‘Mum!’ Ellie glared at Ari. ‘I’m happy to see you both. Don’t ruin it by arguing.’
Ari and Chester shared a sideways look that wasn’t the fondly exasperated sideways look of old friends that Ellie had seen countless times before. This was an entirely new look that was angry yet resigned. As if they were both fed up with the predictability of their relationship.
‘Just because Mummy and Daddy fight, princess, doesn’t mean we love you any less,’ Chester said.
‘You’re not Ellie’s father, Chester,’ Ari said so coldly that Ellie gasped. Then she reached round Ellie to remove his hand from her daughter’s grasp. ‘Never have been, never will.’
‘More’s the pity,’ Chester said and the way he sounded went beyond anger or resignation.
Ellie had heard enough. She jumped down from the wall. ‘I don’t want to hear this,’ she told them, hands on her hips. They’d sort it out, they always did, but she didn’t want to be around them until they were friends again. ‘I’m going to say goodbye now.’
‘Sweetie, don’t be like that,’ Ari pouted. ‘Being cross doesn’t suit you.’
‘That we can agree on,’ Chester conceded. ‘Turn the frown upside down.’
Chester’s eyebrows shot up and Ari stared at her curiously as Ellie tried to find the smile that always came so easily to her. It felt more like a terrifying grimace, but how was she meant to look carefree when she had the weight of many cares pressing down on her?
‘I really do have to go,’ she said heavily.
‘I’ll give you a lift,’ Chester said, as he fished his van keys out of his pocket, because no matter what Ari said, Chester was the closest thing she’d ever had to a dad, and dads didn’t let their daughters get on a hot, stinky, crowded tube with the amount of luggage that Ellie had. ‘Let me take the suitcase and the holdalls.’
Ari nudged her. ‘Am I allowed a hug and kiss before you disappear?’
Ellie was hugging and kissing her before the question had even been asked. And then they were done. Or Ellie thought they were, but Ari wouldn’t disengage, which was odd because Ari was usually quite a perfunctory hugger. ‘Come on, Mum, you have to cut the cord some time. I have a train to catch.’
Ari cupped Ellie’s face in her hands and stared at her intently as if she’d expected the last week to have fundamentally changed the way her daughter looked. ‘I’ve missed you so much, kiddo. It’s been six whole days.’
‘I missed you too, Mum.’ Ellie squeezed Ari extra tight, then finally managed to free herself. ‘Are you all right? I know this must be hard for you too, but it’s not like you to be such a cling-on. You’re not about to tell me that you’re ill, are you?’ Her eyes widened. ‘Oh my God! Are you ill?’
‘No! Apart from dying of heatstroke.’ Ari put her hands on Ellie’s shoulders and gave her a little push. ‘Go on, then. Bugger off to Paris. See if I care. Just bring me back some nice biscuits in one of those cool art-deco tins. And I’m still missing a couple of Françoise Hardy albums. I’ll email you a list.’
Ellie clicked her heels and saluted. ‘Jawohl.’
‘Shouldn’t that be d’accord?’ Ari smiled. ‘Oh! So you never told me who was making you so unhappy or who you’ve been staying with all week. I hope they’re not one and the same because that sounds like a recipe for heartache.’ Ari had a good line in penetrating stares and it was all Ellie could do not to squirm. ‘Anything you want to tell me, darling daughter of mine?’
Ellie was saved by Chester leaning on the horn and sticking his head out of the van window to shout, ‘Get a bloody move on, Ellie! If you miss the train, I’m not driving you all the way to Paris.’
There was time only to give a disgruntled Ari one last hug, then Chester actually revved up the van as if he was planning to drive off and she had no choice but to run after him.
Chapter Twenty-six
It always amazed Ellie that she could get on a train in London and arrive in Paris. Not Bath or Leeds but a city in another country where they spoke a different language. As she looked out of the window of the taxi that was taking her to Le Marais, the old Jewish quarter now beloved of hipsters, fashionistas and artists with trust funds, the wide avenues, elegant Hausmann buildings, even the street signs painted on deep blue plaques edged in green, looked exotic and exciting.
