Page 6 of Last Chance in Paris

The Fairchild divorce – more specifically the division of the Fairchild fortune – had made national headlines. Harry swung back on his chair and drained his glass.

‘I bet she’ll call you. Don’t fly home yet.’

‘I guess. It’s okay anyway – I’ve got things to finish here.’ Jenny pursed her lips, seemed lost in her own thoughts for a second. Then she shook her head and snapped back to attention. ‘And I haven’t gone to see Buckingham Palace yet. You fancy joining me?’

‘Not really my scene, honey.’

The notion of the Eurostar appealed to Harry – the idea of hurtling through a tunnel from one country to another. He looked down at the script on his desk. Working on this film had kept him going for the past year, got him out of bed in the mornings and occupied his head at night. He wasn’t going back to reality just yet.

‘Jennifer,’ he said, ‘would you clear my schedule for next week, please?’

Promptly, she began taking notes on her phone.

‘I’ll fly to L.A. at the end of next week,’ he said. ‘And book me a seat on the Eurostar. Today. I want to see Paris.’

A Farmhouse East of Dijon

With a firm grasp on her walking cane, Mireille Delassus leaned into the cupboard under the stairs and pulled out a leather weekend bag. It was a good deal more worn than she remembered. She carried the bag into the kitchen and put it on an empty chair at the head of the table – Rémy’s seat. A rummage in a drawer next to the sink yielded a glass jar of beeswax polish, a soft yellow cloth and a shoe-shine brush. Mireille carried those to the table and set about her task.

It had been Rémy’s bag, not hers. On the last Thursday of every month, she had packed it for him: two pairs of socks, two neatly folded pairs of underpants, two clean vests, two shirts, all freshly pressed with lavender water, and a small hand towel so that he could freshen up at the train station. He would add his own shaving things in the morning just before he left. He would always plant a kiss on her cheek as he walked out the door, and she would always notice how good he smelled. She had learned early on not to press him for details of his monthly meetings in Paris; Rémy hadn’t liked to discuss business at home. He had been a kind man and a good husband in almost every way. Even five years after his death, she couldn’t quite believe he wouldn’t simply turn up at the table one day, eager for his dinner.

Pulling open the zip, Mireille was grateful to find that the bag was empty. She turned it upside down and shook it. Nothing but a few specks of dust fell to the floor.

We all have our secrets,she thought. Every one of us keeps a locked cupboard in the corner of our hearts, stocked full of past misdemeanours and forbidden desires.

She brought the corner of the cloth to her mouth and wet it with spit. With one hand inside the bag, pressing the lining outwards, she used the tip of her finger wrapped in the soft cloth to push all the dust out of the folds in the leather.

Loin des yeux, mais pas loin du cœur.

Out of sight, but not out of mind, she thought, patting the folded envelope in the pocket of her cardigan.

She wondered if Rémy could see her. Sometimes, when she was doing something quiet – unearthing radishes from their tidy rows or washing dishes – she would feel his presence, hear his voice in her head. Once, sitting right here, winding up a ball of wool, she had imagined the pressure of his hand on her shoulder. Behind her eyelids, she had pictured him placing a cup of tea on the table in front of her and taking his seat. With her head bent, she had carried on winding wool.

‘Je tricote une écharpe,’ she had whispered into the silence. I’m knitting a scarf.

‘Comme c’est joli, chérie,’ he would have said – how lovely – except he didn’t, because there was no cup of tea on the table, and he wasn’t really there.

Mireille opened the beeswax. She pressed her finger into the perfectly smooth, opaque surface, felt the wax melt and give way to her pressure. It smelled of lavender, just like his shirts, and something else, too – it smelled of time, time preserved in a glass jar. She dipped the cloth into the jar and rubbed wax all over the bag, making especially sure to get it into the crevices. Then she took the polishing brush and, with quick side-to-side sweeps, burnished the bag, front, back and bottom, until she could see it glowing with reflected light from the kitchen window.

What would Rémy say, if he could see her now? Could he see inside her pocket? Could he read the contents of her letter?

Leaving the polished bag on Rémy’s chair, Mireille made her way to the dining room. After Rémy’s death, her nephew, Antoine, had carried her bedroom furniture down the stairs to this room and then moved the dining table up the stairs to the room she and Rémy had pretended to share for half a century. In fact, Rémy had slept in a single bed in the back bedroom, but Antoine didn’t need to know that. It would make her life easier, he said, to sleep downstairs, and he wouldn’t have to worry about her having a bad fall. Antoine was a policeman, and he knew all about the types of bad falls old ladies were prone to having. Mireille thought it better not to tell Antoine that, every evening at dinnertime, she carried her plate up the stairs and sat alone at the dining table. The west-facing window afforded her a spectacular view of the sun setting behind the rows of vines. It was, quite literally, the high point of her day.

She opened the doors of her wardrobe and, with a lurch of anxiety, surveyed her choices. Her everyday clothes – cotton dresses and house coats – were out of the question, of course, and even her Sunday skirts would hardly beà la hauteurfor Paris. She could have bought something new, but that would have involved asking for help, and a level of subterfuge that was beyond her.

As it was, she had decided not to mention her escapade to Antoine. He wouldn’t approve of her travelling alone, and she couldn’t imagine any credible excuse for her trip. She had booked a taxi to bring her to the station in the morning. With God’s help, none of her neighbours would see her board the train.

From the end of the rail, she extracted the expensive mauve suit she had bought for Antoine’s wedding. It was more than twenty years old, she thought with no small satisfaction, and only needed smartening up with a clothes brush. That would do well.

She laid the suit over the back of a chair. From the top drawer of her dresser, she took a gold and pearl brooch and pinned it to the jacket’s lapel. Then, from a rail on the back of the cupboard door, she chose her favourite scarf. It wasn’t the colourful silk one she had bought for the wedding; she didn’t want to appear gaudy. This one was more subdued – inoffensive plum and navy stripes.

She would bring a cardigan, she decided, in case it was cool on the train, a handkerchief, maybe two, a clean blouse, spare tights. When all these things were carefully stowed in the bag, Mireille pulled a chair over to her wardrobe. She kneeled on the seat of the chair, and then, very slowly, she pulled herself to a standing position. With one hand holding on to the wardrobe door, she stretched her other arm to the back of the top shelf and pulled out an enormous yellow sun hat. She threw the hat to the bed and, very slowly, climbed back to the ground.

For a moment, she stood looking at the hat. It had the happiest of memories attached to it, that hat. Rémy had brought her on a shopping trip to Paris to buy their outfits for his brother’s – Antoine’s father’s – wedding. They’d drunk cocktails at lunchtime and spent far more money than they’d intended and come home with matching trouser suits in prune – and the yellow hat.

It was once the rich yellow of a sunflower but, after forty-something years, had paled to primrose. She brushed a trace of cobweb from the brim. A further eddy of anxiety threatened as she fretted about how she would manage to carry the bag and the hat along with her cane. The only solution, she thought with a dawning smile, was to wear the thing.

So much for not looking gaudy.

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