Paris for One and Other Stories Read online

  They take the key and share a tiny lift up to the third floor. Nell walks behind. The door opens onto an attic room with two beds.

  "Oh," says the American. "No bath. I hate that there's no bath. And it's so small."

  Nell drops her bag. She sits on the end of the bed and texts Pete to tell him what's happened and ask if he can find another hotel.

  I'll wait here for you. Can you let me know whether you'll arrive in time for supper? Am quite hungry.

  It is already eight o'clock.

  He doesn't respond. She wonders if he is in the Channel tunnel: if he is, he is at least an hour and a half away. She sits in silence as the American woman huffs and puffs and opens her suitcase on the bed, taking all the hangers as she hangs up her clothes.

  "Are you here on business?" says Nell when the silence becomes too heavy.

  "Two meetings. One tonight and then a day off. I haven't had a day off this whole month." The American says this as if it is Nell's fault. "And tomorrow I have to be on the other side of Paris. Right. I've got to go out now. I'm going to trust that you won't touch my stuff."

  Nell fixes her with a look. "I'm not going to touch your stuff."

  "I don't mean to be rude. It's just I'm not in the habit of sharing rooms with total strangers. When your boyfriend arrives, I'd be glad if you could hand in your key downstairs."

  Nell tries not to show her anger. "I'll do that," she says, and picks up her notebook, pretending to read as, with a backward glance, the American leaves the room. And it is just at this moment that her phone beeps. Nell snatches it up.

  Sorry, babe. Not going to get there. Have a great trip.

  Chapter Three

  Fabien sits on the rooftop, pulls his wool hat farther down over his eyes, and lights another cigarette. It is the spot where he always used to smoke when there was a chance that Sandrine would come home unexpectedly. She hadn't liked the smell, and if he smoked inside, she used to screw up her nose and say that the studio apartment smelled disgusting.

  It is a narrow ledge, but big enough for a tall man and a mug of coffee and 332 pages of handwritten manuscript. In summer he sometimes naps out here, and he waves daily to the teenage twins across the square. They sit on their own flat roof to listen to music and smoke, away from the gaze of their parents.

  Central Paris is full of such spaces. If you don't have a garden or a tiny balcony, you find your outside space where you can.

  Fabien picks up his pencil and starts crossing out words. He has been editing this manuscript for six months, and the lines of writing are thick with pencil marks. Every time he reads his novel, he sees more faults.

  The characters are flat, their voices fake. Philippe, his friend, says he has to get a move on, get it typed and give it to the agent who is interested. But every time he looks at it, he sees more reasons he cannot show anyone his book.

  It is not ready.

  Sandrine said he didn't want to hand it over because until he did, he could still tell himself he had hope. It was one of the less cruel things she'd said.

  He checks his watch, knowing he has only an hour before he has to start his shift. And then he hears his mobile phone ringing from inside. Damn! He curses himself for forgetting to tuck it into his pocket before coming out onto the roof. He balances his mug on the pile of pages, to stop them from blowing away, and turns to clamber back in through the window.

  Afterward he is not sure quite what happened. His right foot slips on the desk that he uses to climb back in, and his left foot shoots backward as he tries to keep himself from falling. And his foot--his great clumsy foot, as Sandrine would call it--kicks the mug and the pages off the ledge. He turns in time to hear the mug smash on the cobbles below and to watch 332 carefully edited white pages fly out into the darkening skies.

  He watches as his pages catch the wind and, like white doves, float into the streets of Paris.

  Chapter Four

  Nell has spent an hour lying on the bed, and she still cannot work out what to do. Pete is not coming to Paris. He is actually not coming. She has traveled all the way to the capital of France, with new underwear and painted red toenails, and Pete has stood her up.

  For the first ten minutes, she had stared at the message--its cheery "Have a great trip"--and waited for more. But there is no more.

  She lies on the bed, her phone still in her hand, staring at the wall. She realizes that some part of her has always known this might happen. She peers at the phone, flicks the screen on and off, just to make sure she is not dreaming.

