"There may have been some lying in bed in my boxers."
Nell shrugs. "Well. That's basically Rule One in the Breakup Rulebook: Lie around in your boxers feeling sorry for yourself."
"And Rule Two?" says Fabien, grinning.
"Oh, humiliate yourself a little, then Rule Three, maybe have a night with someone completely unsuitable, then Four, realize you're enjoying life again, and then Five, just as you've decided you don't need to be in a relationship after all, boom! There you go. Miss Perfect will turn up."
Fabien leans forward on the tiller. "Interesting. And I really have to go through all these stages?"
"I think so," says Nell. "Well, maybe you could skip one or two."
"Well, I have already humiliated myself." He grins, unwilling to say more.
"Come on," says Nell. "You can tell me. I live in another country. We are never going to see each other again."
Fabien screws up his face. "Okay . . . well, for weeks after Sandrine left, I would hang around her office, my face like this--"
He pulls what Nell can only describe as a Gallic Sadface.
"--thinking that if she saw me, she would fall in love with me again."
Nell is trying not to laugh. "Yup. That face'll do it for a girl every time. I'm sorry. I'm really not laughing."
"You're right to laugh," says Fabien. "I suspect that it was a kind of madness."
"A romantic madness. If you're French, you can get away with that kind of thing, I bet." She thinks. "Well, as long as you didn't also put a tracking device on her car or something."
"So, Nell, now I ask you something."
Nell waits. He has moved his hand away, and she feels the absence of it.
"Not relationships," she says. "There's a reason I'm an expert on Breakups 101."
"Okay, then . . . tell me . . . the best thing that has ever happened to you."
"The best? Oh, I'm kind of hoping it hasn't happened yet."
"Then tell me the worst thing."
And there it is. Nell feels the sudden chill in the air.
"Oh, you don't want to know that."
"You don't want to say?"
She can feel him looking at her, but she keeps her eyes straight ahead, her hand clasping the tiller.
"It's kind of . . . oh, I don't know. Okay. The day Dad died. Hit-and-run. I was twelve."
She is so good at saying it now, as if it happened to someone else entirely. Her voice even, light, as if it were the most insubstantial of facts. As if it hadn't smashed their existence into a million pieces, a falling meteor, radioactive for years afterward, scorching the earth. She rarely tells anyone these days. There is no point--it skews the direction of travel, changes the way people react to her. She realizes, dimly, that she has never told Pete.
"He was out running--he used to run three times a week, and on the Friday he would go to the cafe on the corner for a big breakfast afterward, which my Mum always said kind of missed the point. Anyway, he crossed the road, and a man in a pickup truck shot the lights and broke his spine in three places. It was his forty-second birthday. Me and Mum were waiting for him at the cafe as a surprise. I can still remember it. Sitting in that booth, so hungry, trying not to look at the menu, not understanding why he wasn't there yet."
Please don't say something stupid, she wills him silently. Please don't do the head tilt or tell me something inspirational that happened to a neighbor of yours.
But there is silence, and then Fabien's voice falls silently into the water. "That's bad. I'm sorry."
"My mum was kind of messed up by it. She doesn't go out much anymore. I'm trying to get her to move, because that house is way too big for her, but she's sort of stuck."
"But you went the other way."
Nell turns to face him. "I'm sorry?"
"You decided to . . . what is the saying . . . take life by the horns?"
She swallows. "Oh. Yeah. Fabien, I should really--"
But his attention is drawn to something up ahead. "Hold on. We need to slow down."
Before she can speak again, he has slowed the boat and points. Nell is briefly diverted, following the direction of his arm.
"What's that?"
"The Pont des Arts. You can see the gold? That's the love locks. You remember?"
Nell stares up at the tiny padlocks, bunched so tightly that the sides of the bridge have become bulbous and glittering. All that love. All those dreams. She wonders briefly how many of those couples are still together. How many are happy, or broken, or dead. She can feel Fabien watching her. Her heart feels suddenly heavy.
"I had a plan to add one. It was going to be one of my things. While we--I was here."
