by Sarah Long
If she were in England now, there was bound to be some juicy detective thing on that she could really wallow in. Or she could ring a girlfriend for a chat. Or catch up on some paperwork that she had brought home from the office. Fill in her expenses.
She switched off the TV and was suddenly panicked by the strange silence of the apartment. Those gleaming parquet floors depressed her sometimes, and there was something cold and impersonal about the high windows with their ornate iron bars. Alone in her beautiful prison, what wouldn’t she give to be back amidst the chintz curtains and fitted carpets of her cosy house in Stockwell?
But this was stupid and negative. Most people would give their eye teeth to be in her position. She went into the bathroom and performed her toilette, as she now called it, wondering whether to keep on the silky lingerie to surprise Jean-Laurent on his return from his business dinner.
In the end her need for comfort was stronger, and she settled on the winceyette nightshirt and went to bed with the memoirs of Brigitte Bardot. Brigitte was recalling her amazement that the concierge of a Spanish hotel where she was staying seemed unwilling to sleep with her. Him a nothing, given the chance of a lifetime to sleep with Brigitte Bardot, and all he could do was weep and say that his grandmother had just died. It was, she said, the first and last time that anyone had ever refused her. Laura yawned and switched off the light.
Much later, she heard the bedroom door and was aware of Jean-Laurent undressing surreptitiously in the darkened room, taking care not to wake her. As he slipped beneath his side of the duvet and hunched his back against her, she turned towards him and wrapped herself into his warm, familiar shape. After the hurly-burly of the chaise longue, she thought, the deep, deep peace of the double bed. Thank goodness she was married.
Thank goodness I’m not married, thought Asa, replacing her toothbrush and taking a swig of breath freshener. Poor old Laura must have spent hours last night preparing that disgusting looking duck, but Jean-Laurent had obviously let her down again. Asa knew this because when she got in from her meeting, she had gone in search of a late night snack and found two breast fillets festering on a plate in the fridge.
And now Laura was at it again. She’d fished out the same bit of meat and was once more trying to please her husband by cooking him up an old carcass. How sad was that? But at least it left Asa free to go out again tonight. On a rather special date.
She spat out the Listerine and looked at herself in the mirror. Twenty-four years old and fifty-five kilos heavy but you couldn’t see the fat bits in this mirror and she was not displeased with what she saw from the neck up. Fresh complexion, blonde hair hanging limply to the chin in the straggly style recently reclaimed from the 1970s. Delicate gold nose-ring which in her darker moments made her think of a fat bull being pulled into the market to be prodded and bartered over by rough farmers. Luckily there was no full-length glass in her bathroom. She needed to go into Laura’s bedroom to be confronted by the bloated reality of her silhouette, which mocked her with its obdurate folds of whale flesh, as cold and heavy as the northern seas of her native Finland.
She felt better now, purified by the expulsion of those empty calories she had so greedily wolfed down. Two family-size bars of Côte d’Or chocolate and a whole baguette now safely despatched to the Paris sewer system where they could do no harm. Leaving her free to plan a reasonable, vegetable-based meal in accordance with her fourteen-day meal plan.
Asa from Finland. She didn’t need a surname, since au pairs lived like cuckoos in the nests of their employers. Her mail was sent chez de Saint Léger, which was all anyone needed to know. Asa, the Finnish au pair, temporarily attached to Laura and Jean-Laurent and their two tiresome children. At least she could get up and leave whenever she wanted. Unlike poor Laura, trapped there for ever to watch her sons grow and flourish while she faded into obscurity. God forbid Asa would ever find herself in that position.
As au pair jobs went, hers wasn’t bad. At least she was allowed to live in the apartment, and had her own luxurious bathroom and a decent-sized room. Most of the jeunes filles were banished to the top of the building to tiny chambres de bonne with one shared toilet. That could be very embarrassing in view of her present problems, though she was making good progress thanks to Devon, her sponsor at Overeaters Anonymous. She thought fondly of his hand squeezing hers at the last meeting. The way he looked into her eyes. He felt her pain. Which made her feel doubly guilty about the bingeing session she had just indulged in.
Still, she would be able to put on a good performance for him now. They were to meet in one of the few vegetarian restaurants the city had to offer. He said it was good for her to eat in public. He would go through her meal plans with her, make sure her goals were realistic. Just the two of them. She put on a last coat of mascara and headed for the door.
Laura called to her from the kitchen.
‘Are you off out, Asa?’