  But she knows. She probably knew it last night, when he didn't respond to her calls. She might even have known it last week, when all her ideas for what they might do in Paris were met with "Yeah, whatever" or "I don't know."

  It was not just that Pete was an unreliable boyfriend--in fact, he quite frequently disappeared without telling her where he was going. If she was honest with herself, he hadn't actually invited her to Paris at all. They had been talking about places they'd been, and she had admitted that she'd never been to Paris, and he'd said, vaguely, "Really? Oh, Paris is awesome. You'd love it."

  Two days later she had emerged from her monthly risk-assessment presentation to potential graduates ("Risk assessment plays a vital role in helping organizations understand and manage risk, in order to avoid problems and capitalize on opportunities! Enjoy your tour around the factory floor--and be careful near that machinery!") and found the sandwich cart outside in the hallway. It had arrived at least ten minutes early. She had gazed at the selection, mentally totting up the pros and cons, and then eventually settled on a salmon and cream cheese, even though it was a Tuesday, and she never bought salmon and cream cheese on a Tuesday.

  "What the heck. We got a bonus this week, right? Let's push the boat out," she had said cheerily to Carla, who pushed the trolley. And then she'd walked to the office kitchen, stopping outside to get some water from the dispenser, and as she paused to fill her cup, she'd found herself listening in on a conversation between two of her co-workers on the other side of the wall.

  "I'm going to spend mine on a trip to Barcelona. I've been promising to take my wife since we got married." It sounded like Jim from Logistics.

  "Shari's buying one of them fancy handbags. That girl will blow her bonus in two days."

  "Lesley's putting hers toward a car. Nell?"

  "Nell ain't going to Barcelona."

  They had both laughed. Nell, her plastic cup half raised to her lips, had frozen.

  "Nell will put it in a savings account. Maybe after doing a spreadsheet. It takes that girl half an hour to choose between types of sandwich."

  "'Should I go for the ham on rye? But it's Tuesday, and I usually have ham on rye on Friday. Maybe I'll go for the cream cheese. I usually have cream cheese on a Monday. But heck, let's push the boat out!'" They had laughed again at the crude imitation of her voice. Nell looked down at her sandwich.

  "Man, that girl has never had a wild moment in her life."

  She ate only half her sandwich, even though she loved salmon and cream cheese. It had tasted oddly gummy in her mouth.

  That night she went to her mother's. After years of prevarication, Lilian had finally agreed that the house was too big for one person and had agreed to move, but prying her from the place where she'd lived for twenty-five years was a little like prying a snail from its shell. Twice a week Nell would arrive to go through the boxes of memorabilia or clothes or paperwork piled high on shelves around the old house and try to persuade her mother to let at least some of them go. Mostly she would spend an hour convincing her mother that she didn't need a straw donkey from a Majorcan holiday in 1983, then emerge from the bathroom at the end of the night to find that her mother had snuck it back into her spare room. It was going to be a lengthy process. Tonight it was postcards and baby clothes. Lost in memories, Lilian held up each one, wondering aloud whether they "might find another use someday."

  "Oh, you did look lovely in this little dress. Even with
your knees. That reminds me--you know Donna Jackson from the nail bar? Her daughter Cheryl went on one of those Internet dating things. Well, she went out with this man, and when she went back to his apartment, his shelves were full of books about serial killers."

  "And was he?" said Nell, trying to shove some moth-eaten wool baby cardigans into a bag while her mother was distracted.

  "Was he what?"

  "A serial killer."

  "Well, how would I know?"

  "Mum, did Cheryl come home again?"

  Lilian folded the dress and put it to one side on her "keep" pile.

  "Oh, sure. She told Donna he wanted her to wear a mask or a furry tail or something, so she blew him."

  "She blew him off, Mum. Off."

  "Oh, what's the difference? Anyway, I'm glad you're a sensible girl and don't take risks. Oh, did I tell you, Mrs. Hogan asked would you feed her cat when she goes away?"

  "Okay."

  "Because I'll have moved by then. And she said she needs someone completely reliable."

  Nell had stared at the little pair of shorts in her hands for a long time before shoving them into the bin bag with unnecessary savagery.

