One Christmas in Paris

by Mandy Baggot

  ‘Ava, are you listening to me?’

  Flicking her eyes to the rear-view mirror, Ava caught her mother’s eyes. It was only then she realised Rhoda had pushed her into the back seat. Not like a celebrity. Like a child.

  She heard her mother inhale as if she were in the middle of a session of reiki. Her father had cited the abdominal breathing in the divorce proceedings and, even then, Ava had understood completely why that might be considered an irreconcilable difference.

  ‘Don’t worry, we can fix this. I know someone who can transform unspeakable hair disasters because, believe me, most top models have been there.’

  It was time to talk. ‘I’m not a top model, Mum, I never was.’

  ‘No, but you could be, if you do all the things I’ve been telling you to do for years.’ Rhoda sighed. ‘I know you haven’t been keeping to the diet I planned for you.’

  Ava closed her eyes. The brown rice had almost made her long for anorexia and she was sure you could clean limescale off a toilet bowl with grapefruit.

  ‘Ava, are you listening?’ Rhoda bit.

  She nodded.

  ‘We can fix all this. Get you back on track, yes?’ Rhoda suggested.

  She just needed to stay quiet. Just utter suitably vague responses.

  ‘The assignment in the Azores could be your big break,’ Rhoda continued. ‘But we need to get you perfect.’

  Of course she did. Because she had never been good enough. Her ears weren’t the right shape and her neckline sagged. She looked bloated if she ate breakfast before a shoot... the list was endless. And that’s why she had started inventing injuries and accidents and blaming public transport on no-shows when she was still at school. And it had worked… to a degree. There were fewer offers, despite Rhoda still sending out her portfolio. And then, after tearing up Rhoda’s diet plans and spending her wax and mani-pedi allowance on Wagamamas, they had stopped altogether. Ava was, for the moment, just the girl in charge of Twitter. But her mother, almost four years after Ava’s last, grudging, catalogue shoot, showed no signs of giving up.

  ‘You can drop me just here,’ Ava said, looking at the window and not really knowing where she was.

  ‘What? Don’t be silly, Ava. I’m taking you back home.’ Rhoda’s eyes appeared in the rear-view mirror again. ‘We need to get ready for India and the Azores.’

  ‘Mum—’

  ‘I have these marvellous little pills that really stop your cravings.’

  Ava started to pull at the door handle, no concern for the fact they were cruising through London’s festive streets. She wanted out of there, even if it meant pitching herself onto the tarmac underneath the strings of multi-coloured fairy lights and illuminated angels. It failed to open. ‘Have you put the child lock on?’

  ‘For goodness sake, Ava,’ Rhoda exclaimed, pulling the Audi into the kerb.

  Ava continued to try the door, yanking at the handle in desperation.

  ‘Calm down,’ Rhoda ordered, turning off the engine and shifting her body in her seat to look at Ava. ‘You’ll get blotchy and crease your forehead.’

  ‘I don’t care!’ Ava wailed. ‘Why would I care?!’

  She wanted out of the car. The air was getting thin like she was 30,000 feet up in a Boeing with the window open. She gave the door another push.

  ‘You’re so like your father when you‘re like this,’ Rhoda breathed.

  Ava closed her eyes. Not that same old same old. When in doubt, blame the man who’d had the good sense to escape. She swallowed. That was cruel. The breakdown of her parents’ marriage hadn’t just been Rhoda’s fault. Her father hadn’t talked, or tried, just packed a bag and handed everything over. Rhoda was good at exhausting people. But, away from that stress now, her father was unblotchy with a forehead that wasn’t creased. He smiled a lot more and went to watch Tottenham every other week. He had a girlfriend called Myleene and they spent summers in the Philippines. She suspected any heavy breathing Myleene did involved something tantric she’d rather not think about in relation to her dad.

  Anger diluting a little, Ava let out a sigh. ‘Could you take me to Debs’?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because that’s where I’m meant to be. That’s where I was going before the guy in tweed started being rude and I threw Ryvita’s finest and... you came.’

  ‘I don’t like that girl,’ Rhoda said with a sniff, pulling down the visor and checking her reflection in the vanity mirror.

  ‘Why not?’ Ava asked.