She feels the weight of it in her bag suddenly. She reaches in to find it. She then sets it on the bench beside her and stares at it for a moment. "But you know what? It's a stupid idea. I read a thing on the train over about how so many people do it that the whole damn bridge is collapsing. Which kind of misses the point, right? I mean, it's an idiotic thing to do." Her voice lifts angrily, surprising herself. "You just destroy the thing you love. By weighing it down. Right? People who do it are just stupid."
Fabien stares up as they float gently underneath. Then he points again.
"I think mine is around . . . there." Fabien shrugs. "You're right. It's just a stupid piece of metal. It means nothing." He glances down at his watch. "Alors . . . it's almost six o'clock. We should head back."
Half an hour later, they are outside the hotel. They stand there in the chill dawn, both somehow a little awkward in the light.
Nell shrugs her way out of his jacket, missing the warmth of it already. "The whole padlock thing," she says, handing it over. "It's a long story. But I never meant that you were--"
Fabien cuts her off. "De rien. My girlfriend used to tell me my head was full of dreams. She was right."
"Your girlfriend?"
"Ex-girlfriend."
Nell can't help but smile. "Well, my head is totally full of dreams right now. I feel like . . . I feel like I just fell into someone else's life. Thank you, Fabien. I had the best night. And morning."
"It was my pleasure, Nell."
He has taken a step closer. They are facing each other, inches apart. Then the porter appears, hooking open the doors noisily and dragging a door stand across the pavement.
"Bonjour, mademoiselle!"
Nell's phone vibrates. She looks down.
Call me.
It is from Magda.
"Everything okay?" says Fabien.
Nell shoves her phone into her back pocket. "It's . . . uh, fine."
The spell is broken. Nell glances behind her. Some distant part of her brain is wondering why Magda is calling her at this hour.
"You had better get some sleep," says Fabien gently. There is stubble graying his chin, but he looks cheerful. She wonders if she looks like a sad horse and rubs self-consciously at her nose.
"Nell?"
"Yes?"
"Would you like . . . I mean . . . for your Parisian experience, would you like to come to dinner tonight?"
Nell smiles. "I would like that very much."
"Then I will pick you up at seven."
Nell watches as he climbs aboard his moped. And she heads in through the open door of the hotel, still smiling.
Pete has now been wedged between Trish and Sue in Magda's backseat for a full forty-five minutes. He is almost completely sober, having been frog-marched from the pub to Magda's car, a twenty-minute walk up the seafront, silenced by the collective wrath of three too-sober women.
"I have never heard anything like it. And believe me, I have had a lot of crappy boyfriends. I am basically the queen of crappy boyfriends." Magda whacks her steering wheel for emphasis, unwittingly veering into the middle lane.
"You know Nell gets anxious about stuff. She doesn't even get the late train unless she's checked to see exactly where it's stopping."
Magda turns in her seat to look behind her. "You left her to go a
ll the way to Paris by herself? What were you even thinking!"
"I didn't ask to go to Paris," Pete says.
"Then you just say no!" says Sue on his left. "You just say, 'No, Nell, I do not want to go to Paris with you.' It's really simple."
Pete peers to the side. "Where are you guys taking me?"
"Shut up, Pete," says Trish. "You don't get the right to talk."
"I'm not a bad guy." His voice emerges as a whine.
"Ugh," says Trish. "The old 'I'm not a bad guy' talk. I hate the 'I'm not a bad guy' talk. It makes me really irritable. How many times have you heard the 'I'm not a bad guy' talk, Sue?"
"About a billion times," says Sue, her arms folded. "Usually after they've slept with someone I know. Or nicked my German sausage."
"I've never nicked anyone's German sausage," mutters Pete.
"Your girlfriend bought you tickets to go to Paris. You failed to go. You went drinking in Brighton with the lads instead. What exactly would you have to do in your book to be a bad guy, Pete?"
"Like, kill a kitten or something?" Pete says hopefully.
Magda purses her lips and swerves into the slow lane. "Kitten killing is way down the list on this one, Pete."
"Below German sausage even," says Sue.
