Paris for One and Other Stories Read online

  "She came to the apartment a couple of weeks ago, to pick up her bracelet. She couldn't believe how I had changed--you know, the book and the Web site. . . ."

  Fabien stares down at his feet.

  "But I looked at her, and all I felt was this . . . this weight. Of all the things I was expected to be. Like those padlocks, you remember? And I realized that when you came, Nell, it was like . . ."

  He looks up, and their eyes meet.

  "Bouf?" says Nell.

  His eyes stay on hers, and then he begins to pat his pockets. "Look . . . look," he says. "I want to show you something else."

  Nell glances over at her mother, who is finally coming to on the bench, wiping at her eyes and blinking against the light. "What's going on?" she says blearily.

  "My son is finding his cojones," says Clement fondly.

  "Did we eat those, too?" murmurs Lilian. "I kind of zoned out after the terrine."

  Fabien reaches into his inside pocket and presents Nell with a ticket. She studies it, realizing with a jolt what she is looking at.

  "You were coming to England?"

  "I wanted to surprise you. To show you that I am a person who does things now. I make things happen. And to tell you--I am done with stages. Nell, I realize we hardly know each other, and I understand that you said it would ruin everything, but . . . I have thought about you so much. . . . You see, I don't think you were my mistake. I think you may be my best thing."

  He reaches out a hand, and she takes it. She stares at their entwined fingers for a moment, trying not to smile as ridiculously widely as she wants to. And then she gives in to it, and abruptly, awkwardly, they step forward and hug each other. And then they hug each other again, holding on for longer this time. And then--because all this staying apart has become frankly impossible--they kiss. For long enough for Nell to stop caring who is watching; long enough for her to forget to breathe, to lose herself in it, to feel that all her edges have become blurred and that somehow the sounds of Paris and the feel of Fabien and the sky and the scents in the air have all become part of her. For so long that her mother finally starts to cough pointedly.

  "So," Nell says as they reluctantly extricate themselves. "This book of yours. You never did tell me. How does it end?"

  Fabien takes the seat beside her. "You know, I think in the best stories the characters themselves decide. Especially the impulsive ones."

  Nell looks up at the padlocks glinting on the bridge, at her mother, who is drinking coffee with Mr. Thibauld. She turns so that she is looking ahead at the Seine, glittering gently in the falling dusk.

  "Well," she says, "I always did like a story with a happy ending. . . ."

  Between the Tweets

  I have a problem," the man said.

  "Everyone who comes here has a problem," said Frank.

  The man swallowed. "It's a woman."

  "It usually is," said Frank.

  "She . . . she claims we've been having an affair," he said.

  Frank leaned back in his chair, pressing the tips of his fingers together. He'd liked to do that ever since his last secretary told him it made him look intelligent. "Yeah. They usually do."

  I sat in the corner, my gaze flickering between my coffee and the man's skin, trying to work out which shade was darker. This was beyond Werther's Original. This was beyond Real Housewives. This was Daytime Television Grade. And that's when I realized who it was.

  "I haven't had a bloody affair!" Declan Travis, former presenter of Rise And Shine!, looked at Frank and then at me. "Really. I haven't."

  Frank nodded. He usually did at this stage. It was a nod that managed to imply agreement while conveying that truth wasn't necessarily the issue. Nobody came to Frank Digger Associates unless he had something to hide.

  "So what do you want from us, Mr. Travis?"

  "Look, I'm a family man. My reputation is built on my wholesome image. I'm at a very sensitive stage in my career. You're in the business of reputation management. Well, I need you to make this go away. I can't have it in the papers."

  Frank turned slowly toward me and cocked an eyebrow.

  "The papers are the least of your worries," I said.

  "Bella's our resident geek. Sorry--digital manager," Frank explained.

  "Reputation is an online issue these days. Death by a thousand pixels. It's a whole new world."

  Declan Travis blinked at me. He had assumed I was the secretary. "Okay, Mr. Travis," I said, opening my laptop. "I need you to tell me everything you know about this woman. E-mail, Twitter handle, Facebook profile, Snapchat, WhatsApp--the lot." He looked at me as if I were speaking Polish. They usually did.

