‘Oh bloody hell, what am I doing here?’ I asked myself out loud.
The girl behind the counter gave me a slightly concerned look that she tried to turn into a smile, only not quite quickly enough. I didn’t have the energy to give her a reassuring cheery grin and instead scrunched up my face and rubbed my eyes hard.
‘Can I please get the check?’ I asked. ‘I mean, the bill?’
‘Of course, madam,’ she passed over a small white receipt on a silver saucer, ignoring the daggers in my eyes at ‘madam’. How many more times?
I dropped my credit card on the saucer, only then to spend two minutes faffing around, trying to get back in the habit of a chip and pin system. I picked up the champagne flute, ready to swig it down – ever the classy lady – before setting it back on the bar. Seriously. Just Say No. Before I could change my mind, I stood up, grabbed my bag and sprinted back down the escalators, as quickly as I had come up them.
Planting myself in front of a blatantly barely used payphone, I marvelled at the fact that it took credit cards and picked up the receiver. With the champagne bolstering my confidence, I tapped in the first number, waiting for the call to connect and closed my eyes.
‘Hey, this is Alex,’ his voicemail kicked in immediately, not even ringing once. ‘Leave a message if you want, but you know I never check this thing.’
‘Alex, if you get this, it’s me, I need to talk to you,’ I rambled into the handset after the beep. ‘Uh, I guess you’re on your way to the festival or something, but oh, bloody hell, I really need to talk to you. Except I don’t have a phone. So I’ll call you back. Just, yeah, I will. I’ll call you back.’
Hanging up, I looked around the station. It was still only eight-thirty in the morning, but it was already busy. It felt strange to conceive that I was actually in England for the first time in a year. There was a WH Smith to the left of me, a Foyles on my right and oh, M&S! I could actually see an M&S. The pang of homesickness that had been popping up every now and then in Paris hit me hard in the gut. There were British accents all around me and football shirts as far as the eye could see – and not just Manchester United ones like in New York. It was beyond weird. Utterly familiar and yet completely novel. But there were still a lot of things that were the same everywhere, Starbucks cups in every other hand, white cables peeping through shaggy haircuts and lots and lots of skinny jeans. But they didn’t make me feel better. They didn’t make me want to stay. The only thing I felt for certain was that I needed a wee.
Picking up the receiver for a second time, I ran my credit card back through the slot on the phone. The dialling tone gave way to a ringing and the ringing gave way to a click and an answer.
‘Hello?’
‘Louisa?’
‘Angela?’
I smiled, it still felt great to hear her voice. ‘Yeah, I, erm, I’m in London—’
‘Oh, babe, that’s amazing!’ Louisa squealed down the phone. ‘Annette! It’s Angela, she’s in London! She’s coming home!’
‘Shit, Lou, are you talking to my mother?’ I screeched. ‘Why on earth is she—’
‘Yes of course I’ll put her on, Angela, it’s your mum,’ she said as her voice pulled away and was replaced by a very pissed-off-sounding Annette Clark.
‘Angela? It’s your mother,’ she announced, entirely unnecessarily. ‘Where are you?’
‘I’m…’ my lips set themselves in a grim line. ‘I’m in Paris.’
‘Then why is there a London number showing on the phone screen?’
Bugger.
‘I mean, I was in Paris. I’m at St Pancras,’ I admitted. She’d been watching too much Morse.
‘Well, you want to get yourself to Waterloo,’ she said, as though I was stupid. ‘Do you remember how to get there? They’ve got these special cards that get you on the trains now, Oysters or something. Do you have any money? Can you get one?’
‘Mum, they’ve had Oyster cards for ages,’ I sighed. ‘I have one. And yes I know how to get from St Pancras to Waterloo. I’ve done it before.’
‘Well I don’t know, do I?’ she replied, grumpy. ‘You’ve been off fannying around in America for bloody months and it’s not like you told me you were coming home, is it? Your dad would have come and got you, you know.’
