Esme ruffled Rory’s hair and smiled at the smattering of other children in the playroom, but her hand shook as she wrote his name on a name badge and for a moment she considered throwing the lurid bit of cardboard in the bin, snatching her son and running for home.
But she did not. She stuck his name badge on his little chest, kissed him good-bye, told the day-care supervisor she would be back in an hour or so and dashed out into the street and back toward Louis’s hotel.
“Stop thinking,” she said out loud. “Just do it.”
And so she found herself not five minutes later staring up at the Excelsior Hotel on the brink of entering into something she knew could change her life forever.
In truth, the Excelsior was not what she expected. It was a slightly dilapidated Victorian building of the type often converted in this part of London to private hotels or guest rooms. The paint was peeling off the façade and the blinds in the bay windows on either side of the door did not match, but then boutique hotels came in so many different shapes and sizes these days, Esme reasoned.
Inside, however, she was forced to wonder if it was a boutique hotel. The reception area was dimly lit and sadly underfurnished and had a nasty stale odor about it. Esme rang the bell and a greasy little man with thick glasses and a terrible case of comb-across hair came out licking his fingers and smelling strongly of vinegar.
“Is there a Louis Lapoine staying here?” Esme asked him, suddenly sure that she had the wrong hotel and that her plans to meet up with him were seriously being mangled by unknown forces.
“Oh, yes,” whined the greasy little man. “Monsieur Lapoine. Room sixteen. Up the first flight of stairs, love, and third on your left.”
The Excelsior did not stretch to an elevator. Why would Louis stay in a place like this? Esme wondered as she climbed up the narrow staircase, noticing that the smell did not get any better as she ascended.
The six of room sixteen had fallen sideways and made a whole new number.
Esme rapped on the door and waited. Could there be some mistake?
But it was Louis’s face that looked into hers when the door flew open and she knew from the look on it that he had given up on her.
“Esme!” he said, catching her by surprise by throwing himself excitedly in her direction to kiss each check, pushing her slightly off balance. She staggered backward into the hallway but Louis grabbed at her, apologizing profusely, and drew her into the room.
“I thought you were not coming,” he said, his eyes bright with renewed anticipation. “I wait for an hour, which in London, you know, is usually enough, and when you didn’t come, I think . . .” He shrugged. “But now, here you are!”
The room was tiny with a double bed—not of the four-poster variety—one ratty chair and a tatty dresser. It fell sadly short of her imaginings.
“Do you stay in places like this wherever you go?” Esme asked, looking around, trying not to sound stuffy. “I imagined that you would be in something slightly more, um”—she searched for the word—“midmarket.”
Louis pulled her down beside him on the bed. It creaked rather rudely and its overstretched springs left her sitting awkwardly on its edge.
“We do not waste money on fancy hotel rooms at la fédération,” Louis said dismissively. “We have better things to think about. Take off your coat, Esme. You are wet.”
He watched her greedily as she struggled out of her trench coat, feeling shy and silly even though there were many layers to go and she could be proud of her matching underwear.
She looked up and met Louis’s eyes.
“Do not be afraid, Esme,” he said, in his hypnotic soft voice, understanding her doubt. “You were right to come.”
And he leaned in and gently kissed her so lightly it was like drinking champagne. The bits of her that weren’t loyal to her husband raced with excitement and she felt her blood heat up and heard a groan escape from her throat. Louis pressed her slowly back on the bed and she felt his lips on her neck and his tongue on her collarbone. She pushed thoughts of Pog out of her head. This was so much more treacherous than a stolen kiss in a restaurant doorway. This was it. There would be no going back. And already, her body was showing signs of being unstoppably on the track to Louis Lapoine.
He was exploring the neckline of her agnés b, his lips moving covetously over her skin. She was starting to feel hot, indescribably hot, deliciously, dangerously, undeniably hot. He moved, slowly, up her neck, along her jaw and across her cheek until his lips met hers and she nipped at him like a hungry foal, desperate for the bliss he could unleash in her, had unleashed in her, all those years ago and again here and now.