  According to Travis it had begun several weeks previously. His teenage son, who liked to fiddle about on computers, as he put it, had idly Googled his father's name and found a young woman with a lot to say. Her Twitter name was @Blond_Becca. Her profile picture consisted of two blue eyes and some peroxide bangs. It was impossible to get any accurate picture of her. I scrolled back through her tweets.

  Declan Travis: Not the family man he likes to make out.

  I was Declan Travis's lover for two years. Why won't anyone believe me?

  He likes to make out he's a family man, but he's a dirty, lying sex maniac. He's used me and ruined my life.

  "What do you think?" Frank came in behind me and stared at my screen.

  I frowned. "Hard to say without her real name. I'll engage with her, see if I can work out what's going on. Then I'll work out how to discredit her."

  Frank squinted, brushed potato chip crumbs from my screen. "Do we think she's telling the truth?"

  I stared at @Blond_Becca's Twitter feed. She was one determined woman. "I'm not sure he is."

  I set up a new Twitter account, under the name Alexis Carrington. It's a favorite: nobody young enough to spend time on social media knows who she is. Then I sent: "Why should anyone believe you?"

  The answer came back within minutes. "Why would I lie? He's not been on TV for two years, and he's at least twenty years older than I am!"

  She had a point.

  "So what is this?" I typed. "Kiss and tell? Why not just sell your story straight to the tabloids? You could make PS20K minimum."

  "I don't want money," she replied. "I just want the truth to come out. He seduced me, he promised me we'd be together, and then he just dumped me. He's a fraud. He's a"-- At this point she ran out of characters. But I got the gist.

  She had thirteen thousand followers. I checked the analytics: up from six thousand five days previously.

  "It's not good," I told Frank. "She doesn't want money."

  "They all want money," he said.

  "Not this one. I told her she could make twenty K, and she wasn't interested."

  He swore under his breath. "Then we've got a live one. See if we can make her go away. If not, take it up a level."

  Travis rang that afternoon. Two tabloid newspapers had called to quiz him about the rumors. The newspapers loved Twitter; there was no such thing as a slow news day if you could report Kerry Katona and the redheaded one from Made in Chelsea battling it out in 140 characters. All they needed was a DECLAN TRAVIS IN AFFAIR RIDDLE headline and they had a five-hundred-word page lead and an excuse for a picture of a reality-television star with her face blacked out.

  "They're camped outside my door!" he yelled over the phone. "My wife is going nuts. My kids won't speak to me. My agent says this is killing negotiations with ITV2. You have to do something."

  "We're issuing a statement," I said soothingly. "We'll deny everything and threaten to sue anyone who says otherwise. Secondly, we've set up your own Twitter account. We'll use it to put out positive messages, pictures of you with your family. And we're closing in on 'Becca.' But, Mr. Travis--" I hesitated. It wasn't hard; I had just opened a packet of Bacon Frazzles, and the smell was frankly intoxicating.

  "What?"

  "Are you really telling us everything? If you don't give us the full picture, we can't fight
this for you."

  His voice was a whinny. "I'm telling you the truth. I have no idea who this woman is. Or why the hell she's trying to destroy my life."

  I don't know why I didn't believe him. It's not as if these kiss-and-tell girls didn't exist, all hair extensions and pole dancer's shoes, so desperate for attention that they would claim to have slept with the entire Manchester United team for two weeks of fame, a couple of Enquirer covers, and a run on a reality show. But @Blond_Becca was different. I hadn't come up against anyone who cared about "the truth" before. It made me nervous.

  By that evening she had twenty-eight thousand followers.

  I direct-messaged her. I typed, "I'm a friend of Declan's. I don't believe he slept with you. He's a good guy."

  "That's what he wants everyone to think. I have proof," she replied. I waited.

  "He has a scar on his left buttock the same shape as E.T.'s head." When I put that detail to Declan, the color actually drained from his face. "That could be anyone," he spluttered. "It could be my masseur. It could be the woman who does my spray tan."

