‘Perhaps you could come to Alma Marceau Métro station? We spent so much time in the Marais and Saint-Germain yesterday,’ she suggested. ‘It is a simple journey, you take a train at St-Sébastien, change at Bastille and then Roosevelt. Or walk to Bastille, it is not far. You have a map?’
‘I do,’ I said, checking my bag. I did. Phew. ‘But really, I’m not really very good with maps – maybe we should meet here?’
Virginie laughed, all tinkly and reassuring. The opposite of a Cici cackle. ‘Angela, you will be fine. I will see you in half an hour. Call me if you cannot find me.’
I really was not in any fit state to be navigating myself around the Métro system. And looking at the Métro map on the back of the street map, it was not going to be as easy as Virginie had led me to believe. That girl had far too much confidence in me. I closed my eyes, dropped my head over the back of the chair and let out a too loud sigh.
‘Everything is OK, Madame?’ asked a very concerned voice at the side of me. ‘You are feeling unwell? Again?’
Opening one eye behind my sunglasses, I saw the concierge from last night standing at a safe distance to my left. Clearly he was convinced I was about to chuck up all over his newly pristine reception. Again.
‘I’m fine, thank you.’ I clambered out of the chair in the most ladylike fashion I could manage (i.e. not very) and attempted to compose myself.
He nodded curtly and backed away slowly, not believing me in the slightest. I pursed my lips together. I wasn’t having him going away thinking I was a horrible lush.
‘My best friend used to be a concierge,’ I blurted out. ‘At a hotel.’
‘Pardon?’ He stared at me from behind the safety of his desk. ‘Your friend works at our hotel?’
Why? Why couldn’t I just leave things alone?
‘Oh no, she lives in LA now,’ I carried on, ignoring the tiny voice in my head that was telling me to shut up over and over and over and over. ‘But she worked in a hotel for years. Have you worked here for long?’
‘For three years?’ he replied, still looking just as confused and now ever so slightly scared. ‘My name is Alain. We are very pleased to have you staying with us, Madame.’
Now, there was no mistaking that for a very polite way of saying ‘please get the hell away from me and leave me alone’, but could I do that? No. Because that would be too easy.
‘Wow, three years, that’s a long time in one job,’ I said, now leaning against the concierge’s desk. The little voice in my head had blossomed into a full blown bellow now, begging me to get out of the hotel before my new friend Alain threw me out. ‘Do you like it?’
He shrugged and stepped back from the desk. I couldn’t help it. I hate when people didn’t like me, or thought badly of me. Somewhere, buried not quite deep enough, was the feeling that somehow, my puking in the street outside this man’s hotel would get back to my mother. ‘Can I help you with something, Madame?’
Give up. Give up now, the voice demanded.
‘It’s Angela,’ I said, reaching across to shake his hand. ‘And no, I’m fine. Thank you though.’ Giving him one last extra bright smile, I admitted defeat and legged it out the door. Note to self, try not to humiliate yourself in front of hotel staff when you’re still a little bit drunk from the night before. And he was still bloody well calling me Madame when I was fairly certain I’d told him I was Mademoiselle at least twice.
At least I’d been right about one thing so far today, the Métro was not going to be easy. I’d found the first station easily enough, but had managed to go three stops in the wrong direction before I realized I was not on my way to Bastille. Every second I was sitting on that bloody train, I could see Donna Gregory’s expression as she read my article, her eyebrow eventually rising so high that it fell off her face completely. I was fucked. Properly and completely fucked. The tunnels were bigger and brighter than at a Tube station or in the subway, but after I had navigated the dozens of short staircases, hundreds of different exits and a very confusing signage system, it was well over an hour and a half since Virginie had called me. I eventually emerged hot, sweaty and completely dehydrated at Alma Marceau. Taking a second to try and work out where I was, I saw the Eiffel Tower and the river on one side of me and a huge roundabout on the other. Where on earth would Virginie be? Before I could throw myself in the Seine, my phone beeped again.
‘Angela? Are you OK?’ Virginie was apparently psychic. ‘I have been calling and calling.’ OK, maybe just concerned.