Originally, Ellie hadn’t been excited about coming to Paris. As the train had plunged into the Channel Tunnel and hurtled out of it into countryside that didn’t look like the rolling green fields of England any more, she had felt her spirits sink lower and lower. It was all very well running away to Paris to escape her many problems but they’d still be waiting for her when she got back.
It certainly hadn’t helped that she’d been compelled to buy every single celebrity magazine that the newsagents at St Pancras had to offer and had spent an hour poring over pap pictures of herself and reading a detailed breakdown of her beauty regimen. (Her hairdresser had revealed that Ellie ‘would rather risk cancer than go without a Brazilian straightening treatment on her luscious long locks’, which now meant she’d have to find a new hairdresser.) Lara and Rose had welcomed the readers of OK! into their ‘beautiful Notting Hill penthouse’, and even though they were still devastated about having a newly minted half-sister, they were also super-excited about launching their own rock-chick-inspired footwear range with an online retailer.
When she hadn’t been reading things that made her stomach roil, Ellie kept checking her phone for an email or a text from David. Each time she’d felt the bitter pang of disappointment because of course he hadn’t been in contact; she’d made it perfectly clear in her letter that what they had was over before it even left the starting blocks.
But now Ellie was clinging to the edge of the seat as her morose taxi driver took a corner much too fast and nearly knocked a girl off her bicyclette, and what did it matter if she was running away? She was in Paris. She was in a city full of patisseries and the delicious cheese that was so smelly you were forbidden to carry it on public transport, and carafes of really deep, dark red wine that gave you filthy hangovers, and the restaurant on Place d’Italie that did a Thai pot au feu, and the sparkling lights that lit up the banks of the Seine at night, and …
By the time Ellie was hauling her luggage up the stairs of the narrow apartment building on Place du Marché Sainte-Catherine, she wasn’t even cursing the fact that there was no lift, because who cared? She was in Paris!
As she reached the third-floor landing, the door opposite the stairwell burst open, and two shrieking voices greeted her. ‘Ellie Cohen!! About bloody time!’
‘My taxi driver took the scenic route.’ With the last bit of strength left in her arms Ellie hauled her suitcase up the final stair and set it down. ‘I swear to God, that thing just gets heavier and heavier.’
Sue grinned at her. ‘Still haven’t learned to travel light then?’
‘Travelling light is for people who don’t know how to accessorise,’ Esme said. She grabbed the holdall, which was still attached to Ellie’s shoulder, and yanked them both through the apartment door. ‘You’ve brought the sunshine from London. Oh, Ellie! It’s so good to see you!’
Ellie always felt positively Amazonian next to Esme and Sue, who were tiny, tiny women. Esme was a streak of lightning with a mop of messy platinum blonde curls and fragile birdlike limbs. She worked for one of the couture houses as something called an artist without a portfolio, and was impulsive, seventeen different kinds of funny and couldn’t be trusted with money, iPhones or secrets.
During the year the three of them, and Tess, had lived together in London, Esme had popped out for milk and phoned twelve hours later to let them know that ‘I seem to be in New York,’ been arrested twice, slept with an A-list movie star and had to be rescued by the fire brigade when she’d climbed on the roof to rescue next door’s cat and had got stuck between two chimneys. It had been the most exhausting year of Ellie’s life, but in weekend doses, Esme was delightful.
/> Sue, who worked at Sotheby’s Paris office, would have got more credit for having a wild side a mile long if she hadn’t been best friends with Esme. The difference was that Sue always managed to extricate herself from whatever scrapes she’d got into. Like the time she’d been accused of card-counting at a rinky-dink Park Lane casino but had protested her innocence very calmly and convincingly by claiming that she’d failed her Maths GCSE. She’d also dated a bona fide prince, though Sue insisted that ‘he wasn’t a prince, just a minor Belgian royal’, and was dark-haired, dark-eyed, terribly amused all the time and had a casual, easy elegance that Ellie knew she’d never be able to emulate no matter how many white dresses she bought.