‘I know,’ I replied. The idea of my dad rocking up in the Ford Focus right now was too much. He would probably take one look at me and drive me straight to rehab. ‘But I’m not actually coming home.’
Which was a fact I wasn’t even sure of until I’d said it out loud.
‘Yes you are. Louisa told me you were,’ she stated. ‘What time will you be here? Do you have something decent to wear to the party or should I get the box of clothes out of the loft?’
‘What box of clothes?’ I asked, completely lost with my mother’s train of thought.
‘The clothes I picked up from Mark’s when you pranced off to New York,’ she explained. ‘There’s probably something in there. Or you can borrow something of mine.’
I let out a silent sob at the idea of turning up to Louisa’s first anniversary party in my mum’s Dorothy Perkins finest. And then I imagined getting out of a cab in the sequined Balenciaga mini dress and Giuseppe Zanotti heels Jenny had sent me. If they hadn’t been blown to very fashionable smithereens, it would almost have been worth it, just to see the look on Mark’s face.
‘Angela, are you still there?’ Mum asked impatiently. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll pass a Waitrose on your way? Louisa’s got a caterer doing a spread and I’m sure it’s lovely, but there’s not a pickled onion to be seen. How do you have a family party without pickled onions?’
‘Mum, can you just put Louisa on for a minute?’ I bit my lip. She was making this easier by the second.
‘I can’t believe you weren’t going to tell me you were coming home in the first place,’ she carried on, ignoring me completely. ‘We’ll be having a talk about your attitude when you get back, young lady. You’ll stay with us of course, but you’d better not think you’re going to be running roughshod all over me and your father, coming and going at all hours.’
‘Mum—’
‘If I hadn’t seen Tim in the supermarket, I wouldn’t have even known you were in France. And France of all places. I don’t know. Why you didn’t just come straight back to London, I will never know. Gadding about all over the place.’
‘Mum, can you put Louisa back on please?’ I was rapidly losing my temper and it really wasn’t her fault. Well, it was a bit her fault, but mostly not.
‘Fine,’ she huffed into the phone. ‘Just don’t tell her what I said about the pickled onions. Louisa!’
‘Thanks Annette,’ she said with a smile in her voice before she dropped an octave. ‘Did she ask you to bring bloody pickled onions? Seriously Ange, if she doesn’t stop going on about it, I’m going to drown her in a vat of effing pickled onions. Not that she needs it, the sour-faced old—’
‘Why is she even there, Lou?’ I had no sympathy for the girl, my mother had hardly invited herself over at eight-thirty in the morning.
‘She invited herself over to help with the party,’ Louisa said. ‘Can you believe it?’
Oh, fair enough.
‘I’m sorry I put you on, but I really thought I was going to kill her,’ she sighed. ‘And you know, she is your mum.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said truthfully. ‘Look, Lou, I know I said I was coming back, but I’m not. I’ve been thinking about it and I need to go back to New York.’
‘What? Angela, babe, I thought you said you were in London?’ Louisa sounded understandably confused. ‘Aren’t you at St Pancras?’
‘Yeah, sort of,’ I said, trying to work out the time in Paris. Eight-thirty here, nine-thirty there. If I could get a train in the next hour, I could make it. ‘I’m really sorry, I’ve been acting like an idiot all week. I just felt really lost, you know?’
‘Then come home,’ Louisa said firmly. ‘You won’t be lost if you’re home.’
/>
‘Exactly,’ I agreed. ‘So I’m going home.’
‘Babe, you’ve lost me.’ Now it was Lou’s turn to start losing her temper. ‘Are you coming or what? I need to know if we need to make a bed up.’
‘She’s staying with me!’ I heard my mother bawl from across the room.
As nice as it was to be fought over, that really did settle it for me. ‘I’m going back to New York,’ I said. ‘I’ll talk to you tomorrow.’
‘Honestly, Angela,’ Louisa said with a distinct air of huffiness. ‘One of these days you’re going to have to grow up and make some adult decisions.’