  The next morning she was walking across the concourse to work when she'd paused outside the travel agent's. A sign in the window said ONE DAY ONLY, SPECIAL DEAL--TWO FOR ONE--THREE NIGHTS IN PARIS--CITY OF LIGHT. Almost before she knew what she was doing, she had walked in and bought two tickets. She had presented Pete with them, glowing half with embarrassment, half with pleasure, the next night when they'd gone back to his place.

  "You did what?" He'd been drunk, she remembered now, and had blinked slowly, as if in disbelief. "You bought me a ticket to Paris?"

  "Us," she'd said as he fumbled with the buttons of her dress. "A long weekend in Paris. I thought it would be . . . fun. We should, you know, go crazy!"

  That girl has never had a wild moment in her life.

  "I checked out hotels, and I've found one just behind rue de Rivoli. It's three-star, but it has a ninety-four-percent satisfaction rating, and it's a low-crime area--I mean, the only thing they say to worry about is bag snatchers, so I'll get one of those bu--"

  "You bought me a ticket to Paris!" He'd shaken his head, his hair flopping over one eye. And then he said, "Sure, babe. Why not? Nice one." She couldn't remember what else he'd said, as at that point they'd collapsed onto his bed.

  Now she would have to go back to England and tell Magda, Trish, and Sue that they were right. That Pete was exactly who they said he was. That she'd been a fool and wasted her money. She had blown off the Girls' Trip to Brighton for nothing.

  She screws her eyes shut until she is sure that she will not cry, then pushes herself upright. She looks at her suitcase. She wonders where to find a taxi and whether her ticket can be changed. What if she gets to the station and they won't let her on the train? She wonders whether to ask the receptionist downstairs if she will ring Eurostar for her, but she is afraid of the woman's icy gaze. She has no idea what to do. Paris suddenly feels huge and unknown and unfriendly and a million miles from home.

  Her phone beeps again. She snatches it up, her heart suddenly racing. He is coming after all! It will be all right! But it's Magda.

  Having fun, you filthy mare?

  She blinks at it and suddenly feels horribly homesick. She wishes she were there, in Magda's hotel room, a plastic cup of cheap fizz on the bathroom sink as they fight for mirror space to put on their makeup. England is an hour behind. They will still be getting ready, their suitcases spilling new outfits onto the carpet, the music turned up loud enough to cause complaints.

  She thinks, briefly, that she has never felt so lonely in her life.

  All great, thanks. Have fun!

  She types slowly and presses SEND, waiting for the whooshing sound that tells her it has flown across the English Channel. And then she turns off her phone so that she won't have to lie anymore.

  Nell examines the Eurostar timetable, pulls her notebook from her bag, and writes a list, working out her options. It is a quarter to nine. Even if she makes it to the station, she is unlikely to get a train that will take her back to England early enough for her to get home. She will have to stay here tonight.

  In the harsh light of the bathroom mirror, she looks tired and fed up, her mascara blurred with tears. She looks exactly like the kind of girl who has just traveled all the way to Paris to be stood up by her unreliable boyfriend. She rests her hands on the sink, takes a long, shaky breath, and tries to think clearly.

  She will find something to eat, get some sleep, and then she will feel better. Tomorrow she will catch the early train home. It is not what she'd hoped, but it is a plan, and Nell always feels better with a plan.

  She shuts the door, locks it, and goes downstairs. She tries to look carefree and confident, like a woman who often finds herself alone in strange cities.

  "Um. Do you have a room-service menu? I couldn't find one in my room," she asks the receptionist.

  "Room service? Mademoiselle, you are in the gastronomic capital of the world. We do not do room service here."

  "Okay, well, then do you know anywhere nice I could get a bite to eat?"

  The woman looks at her. "You want a restaurant?"

  "Or cafe. Anything. Somewhere I could walk to. Oh, and . . . um . . . if the other lady comes back, will you tell her I'll be staying this evening?"

  The Frenchwoman raises an eyebrow a fraction, and Nell imagines her thinking, So your boyfriend never turned up, mousy English girl? That's no surprise. "There is Cafe des Bastides," she says, handing over a small tourist map. "You turn right outside, and it's two streets down on the left. It's very nice. Fine to"--she pauses--"eat alone."

