One Way Ticket to Paris: An emotional, feel-good romantic comedy

by Emma Robinson

  Please God let it be a misdial.

  Chapter Nine

  Laura

  The hotel lobby was large and modern. Apart from the long reception desk, there were small round tables and brightly coloured chairs filled with suits and laptops, and the air was alive with twenty different languages. Laura could see the rest of the team assembled to one side: Gabriella from Germany, André from the French office, Mark from Holland, Sylvie from Spain and Henrik from Sweden. No Paolo yet. She breathed out.

  She walked the twenty steps over to them and joined in the ‘Hello’s and ‘How are things?’ There were plenty of mumblings about the lack of sales recently, which changed into positive smiles when Robert came over. No point giving him food for thought before tomorrow’s presentations.

  ‘Good to see you, everyone!’ Tall, slim, dark and very, very smooth. Dressed in a well-cut suit and open-necked shirt, he could have stepped off the cover of a magazine. James had started to wear suits like this in the last couple of years, but his stocky frame didn’t carry them off quite as well.

  Robert waved a sheaf of papers in the air. ‘Shannon will join us at the museum later, once we’ve finished our tour. She’s made sure I know what I’m doing. Are we all here?’

  ‘We are now!’ Paolo jogged up, a little out of breath, looking very cool in a linen shirt and jeans. His hair was so dark and his top button wasn’t… Stop it. Just stop it.

  ‘Great,’ Robert held up his papers like a tour guide. ‘Let’s head!’ It was funny to hear Robert use American phrases. He must have picked them up from Shannon.

  Laura attached herself to Gabriella and Sylvie. They were speaking in Spanish and she felt guilty that they had to swap to English when she joined them. Paolo was walking with André about five metres in front; she was safe in the short term. But what were the two men laughing at? Was Paolo looking back? Why did she care? You are a grown woman. Stop acting like a teenager.

  ‘We are talking about our worries for tomorrow,’ Sylvie glanced ahead to ensure Robert was outside of audio range. ‘We think it is going to be a tough day. The sales presentations.’

  ‘Not for you, surely, Gabriella?’ Laura was surprised. Gabriella was currently the blue-eyed girl of the company. She had just secured a huge retail deal and smashed her target for the quarter. She should be happy. Not that it showed on her face.

  Gabriella shrugged, ‘I don’t think anyone is safe at the moment. Shannon told me Robert has been having big arguments with the US about our numbers. Even his job isn’t safe.’

  ‘Hey, who wants to be safe? Safe is boring.’ Dropping back to join them, Paolo had appeared at her elbow. How had she not spotted him coming? ‘Living on the edge is much more fun. Don’t you think, Laura?’ He raised an eyebrow at her. He was flirtatious with everyone and she should not be blushing like this. But the way he said her name…

  He was still looking at her intently, expecting a reply. Oddly, so was Gabriella. ‘Actually, I think safety is underrated.’

  The minibus Shannon had booked for them was just a few metres from the front of the hotel. When they got on, Gabriella and Sylvie sat together. Laura dithered; she didn’t want to end up next to Paolo. In the end, she had to sit up the front with Robert. He was checking through the paperwork Shannon had given him, so she was free to look out of the window.

  The woman on the train had been right: Paris was beautiful. Every street they drove along looked like a scene from the kind of black and white photograph you would find on a restaurant wall. A glimpse of the Eiffel Tower in the distance made her gasp: so familiar, yet so new.

  The streets were full of people; well-dressed, beautiful people. As they drove around the Arc de Triomphe and up the wide avenue of the Champs-Élysées, Laura wanted to be out there with them, wandering slowly with arms full of paper shopping bags. As they paused in traffic, she caught sight of a woman and her young daughter, just sitting on a bench, eating an ice cream. No cares in the world.

  ‘Your first time in Paris?’ Robert broke into her thoughts.

  She nodded. ‘Yes, I’ve always wanted to come.’ She could hear James’ voice in her head: Paris is such a cliché. ‘How far is it to the Louvre?’ Her stomach was full of butterflies. Worry about her order being returned, the argument with James, seeing Paolo again and now having to go to an art gallery: they were not her favourite places.

