The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris (3 page)

“Well, it's all decided,” she said, as the Reverend looked up from his grapefruit half.

“What?” he growled.

“For the summer. Claire has been invited to go and
au pair
.”

Claire
had
never
even
heard
the
expression.

“You're going to nanny. For my pen pal.”

“That French woman?” said the Reverend, folding his
Daily Telegraph
. “I thought you'd never met.”

“We haven't,” said Claire's mother proudly.

Claire
looked
from
one
to
the
other. She didn't know anything about this. “Who is it?”

“Well, I have a pen pal,” said her mother, and Claire suddenly remembered the Christmas cards that arrived with
Meilleurs Voeux
written
on
them. “From school. When I was eleven, we all got pen pals. Like you, remember?”

Claire
remembered, guiltily, that she had stopped writing to Jerome in Rouen before she had turned fifteen.

“Oh, yes,” she said.

“Well, Marie-Noelle and I have kept it up…here and there of course, not very often. But I know she has two children now, and I wrote to her and asked if she would like to take you for the summer. And she said yes! You will look after the children; she has a cleaner she says here…goodness.”

Her
mother's face went a little strained.

“I hope they're not terribly posh,” she said, looking around at the very nice but plainly furnished vicarage. A churchman's stipend didn't go terribly far, and Claire had always known better than to expect new things. It wasn't until much later in her life that Claire reflected as to whether her bright, spirited mother had ever regretted falling in love with the committed, passionate young reverend, and the life that followed it. But Claire lost her beloved mum far too young, a victim of the cancer that had already set itself ticking in her own DNA.

“I don't care if they're posh. Are they decent people?” asked the Reverend.

“Oh yes,” said her mother cheerfully. “There's a little boy and a little girl, Arnaud and Claudette. Aren't those the loveliest names?”

Claire's heart was starting to race.

“Where…whereabouts in France?”

“Oh, sorry, where's my head?” said her mother. “Paris, of course.”

T
he settlement from the chocolate factory was not at all life-changing. It was barely anything-changing once I'd paid off my credit card. I wondered if maybe we should have gotten more, seeing as I now walked with a pronounced limp and had nearly died and everything, but they said that bit was the hospital's fault. The hospital said I was getting better now and getting me better was technically all they had to do really, and I did mention to Dr. Ed that actually if the hospital hadn't let me get so sick, they would have been able to reattach my toes. He had smiled and patted my hand in the manner of doctors he'd seen on television and told me if I ever had any questions, just to go right ahead, which completely bamboozled me as I thought I'd just asked one, and then he gave me a smile and a wink—I have no idea what the wink was, maybe it was his “style”—and floated on to sit on Claire's bed.

It was time to go home. After dreaming of being set free for so long, I suddenly realized I didn't actually want to go. Or rather, that it would be weird to lose the institutionalized days of drugs and meals and physio and not having to focus on anything else but getting better.

Now I had to face the world again and find a new job. It was a feature of the settlement that I didn't go back to Braders, presumably in case I had another one-in-a-million freak accident. If anything, I would have thought I'd have been a safer bet than other people, statistically speaking.

And I was going to miss Claire. We'd chatted more and more in French, to the annoyance of almost everyone, and it was truly the one good thing in my life, demonstrating that I could learn something, that I had a new skill. Everything else was just dread. There weren't any jobs, I knew that much. Cath said I could come and sweep up in the hairdressing salon, but that paid about absolutely nothing, and I wasn't that good at bending down without falling over yet. On the upside, I'd lost about fifteen pounds. That was the only upside. But I wouldn't recommend my method of losing the weight.

I told Claire about my worries, and she looked pensive.

“I've been thinking,” she said.

“What?”

“Well,” she said, “I knew…I knew someone in Paris who worked in chocolate. It was a long time ago though. I don't know what he's doing now.”

“Ooh,” I said. “A young flirtation?”

Her thin face took on a little color.

“I don't think that's any of your business.”

“Where you madly in loooove?”

We'd gotten to know each other well enough that I could tease her, but she could still get a teacherly glint in her eye. She did so now.

“He is not very good at writing letters,” she mused, glancing out the window. “But I will try. I shall ask Ricky to use that email thingy when he comes. You can find anyone these days, can't you?”