‘I’m sorry, I’m fine I think,’ I was not fine, I was very, very tired. As if my first solo mission on the Métro wasn’t going to be bad enough, why had I attempted it hungover? ‘Sorry, my brain isn’t working right yet. Where are you?’
‘I am in a café, just by the road. I am waving, can you see me?’
I did a slow turn, thinking how absolutely impossible it was going to be to find one tiny beautiful brunette in a sea of millions, before I spotted her, directly across the road and waving manically. At last, something was going my way.
‘Stop waving like that, you’ll have a stroke,’ I said, waving back and hanging up, happily.
Thankfully, I was able to navigate crossing the road fairly easily and when I collapsed into the chair Virginie pushed out for me, she’d already ordered me fresh coffee, which I downed like a shot.
‘Angela, I am so sorry,’ Virginie buried her face in her hands. ‘I think the Métro is so easy, like the subway, I forget you do not know it.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ I said, signalling for more coffee, still too hungover to really reassure her. ‘I could have just got a taxi, I suppose.’
‘I did not even think of this.’ She tucked a stray piece of hair back into the messy bun on the back of her head. ‘You must be very angry.’
‘Really, no.’ It wasn’t a lie. I was too exhausted to be angry. ‘And you know, I’m sure I’ll be able to use it in my piece, compare the Métro to the subway and all that.’
Virginie nodded eagerly. ‘That would be very interesting.’
‘No it wouldn’t,’ I said, downing my second coffee fractionally more slowly than the first one. ‘But it will pad out a piece, which now I think about it, is slim to non-existent at the moment.’
‘Well, we have all of Cici’s places now.’ She thrust a thick wedge of paper at me before delving back into her cotton shopper bag and producing more. ‘For someone who is not your friend, she is making a lot of notes.’
I put down my coffee and tried to focus on the tiny type and little maps that covered the pages. There must have been half a ream of paper in Virginie’s bag, there was no way I was going to be able to visit all of these places. Glancing at my watch, I realized it was already past twelve. I wasn’t even going to be able to read all of these notes. Shit shit shit shit shit.
‘Did you read it?’ I asked, hoping she could help me tick off the highlights.
‘Non, I thought I would wait for you.’ Virginie winced. ‘I am sorry, I should have read the notes.’
‘No, no, no,’ I muttered, flipping through the pages. ‘But bugger me, I have no idea how I’m going to get through all of this before Christmas, let alone eight.’
‘What is happening at eight?’ Virginie asked, ordering me another coffee. Which was just as well because I wasn’t going to have time to sleep.
‘Oh, I erm, I told Solène we would go to this party she’s having tonight,’ I said, pretending to be especially interested in Cici’s favourite massage café. Oh. Ew. ‘It’s at about eight or something. Somewhere near the river.’
‘The girl from the show?’ Virginie slapped the papers out of my hand and on to the table. ‘Angela?’
‘Yes, the girl from the show,’ I replied, studiously reviewing my coffee.
‘But she is in love with your boyfriend?’
‘No she isn’t.’
‘Yes, she is.’
Who needed Jenny when I had the travel version? Virginie packed just as much of a p
unch and would easily fit in a weekend bag.
‘Well, she’s not because she’s actually his ex-girlfriend,’ I said into my coffee cup. Why didn’t they have mugs here? Couldn’t we have found a Starbucks?
‘What?’
‘Solène and Alex used to go out with each other,’ I said, trying to be OK with it, although hearing it out loud, illustrated by Virginie’s incredulous expression made it really rather difficult to accept. ‘It was ages ago. They’re fine now. And I said I would go.’
‘Alex wants to go to this party?’ Virginie asked. ‘With his beautiful ex-girlfriend who dances in front of him like a whore?’
‘Wow!’ I put the coffee cup down. ‘Well, actually I haven’t told him yet.’
‘He will not go.’ She folded her arms and stared me down. ‘I do not believe he will go.’
‘Right,’ I said. What else was there to say? ‘Well, I’ll cross that pont when we come to it. We really have to work out where to start on all these places Cici has sent us. And I have to email my friend about…some stuff.’
