Lisette's Paris Notebook Page 16

  ‘The evidence?’

  ‘Not gruesome evidence,’ Ami said, ‘not our kind of evidence. It’s just little things. There were dumpling wrappers in her fridge and a new cookbook on her shelf – on making dumplings. Also a book on creatives and blogging. Vinh kind of things.’

  ‘Wow.’ I was stunned.

  ‘I’m only surprised it hasn’t happened before,’ Ami said thoughtfully, ‘but then I worked out that for those first years of high school Vinh wasn’t even in Victoria. So I guess they’ve never really met properly. She’s waved at his car. He’s waved at her window. How romantic does that sound!’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘You’re not really jealous, Lise?’

  ‘Of course not!’ I lied.

  ‘So who are you falling in love with?’ Ami said. ‘Is it still that artist?’

  I sounded so shallow when Ami put it like that. ‘No, but I’m sticking to boys in the arts field,’ I said, aiming for flippancy.

  ‘That’s right, Vinh said there was an antique dealer?’

  ‘How does Vinh know?’

  ‘I told you,’ Ami said patiently, ‘they’re dating. Your mum tells him things, he tells me things.’

  ‘It sounds very cosy,’ I snapped.

  ‘Come on, stop being snarly and tell me about him.’

  ‘He’s . . . I don’t know. He’s just funny and sweet and kind of carefree. No, nonchalant. That’s a better word. Even though he’s really caring.’

  ‘Nonchalant is okay,’ Ami said after the Skype pause, ‘so long as he isn’t nonchalant with your heart.’

  ‘He’s not like that. He lives with his uncle. But he goes back to England in ten days.’

  ‘You should go, too,’ Ami said instantly, ‘you could have a blissful time in England. God, Lise, you could even stay there.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, I’ve got a return ticket. I come home in less than six weeks.’

  ‘You can change it.’

  ‘I can’t change it. Remember all those terms and conditions?’

  ‘So it costs money.’ Ami waved that away with a careless, weirdly slow-motion hand. ‘You’ve got money.’

  ‘No, I haven’t. I mean, I have enough to last me out in Paris. But not to change the stupid ticket.’

  ‘You might have your inheritance,’ Ami said. ‘There was a letter from your lawyer on the kitchen bench.’

  ‘Mum didn’t mention that!’

  ‘Well, she hasn’t opened it. She won’t open it, Lise. It’s yours. But it’s probably to tell you about the money.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Check your bank balance,’ Ami advised. ‘Have you even done that since you’ve been away?’

  ‘Only my travel account.’

  ‘Well, check your real one and see if anything has been paid in. They’d just do that, wouldn’t they?’

  I tried to remember the first letter I’d received. ‘Yeah, I think so, but they said it would take time. They have to advertise the will and all sorts of other stuff.’

  ‘It’s been ages,’ Ami said.

  ‘Not legal ages.’

  ‘Well, he sounds absolutely right for you. I’d go to England with him – even for a weekend.’

  ‘I’m not going,’ I said sharply. ‘I don’t even know if he was really serious.’

  ‘Did he really ask you?’ Ami asked

  ‘It was just a throwaway line,’ I said.

  ‘I wish it was the kind of offhand thing boys said to me,’ Ami said and then told me everything about nineteenth-century English literature, which she was enjoying studying much more than economics, as if I needed to know. Right at the end she said, ‘You know, I could go and steal the letter, steam it open, read the contents and then seal it back up. Or, you could just be a grown-up and ask your mum to open it for you?’

  ‘It won’t be about the money,’ I said, ‘but, yeah, thanks for the heads-up.’

  There’s always some item of clothing you associate with a person – and I don’t mean Chanel’s jacket or Alexander McQueen’s black duck dress. I mean Madame Christophe’s scarves, Fabienne’s stilettos. I can pick a Hugo shirt from fifty paces. They are cotton, silk or linen and worn soft as skin.

  I stopped going to French lessons. Hugo and I spent an afternoon window-shopping the antique stores near Madame Christophe’s. The jewellery was more expensive than at the Porte de Vanves and displayed either on plump little cushions in the window, or in locked cabinets inside. Sometimes I knew more about the pieces than Hugo. Like when I guessed that a piece of bling was a Chanel giveaway.