“You can,” I said. “But if he's a friend of yours, why haven't you gone back to Paris for so long?”

Claire's lips pursed.

“Well, I was busy raising a family. I had a job. I couldn't just jump on a plane whenever I felt like it.”

“Hmm,” I said, suspicious. She was very touchy all of a sudden.

“You could though,” said Claire. “You can do whatever you like.”

I laughed. “I don't think so. Hopalong Cassidy, that's me.”

- - -

I realized later that the impact—the emotional impact—of the accident didn't really hit until I went back home to Mum and Dad's. In the hospital I'd been, well, special, I suppose. I'd gotten flowers and gifts and was the center of everyone's attention, and people brought me drugs and asked after me, and even though it was kind of horrible, I was being taken care of.

Home, though—it was just home. The boys clattering in late at night, grumbling because they had to share a room again; Mum fussing around, steadily predicting doom for my chances of finding another job and how they would cut disability living allowance, to which I said, “Don't be stupid, I'm not disabled,” and we both looked at my crutches, and then she would sigh again. My face in the mirror: my pale blue eyes looked so tired, and my fairish hair, without its usual highlights by Cath, just looked colorless. I had lost weight, but because I hadn't moved around at all, I just looked slack and saggy sometimes. I used to love putting makeup on to get ready for a night out, but it had been so long I'd kind of forgotten how, and the drugs had made my skin so dry.

That's when I really got sad. I cried in my little childhood bed, I slept later and later in the morning, and I got less and less interested in doing my exercises and listening to my friends' stories about new boyfriends and fall-outs and all sorts of things that sounded completely inconsequential to me now. I knew my parents were worried about me, but I just couldn't find in myself what to do; I just didn't know. My foot was slowly healing, apparently—but I could feel my toes, feel them all the time. They itched, they twitched, they hurt, and I lay awake at night staring at the ceiling and listening to the boiler make the same noises it had since my childhood and thinking, “What now? What now?”

- - -

1972

Her
mother
had
wanted
to
accompany
her, have a “girls' day out” in London, but the Reverend had looked very suspicious indeed and hemmed and hawed about it. Seemingly the fleshpots of Paris wouldn't be quite as fearsome as the den of iniquity that was London—he hadn't, she thought, quite gotten the hang of 1968—and he had numerous and repeated instructions, both from her mother and from Mme. LeGuarde on the telephone, that the house was extremely traditional and strict and that it would be nothing but childcare and learning another language, a refinement in young ladies the Reverend did approve of. So after several lists and imprecations about how she was expected to behave—Claire was already absolutely terrified of Mme. LeGuarde; her mother made her sound posh, rich, and demanding, and Claire didn't know how she was going to cope with small children she could barely talk to—he had driven her to the railway station one spring morning, the sky already threatening large amounts of rain.

Already
excited, she opened her Tupperware sandwich box as the train pulled out of Crewe, nervous and jittery and filled with the sense that she was leaving, going on a journey, by herself, and that it was going to be vastly important.

Rainie
Callendar, the school bully, had cornered her before school broke up.

“Off to get even more stuck up?” she sniffed.

Claire
did
what
she
always
did. She kept her head down as all Rainie's cronies burst out laughing and moved away as quickly as possible to try to escape their gaze. It rarely succeeded. She decided in herself, she couldn't wait for the holidays. However much she was going to get locked in a cupboard looking after French brats, it was still going to be better than bouncing between here and the Reverend.

Inside
the
box
was
a
little
note
from
her
mother.

“Have a wonderful time,” it said. Not “Behave yourself” or “Don't forget to clean up after yourself” or “Don't go out alone.” Just “Have a wonderful time.”

Claire
was
quite
a
young
seventeen. She'd never really thought about her mother's life in any terms, apart from the fact that she was just there, providing meals, cleaning their clothes, agreeing with the Reverend whenever he had something new to say about the long-haired youths with hippie values that had reached even Kidinsborough. It didn't cross her mind that her mother might have been jealous.