‘I know it doesn’t seem like it right now,’ I said, looking longingly at a little girl wandering by with a packet of Percy Pigs. ‘But that’s what I’m doing. Trust me.’
‘Always,’ she said. ‘I’m just gutted I’m not getting you back. You know you’re still welcome if you change your mind?’
‘I do and I won’t,’ I promised. ‘I’ll call you later, have an amazing day and I’m sorry about my mum.’
‘Not as sorry as she’ll be if she doesn’t shut up about those bloody pickled onions,’ Louisa threatened. ‘Love you.’
‘Love you too,’ I said, putting the phone down.
Breathing out, I looked up at the clock again and scanned the concourse for a ticket office. Heading for the Eurostar sign, my ballet pumps starting to slob off the back of my feet and making an attractive slapping sound, I pushed through the glass doors and approached the tired-looking man on the desk with my best ‘please help me’ smile.
‘Can I help you, miss?’ he smiled back.
I gave him the biggest grin I had in appreciation of the ‘miss’.
‘Hi. I need a ticket to Paris,’ I started, pulling out my wallet.
‘Absolutely,’ he said, tapping away at his keyboard. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, having a total flashback to doing this with Alain, twelve hours ago. ‘And when would you like to travel?’
‘Now?’
He looked up from behind the keyboard. ‘Really?’
I shrugged and nodded. ‘Yes please.’
‘Oh-kaaay,’ he said, tapping some more keys and scrolling through some more screens. ‘Last-minute shopping trip?’
‘Actually no,’ I smiled brightly. ‘I need to go and kick the living shit out of this girl who’s trying to steal my boyfriend and then tell him that I love him whether he’s having a midlife crisis or an affair or whatever and even if he says he doesn’t want to marry me or live with me, I still want to be with him. ‘
The man stared. It was possible that not everyone he spoke to at this time in the morning was so much of a sharer.
‘So I need to get there as soon as possible really.’
He stared for a second longer before breaking out into an impossibly big grin and clapping his hands together.
‘Right then,’ he yelped. ‘We’d better get you on the nine-thirty.’
‘The nine-thirty,’ I repeated, hopping from one foot to the other in a tiny dance, much to the amusement of everyone else in the ticket office. ‘How much is the ticket?’
‘Hmm, because it’s so last minute I only have business class available,’ he said, scanning the page. ‘It’s going to be £350.’
I stopped dancing. Wow. That was one way to sober me up quickly.
‘Otherwise the first economy seat I have is on the twelve-thirty, won’t get you into Paris until three-forty-five.’
‘And I still have time to make the nine-thirty?’ I asked, looking down at my credit cards.
‘Yeah, you’ve even got time to go for a coffee, just be there twenty minutes before departure,’ he leaned over the counter and whispered, ‘they say half an hour, but really, twenty is fine. If you wanted to do some shopping or get some breakfast or wash your hair or whatever.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ he looked back at the screen.
‘Just book it,’ I said, handing him my credit card.
He ran my card through the machine and I waited in front of the keypad, my fingers poised, but nothing happened.
‘I’m afraid this card has been declined.’ He pulled an exaggerated sad face at me. ‘Do you have another you could try? Or you know, a couple?’
I looked back at him with a grimace. This man was rapidly falling down my Christmas card list. Returning my attention to my wallet, I spied my Spencer Media corporate card. If this wasn’t an emergency, I didn’t know what was. And I could pay it back. It would be fine. Really.
Handing it over with bated breath, I waited for it to go through and after a split second, the machine, beeped, buzzed and ran out a small paper slip for me to sign.
‘Phew, right?’ My new-not-a-very-good friend said, passing me a Eurostar ticket wallet. ‘Make sure you pull her hair, bitches always go down when you pull their hair,’ he added with some confidence.
‘Thanks?’ I said, backing out of the ticket office slowly.
Back on the concourse, I remembered just how badly I needed the loo. Once I remembered, I really, really had to go. Luckily the toilets were right by the ticket office and with even more luck, there was no queue. I thanked the god of the ladies’ toilets and hurled myself into a stall. Relief.
