Christmas at Tiffany's (33 page)

‘Well, not technically London. Gloucestershire. At West Meadows.’

‘Suzy’s mother’s place?’ Anouk asked.

‘Exactly. It was our home from home whilst we were at school.’ She looked at Cassie. ‘Don’t you remember all those half-term holidays there, and weekend exeats?’

Cassie nodded happily. Anouk had been able to hop on the train to get home, but she and Kelly had had long-haul flights to contend with, so they had always stayed with Suzy at West Meadows instead. ‘I think it makes perfect sense – if Brett’s happy with it.’

‘I think he’d get married on the moon if I wanted it, but either way, he knows how important it is to me for us all to be together.’

‘Dare I say it, but it sounds like it’s all under control, then?’ Anouk said encouragingly from her position on the arm of the sofa.

‘Well, it
would
be,’ Kelly said, rolling her eyes, ‘if we could get her ladyship to decide whether she’s going to be a blonde or brunette bridesmaid.’ She squinted through the screen at Cassie. ‘You realize you’re holding up the entire wedding with your schizophrenia – there are colours to be decided upon and themes to be arrived at. Suzy’s going to hit the roof if I don’t come back to her with a decision soon.’ She threw her arms in the air dramatically. ‘Honestly, with me getting married and her pregnant – we’re women on the edge, I tell you. Women. On. The. Edge.’

Anouk tucked her legs under her, and cupped her cheek in one hand. The burgundy had brought a pale flush to her cheeks and a languid smile to her lips. A cigarette was perched between the fingers of her left hand.

‘God, I’m glad that’s over and done with,’ Cassie sighed, hugging her knees up to her chin and pulling her jumper – a moth-eaten gardening one of Gil’s that always hung from the hook in the boot room – down over them. ‘I guess it means Paris Cassie is now officially “go”. Kelly’s in the loop, so you needn’t rein yourself in any more.’

‘Trust me, I wasn’t,’ Anouk smiled, her eyes flicking with satisfaction over her protegée.

‘Oh? So that’s it for the surprises, then? You’ve shown me everything there is to being a Parisienne?’

‘Superficially,’ Anouk shrugged, taking a deep drag of her cigarette.

Cassie narrowed her eyes. ‘What does that mean? That I’m still just a tourist?’

‘Well, you don’t want to hear it, so . . .’

Cassie put her hand up, instantly alert to the ‘great unmentionable’ that their differing attitudes to men had become. ‘Oh, I see! Right, well, I don’t! Enough of the man talk.’

Anouk sighed. ‘It is the big difference. If you want to know what it is like to live here, you have to know how to love here. I can make you brunette, get you a job at Dior, put you in lingerie and swap your
maquillage
for a skincare regime, but if you do not understand the French attitude to love, then you are still just somebody who comes here to climb the Eiffel Tower.’

Cassie rolled her eyes. ‘You are so hung up on love.’

Anouk let her arm dangle down. ‘But that’s precisely my point,’ she said, piercing her with an intense stare. ‘I’m not.’

‘Well, neither am I. I’ve sworn off it.’

Anouk shook her head. ‘No. You are trying too hard, trying to outrun it. Trying not to ring Luke, trying not to say Gil’s name . . .’

‘They’re not the same thing. I didn’t love Luke – don’t love Luke. He just made me happy at a time when I was very unhappy.’

‘And I could introduce you to some people here who would do the same for you.’

‘But I don’t
want
to bounce from one man to the next, Nooks. That’s not who I am. I can’t keep letting people in and then watch them walking away from me.’

‘You’re not getting any younger, Cass.’ She gave a small sigh. ‘Besides, you’re the one who does the walking.’

There was a brief silence.

‘You make it sound like I leave without a backward glance,’ Cassie said quietly. ‘As though I’m not hurt too.’

‘I
know
you’re hurt. That’s why I want you to learn how not to be.’

‘And how do you learn that, exactly? Anaesthetic to the heart?’

‘Practice. Experience. Entering into the relationship with no expectation of Happy Ever After. Just a fond goodbye, somewhere down the line.’