- - -

Claire
was
nervous
getting
on
the
ferry, terrified she wouldn't know what to do. It was absolutely huge. The only boat she'd ever been on was a paddle boat at Scarborough. The great white ship seemed to her romantic—the smell of the diesel, the great honk of the horn as it came alongside the huge terminal at Dover, lined with adventurous-looking people with station wagons piled high with tents and pegs and, even more exotically, Citroën 2CVs with real French people opening their picnics (a lot more exotic than Claire's meat paste sandwiches) with actual bottles of wine and glasses and long sticks of bread. She gazed around at everyone, drinking it in, then went up to the very front of the boat—it was a blowy day, white clouds flicking across the sky. She felt the breeze in her face and looked hungrily back toward England (her very first time leaving it) and forward toward France and thought she had rarely felt more alive.

- - -

“Come and have a coffee,” the message from Claire said on my phone. She'd been discharged, temporarily, and she sounded a little breathy, a little tentative, and I called her back—this was one thing I could manage—to arrange for us to meet up in the cozy bookshop coffee shop, where I thought she'd be more comfortable.

Her nice daughter-in-law Patsy dropped her off and made her promise not to buy too many books. Claire had rolled her eyes when she left and said she loved Patsy, but everyone seemed to equate being sick with being four, and then she remembered she didn't have to tell me that, and we cheered ourselves up by doing imitations of Dr. Ed sitting on the bed doing his empathizing.

Then there was a pause during which, in a normal conversation, someone would have said, “Hey, you look well” or “You've cut your hair” or “You look healthy” (code for “Cor, you've gotten fat,” as everybody knows), but neither of us could say anything. In the hospital, with its crisp white sheets and Claire's neat, spotless cream pajamas, she didn't look well, but she seemed to belong there. Out here in public, she looked terrifying. So thin that she might break, a scarf tied artfully around her head that served only to announce “I've had cancer for so long I've gotten really good at tying scarves,” a smart dress that would have looked rather nice if it had fitted her but clearly didn't as she was far too thin, and drawn-in cheekbones. She looked…wow, she looked sick.

I got up to go fetch us some coffee and some chocolate brownie cake, even though she had said she didn't want any, and I said she would when she tasted the homemade stuff they did in here. She smiled thinly and said, “Of course, that would be great,” in a way that wouldn't have fooled a horse. I was conscious of her eyes on me as I limped across the floor. I still wasn't at all confident with my stick and had basically decided to get rid of it. Cath kept trying to get me to come out, saying that everyone was dying to hear all about it, but that thought filled me with total horror. I did though desperately need to get my hair done. And some new clothes. I was in my daggiest old jeans and a striped top that had been absolutely no effort whatsoever, and it showed.

“So,” she said when I was back. The lady had agreed to bring over the tray, thank goodness. We shared a look.

“We're like the old nag's corner,” I said, and Claire smiled. The lady didn't. I think she was very concerned that we were about to throw up or fall over in her lovely café. The chocolate brownie cake was exceptionally good, though, and worth all the weird looks we were getting.

“So…” Claire suddenly flushed a little and looked excited. “I got a letter.”

“An actual letter?” I said, impressed. I never got letters, just instant messages from Cath telling me some bloke was either totally fit or a right turd or both.

She nodded.

“Well, more of a postcard…regardless. He said he does need a new factory worker, yes. And I know of an apartment where you could stay.”

I looked at her, totally taken aback.

“What?”

“Well, I didn't…I didn't think you'd actually do it,” I said, stunned and touched. “I mean, go to all that trouble.”

“It was two letters,” said Claire. “I hope that's not your idea of hard work. I've talked you up quite dramatically.”

“Uh-oh,” I said.

She smiled. “It was…it was nice to hear back after all this time.”

“This was definitely a romance,” I said.

“It was definitely a long time ago,” she said crisply in her teacher's voice again.

“Don't you want to go?” I said.

“Oh no,” she said quickly. “That time of my life is well over with, quite done and dusted. And I have quite enough on my plate. But you're still young…”

“I'm thirty,” I said, moaning.

“That's young,” she said very sharply. “That's very young.”

“So, what's it like, this factory?” I said, changing the subject. Her own kids weren't much older than me and all married and settled with good jobs, and I didn't think I could handle the comparison.