The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris (17 page)

“What's happening? What's going on? Where is he?” shouted Laurent, sounding furious, as if it were my fault.

“He's in surgery,” I said, trying to sound gentle and consolatory. “They said it might take a while.”

“Why? Why is it taking a while?”

I shrugged. “I think it's difficult when…when the patient is a bit heavier than normal…”

“Is it because he's so fat? Stupid bastard. He's such a stupid bastard.” He glared around. “Where's Alice?”

“Didn't Frédéric ring her?”

“He probably wouldn't; he hates her,” said Laurent.

“Not that much, surely.”

He ignored that. “What was he doing? What were you doing with him?”

“I wasn't doing anything with him,” I said indignantly. I wasn't the one who'd let him eat himself to death for over forty years. “He asked me to go for a walk, that's all.”

“That's all? Did he stop for brandy?”

“If it was my job to stop him drinking brandy, I think somebody should have made it a bit clearer to me!” I said, almost shouting.

He stopped short. “Sorry,” he said muttering. “Sorry, that's not fair. I'm just…I'm just upset.”

“I know,” I said. “Of course you are. Hopefully they'll let us know soon.”

He looked around. “He can't…he can't die…”

“Anna,” I added helpfully.

“I knew that,” he said, putting his hands distractedly through his thick brown hair.

“You know, we haven't spoken for months,” he muttered. “He can't…it can't…”

I shook my head. “He spoke about you this morning,” I said.

“What, to say what an ignoramus I am?”

“Yes,” I said. “But in a loving way.”

Laurent's face looked gray. “Christ,” he said, looking at his watch. “Where are those doctors?”

I swallowed.

“What else?” he asked suddenly. “Why was he confiding in you? You've just gotten here…some English girl…” Then his eyes widened. “You're not…you're not connected to…”

I nodded slowly. “Claire sent me.”

He looked so feverishly furious I thought he was going to spit. “That woman!” he cursed.

“I don't think she did anything wrong,” I said quickly.

“Tell that to my mother,” he said. “When he walked out on her for some scrawny English witch that reminded him of the first one.”

“Alice is nothing like Claire,” I said stoutly.

“Well, he found that out a bit late, didn't he?” said Laurent. “He'd already wrecked our family. Too scared to mess it up again. Thank God they didn't have any children.” He snorted. Then he looked sad.

He stared again at the door, as if gazing at it might make something happen, then sighed.

“Oh God.”

Finally the door swung open. Laurent was halfway to his feet before he realized it was Alice.

She looked absolutely white, the black scarf she was wearing a slash against her pale neck, her lips devoid of lipstick and looking naked and thin, stretched in her face. A vein stood out in her throat. For the first time, I thought, she looked old.

“
What
have
you
done?
” was the first thing she said, almost hissed. It wasn't clear if this was directed at either or both of us.

“What have
you
done?” said Laurent, standing up completely this time. “You're the one who punted him around so many boring dinners and lunches with your
beau monde
chums to show him off, where he had nothing to do but get bored and eat and drink too much. You couldn't just leave him alone, could you, doing what he did best—creating and enjoying himself.”

“How would you know?” said Alice, sneering. “We never see you. You're off too busy ‘making it on your own,' except of course, oh how convenient, you appear to have a very useful last name.”

Laurent looked utterly furious for a second and a half, then turned away.

“Oh yes, we're all so concerned about his welfare now,” spat Alice, two circles of pink appearing high on her cheekbones. “Bit too late, don't you think?”

I stepped up. “Uhm, maybe we should all calm down?” I ventured. “I don't think Thierry would want us to be squabbling…bad karma?”

They both turned on me, and for a second I thought I was going to get it in the neck. Then Laurent held up his hands in resignation.

“Yes, yes, you're right,” he said. He fixed Alice with a hard stare. “I think we should put aside our differences for Thierry, do you agree?”

Alice gave a shrug so Gallic it was impossible to believe she wasn't French born and bred, and whipped out her mobile phone.

Moments later, the atmosphere was lifted somewhat by Benoît and Frédéric arriving, both of their heads down. They were so obviously miserable, it gave me something to do, to comfort them. They had closed the shop for the afternoon for the first time outside of August in forty years. Already, worried customers had come around asking if it were true, and the newspapers had been on the phone. By the sound of her, Alice was dealing with that side of things. Now all five of us stood or sat, Laurent not looking at any of us, Alice walking up and down talking on her mobile, as if making herself busy would in itself make a difference. I focused hard on the linoleum. Every minute that ticked by made me feel less optimistic.

Suddenly the doctor was standing at the door, removing her mask. Her face was completely unreadable.

- - -

Claire clutched the handle of the chair very carefully. She had tried to call Anna back—she knew there was something wrong, there had to be, she could hear it in her voice—but she couldn't get anyone to pick up the phone. She bit her lip. Monserrat, her caregiver, was fussing about cheerfully in the background, clearing up, lining up her medicine bottles for later when the community nurse would come around. Monserrat was great, but she didn't want to get into a big conversation about how she felt and what was up.

It had been her decision, when first diagnosed, not to tell people. She couldn't have explained why. She didn't want to draw lots of attention to herself to begin with; she couldn't bear to see pity in people's eyes. She never could. Not when her marriage broke up, not when she had flunked her A-levels. It felt more painful than chemo ever could. She knew on some level that it was pride; stupid pride, inherited from her father more likely than not, but it didn't make it any different.