‘That’s what it is to be Parisian, huh?’

Anouk smiled.

‘Hmmm, I think I prefer Henry’s version – and God knows, between becoming a nun and pot-holing, that’s saying something.’

‘Becoming a
nun
?’ Anouk echoed, arching an eyebrow. ‘What are you talking about?’

Cassie refilled her glass. ‘He’s sent me another list. Some more flowers seeds too. I’ve got them growing next to the coriander, by the way, so don’t throw them out.’

‘Henry’s sent you a list for Paris? This I have to see. As if an Englishman could give you a better idea of the city than me.’ She stubbed her cigarette out and held out her hand. ‘Show it to me.’

Cassie sighed. ‘God, you’re all so territorial. Kelly was exactly the same.’ She got up and fished it out of her bag. ‘Tell me it makes sense to you, because I feel like I’m reading the cryptic clues in
The Times
crossword.’

She handed it over and Anouk scanned it. ‘Point Zero . . . Ladurée . . . Claude . . .’ She looked up. ‘Who is Claude?’

Cassie shrugged. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

‘Dîner en . . . Dîner en Blanc! How does he expect you to get on to that?’

Cassie’s eyes widened in panic. ‘Why? What is it? Please tell me it’s just a restaurant with a crazy waiting list?’

Anouk tutted. ‘You should be so lucky! The White Picnic, it is a secret thing – no one knows who are the organizers and the members are secret. You can only get on to it by invitation.’

‘Then how will I get invited if I don’t know who to ask?’

Anouk shrugged. ‘The catacombs – oh, great, explore the dark underground tunnels while you’re in the City of Light,’ she said sarcastically. ‘The Kiss – mmm, predictable.’ She let the list flutter to her lap and looked at Cassie, satisfied. ‘I much prefer my version of Paris. Get you looking right and introduce you to a sexy man.’ She smiled and lit another cigarette.

Cassie picked up the list and scanned it again. The Manhattan list had been such fun. This didn’t seem quite so . . .

‘I wonder who Claude is?’ Anouk mused, her eyes slitted in concentration. She regarded Cassie slyly. ‘Maybe Henry is setting you up on a date with him. He thinks you need some fun, too.’

Cassie closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘It’s a goddamn conspiracy.’

She heard the digital notes of numbers being punched into the phone and opened her eyes in alarm. Anouk immediately handed the phone to her. ‘You speak to him, or I will.’

‘Who? Henry?’ The long dial tone pulsed slowly in her ear.

‘Claude.’

‘Allo?’ The voice was abrasive, and his pick-up was more of a shout than a greeting. Cassie gulped down her fright.

‘Allo?’

‘Uh . . . Hi! Is that, uh . . . Claude?’

‘Who is this?’

‘My name’s Cassie.’ She bit her lip in mortification. She couldn’t believe Anouk had done this to her. She’d had no intention of ringing some stranger for a blind date. ‘I’m in Paris. Henry Sallyford asked me . . . to call you.’

A long moment passed. ‘Henri?’

‘Yes. Did he . . . did he tell you I would call?’ Please, at least say he’d done that.

Another moment stretched out. ‘Yes, yes, I remember . . . I’m just checking my diary.’ He sounded hassled. Cassie heard the sound of pages being flicked. ‘Okay . . . come over Saturday, eleven o’clock. We’ll do lunch. You have my address?’

‘Uh . . . uh . . .’ Cassie reached round wildly for a pen, not because she wanted to have lunch with this man – they hadn’t even said “how are you?” to each other – but she was in the middle of it now, and she didn’t want to be rude.

He dictated his address, somewhere in the middle of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

‘Okay, Saturday then,’ he said. ‘Don’t be late.’ And he hung up.

Anouk stared at her as – stunned – she put down the receiver.

‘So?’ Anouk was leaning towards her curiously.

‘Well, if
that
was a taster for the French seduction technique, I think it might be easier to learn the rules of disengagement than I thought.’