  ‘Not far. Past the Place de la Concorde and then we’re almost there. Do you like art?’

  Laura didn’t have anything against art. It was the people who liked it who had caused her some issues. ‘I don’t really know much about it, to be honest.’

  Robert lowered his voice. ‘I don’t know much about it, either. It was Shannon’s idea. She loves art galleries. Apparently she dreamed of being an artist when she was a young girl. Studied art at college.’ Robert’s eyes changed when he talked about Shannon, Laura noticed. He lost a little of his stiffness. He softened.

  Shannon had been an art student? That was surprising. Laura had shared halls with a group of art students at university and they had been an airy fairy, unreliable bunch. Particularly Liam. She shuddered at the memory.

  The minibus dropped them alongside the pyramid in front of the Louvre and Laura resisted the urge to pretend she was here to solve the Da Vinci code. Inside, the Louvre was huge. Echoed footsteps bounced from the ceiling to the floor and huge staircases swept in front of them; it would be an agoraphobic’s worst nightmare. Their tour guide met them and explained that there wasn’t time to fully explore the vast galleries but that he would take them to see two of the most famous exhibits: the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa. At least Laura had heard of them. Something to tick off the ‘Things to see before you die’ list.

  But the Mona Lisa was a bit of a disappointment. For a start, the canvas was really small; much smaller than Laura had been expecting. Secondly, it was behind a glass case and surrounded by a rope so no one could get anywhere near it. Thirdly, there was a constant flock of tourists obscuring her view. Therefore, she was trying to look at a small painting, from a distance, through glass and other people’s hair. She tried in vain to get closer but to no avail. She’d have to just buy the postcard in the gift shop and look at that.

  Gabriella and Sylvie were chatting animatedly in Spanish and Laura didn’t want to impose herself on them a second time, so she wandered away to look at some of the other portraits in the room. She slipped her mobile out of her pocket and checked her email – still no returns approval request – and then had a quick thumb through Instagram.

  Tina had posted a photograph of a passport with its number and security information blurred out. It took Laura a few moments to recognise the name: Tina Hanson. She’d written a comment – Finally changed my passport to my married name! – and tagged a few of their friends. Their married friends. Not Laura. Obviously, she couldn’t tag the saddo who’d had a boyfriend longer than any of them but just wasn’t good enough to actually attain the gold band on her ring finger. Was this some kind of ‘Mrs’ club now? Only people on at least their first surname change need apply? Did they sit around and discuss married things like… bouquets and… joint accounts and… married bloody sexual positions?

  Laura was being unfair. Tina wouldn’t have tagged her because she was thoughtful and wouldn’t have wanted to rub her (unmarried) nose in it. But Laura still wanted to throw her phone across the room, right through the crowd, right into Mona Lisa’s smug – probably married – bloody face. Or cry.

  ‘Not impressed with Mona?’ Paolo was behind her. How did he move so soundlessly?

  ‘Art appreciation isn’t really my strength.’ Laura painted on a smile, pocketed her mobile and turned to face him. ‘I was more of a maths and science girl.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Is it wrong that I wanted her to be about two hundred percent bigger?’

  Paolo grinned. ‘A lot of people say that – although they are not quite so mathematically specific. I suppose her reputation is so huge, we want her to be big
too.’ He glanced back at the portrait, ‘But what about that smile, eh? I wonder what she is thinking about.’

  Laura followed his gaze. ‘Probably, hurry up and finish, Leonardo, my bottom is going numb.’

  Paolo laughed. ‘I can see we need to work on your art education. You must come to Italy and I will take you to the Uffizi.’

  Damn those butterflies in her stomach. This was not the first time she’d had a man wax lyrical about the Uffizi Gallery. Was it that memory which made her feel so strange or the way that Paolo was now looking at her? He is just making conversation; he knows you have a boyfriend. ‘You are an art expert then?’ Laura tried in vain not to sound remotely flirtatious.

  Paolo shrugged. ‘Not an expert, just an admirer. I like to find a gallery in every city I visit. You can learn a lot about people from the things they find to be precious.’