Sue was looking terribly amused now, and chic in a strappy little black dress, as Ellie told them about her traumatic taxi ride. Esme was wearing a beautiful, nude-coloured flapper frock encrusted with thousands of tiny sparkling beads, and a pair of cheap flipflops. Ellie felt decidedly de trop in her cuffed shorts and a Breton top which was crumpled from the journey and besides, you couldn’t really do Breton tops in France. It was culturally insensitive.
‘So, shall I jump in the shower, then slip into something—’
‘No time for that,’ Esme cried. ‘We’re meeting friends for pre-dinner drinks in ten minutes in Bastille. You’ll love them. They’ll love you. It’ll be much mutual loving.’
Ellie tugged at her top, which was clinging to her because, despite the rain she’d been promised, Paris was as hot and humid as London. ‘I need to change.’
‘You don’t. You look adorable,’ Sue said, picking up Ellie’s Mulberry bag and draping it back over Ellie’s shoulder. ‘A Breton top in Paris. It’s so witty.’
‘Beyond witty,’ Esme echoed. ‘Tell us all your news over dinner. Never mind being the scourge of the tabloids, girls only run away to Paris to escape men.’
‘You invited me!’ Ellie reminded her as she was pushed out of the door.
‘Yes, but you could have said no. It can’t be the man in the papers. Nobody who wears tight white vests and has a tribal armband tattoo is capable of breaking a girl’s heart,’ Sue said, as she locked the apartment because Esme wasn’t trusted with her own set of keys. ‘Who was he?’
‘No one,’ Ellie insisted. ‘My heart is very resilient. It doesn’t break that often.’
‘One aperitif and two glasses of red wine and you’ll be telling us everything,’ Sue said and Esme agreed, but Ellie begged to differ. Maintaining a dignified silence had become a way of life by now.
Sixteen hours later, Ellie longed for swift and sudden death because death would be preferable to having to live when the inside of her head had been colonised by a troupe of tiny people jumping up and down in hob-nailed boots while beating sticks against her temporal lobes. They also had a bunch of mates who were hanging out in her stomach like it was their own private rave tent.
‘Oh God,’ she muttered out loud. ‘I must have had a dodgy moule last night.’
‘You didn’t have any moules,’ Sue said gently, as she removed the soggy ice pack on Ellie’s forehead and replaced it with a freshly frozen one.
‘Stop talking about moules,’ Ellie groaned. It wasn’t a rogue mussel that was responsible for her current malaise. It was a quiet Saturday night with Sue and Esme and their lunatic friends, which had started with Kir Royales in a little bar in Bastille, then a three-course meal at Swann et Vincent with white wine and dessert wine. By then, Ellie had been feeling a little wobbly – she’d had to request a bread basket instead of pudding to mop up some of the alcohol – but she’d still jumped in a taxi to Montmartre to sit outside a café and have coffee and brandy before climbing twisty uphill streets, only to descend down some rickety stairs to a cellar where she’d drunk ice-cold beer and danced to really bad dubstep with a specialist in Egyptian Antiquities from Venezuela, and then … Ellie couldn’t remember getting back to Le Marais. All she remembered was waking up an hour ago on Esme and Sue’s sofa with a bucket on her chest. It was an empty bucket but Ellie wasn’t sure how much longer it would remain that way.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to come to St Tropez?’ Esme asked again. Ellie had never noticed before how shrill her voice was. ‘There’s room on the private plane we’re getting from Orly. Honestly, Ellie, once you’ve flown on a private plane, it ruins you for non-private planes. You have to experience it once in your life.’
‘Can’t go. Stay here,’ Ellie whispered. ‘Stay here and die.’
‘Please don’t,’ Sue said, and after an hour of clattering about and banging things and talking at the very top of their vocal registers, they were off on their holidays, leaving Ellie a catatonic lump on their art-deco Jules Leleu sofa. Eventually she managed to stagger to the Monoprix to buy Evian, Diet Coke and ready-salted crisps, which were all she could choke down when her hangover was this evil.
Once she was sufficiently rehydrated, Ellie shifted location to Sue’s bed, where she slept until eight the next morning, woken only by the cafés in the square below opening their awnings and putting out tables and chairs, because it was a complete myth that Paris ground to a halt during August.