  ‘Yeah, I think you’re right,’ Hugo said. ‘Who would want it, though?’

  ‘I bet one of Mum’s clients would,’ I said. ‘There’s a woman who has three vintage Chanel handbags. She’d buy it.’

  We talked about family. We talked about everything.

  ‘My dad’s a bit of a tosser,’ he said one night, as we sat together eating ice-cream in a park. ‘He’s always got an idea that he thinks will make money and it never does, of course. He’s charming, though.’

  ‘So is he your uncle’s brother?’

  ‘No, Unc’s my mum’s brother. He practically raised my mum – their mum was sick all the time and their dad wasn’t around.’

  ‘Sick from what?’

  A restaurant barge went up the river. People on board waved champagne glasses at us.

  ‘I think she was depressed,’ Hugo said. ‘They don’t talk about it much. She had migraines, they say. She drank too much. She stayed in bed all day. If you ask them anything directly they get evasive. As soon as Unc came back from the Falklands, my mum was onto him. Phone calls every day. Mental health checks every week.’

  ‘I haven’t got any uncles or aunts,’ I said, ‘or not that I know about. The women in my family are all only children.’

  ‘Attention-seekers’ – Hugo punched me lightly on the arm – ‘drama queens, divas. What about your dad?’

  ‘Not according to Mum. But how would I know? Like what if he did have a brother or a sister and she’s just wiped them from her memory? I could have cousins I don’t even know existed.’

  ‘But she told you about your dad,’ Hugo argued.

  ‘Only when she had to.’ I remembered the letter arriving. How light it was. How we’d stared at the envelope and Mum had said the solicitor’s name aloud, both of us clueless. ‘Only when he was already dead. Great, I’ve got a painting he did now. His wife sent it. But I will never know him. Her name is Sarah,’ I told Hugo. ‘My mum’s name is Sally. Sally, Sarah – a little close, don’t you think?’

  ‘Have you met her?’

  I shook my head. ‘She lives in Wales,’ I said, ‘and anyway, she’s not related to me.’ There had been a note with the painting. ‘Sarah’ had said it was unfortunate that circumstances (like my father choosing to live on the other side of the world!) had not permitted us to know each other. She said that she hoped I had inherited my father’s sense of adventure and playfulness. The sense of adventure, I’d thought, that took him away from me and my mother. The playfulness I’d never, ever seen. How could I miss a father I’d never known? But I did. I did. She’d also said I was always welcome wherever she was. As if.

  ‘I think you should meet her.’ Hugo turned to me. ‘She’ll open up part of your story to you. She can tell you what your father was like.’

  ‘I think it would be too weird.’ I hugged my arms around myself.

  ‘Life’s weird,’ Hugo said. ‘You could come to back to England with me. We could stay with Mum in Camden first and then you could meet Unc and then, when I’ve tied up some business, we could go to Wales. Easy.’

  ‘I can’t, Hugo. It’s not that easy.’ But even as I said it, I wondered – could it be that easy?

  ‘Why not? You could stay for – what? Four weeks? – then come back to Paris and still catch your plane.’

  ‘What about my French lessons?’ I said.

  ‘You’ve already missed some! Anyway, I c
an teach you French. We could speak nothing but French.’

  I thought of what Mum had said about romantic involvements. I thought about leaving London after four weeks of Hugo’s company, getting on an aeroplane and flying back to Paris and then the long-haul flight back to Australia. I couldn’t do that. If I went with Hugh to England, I’d be saying something about us, wouldn’t I?

  Weren’t those unspoken words already resonating in the way my fingertips traced the long veins inside his pale arms and held the sides of his face when we kissed? Wasn’t each kiss saying something about us?

  He dropped the subject and each kiss became more urgent, as though our mouths knew what our hearts were refusing to admit. It was as though we needed to know everything about each other, from the surface of our skin to the inside workings of our minds and history. I’d never asked anyone so many questions or answered so many myself. What was happening to me?