They kissed for an age. Her eyes were closed and her mind was locked in the past, where if she breathed in deeply enough she could smell the wood-fired oven, feel those golden well-worn steps beneath her back, taste that first crumb of sourdough, the crumb that would introduce her to the delights of which before she had only dreamed.
Her pleasure was indescribable. She writhed with it. And all from a kiss! Louis drew back and looked at her, drinking in her enjoyment. Then, still looking, his hand traveled too slowly (no, not slowly enough!) down her rib cage, forgiving the indent at her waistband and continuing to her hips. His thumb flicked against the softness of her belly and he dived into her again.
He tasted different, she realized then, from the way she remembered him. Different even from the Orrery doorway. But his flavor still sang to her. She lapped him up. She devoured him. She had waited so long.
He was panting when he pulled back from her again, his eyes glazed with pleasure, a light film of sweat on his forehead.
“Esme,” he groaned in his chocolate-covered accent, and he knelt up, astride her, running one hand through his hair as though trying to slow himself down. Oh, the joy of being loved back! Esme felt it all over again.
She reached up and traced the line of his neck with one finger from the corner of his mouth, back to his ear, his edible ear, then down to the collar of his shirt. Over his exquisite Adam’s apple her fingernail trailed, then she started to pull at his tie, already loosened, noticing for the first time that it was the same one he had worn when they last met. And when they first met, in Marylebone High Street. In fact, it was the same suit and perhaps the same shirt, which, now that she looked closely, was slightly grubby around the neckline.
Sensing her hesitation, he ripped the tie off himself, then unbuttoned Esme’s jacket and brought his mouth down to her silk shirt, biting at her nipple through her new bra and rendering her unsure whether to scream for more or for him to stop.
Her body was working on its own now. She tugged at Louis’s shirt buttons, undoing them to his waist then pulling the shirt away from his delectable shoulders. She rose up and bit into him, savoring his taste. He was salty and sour, like bread. He wriggled downward and ran his hands up her rump underneath her skirt and he tugged at her bikinis, flicking his finger inside them against that soft, doughy skin.
Esme groaned and wriggled farther into the middle of the bed. Something beneath her was digging into her shoulder and making her remember herself, which she did not want to do. She wanted to forget herself. She wanted to know nothing but this, but him.
“Ouch,” she cried as Louis pressed down on her and whatever she was lying on bit into her shoulder.
Louis was on top of her now, fumbling with his belt, his erection pressing into her thigh.
“Esme,” Louis moaned. “Oh, Esme.”
She twisted around and grabbed at what lay underneath her. It was in Louis’s suit-jacket pocket, and she would never know what made her dip into it but dip into it she did. It was the dusty track up to Louis’s uncle’s house all over again.
She pulled out a hard plastic baby pacifier. Pink and slightly gooey. Aghast, she felt her pheromones spiral back into control.
“But, Louis,” she said, looking at him, and wondering how his black eyes could still sparkle like that. Louis’s children were teenagers now. A
nd he did not even live with them.
“It’s not how you think,” Louis said breathlessly, his erection nonetheless withering. He leaned down onto one elbow and ran the other hand through his hair. The cut was wrong, Esme suddenly noticed. It was too long at the back. And he had missed a few spots on those smooth nut cheeks when he shaved.
She pushed him off her, then sat up and looked around the room. There was no suitcase. No briefcase, even. The bathroom door was open and there were no toiletries by the sink. Her heart was starting to thump in her ears, and not in the way Louis usually made it.
Something was wrong. There was a hip flask of brandy, open and only half full, and two plastic triangles of chain-store sandwiches sitting atop the Bible on the bedside table.
“Oh, my God,” whispered Esme. Chain-store sandwiches? She pulled at her blouse, which was open and exposing most of one ripe breast and a morsel of soft white stomach. Her skirt had twisted around and come unzipped and her tights were halfway to her knees. She felt sick.