Paris in August was perfect. Esme’s favourite cheese shop was fermé but the café where she liked to have her morning tartines à la confiture d’abricot (Parisian cafés hadn’t really embraced muesli) and black coffee was open, as were the Jewish bakeries on Rue Saint-Antoine. She bought structured white dresses and drapey blouson tops at Sandro, Zadig et Voltaire and Maje, and canvas tennis shoes at Bensimon, but Ellie wasn’t in Paris simply to shop. Or lounge on the sand at one of the Paris Plages, the artificial beaches set up each summer along the Seine. No, shopping and sunbathing were morning activities, then after a leisurely lunch, Ellie would start work.
Work involved trying to track down pieces by an obscure Surrealist painter by pretending she was interested in pieces by another obscure Surrealist, because Vaughn didn’t want anyone else on the trail. He also wanted Ellie to sniff out any new trends and artists and get a general sense of what was happening on the street. Vaughn was always obsessed with what was happening on the street.
So, armed with her company credit card, Ellie spent her evenings meeting up with artists, sculptors, painters, filmmakers and people who did stuff with lights and fibre optics and holograms, who all thought that art dealers and the employees of art dealers were in league with the devil unless these employees had company credit cards and were happy to get their round in.
Ellie could allow herself to breathe out because, finally, there was real distance between her and her scandal. She could even make Billy Kay fade back into the background, because no one in Paris was obsessed with celebrities in the same way that people in Britain were unless it was Carla Bruni or a member of the House of Grimaldi. Her Parisian acquaintances simply shrugged when the subject arose and talked about how bourgeois celebrity culture was. They’d only have been impressed if Ellie’s long-lost father turned out to be Serge Gainsbourg, or Johnny Hallyday, at a pinch.
There was never any shortage of interesting and interested men in Paris either. So unlike British men, who were useless at picking up signals or wouldn’t admit they fancied you until after they’d actually kissed you. Men who claimed to have wanted you since the very first moment that they saw you, but still suspected you of being an avaricious schemer. Also men who already had girlfriends. Ellie had had quite enough of men like that.
But she wasn’t interested in any of the men who showed signs of being interested in her, despite the fact that she was sure she was wearing her heartbreak on her sleeve. Maybe heartbreak was exaggerating her fragile emotional state but Ellie’s heart had definitely been damaged. Before, she’d always suffered at the end of a relationship from the knowledge that she hadn’t been good enough, that it had all gone wrong again.
Now, she was grieving a relationship that had never happened, which was pathetic. In mourning simply for a few kisses and a night spent holding someone who’d been asle
ep. People always said that it was better to regret something you had done, rather than something you hadn’t done, but imagining what she and David could have had was torture, and Ellie was sure that she bore its scars. So when men offered to buy her a drink, or asked her to dance or lingered too long as they kissed her on each cheek at the end of an evening, Ellie shied away.
That was why, on Friday morning, she decided not to meet up with Stéphane, who owned a small gallery in Belleville and had offered to show her around. Stéphane had smouldering dark eyes, a sultry pouty mouth and a lock of black hair that fell across his forehead and made a girl yearn to push it back and let her hand rest against his skin. Oh, no, Ellie wasn’t going there, but making her own way with the aid of a guide book and her own lousy sense of direction.
Belleville, where Edith Piaf was born, in the north-west of the city, was a shabby, eclectic neighbourhood with a large Asian community and a bustling Chinatown, and was as close as Ellie would ever get to the Montmartre of the 1920s, when Montmartre had been home to a colony of artists drinking absinthe and pastis in dark cafés and having torrid affairs with each other.
The cheap rent and abandoned warehouses and factories of Belleville had brought the artists in the 1980s and they were still there, although they weren’t drinking absinthe in dark cafés but eating pho in the amazing Vietnamese restaurant where Ellie had lunch, elbow to elbow with elegant French hipsters and little old ladies with a firm grip on their bulging baskets from a successful morning’s marketing.
After lunch, Ellie went exploring. It was almost five when she discovered a little alley between two buildings and, curious, slipped down it to find herself in a huge walled garden bordered by the backs of buildings, most of them derelict, apart from a big industrial space with its doors wide open in the summer heat. What she saw in that space made her inch forward, eyes wide, mouth open.