managed to gasp as I clambered up. I was soaking.
“I was shouting at you. Didn’t you hear me? I didn’t catch your name the first time.”
“You don’t follow a woman like that!”
“Well, you don’t march out into a foreign city if you don’t know your way home. Sami is fun, but he’s always going to choose the party over you.”
I brushed down my hair as he lumbered to his feet. His English was extremely good, only the merest hint of a French accent.
“So you were…”
“I’d come to find you. I was only meant to meet you anyway, and I’m heading back your way. Actually, I’m knackered. Sami is never where he says he’s going to be…”