Also, what was her ex-husband Richard going to do anyway? Drop everything and rush back and undo their entire lives? And the boys were busy. When it finally got so much and she had to tell them, they had been wonderful, and those nice girls they married, but she had always attempted to minimize any pain or discomfort so they wouldn't worry so much. She much more enjoyed the stories of what the children were doing and, sometimes, their hand-drawn cards. Anything that took her out of herself, that helped her stop thinking “cancer cancer cancer” was all for the best.

Project Anna had been the best thing she'd found to date. She had told herself it was purely about extending the girl's life experience; showing her a different way of doing things, the same way, once, Mme. LeGuarde had shown her, for Anna to enjoy her own youth. She only had the memories of the lovely girl she had been once. (And she could look back now without embarrassment; she had indeed been lovely.) These days her body was all pale folds, swollen by steroids and strong drugs, softened by childbearing and age. She felt herself starting to hang loose from her bones, her teeth softening in her head.

But then, seventeen and fair-haired and fresh—she could understand now why Thierry had been so attracted to her, even if then it had seemed completely out of the blue. Anyway, she didn't want to ruin those memories. When she'd first gotten the Internet (quite late; she'd had the prickling sensation that, even though he'd been dead many long years, the Reverend would not have approved of the Internet one bit), she had of course looked him up. And she'd found him too, still often in the pages of the French press, or in many, many cookery books and guides to Paris. His heft had surprised her, although she remembered with pleasure his gargantuan appetites for everything—for food, for chocolate, for sex and wine and cigars, and for her. It wasn't entirely surprising, she supposed, that it had caught up with him. On the other hand, she had led a blameless life of teaching and cooking healthy meals for her family and keeping her weight down and not smoking and not drinking to excess and look where she had ended up, on a ward with tubes sticking out of her, feeling like she was 190 years old, so did it matter, really, in the end?

She had idly wondered, many times, what would happen if she wrote him a quick letter—she knew where to find him, after all. But she had always stopped herself. It was ludicrous, a crush from so long ago, a two-month wonder. He must never think of her at all. She couldn't imagine anything more embarrassing than someone turning up in your life you completely forgotten ever existed. She imagined him searching his memory, trying to be polite, the awful dawning realization of how much thought she'd given him throughout her entire life, how much time. It was a ghastly idea. Until Anna had given her the perfect excuse.

- - -

1972

“There, there,” her mother had said, as she lay back in her old bedroom, with its ridiculous posters of Davy Jones and ponies. It was the room of a child, utterly stupid to her eyes now, and seeing it had only seemed to confirm how much she no longer fitted in in this place.

She
had
cried
all
the
way
back
on
the
train, on the ferry, and on the train again, even as she remembered Thierry's fervent words—do not forget me, do not leave, come back, come back. And she had promised, she really had, but she had no money and no hope and no idea of what to do, and she was trapped in a pale blue bedroom with ducks on the mantelpiece and a valance on the bed, and a school uniform hanging up in the cupboard.

Mme. LeGuarde had held her hands on the last evening, genuinely sad to see her go; Arnaud and Claudette had held on to her legs.

“I hope you have gotten a lot out of your stay,” she said, and Claire had gotten tears in her eyes and sworn that she had, that she could never be grateful enough.

“I don't want to be patronizing,” said Mme. LeGuarde, “but it is nice to have love affairs when you are young. But there will be many, you understand? One swallow does not make a summer is the English phrase, I know. You are confident now and you have learned many things on your way toward being a grown-up woman, so take these memories. But do not cling on to Paris, no? You have your own life, your own way to make. You are far too clever to hang around, waiting for crumbs, relying on other people, you understand me?”

And
Claire, struck dumb with misery, had nodded and remembered the words and she knew deep down it was wise advice. But oh, how much she didn't want to hear it. She wanted Mme. LeGuarde to say, “We cannot do without you. Forget school, come stay with us until you marry Thierry.” Even thinking something so ridiculous brought a blush to Claire.

Back
home, her mother had been so pleased to see her, but Claire felt like a stranger in her mother's arms; how could it only have been two and a half months? She was a new person. A woman of independence, who worked, then spent her evenings as she chose. How could she be expected to concentrate on algebra and verb declensions?

Her
father
had
looked
her
up
and
down. He had never particularly enjoyed Claire growing up, even though she had been as respectful and obedient an adolescent as one could find. It was evident even to his unpracticed eye that she was growing further away from him than ever. He grunted.

“I hope you haven't picked up any fancy ways in Paree,” he said. “They're loose over there.”

“She's a good girl,” assured her mother, stroking her all over. “You look wonderful, dear. So kind of Marie-Noelle to take such good care of you. She wrote to me.”

“Did she?” said Claire, looking startled.

Her
mother
smiled
a
secret
smile. It had obviously been everything she'd hoped for her gorgeous but too staid daughter.

“Don't worry, nothing bad. Apparently she was a credit to the family, Marcus.”

“Well, I would hope so,” said the Reverend, looking slightly mollified. “You would hate to be neither use nor ornament, hmm, Claire?”

Claire
nodded. It had rained all the way on the train home. After the golden heavy light of Paris unfolding onto ancient cobblestones, of verdant parks and iron railings and great churches, the bland red brick and corrugated iron of Kidinsborough, the already dripping cement of the new NCP car park and the shopping center, with its overturned trolleys outside, felt worse than ever. She couldn't believe what she was doing back there. She wished she had a best friend to confide in, for once.

Her
mother
had
made
mince
and
potatoes
for
her
homecoming, once her favorite. “I'm really not hungry,” she said to her mother apologetically. “I might just go to bed. I'm so tired.”

“Your mother has made good food,” said the Reverend. “It would be a sin to waste it.”