  And then I told him about the other identifying feature she had mentioned, and Frank's eyebrows shot somewhere into his hairline, and he said that it was probably a little early in the day for talk like that, thank you, Bella, and took Mr. Travis out for a restorative drink.

  Declan Travis became a nightmare for Frank Digger Associates. Two newspapers ran the story the following day. TV'S MR. CLEAN IN AFFAIR DRAMA, said one headline, and WIFE GRIM-FACED AS SHE LEAVES FAMILY HOME. Another said simply, DIRTY DECLAN? accompanied by a selection of pictures from his finer moments on breakfast television.

  Mostly involving girls in bikinis.

  "We've got forty-eight hours before the broadsheets pick it up," Frank said, scratching his head. They would run features titled "Why do men find it so hard to stay faithful anymore?" as an excuse to repeat the more salacious details published in the tabloids. Travis, meanwhile, was apoplectic. He was chewing Valium like they were Smarties. His agent was on the phone fourteen times a day. @Blond_Becca had fifty-four thousand followers. I had spent two days creating fake Twitter accounts to contradict her. Frank glared at me. "It's a code red," he said.

  "Will he pay?" I said.

  "Oh, he'll pay now," said Frank.

  I rang Buzz. "I need you to trace an account," I whispered. "The usual terms." Three hours later when he called me back, I scribbled the address onto my pad. And then I sat back and stared at what I had just written.

  She was online that afternoon. I sat in the car and tapped the Twitter app on my phone.

  "Hello, Becca," I messaged her.

  "Do you believe me now?" she wrote.

  "Yes. I believe you slept with Declan Travis. Perhaps we could talk about this further?"

  "I told you. I'm not interested in going to the papers. I don't care what they're saying."

  "I wasn't talking about the papers," I typed. "Come out to the car. I'm parked right outside your house."

  Sally Travis was the kind of blonde who would once have been called "perky," had passed through "foxy," and could now be described as "well preserved and probably lusted after quietly by the chairman of the golf club." She opened the door of my car, waited while I brushed the potato chip crumbs off the passenger seat, and sat down.

  "I had to do something," she said. She lit a cigarette with perfectly manicured fingers and blew out a large, perfectly constructed smoke ring. "He's past it. He's been offered nothing in six months but a Pets in Crisis and the holiday cover for Anthea's Antiques."

  "He doesn't know you're behind this?"

  "Of course he doesn't know," she said wearily. "He's thick as two short planks, bless him. If he knew the truth, he would have blurted it out weeks ago. I just thought this way we could raise his profile, make him . . . exciting again. You know, relevant."

  I stared at her. "He's going insane with worry."

  She narrowed her eyes. "I know you think I'm awful. But look--I just got off the phone with his agent. This morning alone we've been offered a slot on Loose Talk and two exclusives with the Sundays. Best of all, morning telly has come knocking again. It's what he loves."

  She raised a small smile. "Oh, I know he's a bit shaken now, but I'll fill the kids in. And once he sees what's come out of it, he'll be absolutely delighted."

  She exhaled and blew another perfect smoke ring out the window.

  "Besides, I can't have him under my feet all day, Bella. He drives me nuts." She turned to look at me. "What?" she said.

  Her high heel crunched on a stray Frazzle.

  "I don't suppose you want a job?" I said.

  I was back in the office by four. The traffic on the M3 was awful, but I hadn't cared. I had sung along to a CD, eaten two packs of emergency Pickled Onion Monster Munch, and pondered the subtle complexities of enduring love. It wasn't a subject that came up much in my line of work.

  Sally Travis and I had talked it out over a further half hour. We had agreed that @Blond_Becca would disappear as abruptly as she had arrived. Declan would remain blissfully ignorant. Nobody would be able to pin anything on him, but the faint hint of marital naughtiness would perversely do him no harm with the housewives. And we would place a four-page spread in the next edition of OK!--DECLAN AND SALLY TRAVIS: "STRONGER THAN EVER AFTER TWENTY YEARS OF MARRIAGE." The wives would read it out of sympathy for Sally. The husbands would leaf through with a flicker of envy that the old dog still had it. I had called a contact at the magazine, and they were totally up for it. That fee alone would cover Frank Digger Associates' expenses.