Pete sees the sign to Gatwick. "So . . . uh . . . where are we actually going?"
In the mirror Magda and Sue exchange a look.
Nell wakes up at a quarter past one. Actual lunchtime. She blinks blearily and stretches luxuriously when she realizes where she is. The little hotel room on the top floor feels curiously homey now, her new Parisian purchases hung neatly in the wardrobe, her makeup scattered all over the shelf from the previous night. She climbs slowly out of bed, hearing the unfamiliar street sounds of the city below, and despite her lack of sleep feels suddenly elated, as if something magical has happened. A quarter past one, she thinks, and shrugs in what she fancies is Gallic fashion. She has a few hours to herself to enjoy Paris. And then she will meet Fabien for her last night. She sings when she climbs into the shower and laughs when the water runs briefly cold.
Nell walks what feels like the length of Paris. She walks through the numbered arrondissements, meandering through a food market, gazing at the glossy produce, both familiar and not at the same time, accepting a plum at a stallholder's urging and then buying a small bag in lieu of breakfast and lunch. She sits on a bench by the Seine, watching the tourist boats go by, and eats three of the plums, thinking of how it felt to hold the tiller, to gaze onto the moonlit waters. She tucks the bag under her arm as if she does this all the time and takes the Metro to a brocante recommended in one of her guidebooks, allowing herself an hour to float among the stalls, picking up little objects that someone once loved, mentally calculating the English prices, and putting them down again. And as she walks, in a city of strangers, her nostrils filled with the scent of street food, her ears filled with an unfamiliar language, she feels something unexpected wash through her. She feels connected, alive.
When she walks back to her hotel, the girl is playing the cello again, a low sound, resonant and beautiful. Nell pauses underneath the open window and then sits down on the curb to listen, heedless of the curious looks of passersby. This time when the music stops, she cannot help herself and stands and applauds, clapping into the echoing street. The girl emerges onto the balcony and looks down, surprised, and Nell smiles up at her. After a moment the girl smiles back and then takes a small bow. Nell hears the music in her ears the whole way back to the hotel.
The woman at the airline desk is staring at the three women who surround the disheveled man.
Magda smiles reassuringly. "This gentleman would like a ticket to Paris. On the next possible flight, please."
The woman checks her screen. "Certainly, sir. We have . . . a seat on a British Airways flight that leaves for Charles de Gaulle in an hour and ten minutes."
"He'll take it," says Magda quickly. "How much is the ticket, please?"
"One way? That will be . . . one hundred and forty-eight pounds."
"You're kidding me," says Pete, who hasn't spoken since they entered the airport terminal.
"Open your wallet, Pete," says Magda, in a voice that suggests it is not a good idea for him to disagree.
The airline woman has started to look properly concerned now. Magda opens Pete's wallet and starts counting money onto the desk beside his passport.
"A hundred and ten pounds. That's all my money for the weekend," Pete protests. Magda reaches into her bag.
"Here. I have twenty. And he'll need cash to get into Paris. Girls?"
She waits as the others pull notes from their bags, counting them out carefully until they have enough. The woman slides the money toward her slowly, all the while watching Pete.
"Sir," she says, "are you . . . happy to take this flight?"
"Yes he is," says Magda.
"This is nuts," says Pete. He stands there, looking sullen and awkward.
The airline woman appears to have had enough. "You know, I'm not sure I can issue this ticket if the gentleman here is not traveling voluntarily."
There is a short silence. The girls exchange glances. A queue has started to build behind them.
"Oh, explain it to her, Mags," says Sue.
Magda leans forward. "Miss. Airline lady. Our best friend, Nell, is a nervous traveler."
"She's a nervous everything," says Trish.
"So she gets anxious about all sorts of stuff," says Magda. "New places, the possibility of foreign invasion, objects falling off tall buildings, that kind of thing. Well, she and this gentleman here were due to go on a romantic trip to Paris this weekend. A big step for her. Huge. Except this gentleman here decided not to turn up and went drinking with his low-life mates in Brighton instead. So now our very nice friend is all alone in a strange city. Probably too afraid to leave her hotel room, given that she doesn't speak a word of French, and feeling like the biggest idiot in the world.