  Laura narrowed her eyes. Was he feeding her a line? But he wasn’t even looking at her now; he was looking at the painting in front of them. Not for the first time, she wondered how someone like him had ended up selling computer hardware for a living; he should have been an artist himself, or a writer, maybe. She could imagine him on a retreat in the middle of nowhere, creating something wonderful. Pen or paintbrush in hand, shirt unbuttoned to the… Stop it!

  She shook the image from her head. Steer the conversation onto lighter, safer, territory. ‘Whereas I like to find a cake shop in every city that I visit: you can tell a lot about people from the dessert that they choose.’

  Paolo threw his head back and laughed, drawing a disapproving look from an older gentleman nearby and a different kind of look from the younger woman he was with. Five minutes in his company and Laura felt witty and attractive. How did he do that?

  The tour guide called across to them. ‘Time to move on, please.’ And then Henrik called Paolo over. Paolo winked at her and moved away.

  Laura’s legs felt a little wobbly as she followed the group. Maybe it was the amount of coffee she’d drunk today. She definitely didn’t feel quite herself. And the last thing she wanted was for Paolo to teach her about art; her one experience in that realm – with Liam – hadn’t ended well at all.

  * * *

  ‘Here, ladies and gentlemen, is Aphrodite of Milos, better known as the Venus de Milo. One of the most famous examples of ancient Greek sculpture, it is believed to depict Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty.’

  After the disappointment in the size of Mona, Laura was pleased that Venus’ proportions didn’t disappoint. Despite her lack of arms, she cut a pretty impressive figure. According to the tour guide, she was two hundred and three centimetres tall.

  ‘What do you think of her?’ she asked Paolo, who had silently reappeared beside her again.

  He nodded and held his chin in mock contemplation. ‘I wouldn’t leave her lonely.’ He winked. ‘Although I’ve heard she’s rather cold-hearted.’

  Laura nudged him. ‘Actually, I’ve heard she’s pretty ‘armless.’

  Paolo groaned and nudged her back. The hairs on her arms stood to attention. Traitors. And something weird was going on with her breathing.

  The expression on Paolo’s face changed and he made a small nod to the left of her: Robert was walking towards them. Paolo didn’t move his mouth as he whispered, ‘Quick, save yourself.’ And then slipped away.

  ‘How are things in the UK?’ Robert probably wasn’t far off two hundred and three centimetres tall himself. Although he did have arms. Which were often folded. He also had the habit of looking at you directly and deeply in the eyes as if he could read what you were thinking. He doesn’t need to know about the Boots nail varnish. Laura’s heart started to race a little. Did he know about the stock return issue?

  Robert always did this, brought up work when they were supposedly socialising. Perhaps he had learned it from a Machiavellian Management programme: 1) Get them relaxed 2) Fire off a difficult question 3) Watch them flail around like a tipped-up tortoise. If Shannon had been here, she would have distracted him to give them all a break, but she still hadn’t arrived. Laura really wanted to talk to her. And not just about this distribution customer who was threatening to return their order and destroy her sales figures for the quarter. Shannon had become a friend. One who wasn’t part of the ‘Mrs Club’, either.

  ‘Not bad, not bad. Picking up a little.’ Laura put a hand on the mobile phone in her pocket. Had they emailed through a returns document yet? Divert. Distract. ‘What time did you say Shannon was joining us?’

  Robert looked at his watch. ‘She’s going to meet us as we leave here. I’ll send her a text and find out whether she’s finished where she is.’ He smiled, with his mouth but not his eyes, as he took out his phone. ‘We’ll catch up on those sales figures later, eh?’ There was no getting one over on him.

  Laura was not a natural saleswoman. She’d originally planned to be an accountant, the same as James, but she’d known at the end of their three-year course that it wasn’t for her. She’d loved working with numbers, but the legal documents they’d had to read had made her want to pluck her eyes out after about two pages. The art history girls she’d lived with would laugh and tell her they were taking her out to rescue her from the ‘Tyranny of Numbers’.