  I walked straight into Frank's office without knocking and sat down on the leather sofa.

  "You can tell Declan that Becca is no longer a problem. All he has to do is sit back and watch those career offers roll in." I crossed my feet on his glass coffee table with an air of studied nonchalance.

  It took me a few minutes to realize that he didn't look happy.

  "What?"

  "Have you not listened to your flipping radio?"

  "No," I said. "It's busted. Why?"

  Frank put his head in his hands. "I couldn't stop him."

  "Stop him from what?" I said. "Frank, I don't understand. What's going on?"

  "I couldn't stop him from speaking out." Frank shook his head in disgust. "You were right all along, Bella. Declan Travis has just gone on telly and admitted to a three-year affair with his ruddy makeup girl."

  Love in the Afternoon

  They are allowed into the room on the dot of two. No earlier. Hotel policy, the receptionist explains. "It has actually been free since eleven, but management say if we do it for one . . ." She taps her nose knowingly.

  Sara nods. She hasn't minded waiting. It has given her some time to acclimate. She had not expected to be here today, at a four-star Jacobean hotel in deepest Suffolk, with rolling manicured lawns and a dress code. She had expected to be home, sorting through school uniforms and unloading the detritus of lunch boxes and gym bags, perhaps doing a supermarket run. The usual weekend routine.

  But Doug had swept into the kitchen shortly after breakfast, their children hovering behind him, and announced theatrically that she should put down her rubber gloves and put on some makeup.

  "Why?" she'd said absently. She had been trying to listen to the radio.

  "Because we are dropping the kids at my mother's, and then I am whisking you away for a night."

  She had stared at him.

  "For your anniversary," their daughter added.

  "We knew all about it," said Seth, their younger. "Dad did it as a surprise."

  She had peeled off her rubber gloves. "Our anniversary was weeks ago."

  "Well . . . happy belated anniversary." He'd kissed her. Behind him, Seth had made retching noises.

  "But . . . who's going to look after the dog?" she said.

  Irritation flickered across his features. "We'll leave some food out for him. It's only twenty-four hours."

  "But he'll b
e lonely. And he'll mess."

  "Then we'll take him to my mother's."

  His mother hated dogs. Sara made a mental note to order flowers for Janice as an apology. I don't want to go away, she thought suddenly. I want to get the house straight. I want you to fix the bathroom light switch, like you've been promising you would for the past two months. But she forced her mouth into an obliging smile as her daughter pointed to a weekender.

  "I've put your blue dress in," Tamsin said. "And the satiny high heels."

  "Come on, come on!" Doug clapped his hands, like the organizer of an errant tour group. In the car he placed a hand on her knee. "Okay?" he said.

  "Who are you?" she said. "And what have you done with my husband?" The children laughed. At their grandparents', they would watch satellite television and steal glasses of their grandmother's sherry before supper.

  The room overlooks a lake. It is dominated by the widest bed she has ever seen. She thinks absently that the children and the dog could have come, too, and there still would have been room for one more. There is tea and coffee and even home-baked biscuits in a small tin. He mentions this twice, as if reaffirming what a splendid hotel it is. He tips the man who brings up their cases, patting his pockets for change, and then, as the door closes, it is just the two of them, their eyes sliding together in the silence.

  "So," he says.

  "So."

  "What shall we do now?"

  They have been married for fourteen years. Once this question would have remained unasked. Once, maybe thirteen years ago, they sloped off to bed in the afternoon, dragging plates of toast that would end up untouched and congealing on the floor. There had been something deliciously decadent about stealing away in daylight hours when the rest of the world was working.

  Now she is wondering whether her daughter packed her contact lenses and when she will find time to wash the school uniform.

  She regards him, this man, pacing the room as he unpacks his clothes, smooths trousers carefully onto hangers. It is five weeks and two days since they last made love. That occasion had ended prematurely when Seth had been sick and yelled down the corridor that his duvet cover needed changing. She remembers feeling faintly relieved at the time, as if she had been excused from gym class at school.