"Therefore we think it would be a good idea if Pete here got on your flight and gave his girlfriend a romantic twenty-four hours in Paris. So there may be a little coercion involved, yes, but it is done with good intentions." She steps back. "It is done with love."
There is a short silence. The checkin woman stares at the four of them. "Okay," she says finally. "I'm calling security."
"Oh, come on!" exclaims Magda, throwing up her hands. "Seriously?"
Pete looks briefly smug.
The woman has a phone to her ear and dials a number. She looks up at Pete. "Yes. I think it would be sensible if your friend here had an escort to make sure he makes it onto that plane." She then speaks into the phone. "Desk Eleven. Can I have a security officer over here, please?"
She fills out the last of the ticket and hands it to Pete with his passport. An unsmiling security guard approaches.
"We need to make sure this gentleman gets to Gate Fifty-six safely. There you go, sir. Your boarding pass."
As Pete turns away, she mutters "Douchebag."
The smell of chopped herbs seeps through the window of the tiny kitchen. As Fabien and Clement stand side by side preparing food, Emile is carting a table and chairs through the French windows that open onto a tiny cobbled square.
"Not those chairs, Emile. Haven't you got any more comfortable ones?" Fabien is uncharacteristically stressed, his skin pink with effort.
"These will be fine," says Emile.
"And the duck. Papa--you didn't forget the marinade, yes?"
Emile and Clement exchange looks.
Clement walks to the fridge. "And now my son thinks he can tell me how to cook duck. Yes, I have prepared the marinade."
"I just want it to be special," says Fabien, opening a drawer and rifling through it. "A perfect traditional French meal. Shall we put some little lights in the tree? Emile? Do you still have those Christmas lights? The white ones. No colors."
"The box under the stairs," says Emile. As they watch, Fabien disappears. He reappears
minutes later with a tangled string of lights, a man possessed. He walks outside and starts stringing them in the branches that hang over the table, standing on the tabletop to get to the high point. Then he starts rearranging the table and chairs, examining them from different views until he is satisfied. And then moving them again just in case.
Clement watches him steadily. "All this for a woman he has met twice," he murmurs.
"Don't knock it, Clement," says Emile, handing him some garlic. "You know what this means. . . ."
They turn to face each other. "No more Sandrine!" Clement considers this, then abruptly pulls off his apron. "Actually, I'll pop down to the poissonnerie and buy some oysters."
Emile is chopping with renewed vigor. "Good idea. I'll make my tarte tatin with calvados."
The door of the boutique jingles merrily as Nell opens it.
"Bonjour!" she says. "I need that dress. The pineapple dress."
The shop assistant remembers her immediately. "Mademoiselle," she says, slowly, "the price is the same. It will be--how you say?--thirty pounds a wear!"
Nell closes the door behind her. She is glowing, and she still has the taste of ripe plums in her mouth. "Well, I've been thinking about what you said. Sometimes you just have to do what feels good, right?"
The assistant is out from behind the counter before Nell has barely taken another step. "Then, mam'selle, you must have the lingerie to go with it. . . ."
An hour and a bit later, Nell walks down the wooden staircase of the Hotel Bonne Ville, enjoying the way the skirt of the green pineapple dress billows slightly with each step. She pauses at the bottom to check that she has everything in her purse and looks up to see Marianne watching her. The receptionist lifts her chin and nods approvingly.
"You look very nice, mademoiselle."
Nell walks over to her and leans across the counter, conspiratorially. "I got the lingerie, too. I think I'm basically living on bread and cheese for the next two months."
Marianne straightens her paperwork and smiles. "Then you are now an honorary Parisienne. Congratulations."
She steps outside just as Fabien pulls up on his moped. He stops and gazes at her for a moment, and she lets him, conscious of the impression she is making. He holds out her coat, which he has retrieved, and she takes it. Then she glances down and sees his shoes--dark blue suede and somehow indefinably French.