The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris (35 page)

“All that time I blamed my dad.”

Mme. LeGuarde smiled. “Never underestimate the power of a woman. I am sorry. I thought it was right.”

Claire shook her head. “I was so sad.”

“He was too,” said Mme. LeGuarde. “And when he got back from Beirut…Oh, Claire. You would not have known him. He was not the same man. He saw some things he should not have seen. He put on a happy face once more, but he was not happy, not anymore.”

Claire nodded. “I see.”

“And then of course you got married and your mother was so happy…she liked Richard a lot, you know.”

“I do know. He really spoiled her, was always taking her out for tea or buying her presents.” She smiled in memory. “I thought he was being a suck-up. Now I think about it, he was being terribly polite and kind. He's a very good man.”

“That's what she said.”

We finished our tea and the two women embraced.

“You are not well,” observed Mme. LeGuarde. She seemed, I thought, a very straightforward kind of a person. I liked her.

“No,” said Claire.

“And I am very old.”

“Yes.”

“When do you leave?”

“Tomorrow.”

They paused at the door.

“So,” said Mme. LeGuarde. “In another life.”

“I hope so,” said Claire, and the two women embraced and I stood back a little.

- - -

Claire wasn't sure she could make it to the top floor. Mme. LeGuarde had invited her to see the hideous garages that had been built when they'd sold off the garden—a heartbreak she clearly wasn't over—and she'd had enough trouble managing that. But she didn't want to let Anna down or to worry her. Tomorrow Thierry wanted to take her back up the Eiffel Tower one last time. She would think about that when she got there. Now all she wanted to do was take enough morphine in the bathroom to get her through the next half hour. Then the next. Then the next.

- - -

“GREETINGS!”

The entire apartment was covered in draped material, and Sami had a manic look in his eye and a mouthful of pins. A grumpy, short, fat man was standing with a large cummerbund swathed around his middle.

“It'll be ready! It'll be ready!”

The man looked at his watch.

“Five hours till the dress.”

“Oh
shit
!” said Sami. “Darling, have you got any dexedrine?”

“Yes, Sami,” I said. “Of course I have dexedrine.”

He was so caught up he missed my being sarcastic for a couple of seconds, then remembered his manners and apologized to Claire.

“Forgive me, we are on tonight. The grand dress rehearsal. It will all be
fine
.”

“Ow,” said the man, as Sami pricked him with a pin.

“And you are all coming?”

“Uhm,” I said.

“You are coming! Of course! To the opera house!”

“Oh, I'm not sure…”

“You are not sure?” said Sami. “These performances have been sold out for months. They will be attended by the president, by the Prince of Monaco, by everyone who is anyone in le tout Paris, and you get offered a sneak preview for free?”

Claire spoke up. “Which opera is it?”

“
La
Bohème
,” said the young man. “And I am Rodrigo, and I should be warming up my voice right now.”

“Oh!” said Claire, then glanced at me. “I love that opera.”

I'd never been to an opera in my life; all I knew was that song from the football. Suddenly the man, who was the most unprepossessing young gentleman I'd ever seen, opened his mouth.

Even Sami stopped moving. The sound that came from him was as thick and rich as Thierry's chocolate. It was melting and dreamy. He sang just a fragment—I couldn't even understand the words, but the swoop of his voice filled the house to the rafters. An expression of calm began to spread over Claire's features.

“Okay,” I said quickly. “We'll come.” I turned to Claire. “If you're up to it?”

“If you could take me back to the hotel now for a little nap,” said Claire, “I can't think of anything I'd like more.”

T
hierry and Laurent met us in the lobby, both wearing dinner jackets and bow ties, Thierry's looking rather baggy around the neck, Laurent's looking very hired and utterly gorgeous. “It's only a rehearsal,” I said, but I was delighted nonetheless. Claire was wearing a very simple gray wrap that did its best to make her terrible weight loss look chic. I was wearing a present from Claire; it had been a total surprise. She'd looked a bit nervous back in the hotel room but said she thought it might fit me now (I must have lost weight, I could tell by the way she said it). It was old, but it might pass for vintage, and if I didn't like it not to worry, she didn't know much about style these days.

But when I saw the dress, I did love it straight away; it had little daisies around the hem and though I had thought it might be a bit young for me—I was no spring chicken after all—in fact, the cut and the shape of it were so sophisticated it worked perfectly and showed off my light summer tan. It was the nicest dress I'd ever worn, and I could tell by Claire's face when I put it on that she thought it suited me too.

- - -

Claire hadn't even understood why she'd brought the dress in the end, until she saw Anna's eager face, flushed and clearly in love and so happy. If she had been prone to thinking a lot of herself, Claire would have been proud that she'd sent her here.

The nap had helped a little, but nothing much. She could no longer hold down food; she'd pretended to eat lunch while Anna was out of the room. She hadn't needed to go to the bathroom all day either. “If you can't go,” her doctor had said, “that's a sign. Hospital, double quick. No messing.”

“Yes, doctor,” she said.

And now she was running on fumes, she knew. It was odd, as if her body was giving up like an old boiler, or a car, one bit at a time, just gently shutting down.

She turned her face to Anna, who suited the dress well, but whose face was so brimming with happiness and excitement she would have looked lovely in a sack. She was lovely.

- - -

“Lovely,” she said briskly, and nothing more, and I made up her face for her and put some mascara on the two baby lashes she had growing and some pale pink lipstick, and we looked at each other in the mirror and she said, “Well, I guess this is as good as it's going to get,” and we quickly hugged each other.