I spread the pages out on the table and tried to make some sense of the addresses, but strangely enough, it was all a foreign language to me. Not quite Greek, but almost.
‘I am sorry, I do not know your Alex,’ Virginie said, reaching across the table and touching my hand lightly. ‘I will look at Cici’s emails and you can email your friend and call Alex? I can work out what is close by.’
‘That would be amazing.’ It felt a little as if I was cheating having Virginie do the work for me, but making up to Jenny wasn’t going to be easy. It was still too early to call her, so a well-crafted email would have to do for now.
‘And you are absolutely going to this party?’ she asked, scooping up all the pieces of paper and taking a black leather notebook from her bag.
‘I am,’ I replied, although entirely uncertain as to why.
‘D’accord.’ Virginie gave me one short, sharp nod. And sighed.
Writing the email to Jenny took far longer than I had hoped. I was used to her moods, but we’d never rowed while we were on different coasts, let alone different continents, and I really didn’t like it. Plus, this was entirely my fault whereas usually, I could more or less count on Hurricane Jenny taking at least fifty per cent of the blame. What was I supposed to do? Because of me, albeit inadvertently, about ten thousand dollars’ worth of borrowed clothes had been destroyed. And who would believe what had happened to them? Jenny was still new at this whole stylist thing, her reputation, as she often told me drunk in the middle of the afternoon, was everything. Apparently the getting drunk part was actually essential to the process and not detrimental. But losing lots and lots of beautiful, expensive things was not going to help her out in anyway. It wasn’t as if she’d dressed someone who would at least have got the clothes on TV or something before she accidentally destroyed them, cough, Mischa Barton.
In the end, after writing four different versions of the same message, I opted for ‘I am so sorry, let me know when I can call you and we’ll try and work it out. I’ll replace them somehow. Love you x’
Although I had no idea what somehow might be. And once I’d watched the email icon flicker and send, I took a deep breath and called Alex.
‘Hey,’ he answered right away which was unusual, but a relief. Pull it off like a plaster, Angela, I told myself. ‘What’s up?’
‘Hey,’ I began, biting my little fingernail. ‘How did the radio thing go?’
If there was one thing I was good at, it was procrastination.
‘It was fine, we played, we talked.’ The line was crackly, but he sounded as if he was in a fairly good mood. Time to bite the bullet. ‘Whatever.’
‘So, I was just checking, we have no plans tonight, do we?’ I turned in my chair to avoid Virginie’s raised eyebrow. ‘Because we’ve been invited to a party and I sort of said we’d go.’
‘You got us invited to a party already?’ He laughed. ‘This didn’t happen last night by any chance?’
‘Maybe,’ I admitted, turning a little bit more. ‘You know I like to make friends when I’ve had a drink.’
‘You like to do a lot of things I don’t approve of when you’re drunk. And some stuff that I do approve of.’ Alex lowered his voice just enough to give me goose bumps. ‘Sure, just let me know where I need to be.’
‘Um, well, the thing is, it’s Solène’s party,’ I said quietly. ‘At her apartment.’
The line suddenly went awfully quiet.
‘Alex?’
‘We’re not going to a party at Solène’s place.’
He didn’t sound that angry, just absolutely decided.
‘It’s just I said that we would, and she said that she really wanted to catch up with you, and for us to meet her boyfriend, and we would really only have to stay for a while, but I really think that, since I said we would, that we should go. Just for a little bit. Otherwise she’ll think—’
‘What?’ Alex cut me off. Which was probably a good thing to be fair. ‘What will she think?’
‘That we’re rude?’
‘I’m pretty certain I don’t care what she thinks about you,’ he replied. ‘And I’m completely fucking sure I don’t care what she thinks about me. I’m not going, you’re not going.’
‘You can’t tell me what to do.’ It was weird to hear Alex swearing at me, and I really didn’t like it. And I was trying to be as quiet as possible, pretty sure that Virginie was going to be ready and waiting with whatever the French version of ‘I told you so’ was. ‘I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal of this. We only have to stick our heads in and say hello. And you might feel better about everything if you actually saw her. It’s not good to be angry about something that happened so long ago.’