She looked at the pacifier in her hand.
“Whose is this?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady. “Whose baby does it belong to?”
Louis, his shirt still off, his trousers unbelted and unbuttoned, reached for her.
“Esme,” he said in his bewitching voice. “Does it matter?”
Esme closed her eyes to the sound of half a lifetime of dreaming being flushed gently down the toilet.
“How can I have been so stupid?” she asked herself as she slid to the side of the bed, stood up, slipped into her shoes and started to right her skirt. She was shaking.
“No, no, no,” groaned Louis. “Please, Esme. We should do this. We are meant to do this. You and me. Come on.”
But her rose-colored spectacles were off for good. Her fairy tale had disappeared. All she could see was a tatty little man in a tatty little room and a married woman, every bit as tragic, who was trying to go somewhere that no longer existed.
“So let me guess—you’re not married to Diana anymore but you are married to someone,” she said, more amazed than angry as her fingers bumbled over buttoning her shirt. “And I suppose she is waiting in the nice hotel or shopping at Harvey Nicks or back in Paris with the ladies who lunch.”
She straightened the ankles of her tights but did not want to expose her thighs to right them in the crotch. Louis watched her, his shoulders slumped.
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” he said.
“It already bloody isn’t!” Esme said vehemently. “How could you do this to me a second time? After everything? After we talked about how much you hurt me last time and how I couldn’t love anyone for ages and how you meant every word but the time wasn’t right? I told you about Teddy, for God’s sake. I have not been able to talk about him with anyone. Ever! I trusted you. Again. I trusted you and you could have ruined my life.”
Louis looked sad. “Your life seems ruined already, Esme,” he said.
“That’s not true.” Esme was horrified. “I have a perfectly good life.”
“Oh, yes,” Louis hit back. “Then what are you doing here?”
“I thought you could save me,” Esme replied, realizing as she spoke the words that it was true. “I thought you could make me feel the way I did when I met you. Like nothing else mattered. Like nothing in between had happened.”
Louis, sensing a gap in her resolve, leaned toward her. “I can, Esme,” he said earnestly. “I can.”
She looked at him in wonderment as she reached for her coat and struggled into it. “You can’t,” she said. Oh God, this was not what she wanted! He was not what she wanted. “Nobody can save anybody else,” she said. “And certainly not me.”
“That’s not what your friend Charlie thinks,” Louis said, standing up and pulling himself together. Esme froze. What did Charlie have to do with this?
“What do you mean?”
Louis shrugged. “Nothing,” he said. “Forget about it.”
“What does Charlie have to do with any of this?” Esme insisted, her heart, already low, sinking further.
Louis shrugged again. “Maybe meeting you this time was not such a coincidence, Esme. That is all.”
She thought about the lunch, the phone call from Charlie, meeting Louis while she waited. What was Louis saying?
“Charlie arranged this?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
Would Charlie really do that to her?
A hardness stole into Louis’s eyes as he zipped up his pants and threaded his belt through the loops.
“I met him in a bar one night not so long ago and he was sorry for the stitches in my nose and tells me you still think of me, that you think a lot of me, and he offers to buy the lunch. At the Orrery. He thinks it will cheer you up and make you happy. He is a good friend, no? He even sends me this suit. Not really my color, but still.”
Esme collapsed slowly into the ratty chair as her head spun. The whole thing had been a setup. She had not been meant to meet Louis and rekindle their passion. It had all been engineered behind her back. Destiny had nothing to do with it. It was all design.
Louis, she noticed, was slipping his feet into badly scuffed shoes. He wore brown socks. He drank during the day. He ate chain-store sandwiches and he had a baby young enough to need a pacifier.
“Do you even work for the bakers federation?” she asked tonelessly.
“Oh, Esme, you are such a romantic.”
Esme sucked back a sob.