  "Thank you."

  "I will call Michel and make sure he has a table for you. Name?"

  "Nell."

  "Nell." The woman pronounces it as if it is an affliction.

  Her cheeks flaming, Nell grabs the map, slides it into her handbag, and walks briskly from the hotel lobby.

  The cafe is busy, the tiny round tables outside bulging with couples or groups sitting shoulder to shoulder in thick coats, smoking, drinking, chatting as they look out over the busy street. Nell hesitates and glances up, checking the name on the billboard, and wonders briefly if she can really face sitting in here alone. Perhaps she could just nip into a supermarket and buy a sandwich. Yes, that would probably be the safer option. A huge man with a beard stands in the doorway, and his gaze lands on her. "The Englishwoman? Yes?" his voice booms out over the tables.

  Nell flinches. "You are NELL? Table for one?" A handful of heads swivel to look at her. Nell ponders whether it is possible to die spontaneously of embarrassment.

  "Um. Yes," she mutters into her chest. He gestures her inside, finds her a small table and chair in a corner by the window, and she slides in. There is a steamy fug on the inside of the windows, and around her the inside tables hum with well-dressed women in their fifties exclaiming in words she cannot understand, young couples gazing at each other over glasses of wine. She feels self-conscious, as if she is wearing a sign that says PITY ME. I HAVE NOBODY TO EAT WITH. She gazes up at the blackboard, repeating the unfamiliar words in her head several times before she has to speak them aloud.

  "Bonsoir." The waiter, who has a shaven head and wears a long white apron, puts a jug of water in front of her. "Qu'est-ce--"

  "Je voudrais le steak frites, s'il vous plait," she says in a rush. The meal--steak and chips--is expensive, but it is the only thing she thinks she can pronounce.

  The waiter gives a small nod and glances behind him, as if distracted. "The steak? And to drink, mam'selle?" he says in perfect English. "Some wine?"

  She was going to have Coke. But she whispers, "Yes, please."

  "Bon," he says. In minutes he is back with a basket of bread and a jug of wine. He puts them down as if it is absolutely normal for a woman to be sitting there on a Friday evening by herself, and then he is gone.

&nbs
p; Nell doesn't think she has ever seen a woman sitting alone in a restaurant, apart from that time when she went on a sales trip to Corby and that woman sat alone with her book by the ladies' and ate two desserts instead of a main course. Where Nell lives, girls eat out in groups, mostly curry at the end of a long night's drinking. Older women might go alone to bingo or to a family event. But women don't just go out and eat by themselves.

  But as she looks around her now and chews a piece of crusty French bread, she sees that she is not the only single diner. There is a woman on the other side of the window, a jug of red wine on her table, smoking a cigarette as she watches the people of Paris bustle by. There is a man in the corner reading his paper, spooning forkfuls of something into his mouth. Another woman, long hair, a gap in her teeth, is chatting to a waiter, her collar high around her neck. Nobody is paying them any attention. Nell relaxes a little, unwinding her scarf.

  The wine is good. She takes a sip and feels the tension of the day start to ooze away. She has another sip. The steak arrives, seared brown and steaming, but when she cuts into it, it is bloody inside. She wonders whether to send it back, but she doesn't want to make a fuss, especially not when it might involve speaking in French.

  Besides, it tastes good. The chips are crisp and golden and hot, and the green salad is delicious. She eats it all, surprising herself with her appetite. The waiter, when he returns, smiles at her evident pleasure, as if noticing her for the first time. "Is good, uh?"

  "Delicious," she says. "Thank--er, merci." He nods and refills her glass. She feels a brief, unlikely moment of pleasure. But as she reaches for it, she somehow misjudges and knocks half a glass of red wine onto the waiter's apron and shoes. She peers over the table, at the deep red stains.

  "I'm so sorry!" Her hands fly to her mouth.

  He sighs wearily as he mops at himself with a cloth. "Really. It's of no matter."

  "I'm sorry. Oh, I--"