  ‘She’s so...’ Rhoda started. ‘So...’

  Ava waited, sensing the type of thing that was going to come out of her mother’s mouth.

  ‘Ordinary,’ Rhoda finished off.

  Ava’s hackles were back up, defensive on her best friend’s behalf. She opened her mouth to say there was nothing wrong with ordinary, that ordinary was safe and cosy and comfortable. She closed it again when she realised what she had already been aware of for years. Her mother thought ‘ordinary’ was a mortal sin. Why be ‘ordinary’ when you could enhance everything with a potion from the Chinese herbal shop or chicken fillets in your bra.

  ‘I know what you’re doing, Ava,’ Rhoda stated. ‘And I want you to know it’s OK. I understand.’

  Did she? A flicker of hope danced in her insides.

  ‘You were going for a short crop like Natalie Portman tried.’

  Hope fell to the bottom of her stomach like an ungraceful Sugar Plum Fairy.

  ‘The thing is, Ava, you don’t have the cheekbones for that style,’ Rhoda continued. ‘And I think you know that... so really this was just a cry for help.’

  Instinctively, Ava’s fingers went to where her strawberry-blonde shoulder-length hair should be. A good ten inches higher up and they found the short crop of platinum. ‘This isn’t a cry for help.’

  Rhoda breathed out. ‘But you’ve lost Leo.’

  Ava furrowed her brow, her mother’s tone saying so much. She had lost Leo. Not Leo had lost her. And Leo wasn’t a cute puppy who had wandered off into the woods and was roaming alone in Epping. Leo was a cheating arse who had lied to her. For months. She was better off without him. Even if it meant she would be single for Christmas... and possibly forever.

  She shifted, unable to stay enclosed in the car any longer, bearing the brunt of her mother’s pent-up wrath because Ava had never been the next Cindy Crawford. Leaping forward, she clawed her way over the gearstick and into the passenger seat.

  ‘What are you doing?!’ Rhoda yelped. ‘You’ll scratch the leather seats.’

  And that comment said it all. Ava pulled the door handle and scrabbled out, a draft of icy wind freezing her newly shorn scalp. She’d get the Tube or hail the first for-hire cab, anything rather than sit here another minute more.

  ‘Ava, get back in the car,’ Rhoda called, seatbelt restricting her from leaning too far.

  ‘No,’ she replied.

  ‘We are going to Goa. It’s going to be nothing but chanting and mung beans. Your soul is going to be just as cleansed as your dermis, I promise.’

  She didn’t want her soul cleansed. The only thing she wanted to scrub away was this constant feeling of inadequacy. But the problem was, she had never been able to say no to her mother. She’d always had to look for another way out, or make something up. A sprained ankle or overdosing on Kettle chips and going up a dress size. And this time wasn’t any different.

  Ava pulled her coat closed, teeth chattering as the evening’s dropping temperature touched every uncovered inch of her. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ she stated as softly as she could manage.

  ‘What time?’

  Ava swallowed, holding on to the door of the Audi as her mother’s eyes, false eyelashes to rival Nicole Scherzinger, looked back, waiting for an answer.

  ‘Schedule in eleven o’ clock,’ Ava responded. ‘Goodbye, Mum.’

  Without waiting for Rhoda to work up a response, she pushed the door hard and watched it slam shut, closing out her mother’s opening an
d closing mouth and the rose-gold earrings circa pictures she’d seen of Grace Jones in the eighties. Then she about-faced and headed off towards the line of hanging snowflake lights suspended from the railway bridge.

  * * *

  Cabs were hard to come by on a Friday night and Ava’s cluttered bag wasn’t giving up her Oyster card so, by the time she’d walked across the borough and made it to Debs’ front door, she was colder than a character from Fortitude.

  She knocked – hands red and swollen from the frosty air – and within a few moments the door was flung open, Debs appearing in a Christmas jumper and a skirt with flashing lights. The sweater pronounced ‘No rein here, deer, just snow’ with a motif of two glittered-up reindeers, hooves in the air, looking like they were about to perform something choreographed by Michael Flatley. The skirt was glowing on and off with a multitude of colours and, for a second, Ava was blinded.