Cassie returned the bike to the nearest Vélib rack and shuffled slowly down the street. It was narrow and quiet, with contemporary art galleries, minimalist furniture boutiques and rococo antiques shops. She was supposed to have been here forty minutes ago, but she’d overslept. Pierre and Guillaume had taken her and Anouk (‘just as a sociable four,’ Anouk had protested) to a burlesque club in the Marais the night before, and it had been past two in the morning before her head had hit the pillow.

Cycling in the cold and hooking up with a random stranger was absolutely the last thing she felt like, and it was only because Anouk had hidden Henry’s list, which had Claude’s phone number on it, that she had made it here at all. What she really wanted to do was lie in bed and groan and have someone silently hook her up to a saline drip, run her a hot bath and finish with a full-body massage. In fact, she’d nearly wept as she heard Anouk book her slot at the Hammam.

She checked the address again and sighed crossly. Where was the goddamn door? She wasn’t that hungover, surely. She could still count. All she needed was to find number thirteen, but the house numbers seemed to jump from eleven to fifteen.

An elderly man in a navy overcoat and trilby walked past on the opposite pavement, a bagged baguette under one arm and the paper in his other hand. She tried her best to run over.

‘
Excusez-moi, monsieur
. . . do you know where I can find this address?’

The man looked at the piece of paper she was holding out – it was the dry-cleaning receipt she had scrawled the address on the other night. He pulled out a pair of spectacles and struggled to read her writing.

‘
Oh, la-la
.
C’est la bas
,’ he said finally, pointing to a tiny alley opposite, next to where she’d just been. Cassie hadn’t noticed the alley because it was so narrow that a scooter chained to the downpipe on the adjacent building had obscured the entrance to it.

‘Thank you, thank you, sir,’ she smiled, running back over. She started down the alley. It couldn’t have been more than twenty feet long, and there was nothing down it except for a black fire door, which only opened from the inside, and a fire escape above. She turned round, searching for a name or number, anything at all, but there was nothing. She looked back at the fire door. That had to be it.

She was just raising her hand to knock when she heard voices from the other side – lots of them. She stepped back just as the door was flung open and a couple of Japanese girls came out, talking quickly, cameras around their necks. They were followed by a tall, narrow woman with ebony skin and a wicked afro, a middle-aged man with a grey moustache, and finally a dark-haired, black-eyed man the size of a bear.

‘Wait there!’ he barked to the group as he punched in an alarm code inside the door. They all stopped obediently, though the Japanese girls didn’t break stride in their conversation.

‘Oh, excuse me, but I’m going in!’ Cassie said, lurching forward, not quite able to bring a smile to her eyes.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded, clearly as grizzly by nature as by looks. He looked her up and down. She was wearing blue jeans and the Moncler jacket Luke had given her for Christmas. She hadn’t been able to face wearing it since leaving New York, but winter was showing no signs of upping sticks and the wind was especially bitter on the bike.

Cassie prickled at his abrupt manner. ‘I’m here to see Claude,’ she said, deliberately not answering his question.

‘I
am Claude,’ he said, with such pomposity that he could have been saying, ‘I Claudius.’

‘Oh.’ Cassie’s eyes widened. That was bad luck. ‘Well – hi!’ she said, giving a wan smile and holding out a hand. ‘I’m Cassie.’

He ignored it. ‘You’re late.’

‘Yes.’ She dropped her hand, insulted by the snub and suddenly determined not to apologize. She planted her hands on her hips and turned the tables on him. ‘I couldn’t find the door.’

He scowled at her.

‘So, what – you’re . . . going out now?’

‘Well, we weren’t going to wait for you any longer,’ he said, marching off.

Cassie stared after him. ‘We?’

Again he ignored her, disappearing out of the alley and making off down the street. Cassie threw her hands in the air in bafflement. Oh, great! Now what was she supposed to do? Leave him to go out with his friends? Chase after him?

She stared down the empty alley, catching snatched flashes of people walking past on the bright pavement beyond. She looked at her watch. She supposed she was forty-five minutes late now. And he was Henry’s friend. Clearly if Henry rated him, he must have something going for him. He wouldn’t have hooked her up with a bad-tempered Frenchman just for the hell of it.