  The life of an art history student was very different from that of an accountancy student. Laura had had classes every day – the maths in particular had been intense – but the girls in her halls had seemed to spend more time in the university bar than they had in a lecture hall. They had persuaded her to come out with them every night and it had been exciting, different, daring. She’d never met people like this at the small comprehensive she’d been to. Liam had been one of the boys on the art history course.

  If Laura had known more about art and artists, she might have read something into the fact that Liam’s favourite artist was Van Gogh – although in Liam’s defence, he had never showed a tendency to remove his body parts. There had been a lot of other warning signs, though. For a start, he’d had a very easy-going relationship with money. If he had money, he would spend it like water on whoever was in the room. If he didn’t, he was more than happy to ‘borrow’ from others or allow them to spend their money on him. Laura’s family hadn’t been poor growing up, but they hadn’t had much to spare, either. She’d been taught to be careful with money, not spend beyond her means. Still, there was something about this boy which had attracted her. He was different. Dangerous. For the first time in her life, she hadn’t played it safe. In any sense of the word. A late-night party at one of the boy’s houses. Too much cheap wine. A dark room. Deep conversation. Hot breath, whispered words. Instinct over logic. Four hands. Two bodies. And the first and last one-night stand of her life.

  The next morning, he’d waved at her across the quad, then continued to chat up the girl he was sitting with. After that, he’d been friendly but uninterested. Laura had been hurt, embarrassed and angry at herself for being so naïve.

  When you were at university, there were available men hanging from the trees, so it was only six weeks later that Laura had started seeing James. He was on her course but she’d never really noticed him before. If Liam had been a scatter graph, James was a line of best fit: a smooth, steady progression. Inexperienced and a little old-fashioned, they didn’t sleep together until over three months into the relationship – a rare feat in that permissive environment. That’s why she’d known for certain it wasn’t his when she’d discovered that she was pregnant.

  Chapter Ten

  Kate

  Hotels rooms were so wonderfully tidy, so clear of anything except the essentials. There was a walnut desk, a small wardrobe and a pristine bed that Kate would be able to sleep in all night long by herself. No snoring husbands and no midnight visits from wriggling offspring and their soggy, well-loved toys. Kate put her bag down on the bed and went to check out the bathroom. White. Clean. Empty. Perfect.

  Kate’s fantasy self would live in a whole house like this; there would be no o
verflowing kitchen drawers full of salad servers, pencil sharpeners and tiddlywinks. No walk of fire across the living room over vicious pieces of Lego. No collection of plastic lids stacked up, waiting to be reunited with their missing partner containers.

  In a previous life, she’d stayed in hotels all the time, and had been to most of the major cities in Europe for one team meeting or another. Just like that girl on the train. It had been a lot of fun, especially once Shannon had joined the crew. They’d go out dancing all night and still be up for a breakfast meeting. Once, at a nightclub in Antwerp, Kate had whispered, ‘We have to go home; I’m so drunk it feels like the floor is moving.’ Shannon had held her stomach and laughed for about twenty minutes. How was Kate supposed to have known the place had a tilting dance floor? It didn’t matter how drunk they’d been though, no one would ever have realised it the next day. She couldn’t do that now.

  She needed to text Luke, to let him know that she was here. But what was she going to say? Would she tell him everything straight away? About her plan for tomorrow? She should check the tickets first. Once she had made up her mind that it wasn’t a completely insane idea.

  It was uncomfortably quiet in here. Kate’s heart was racing again. She sat on the edge of the bed and thumbed through her mobile for some music to fill the void and calm her mind. Maybe one of the French impressionists? Like their painter counterparts – Monet, Manet, Renoir – they created a mood and an atmosphere without worrying about the details of the story. She found Erik Satie and lay back on cool sheets, letting the sounds of his Gnossienne soothe her. This was what she missed most about playing the piano. The escape. Her fingers tapped out the chord combinations on the mattress. Tim had always teased her when she did that.

  Tim. Should she tell Luke about him, too? How she’d bumped into her ex-boyfriend at the hospital that second time, and how he’d suggested that they get a coffee to ‘catch up’ and talk about ‘old times’?