  ‘Ava!’ Debs exclaimed, as if Ava was Father Christmas himself. ‘Goodness, you didn’t have to go to so much trouble with the wig! Is it meant to be Cruella De Vil or Elsa from Frozen?’

  Before Ava could open her mouth to say anything, Debs had stepped forward and pulled her into a bear hug. Large plastic candy-cane earrings almost took out one of Ava’s eyes. She closed them, relishing the scent of LUSH products and eau de Lambrini as Debs hugged hard.

  ‘It’s not a wig,’ she whispered.

  Debs let her go then, standing back and staring at her, eyes focussing on her scalp as if looking for the weave.

  ‘It’s not?’ Debs said, voice still a little uncertain.

  Ava shook what was left of her remaining hair. ‘Leo was cheating on me,’ she began, ‘with the girl I told you about.’ She sniffed. ‘The one who looks like Ferne McCann. And’ – she looked up at Debs – ‘I went to Waitrose to get red wine and Christmassy crisps and I threw things at a really rude man and security came and then... my mother and...’ With every word that passed her lips her breath was becoming shorter and shorter, each piece of rotten drama suddenly activating inside her. Her eyes began to smart with tears to the strains of Greg Lake’s ‘I Believe in Father Christmas’ filtering out from the house. ‘My mother wants to take me to Goa, then the Azores,’ she continued. ‘After she’s fed me lentils, plastered me in Clinique and fitted me with a hair integration.’

  ‘Don’t say any more,’ Debs ordered, gathering Ava up in a warm hug she’d delivered so many times before when the going got tough at home, school, or wherever and whenever Bitchy Richy Nicola in the year above had decided to verbally attack her. ‘I know what we’re going to do.’

  Ava closed her eyes and took comfort in the gesture before releasing Debs. ‘Pickle our livers in Kopparberg?’ She pressed her index fingers to the escaping tears before they froze.

  ‘Yes!’ Debs answered enthusiastically. ‘And wait until you taste the homemade damson wine Ethel brought round. She said she made it in 1988 and I totes believe her.’

  Ava let a small laugh escape. ‘Maybe it will make my hair grow back.’

  ‘I like your hair,’ Debs said, pulling Ava closer as she stepped into the house. ‘It’s very... European.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes, and that’s a good thing,’ Debs continued, pulling Ava into the house and closing the door on the dark and the freezing air.

  ‘It is?’

  ‘Yes, because it’s going to go beautifully in Paris,’ Debs said, putting her arm around Ava’s shoulders. ‘First come and say hello to everyone and start marinating your internal organs.’ She smiled. ‘Then we’ll get online and book you on my Eurostar. What you need is a change, Ava. France to be exact.’ Debs waved a hand like she was depicting an artist’s landscape. ‘The Parisian air, the French food... the French men.’

  ‘You need someone to help you with your latest article, don’t you?’ Ava guessed.

  Debs’ smile wobbled.

  ‘Debs?’

  ‘Is it that obvious?’ she asked with a sigh and a light laugh.

  ‘Just a bit.’

  ‘I was going to ask you anyway. Before’– Debs stopped briefly – ‘the TOWIE woman and the cosmopolitan hair.’

  Ava smiled at her friend. ‘In that case... have you got any Stella?’

  6

  Rue de Rivoli, 4th Arrondissement, Paris

  Julien stood in front of the Saint-Jacques Tower as the snow began to settle on the pavement. It was the earliest he had made it out of his apartment in months. Not only was it still light, it was before lunch, and around him the city was in full swing. Buses, cars, sliding over the thin coating of snow on the roads, wipers swishing the flakes away from windscreens.

  The last couple of days had passed without unusual occurrence. Didier had called. He hadn’t answered. He had people-watched from his Juliette balcony, eaten from cans when his stomach protested and drank from bottles when his memories got overwhelming. But now, he was here, his camera around his neck, looking at one of the monuments he’d always admired. The monument in the photo he’d forgotten all about until he found it, loose at the bottom of a box of Lauren’s things. There it had been last night, under her favourite cranberry-red, woollen beanie, the corner of it stuck inside a well-thumbed copy of a Jackie Collins novel. He’d pulled it out, his sister’s vibrant smile like a punch to his gut. He’d stared at the picture until his eyes ached, hoping somewhere in the depths of him that looking would bring her closer again.

