The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris (29 page)

C
laire was ready. So ready. Everything in the house was immaculately tidy. Her oncologist had been cross at first—like all doctors, Claire surmised, he liked mindless gratitude and obedience. Well, like all people, she supposed. But then he'd gradually gotten used to the idea, postponed her next round of chemo, and prescribed her several very strong emergency painkillers just in case. He'd warned her repeatedly that she wouldn't be insured in France and that her health insurance card wouldn't help her out with her preexisting condition and that she could get in serious trouble, but she clearly wasn't listening, so in the end he had smiled and wished her all the best and reminisced about a time as a young medical student when he'd snuck into the Folies Bergère and it had been the best night of his life, and she had smiled back. Paris touched so many people.

Her suitcase was packed. Her sons had both come around and sighed heavily and complained and begged her to change her mind but of course to no avail. She had more color in her cheeks than she had for over a year.

- - -

Taking the train back to the UK was a revelation. I couldn't believe how nervous and anxious I'd been on my way here, how sick I still felt, in body and in spirit, really. How I was convinced it would be such a disaster and I'd be thrown out for being a fraud, or that I would sit in a rented room for three months not talking to anyone because everyone would be so rude to me and I wouldn't be able to speak the language.

And before I got on the train even, I would probably have said, on balance, that more bad things than good had happened. Thierry's illness, my nonstarter flirtation with Laurent, my very slow learning to make one or two types of chocolate that even now I was only beginning to truly appreciate.

But on the train, as I smelled the awful fake scent of the hot chocolate dispenser—which had never bothered me before—and watched the brightly dressed, blond-headed British girls get on, with their big bosoms and ready smiles and little gin and tonics in their hands, I realized I had changed. That I was more comfortable, more confident—not just than I'd been before the accident, but maybe than ever before. Okay, so I had hardly taken Paris by storm, but I had made friends and kept my job and eaten some unbelievable food. I stroked my plain pale gray Galeries Lafayette dress, which I wouldn't have looked at three months ago but now I felt suited me very well, listened to the safety announcements, feeling quite at home in either language, took out my magazine, and settled my head back and realized how happy I was to be going home, but how happy I would be to come back too.

- - -

I hadn't rung Laurent, for lots of reasons, the main one being I was a big fat crazy coward who hated dealing with things straight on, but I had emailed him, telling him when we'd be arriving in Paris, with all the dates, and hoping that Claire would be able to see Thierry. What I meant by this, clearly, is that I hoped Laurent would smooth everything over with Alice, but I didn't put it like that.

Anyway, I was putting stupid thoughts of stupid Laurent out of my head completely. As if in strict defiance of what he or any other French person might think, I marched straight up to the buffet and ordered a large packet of Walker's chips—cheese and onion—and ate them, straight from the packet, in public, something no French person I had yet met would ever have done. So there, I thought to myself.

- - -

Mum burst into tears when she saw me. Which I know, I know, should have made me happy. Obviously, it's nice to be loved, of course, I know I'm lucky but, you know,
Mu-um
. Also I hate the implication: that she was totally sure that I couldn't leave the house on my own without being eaten by crocodiles or kidnapped by white slave traders. It was a bit insulting to be honest, that she was crying tears of full relief that her useless daughter who couldn't be trusted in the real world hadn't actually died when traveling to the nearest possible foreign country to Kidinsborough. (Unless you counted Liverpool. Hahaha, only joking.)

I didn't say any of this, of course, just buried my head in her shoulder, so pleased to be home. Dad patted me lightly on the back in his jolly way.

“Hello, girl,” he said.

“Hi, Dad.”

I found myself choking up a bit, which was ridiculous as I'd only been away for two months, but I hadn't been like that girl Jules in my class who'd gone away to university miles away, then worked in America and traveled all over the place. That wasn't me at all, never had been.

I looked at Kidinsborough with a funny air through the car windows. Another pawn shop had opened. Another little café had closed down. The people seemed to walk so slowly. I wondered, almost abstractly, if I was turning into a snob, but it wasn't that. If you believed the papers (which I didn't really understand anyway), the UK was doing well, while France was pretty much running on fumes, but you really wouldn't see it to set up a street in Kidinsborough against the rue de Rivoli.

On the other hand, that was hardly fair. I was sure there were plenty of grim former industrial towns in France, cluttering up the border with rusting railway tracks and thundering lorries. I watched a woman shouting at her pram. She was wearing two tank tops, both grubby, neither of which reached all the way over the rolls of fat down to her leggings. She was pushing a buggy loaded with huge thin plastic bags through which the family bags of chips were clearly visible.

I winced. I was turning into a snob.

- - -

“
Anna!
Have you turned into a total and utter snob?”

It was Cath on the phone. I was so pleased to hear from her.

“
Yes!
” I screamed back. “I can't help it! I don't know what to do. I'm kind of horrible now.”

“Everyone in France is horrible,” she said with all the authority of someone who'd been told off by a ferry operative on a school trip to France in 1995.

“Everyone knows that. They eat dogs and stuff.”

“They don't eat
dogs
,” I said crossly. “Where did you even hear that?”

“Well, dogs, or horses or something.”

“Mmm,” I said.

“Oh. My. God. It's true. Do they eat horses?”

“Well, if you eat cows, I don't really see the difference…”

“Oh my utter God, that is total rank. Did you eat a horse? Oh man, that mings the mong.”

I started to feel less snobby.