There was no mistaking the pleasure in her voice.
‘Yes. I’m meeting some friends.’
‘Good for you. Have a nice time.’
Don’t patronise me, thought Asa.
‘Thank you, see you later,’ she said.
‘Well, there’s an unexpected treat,’ announced Laura as she flounced into the living room with two champagne flutes. ‘I was going to be nice to her and give her a glass, but now we’ll just have to finish the bottle ourselves. Here we are, my darling, let’s drink to a gloriously intimate evening.’
Jean-Laurent put down Le Point magazine and held the glass up to the light.
‘Is it the vintage? We’re not celebrating anything, are we?’
‘Yes we are. We are celebrating our perfect life, our happy marriage and the best decision I ever made, which was to follow you to Paris.’
Jean-Laurent looked at her suspiciously.
‘I hope this is not a case of the lady doth protest too much.’
‘You see, you’re not even English but you can still quote Shakespeare. What a catch you are, how blessed I am.’
‘What has brought this on? Not planning to leave me, are you?’
‘Ah, but always the underlying distrustfulness of the Frenchman. No, of course not. Why, are you planning to leave me?’
‘Not until I have eaten that magret de canard. I must say that from a low base you have achieved a culinary prowess that would satisfy even the most demanding mother-in-law. In fact, you might say you have become the perfect French housewife.’
‘Jean-Laurent, you know I don’t like that word.’
‘What’s wrong with it? It’s what you are, isn’t it?’
‘No, it’s not what I am. I am a rather talented account director who has decided to take some time out for the sake of her family. My mum is a housewife. She wears Ecco shoes, irons my dad’s underpants and goes to coffee mornings, bless her.’
He laughed.
‘Whereas you go to the café for your coffee, wear Manolo Blahnik stilettos and get the au pair to see to the laundry. Quite different.’
‘Please, just don’t refer to me as a housewife.’
‘All right then, how about household manager?’
‘Jean-Laurent!’
‘OK, OK, as far as I’m concerned, you’re just my lovely lady wife. Santé!’
They clinked their glasses.
‘Do you remember Penny Porter?’ said Laura.
‘Of course. Very intelligent woman, very focused. Quite sexy, too.’
‘Don’t say that! You’re meant to say hard-bitten and self-obsessed. And with all the sex appeal of a male chartered accountant.’
‘Actually, I do recall she had rather large feet.’
‘Thank you. Well, she’s had a baby.’
‘So what?’
‘I know, so what. People do. But there was a picture of her in the Daily Mail.’
‘That rag! I thought you never read it.’
‘I don’t. But there she was. In a lifestyle piece. Boring old Penny Porter the subject of
a lifestyle piece! I couldn’t believe it. Banging on about the joys of combining career and motherhood.’
‘You’re not jealous, are you?’
‘No, of course not. She chose her career, I chose lifestyle. But now she’s got both, damn her.’
Jean-Laurent sighed and sank back into the sofa.
‘Laura, stop it, this is getting boring. It was your choice. I didn’t have to take this job, we could have stayed in London, but you seemed only too keen to chuck in your career. You can’t blame her for doing what you might have done. Choices, it all boils down to choices!’
‘I know, I know, you make your bed and you lie in it. And at least I get to lie with you.’
‘At least you do.’
‘How was François?’
‘François?’
‘Your dinner date last night.’
‘Oh, François. Sorry, I was on another tangent. Yes, well . . . François was François, you know what he’s like.’
‘No I don’t, I’ve never met him.’
‘We’ll have to invite him round, then,’ said Jean-Laurent.
Though not too soon, he thought. It wouldn’t do to have Laura tripping up his favourite alibi.
THREE
Like any other urban couple with a modicum of social ambition, Laura and Jean-Laurent did dinner parties. It was essential if you wanted to count yourself part of Paris society. It was only the famous and successful who could throw up their hands in horror at the idea of sitting around a table with eight other couples. Laura thought it must be wonderful to be like those featured in Gala magazine who didn’t have to bother. ‘Je ne suis pas mondaine,’ was the claim of every famous actress who could afford to chuck an endless stream of invitation cards into the bin in favour of a quiet night in. But when you were a faceless housewife, you needed to take every opportunity you could.