  He tilted his head a little, eyes raising upwards with the gradient of the building. It was beautiful. A creamy white guardian standing over the street below, it’s flamboyant Gothic design representative of the Parisian ways. Gargoyles gurned down along with the sculptures of saints and the four evangelists – lion, bull, eagle and man – on each corner of the tower. Julien tipped back his head, the camera to his eye and clicked.

  The almost insignificant little noise his camera made caused a tightening of his core. It was the first time he had heard that noise in so long. That tiny sound used to be as present in his life as breathing. He lowered the camera and took a long, slow breath, his gaze going from the tower to the street around him. The city always carried on. Resilient, brave, caught up in living. He watched a line of school children walking along the pavement led at pace by their teacher. Cheeks red with cold, woollen hats on their heads, breath dancing in the air as they chatted with excitement. Fearless and innocent in a changing world.

  Could that be a theme for him? Contrast? Like night versus day? Dark versus light? The old flamboyance of the Tour de Saint-Jacques compared to the modern Pompidou Centre only a few streets away? He wasn’t sure how he felt about the Pompidou Centre with its steel supports and air ducts. It might make the inside uncluttered for the museum, but was its outside beautifully different or downright ugly?

  Beauty. Now that could definitely be a theme. It was different things to different people. One person’s view, appreciated by their eyes, held in their heart. It was certainly a better idea than capturing a naked Didier with a kitten. He smiled, a genuine reaction brought on by thoughts of his carefree friend prancing nude around the steps of a French church. And then it started, a rolling, unstoppable sensation that filled every inch of his insides. Laughter, uncontrollable laughter. A ray of winter sunshine hit his cheeks and suddenly it was like he had been reawakened. He was here. He was alive. He stretched out his hands, palms to the sky, letting the snowflakes fall onto his skin as his head tipped back. Beauty. Resilience. Life. It was still there. The little things. The smallest pleasures. He had his theme.

  7

  Debs’ house, London

  ‘So, are you sure you girls have got everything you need?’

  It was Debs’ mum, Sue, who had asked the question and Ava answered by holding up her passport. Sue had come round early with tins of treats for them to eat on the train – sandwiches, cakes and cheese straws. She was also in charge of feeding Debs’ fish while they were away.

  Sue laughed, her wavy blonde hair shaking in response. �
��Clothes, Ava? Something to keep you warm?’

  ‘I happen to know that your daughter has a fine selection of jumpers I can borrow if I get cold, and besides, I can’t go home again just now.’

  She had been avoiding her mother’s phone calls for the past two days and sneaking about between dusk and dawn so there was no chance of her being kidnapped by Rhoda and put on the next plane to India.

  ‘I really think you should call your mum, Ava. She’ll be worried about you,’ Sue said softly.

  Ava looked up at Sue. Hair held off her face by a claw clip, make-up natural and at least three tones less orange than Rhoda’s. She was wearing a pencil skirt and quite a funky animal-print blouse. Modern, tasteful, nothing designer, her smile warm and genuine. Debs’ mum had virtually adopted Ava and she had been coming here for comfort and real food since senior school. There was no calorie counting in this house, just a never empty biscuit tin and pizza on Saturday nights. Here there had never been any expectations. Just an accepting welcome, an old comfy sofa and a listening ear if asked for.

  ‘I’ll call her from the train station,’ Ava offered. She wouldn’t. But she didn’t want to make Sue party to this, and it would make her feel better. If she actually believed her.

  ‘Promise me, Ava,’ Sue added, eying her with suspicion.

  There was no getting away from it now. She couldn’t make a promise.

  ‘I can’t call her,’ Ava stated. ‘If I call her she’ll make me go to India.’

  ‘I’m sure she won’t—’ Sue began.

  Debs entered the kitchen, pushing a wheelie case, a giant holdall on her back. ‘She will, Mum. This is totes the best way. Ava needs to disappear.’

  ‘Disappearing is perhaps a drastic way of putting it,’ Ava said.

  ‘Shall I call her?’ Sue suggested. ‘Maybe when you’re in the tunnel, actually under the water—’

  ‘No!’ Ava and Debs said at once.