“There is no such thing as the bakers federation,” said Louis. “The artisan bakers of France are a small group and getting smaller. No one cares about them! No one cares about pain au levain. You would be lucky to find it in Paris let alone in the country where it came from, where it belongs. There is nothing magical about sourdough, Esme. Once, maybe, I thought there was but not anymore.”
“You can’t mean that, Louis. You of all people. What happened to the boulangerie? What happened to your starter, the starter your great-great-, your many-greats grandfather began two hundred years ago?”
A dark look crossed Louis’s face. “My uncle was offered a lot of money and so he sold the bakery.” His voice was bitter. “I could not afford to buy it myself and he could not afford to keep it so that is that. Now it is an Internet café.”
“And your uncle, is he, did he really die?”
Louis was shocked.
“But of course! I could never lie about something like that.”
“Well, you can lie about everything else, Louis. Did you really come looking for me after I left Venolat?”
She could tell from the look on his face that he was tossing up whether to lie again, in itself providing the painful answer.
“No,” he said. “Diana was very angry. My aunt was unwell. I could not leave then.”
“But you do live in Paris now? You are still a baker?” She was desperate for something about Louis to be right.
“I live in Hounslow, Esme,” he said tiredly, his skin looking gray and dull in the dingy light of the awful room. He had no life left in him at all. She could see that now. “I live with my girlfriend, Katarina, and our baby, Eleanor. I am the manager of the high street Pret a Manger.”
Esme was too stunned for tears. She suddenly understood what people meant when they said the rug had been pulled out from under them. She felt like she was skittering on air above a bottomless canyon. She felt sick to her stomach.
“Your girlfriend? Pret a Manger? How could you do this to me?”
“Nobody is perfect, you know,” Louis told her, looking small and pathetic. “No matter how much you want them to be.”
He reached for her but she shrank away.
“But how could you, Louis, how could you? After your family had been baking in that building for all those years. It was you who said that the secret to sourdough was sticking with it but then you just let it go!”
Louis shrugged again. He looked pitiful.
“You are foolish if you think it is anyth
ing more than just bread,” he said, and in that moment Esme knew he was not the Louis he had once been, just as she was not the Esme she had once been, and that there was no going back for either of them.
He picked up the brandy and drank from the bottle.
“Your friend Charlie thinks he is doing us both a favor but I think not.” He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and looked at her. “I have paid for the room,” he said. And he walked out the door.
But instead of closing it behind him, he turned to her.
“Your bread, your pain au levain, was good,” he said, and she detected a wistfulness she did not think he could manufacture. “Different from Lapoine, of course, but good.” And with that, he was gone.
Esme sat on the bed, speechless, her head reeling until she realized that the feeling that was surfacing above all others was one of relief. “Thank God, thank God, thank God,” she breathed. She might have teetered but she had not fallen. She was not a cheat or an adulterer or a slut. Close. But not close enough.
How could she have fallen for him a second time? How could she have been so stupid? Thoughts still whirred in her head but made more sense than they had in a long time, and all, at least, pointed in the same direction: home.
She looked at her watch. It was nearly four. She would pick up Rory, maybe go to Hamleys and then go back to her family, where she now knew she belonged.
Louis, she would forget. Charlie she would deal with later. Charlie! Did he really think he had been doing her a favor? Was that his idea of helping? Pog she could not wait to wrap her arms around. She had saved him from her betrayal and she would never do that to him again.
She hurried through the streets—it was still, of course, raining—and took the steps to the gym two at a time. Her receptionist friend merely raised her eyebrows as Esme headed for the day care, trying to pick Rory’s orange curls out in the kaleidoscope of color.
“Forget something?” the day-care supervisor, Felicity, asked.
Esme laughed. “No, I’m back,” she said. “For Rory.”
Felicity’s face paled. “But he’s gone,” she said. “Your driver picked him up. Not long after you left him here. He’s been gone for more than an hour.”