“Hello,” I said. “I wonder if you can help me.”
I explained the situation and she hummed and hawed on the end.
“Well,” she said finally. “She’ll have to change at Crewe. Or at London.”
“Crewe’s probably better, wouldn’t you think?”
“But I don’t think…I mean, we don’t accept responsibility for sick people on the train.”
“There’ll be somebody with her,” I said, a little testily. “All I’m asking is can a guard meet the train and make sure we’re comfortable in the second train? It’s going to be a big stress for her.”
“Wouldn’t she be better flying?” asked the woman tentatively. “They do lots with wheelchairs and so on.”
“You’re a train company!” I said, exasperated. “Do you tell everyone to get a plane?”
“You don’t need to shout,” said the woman. “I’m just saying we don’t normally do this. Health and Safety won’t allow it.”
I snorted, in a proper French way. “You can’t do anything? Look,” I said, “what’s your name?”
“Aurelienne.”
It was an incredibly unlikely name to belong to such a normal, comfy-sounding woman. “Really?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice softening a little. “My father was French.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
“Thank you.”
“Well, then, you will understand.”
And I told her the whole story, about Claire and Thierry being in love, and how they’d waited their whole lives and now they were both sick and it was their only wish to meet, one more time, in Paris—I laid it on a bit, I will say. At the end, she was silent.
“Well, that’s nice,” she said.
“It will be,” I said, “with your help.”
I was all fired up now, sure I could convince her to see the romantic side of it, sure I could stir her latent French heart.
“It’ll be in the papers,” I lied.
“I just don’t…” she said. Then added, “You know, I’ve never even been to Paris.”
“You haven’t?” I said, shocked. “You’re half-French.”
“Oh, my name is all I have really. He left my mother,” she said. “She hates the French.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Probably just the same in this case.”
“No,” I said. “They just got separated.”
“Hmm,” said Aurelienne.
“And now they want to get back together.”
“Hmm.”
“And you’re going to help make it happen.”
There was a long pause.
“You know, I don’t know why she doesn’t just fly.”
- - -
In the end, using Claire’s credit card, I booked us both first-class train tickets, thinking at least the seat would be more comfortable for her, and it might predispose one of the Health and Safety guards to give us a hand going over the bridge at Crewe. For the price of them, they really ought to let us drive the damn thing. The lady was probably right about flying. Maybe Claire would let us fly back. I didn’t even know if she’d thought that far ahead. I wondered if she had medical insurance. Of course she wouldn’t. Life seemed to get more complicated all the time. Maybe Sami was right. Maybe I did need something a bit simpler.
As if on cue, my phone rang. I picked it up.
“Allo?”
“Where were you? You have been on the phone for four hours!”
“Why, what’s happened? Is something wrong?”
“No,” said Laurent.
My heart skipped a beat anyway.
- - -
Laurent inwardly cursed himself. He had barely noticed the new little shopgirl—well, obviously he’d noticed her when she’d come at him in the street, but not properly—before. She had just arrived, then it was irritating she seemed to be so close to his father so quickly, and then she’d been all around the place, but that was all she was, a mere disturbance on his itinerary of work and the hotel and nightclubs and generally having a good time.
Then yesterday. He couldn’t help it: he was impressed. Genuinely, truly impressed. First, by her dedication to the shop. He knew that a life in gourmet food had to start very young, but she had tried so hard to help out, and help his dad.
Then at dinner last night. Going back there had been a spur of the moment idea, but once they’d gotten ensconced, he’d looked at her properly in the candlelight and realized how pretty her face was, how soft and kind her features: her round blue eyes, with their strong eyebrows, and her very plump, pink lips that made her look younger than she was. And the generous bosom spilling over the top of her pretty floral dress. She was completely unlike the skinny, high-breasted French girls he usually went for, not, he realized, because she was any less attractive, but because she didn’t carry herself as if she innately was. She didn’t strut, and she didn’t look down her nose. She didn’t give off a vibe of being untouchably beautiful and effortlessly chic, as even the plainer girls of Paris did—and she certainly wasn’t chic; that much was clear. But she was luscious and sexy precisely because, he realized, she didn’t know just how sexy she was.
Just at the moment as he’d been coming to those conclusions, she’d eyed him up very clearly and stated how much she didn’t fancy him, and he needn’t think he was getting his own way with her.
If anything could make Laurent Girard very, very interested indeed, that was it.
- - -
I looked at the phone, surprised. I hadn’t thought I’d hear from him again.
“Well, I’ve been busy,” I said. “What is it?”
Laurent had to think on his feet. He really had no idea why he was ringing.
“Have you seen my dad?” he asked quickly.
“Uhm, yeah,” I said, before working out whether it was politic to answer this or not. Alice had already warned me off of the family once before. Mind you, was I really scared of Alice? I thought about it and remembered that yes, yes I was. But it was too late.
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“How was he?”
“Sitting up. Talking. Smiling.”
“Eating?”