  I showed him photographs of Mum’s studio and he studied them attentively, admiring the Art Nouveau sweep of the front. He peered at the interior shots and said, ‘Wow! Paper patterns, hung up properly. That’s class, Lise.’

  In return he told me his favourite Roald Dahl story about a valuable Chippendale chest of drawers being cut up by people who had just sold it to an unscrupulous antique dealer. They were worried it wouldn’t fit in his car but he was actually cheating them.

  ‘That’s awful,’ I said when he’d finished.

  ‘You, Unc and I,’ Hugo said seriously, ‘we don’t laugh at the story. Everyone else thinks it’s hilarious.’

  He told me about weekends spent visiting the Victoria and Albert Museum, when he could get away from the shop to visit his mum and sister back in Camden, and how he was researching the sixties. ‘Everyone has to have a period, you know? A small but significant collection to call their own. The fifties is already out of my price range. I’m thinking the futuristic sixties. There are real gems out there. Imagine a world without mobile phones or Google. The future people were imagining then is nothing like now.’

  When I heard the chimes of the shop ringing, I’d rush down the stairs, hoping it was him. He’d stand there, chatting to Madame Christophe, patting Napoléon and then we’d saunter out, arms wrapped around each other into the Paris afternoon or evening. We’d sit by the Seine, swinging our legs and talk until something he said, or I said, or the way he smiled, stopped us talking. We’d kiss and kiss. I’d feel his heart beating through the thin cloth of his shirt.

  With Ben it had been all about sex. We’d kissed until my jaw had ached and my lips were dry. I’d wanted his hands all over me. We talked on and on about how we had to do it, because we loved each other. But it was impossible – Mum never went out and he had three younger brothers who were always around. When he got his licence, he’d borrowed his mum’s car, to take me to the movies, he said. Being able to borrow the car was his reward for getting his licence first try. But really, our reward had nothing to do with the movies!

  I hadn’t told Hugo about Ben. I hadn’t even invited Hugo to stay the night with me. I wasn’t sure how. He’d apologised for not asking me to his place but I knew it was just a couch at his uncle’s friend’s studio. That was clearly when I should have asked him to spend the night at my apartment. I’d been tongue-tied and unexpectedly awkward, cursing myself later. Why was I so stupidly shy at that precise moment?

  ‘I didn’t know what to do,’ I said to Goldie and Mackenzie.

  They had claimed me for some girl time. There was a beatbox band playing at the Tuileries. It was some kind of German music festival, and I hesitated in case we bumped into Anders, even though he was no longer important. Friendship and crepes won out hands down.

  ‘You just say to him, please stay the night,’ Goldie said. ‘What’s the problem with that?’

  ‘I know, but I was scared . . .’ I stopped.

  ‘You are making a problem where there is no problem,’ Goldie said.

  ‘I know that, Goldie. It just felt – feels – like a big thing.’

  ‘It is, then,’ Mackenzie said. ‘Whether it is a big thing or it isn’t, if you feel it is, then it is, because that’s what your emotions are telling you.’

  ‘That is so American,’ Goldie complained. ‘I don’t even know what you’re trying to say.’

  ‘It’s Canadian,’ Mackenzie said. ‘I wish everyone wouldn’t confuse us with them. It’s disheartening.’

  We walked down to the pond and watched the kids, pushing little sailing boats around with their long sticks.

  ‘We used to make paper boats,’ Mackenzie said dreamily, ‘every solstice. In summer, my mum would take us down to this picnic place. We’d make paper boats and write our wishes on them and then we’d sail them down the river. In winter, we’d write our wishes on paper and Mum would hang them carefully from a tree. Every morning, when I ate breakfast, I’d watch as my wishes twirled around in the wind.’

  ‘That’s so Canadian,’ Goldie said.

  ‘But not American,’ Mackenzie said triumphantly.

  ‘Anyway, we couldn’t do that here. There’d be a law against it.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Mackenzie said, ‘it would be like sitting on the grass. So many parks where you can’t lounge around! So French. But we could hire some of those toy boats? We could tell our Paris wishes to our boats and set them sailing.’

  ‘It costs money,’ Goldie said.