Laurent's face lit up when he saw me, and Thierry made a sharp intake of breath and glanced at Claire in a way that made me think he might have seen the dress before. Then I got one of the hotel staff to take a picture on my phone, and Laurent was holding Claire up out of her wheelchair and tickling me, and he held us and we burst out giggling at the exact same moment as the flash went off.

- - -

There were absolutely loads of people there for the dress rehearsal and all of them were studiously dressed down in a way that said, “We are totally music professionals who only care about the art of it and not the silly fripperies,” but we didn't care. Sami had arranged good seats for us in the middle of the stalls by dint of putting a huge turquoise roll of cloth over the top, and Thierry insisted on bringing a box with sandwiches and a bottle of champagne in a cool flask. I tutted at him and said Alice would kill him, and he smiled and said it was a very special one off and popped the cork as the tuning up finished and the lights started to fade.

I thought,
I
will
be
totally
bored
at
this
. I won't get it and it will be obvious to everyone that I'm just dumb Anna Trent from Kidinsborough, average student, speaks French like a Spanish cow, likes Coldplay.

But then the conductor marched on, without ceremony—nobody clapped; this was a rehearsal after all—and raised his hands, and all these musicians I could see, hardly any distance away from me…they just started to play these strings, running up and down their violins, and it was just totally amazing. It wasn't weird or boring at all; it was beautiful. Then the curtain went up and I gasped. Two men—including the little short arse I'd met at the flat—were in a bare, cold-looking garret just like mine. It too had a window, with a view over Paris full of twinkling lights and smoking chimneys, and through the window, although I had absolutely no idea how they did it, snow was falling. It was exquisite. Then the men began to sing and I was transported. Sami had told me the story before one night when he was hemming, and it didn't seem necessary to watch the cold, starving men burn their books. Then the other man—who was taller and more handsome—met the beautiful Mimi, who wore a dress that was patched and faded, but still fit her absolutely perfectly, as she showed how poor and helpless she was in a voice that reached the very heights of the rafters.

Laurent didn't take his hand off my leg the entire time, as I leaned forward, more and more transfixed. I glanced at Claire. Her eyes were half-open, her head leaning against Thierry's shoulder. He had his arm around her. She looked awful. I felt a sudden lump in my throat.

“Are you all right?” I whispered.

She nodded. “Yes, my love.”

“And I'll take you home tomorrow,” I said. “Richard will meet you and take you back to the boys.”

She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I am so lucky,” she said and squeezed my hand. Thierry whispered something in her ear.

- - -

Claire could barely make out the figures on the stage. The two boys…her boys…oh where were her boys now? She wanted to see them so much. She missed them so much; the fresh smell of their hair, the way they slept, arms thrown out, spread-eagled on their bunk beds, their little arms around her neck…Thierry whispered in her ear, “Don't go,” and she smiled. “I must,” she said. “I must go home to my boys…and to someone I should have loved better.”

Thierry kissed her bald head gently. “You couldn't have loved me any better.”

“No, I couldn't,” she said.

- - -

There was no interval, no pause, as the singers carried on with their scenes. But I preferred that; I didn't want anything to break the spell, that even though these people were singing, I was with them, at the dance, which was perfect, with the sellers, and finally, as Rodolfo laid her down gently on the poor couch, kissing her repeatedly, the tears slipped steadily from my eyes. Laurent gently whispered the name of the aria they were singing, “Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen,” and my heart jumped and stuttered with panic. I turned, and straightaway, even before the orchestra fell apart and fell silent and the cast stared at us open-mouthed, and the shouting, before Sami came charging full-pelt right from backstage across the footlights toward us, his long turquoise scarf fluttering behind him, and the ambulance and the lights and the noise—I knew, I just knew. We all knew.

T
he elderly gentleman, clearly once very handsome, now slightly heavier, but with his bushy mustache as luxuriant as ever, pushed his way to the front of the queue with his cane. He was tall and beautifully dressed and as most of the visitors were foreigners, not French, they let him march through with his air of authority as he bought his ticket to the top.

In the lift, he stood with his hands clasped behind him. It had been a beautiful autumn. The leaves after the hot summer had burnished bright red and gold, and everyone had returned to the city rejuvenated after their summer breaks and wildly excited to hear that the great Thierry Girard had gone into partnership—with his son, no less—and was no longer relying on past glories and turning out old classics, but was turning out cutting-edge work and taste surprises. Laurent's oyster chocolate had been talked about for weeks. And working shoulder to shoulder with Anna, who had turned out to be such a find…they looked so happy together, bickering affectionately over flavorings, forcing each other to taste some new concoction—he didn't feel the need to go in nearly as much. He had much more time to walk, to spend time with Alice, who was less frenetic now the financial future seemed secure but still watched his diet like a hawk, to reflect on how close he came to losing everything, everything good about his life. Well, he had years now, barring accidents, years Claire had never had. He owed it to her to enjoy them, he felt. Make it up to her now.

Up at the very top, he turned left out of the lift—most people would turn right, he knew—and went right around to the east side, from where you could see the towers of Notre Dame, their little island, their little haven in the center of the world. From up here, the movements and traffic and noise felt like nothing, all the tiny business of the human world, scattering around, each carrying inside them a multitude of happiness and sorrow, all those loves lost and found.

The wind was blowing, an autumnal chill in it. He was glad he was wearing the pink scarf Alice had bought him.

He opened up the box. He had wanted so much to give it to her, had meant to, up here. But they had not had time. They hadn't had time to…well. He was not going to dwell on it now.

Thierry took the brand new straw hat out of its white box, lifted it high in the air over the fencing, and—
pouf!
—let the wind carry it away, watching it dance and fly in the air, high above the chimney pots and cathedral bells and steeples, watching it twist, its ribbon flapping, until it flew up and up, into the blue sky and out of sight.

THE END