“Get ready,” said Cath. “We're going out.”

It was good to be home.

- - -

Cath let herself into my room, armed with blow-dryers and curling tongs. She stopped short when she saw me.

“What?” I said.

“Dunno,” she said, but she didn't look pleased. She had a bright blood-red streak through the top of her hair that made her look like a particularly cheerful vampire. “You look…different.”

“That's because I'm not in bed vomiting up blood and crying,” I pointed out.

“No, even after you got sick.”

“Well, I'm not out of work and crying in the morning.”

She shook her head. “Neh. It's more than that.”

She opened up her hairdressing bag and pulled out two clanking bottles of WKD.

“Uhm, Cath, we're thirty,” I reminded her. “You don't need to smuggle drink into the house. Dad would make us a martini bianco if we asked him nicely.”

“It tastes better like this,” she said. “Can I smoke out the window?”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes.”

She lit up and climbed on my bed, regarding me closely.

“You've lost weight,” she said accusingly.

Actually I'd lost a lot of weight in the hospital, then regained it all again by staying indoors being depressed and eating extra-spicy KFC. Then the last few weeks had been so busy I hadn't even really noticed, which was, I will say, not at all like me. But my jeans had certainly felt looser. But I still considered myself fatter than every other person in Paris. The women were so tiny. Maybe I was just falling into line.

“You've gone Frenchy-thin,” she said. “Hmm. Do you smoke now and eat nothing all day except frogs' legs and dog?”

“It's horse,” I said.

“I knew it!” yelled Cath.

Her eyebrows would have arched if she hadn't had that dodgy cheap Botox that she didn't even need. It had given her a look that screamed Botox. She adored it, all the sheen without the need for repeated injections. Everyone assumed she had it about once a week.

“What's this man like?” she asked.

“There's no man,” I said. “Well…I mean…No, no man.”

“Oh my God, what's he like? Is he tiny and without an arse? French men never have arses.”

“How come you're so well-informed?”

“Everyone knows that,” she said dismissively. “I've met a few men in my time.”

This was undeniably true. I drank the blue drink. Had it always been this revolting? I wasn't sure.

“Well, I kind of nearly met someone, then he saw my foot and had a serious freak out.”

Cath put her glass down. Her voice was quieter.

“Seriously?”

“It's all right,” I said, taking a swig. It wasn't much better than the first one, but I persevered. “It doesn't matter.”

“What a twat,” she said.

“Oh no, it wasn't really his fault…my shoe fell off and he thought my toes fell off too.”

She paused for a second then, suddenly, we both burst out laughing.

“What an idiot!” she said when she paused for breath. “Thank God you didn't brush your hair. He'd have thought your head was falling off.”

The blue drinks must have been getting to us, because we found this very, very funny too, and suddenly I realized that while I might have been learning lots of new things and experiences, I hadn't had a bloody good laugh for ages.

We headed out to Faces, and there were loads of people there I hadn't seen for absolutely ages and everyone was dead nice and bought us drinks and congratulated Cath on beating that shoplifting charge, to which Cath assumed a heavenly look and pretended she wasn't in the least bit surprised, and a bunch of lads we went to school with were there and that was so funny, the married ones all fat and tired-looking, the unmarried ones all flash-looking and bragging about their cars. A few more blue drinks and everything seemed hilarious again and I even ended up giving Darr a bit of a snog for old times' sake—well, he was right there, and I felt like I needed the practice, but he was absolutely, I realized, rubbish compared to Laurent, so I quickly knocked that on the head. Then me and Cath marched home arm in arm, singing a Robbie Williams song, and it was exactly what I needed.

Even with it though, I still felt different. Like I was an outsider, looking in. That I was playing at being a Kidinsborough girl rather than actually being one. Even though I was, wasn't I? Of course I was.

It was very kind of Claire not to ring until the afternoon the next day.

- - -

Actually, it was better than kind; it was bliss. I sat in front of the gas fire, watching the telly—my mum had taped loads of reality shows; she likes anything where people come to a sticky end—and we ate toast (no one could believe it when I told them the French had never really heard of toast and ate this indigestible crunchy preburned stuff) with marmite. The boys let me eat some of their massive supplies of chips, which was their way of saying they were pleased to see me, and my dad didn't really say anything much, just popped his head around the door every now and again, smiled, then popped out again. I'd forgotten how nice it was at home. I'd also forgotten that by the next day, Mum and I would probably be driving each other up the wall and I'd be down at the discount store begging for a job and tripping over the boys' sneakers…

And I had promises to keep. The second I saw the wheelchair, I knew this was going to be a bigger task than I'd counted on. It was…well, it was huge.

“I know,” Claire said. “I hate it too.”

“It's just so…”

Claire was sitting on the sofa and we were both staring at the ugly, hideous big National Health Service wheelchair that we both knew so well from trips through hospital corridors, to operating rooms and blood-testing departments, with jaunty porters who always had a cheery word. But now it was just us.

“Well, I'm sure I can fold it up,” I said, not sure at all. I'm only five foot three and a bit wobbly on the one side.

“And people will be kind,” said Claire firmly.

I looked at her. She'd lost even more weight; the bones on her face made her look like one of those ballet dancers from the opera. Blue veins were visible underneath her skin, except on her arms, where repeated stabbings had caused them all to retreat and hide. The story was that she was off the chemo so she could get well enough to operate on. She insisted this was the case, but she didn't look better to me. Not at all.