  ‘And won’t it seem odd?’ I asked, even though I wanted to do it. The vintage boats looked magical and the children were like characters in a storybook. I wanted to be like them, not worried about anything except the fate of my little wooden boat.

  ‘Who cares?’ Mackenzie said. ‘I’ll shout. I’m a Canadian. That’s what we do.’

  ‘You can’t shout all of us,’ Goldie argued. ‘That’s not Canadian. That’s just foolish.’

  ‘I can, Goldie, and I will. Come on.’

  Against all our protests, Mackenzie hired us each a boat and we took them down to where there were the least kids around.

  ‘Now,’ Mackenzie said, ‘you have to whisper your wish to your boat and set it sailing into the world. Except of course, it’s not really the world – but hey, it’s the French way and we can adapt.’

  I don’t know what the others asked for. I stood there in the bright sunlight and I thought about my wish for what seemed like a long time. I didn’t want to get confused. Madame Christophe had told me that most of her clients didn’t even know what question it was that they wanted answered. I wasn’t going to squander my boat wish on something I didn’t really want. It made it difficult. Mackenzie and Goldie had already launched their boats by the time I shoved mine out into the water. In the end I sent it into the pond without wishing for a single thing. How lame was that?

  MORE RULES

  All designers break rules. Coco Chanel took off her corsets and wore her signature pearl necklace backwards. Schiaparelli wore a shoe on her head. Vivienne made safety pins a fashion accessory. All artists break rules. Obedience doesn’t create masterpieces. But nor does it create failures. It’s like sewing with a pattern. You end up with something that looks like the illustration on the packet. More or less. It might not be the skirt you dreamt about, the one that swirled and swished and danced with you, but it will fit. Obeying rules means everyone is safe. More or less. But what about the rules you make yourself? Can you break them?

  Hugo extended his stay by three days. ‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘I’ve cleared it with Unc. I can’t leave yet.’

  I skipped another French class to celebrate and Hugo and I went to Versailles for the day.

  ‘It’s extraordinary,’ I said so many times that Hugo stopped counting.

  ‘Imagine having just one of those vases!’

  ‘Or sleeping in those beds!’

  ‘Sneaking through the corridors to visit your lover.’

  ‘I’d get lost,’ I said.

  ‘You’d need Google Maps!’

  We kissed near each fount
ain. I told Hugo it was an Australian superstition.

  ‘You’re just taking advantage,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t hear you complaining.’

  ‘I think it’s a Camden thing that you need to do it twice,’ he answered.

  ‘I’m not objecting,’ I said.

  It couldn’t last. He would have to go back to work. I had to get on with my life.

  ‘We miss you,’ Mackenzie said. ‘You’re the best student in the class. Fabienne misses you.’

  ‘She doesn’t even like me,’ I said.

  ‘She does, actually,’ Goldie said. ‘She likes anyone with a good accent. She asked after you on Tuesday. She said, “Where is the Australian?” and then she raised an eyebrow at Anders and said, “I hope you haven’t scared her away.”’

  ‘Oh no!’ I said. ‘What happened next?’

  ‘I told her that on the contrary,’ Mackenzie said, ‘au contraire, you’d met someone. I was pretty pleased with the au contraire. You need to come back, Lise, if only to say goodbye.’

  ‘I’m not leaving for another four weeks,’ I protested. ‘I just need to be with Hugo while he’s still here. You know that.’

  They talked me into it.

  I didn’t want to see Anders. Somehow I felt that would taint the relationship I was building with Hugo. Would it be better to see him again when Hugo had left? The thought of Hugo leaving made me desolate. How was it even going to work? I’d go to the railway station and we’d cling together until the train tooted? I couldn’t even think about it.

  On the morning of the Great Return I was nauseous. I gave half of my breakfast croissant to Napoléon and then wondered if I felt sick only because I was actually hungry. Even my Falbalas shirt couldn’t give me courage.

  Madame Christophe regarded me sharply. ‘You are returning to Fabienne’s class?’ she asked eventually. It no longer completely shocked me when Madame Christophe knew things that I hadn’t told her.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, pouring another coffee for myself and adding a big splash of milk. ‘It seems like time. Anyway, Hugo has a client to see.’