‘Well thank you, Oprah,’ Alex replied flatly. ‘I figured you’d quit the self-help shit when Jenny left. And I don’t want to tell you what to do, but I’m not going to this party. If you want to go to dinner with me, call me back later.’
I stuck out my bottom lip and stuffed my phone back into my bag.
‘He does not want to go to the party?’
Looking up, I stared out across the river for a moment. Eiffel Tower, River Seine, lots of pretty people on bikes, yep, definitely in Paris. And yet still getting attitude from my girlfriend.
‘He does not want to go to the party,’ I confirmed. ‘I get it, she’s his ex. I wouldn’t want to go to my ex’s party. I shouldn’t go.’
But the sick thing was, I wanted to. I wanted to see Solène’s apartment, I wanted to see her boyfriend, and for some inexplicable reason, I wanted her to like me. And if not like me, at least see me looking awesome and know that I was good enough for Alex. As good as she had ever been. Hmm, I had to stop complaining that I didn’t understand boys. I didn’t even understand me.
‘I was thinking,’ Virginie tapped me cautiously on the shoulder, ‘you have to go to the party.’
‘What?’ I did a full one-eighty in my chair. ‘Now you think I should go?’
‘I did not say you should not go,’ she shrugged. ‘I said Alex would not want to go. It is very difficult for a boy to see his ex-girlfriend. Very, very difficult with his new girlfriend there also. But you should go. And you should look fabulous.’
‘Easier said than done,’ I mumbled. ‘How do you look fabulous without hair straighteners?’
Virginie outlined her plan as we crossed on to Avenue Montaigne. I tried to listen, there was talk of buying some amazing dress, her lending me some killer shoes and some sort of hairstyling extravaganza that would possibly negate the need for straighteners. I would have been more cynical, but luckily for my French Fairy Godmother, I was somewhat distracted. We were, in theory headed to the Roosevelt Métro station to get on with our research, but Virginie had failed to mention that Avenue Montaigne was home to almost all of Paris’s designer stores, couture houses and general wonderment. I pressed my nose up against the window of Paul & Joe, lusting after a gorg
eous grey silk dress and trying not to shed a tiny tear for the Paul & Joe Sister dress I had lost in Suitcase Gate.
‘That dress would be perfect for tonight,’ Virginie whispered into my ear. I nodded, she was right. It was short, silvery-grey with a white Siamese cat hand-painted on to the front. Slightly odd, but very cool. At least as cool as Solène. ‘You should try it on.’
‘I can’t afford it,’ I said, shaking off the vision of myself, all black eyeliner, messy hair and black opaque tights. In that dress. It was too hot for black tights anyway. Not that it wouldn’t look awesome without tights. ‘And it has a giant cat on it.’
‘It would take a very stylish girl to wear it,’ Virginie agreed. ‘Perhaps someone like Solène?’
‘I know what you’re doing,’ I said, pushing the door open. ‘And luckily for you, I am very, very easily led.’
Happily, at least until the shopper’s remorse hit, there was just enough room for the dress on my credit card. Or at least, the credit card company people were prepared to allow me to go over my limit to the same value as the dress. I liked to think I had a telepathic link to Barclays and that they understood my pain. I was pretty much able to convince myself of anything when a dress was at stake. But now, with this dress, I would definitely be able to face Solène on even terms. It was gorgeous and it fitted me perfectly. Besides, Virginie was right, I absolutely should go to the party, I wasn’t having her, his ex, thinking that I was rude. Or even worse, running scared. Even if she was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever had the displeasure to lay eyes on. And in a super cool band. And all sexy and French. It was OK, I had the cat dress. What could go wrong? Apart from Alex still being all pissed off.
I sent him a flirty (OK, dirty) text message about potential plans for the evening from the changing room at Paul & Joe, explaining that I would pop into the party, just to say hello and that he absolutely did not have to show. And then it was possible that I suggested we meet back at the hotel, go out for dinner somewhere lovely and then follow that up with a repeat performance of the night before. Obviously that would be back in the hotel. We might be in the world capital of romance, but I was fairly certain they still had decency laws here.