Washing my hands, I couldn’t help but look at myself in the full, brightly-lit mirror and was forced to acknowledge that the Eurostar ticket man was right, I looked terrible. Even worse than I had on the train. I just wasn’t going to cut it in a potential Angela versus Solène face-off, even with the recommended hair pulling. I still had more than twenty minutes before I absolutely had to be on the train and they needed to be used wisely.
And wisdom told me that there was only one place to go. Within seconds, I was sitting at the Clarins counter in Boots, giving the make-up girl an abridged version of events and allowing her to smother my face in a variety of lotions, potions and ultimately, an awful lot of make-up. I figured I’d already crossed the line with the company card, so I paid for more or less all of the make-up (it was only polite) and hightailed it over to the dry shampoo, hairbrush and ponytail holder department. This was going to be a mission the likes of which I had never attempted before, at least not without Jenny, Erin and a small army of hairdressers. Stopping in at M&S for enough packets of Percy Pigs to feed roughly the entire train, I realized it was almost nine a.m. and I sprinted to the train. Only losing my shoe twice.
I got to the check-in line just as they started calling people to the front for the nine-thirty train, wishing I had enough time to try and call Alex again, wishing I had enough time to go and buy some knickers from M&S, and wishing that I had never been so stupid as to come to London in the first place. Clutching my passport and ticket in one hand and ramming delicious sweets in my mouth with the other, I ran my ticket through the check-in machine and followed the slightly peeved-looking attendant towards the waiting train.
I’d made it.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The journey back to Paris was painfully slow, but at least it gave me the opportunity to attempt to do something with my hair. By the time I tore out of the train doors at the Gare du Nord, I’d created something appropriately avant-garde with a skinny black Alice band and an awful lot of dry shampoo, aka the best invention since sliced bread. Actually dry shampoo must have surpassed sliced bread in the world’s must-have stakes by now, it was surely saving more women more time.
My taxi driver seemed to understand my urgency, even if he didn’t understand my directions. I repeated the name of the hotel three times in an appallingly bad French accent until I decided to write it out on the back of my Boots receipt, at which point the driver huffed, puffed and set off unhappily. The traffic was so much worse than it had been that morning. Paris had woken up and was enjoying a busy Sunday. Honestly, why couldn’t everyone be hanging out in cafés eating pastries when I needed to get through town, I huffed, high on anticipation and jelly sweets. This must be how Tania and Sasha felt all the time.
Miraculousl
y, we arrived at Rue Amelot without me leaping out of the car and killing any of the wandering tourists that thought it appropriate to cross the street in front of my taxi when the lights had already changed to green and without the taxi driver killing me for shouting out of the window at the tourists that crossed in front of us. It was a fun journey. I threw money at the driver, possibly too much, possibly not enough, and leaped out of the car and into the hotel.
‘Mademoiselle Clark?’ Alain raised his head in surprise as I dashed through the reception. ‘You did not go to London?’
‘I did,’ I called, jabbing the lift button, ‘but there was a bit of a change of plan. I don’t suppose you know if my boyfriend, um, Monsieur Reid is still here?’
‘I believe Monsieur Reid left the hotel some time ago,’ Alain said, looking really quite confused. Perfectly understandable.
‘Oh shit!’ The lift doors pinged open, but there really was no time to go upstairs. If he was already on his way to the festival, I had to get there, now.
‘Is there anything I can help you with this afternoon?’ Alain asked. I could tell by the look on his face he regretted saying the words as soon as they were out of his mouth.
‘Thing is, Alain,’ I tried the same ‘please help me smile’ that had been so effective at the Eurostar desk, ‘I need to get to Arras. In fact, I needed to get to Arras some time ago, but I made a massive cock up and went to London instead.’
‘That is quite the problem.’ Alain nodded to show he was following, which impressed me no end.
‘Right? But the thing is, I don’t know how to get to Arras. There’s this festival and I need to be there right away. Can you help?’