Tonight they would be the guests of Francine and Dominique Duvall, who had also promised to invite Sylvie Marceau, a singer who had shot to stardom in the sixties with a song about a lollipop that she used to lick suggestively on stage beneath the leering gaze of one of those hoary old French singer-songwriters. In the UK she would have been a one-hit wonder, speedily forgotten, but the French were remarkably loyal to their celebrities and decades later she remained a fixture on the showbiz circuit, though she still managed to find time for her one-time school friend Francine. Her doctor husband was also expected, a renowned anti-ageing specialist who was thought to have performed miracles on his wife.
Laura had met Francine at an afternoon class in painting on porcelain, the hobby of choice of Parisian women with time on their hands. It was vaguely creative but didn’t require any talent, the modern equivalent of petit point. Laura had given up after a few sessions – there was something depressing about defacing perfectly decent plain china with nervously applied floral motifs.
Francine, on the other hand, was an enthusiast, and every time she entertained, her guests were confronted by yet another set of dinner plates embellished with swirls and dots. She had even opened a little shop to sell her work, but most of her business came from private sales, where friends were invited to part with their money in exchange for a few bits of china and the knowledge that they were making a sisterly contribution to the cause of new careers for middle-aged women.
A dinner party midweek was always a bonus for Laura, since it gave a focus to her day and allowed her plenty of time to prepare. In her previous life she would have gone straight from work in her office clothes, but now she could spend all morning thinking about her look, and all afternoon laying out the options on the bed. She had learned from Parisian women that the success of an outfit was all in the detail, and selecting the right bag and shoes was absolutely critical.
There was another very good reason for Laura taking more care over her appearance now than she ever had before. She had discovered that clothes were an armour, and the more elegant you appeared, the better equipped you were to deal with that terrible question. The question that Laura dreaded as much as every other non-working person. The question that hung in the air whenever strangers exchanged small talk across a bourgeois dining table. It was only a matter of time before someone would throw it at her in all its innocence:
‘And what do you do?’
Or, in French:
‘Qu’est-ce que vous faîtes dans la vie?’
When they first moved to Paris, Laura had read a book on French etiquette that said it was terribly bad form to ask people what they did. It just wasn’t done. Well, clearly she was moving in the wrong circles, because she couldn’t think of a Parisian party when she hadn’t needed to make her grotesque apology, harking back to what she used to do, and explaining about lifestyle change and the stimulating experience of living abroad.
To boost her confidence tonight, she was intending to wear the new Kenzo suit she had bought on Monday. Flattering, nipped-in jacket, size twelve, and long flowing skirt, size fourteen, that she had picked up this morning on the way back from the school run. The extra inch they had built in meant it fitted her like a glove, skimming forgivingly over her tummy and hips. It was black, like most of her clothes. More specifically, to correspond to the dictates of this season, it was Surface Black, which meant it had a bobbly texture that prevented it from being just Plain Black.
Personally, she would have chosen the cigarette trousers that went with the jacket, but she could tell from the wince on the sales assistant’s face that even with a few alterations she would still have looked like a tub of lard shoehorned into an ice cream cornet. Parisian women all looked fantastic in trousers, of course. Damn them and their tiny little bums.
They worked at it, though; every pharmacy in the city had big posters in the window promoting anti-cellulite medication. Peau d’orange was how they described cellulite – skin of an orange; or, even more unflatteringly, culotte de cheval – riding breeches, suggesting the bulging thighs of an English horsewoman, gripping the flanks of her mount as she hurtled round the point-to-point. She thought of those size ten French sticks twisting their thin lips into a moue of horror at the thought of developing horsey thighs. It was enough to keep you off the pains au chocolat for the rest of your life.
To offset the severity of the surface black, Laura had chosen a silver scarf with a red trim detail that very nearly matched her scarlet shoes. Taken with the slightly battered twinkly clutch-bag that had stood her in good stead since her college ball days, she felt it made a very satisfactory ensemble.
At six-thirty she locked herself into the bathroom, away from the noisy clatter of the children’s teatime, to begin her beauty ritual. She had bought a new lipstick from Sephora in rue de Passy, a cavernous emporium of colourful beauty products, like Body Shop but five times bigger and without the self-righteous overtones. You could bet that no French woman would risk applying a product to her precious skin that hadn’t first been tested on a pale rat in some laboratory cage.
Laura had been on a special two-day course recently to learn how to apply make-up, so she understood the importance of drawing a white line down the centre of her nose. Once you had smudged it into the surrounding foundation, you really didn’t look one bit like a Red Indian. She then took a dark brown pencil to outline her lips, and set about filling in with the new Chanel lipstick.
She stared moodily at her reflection from beneath her eyelashes, heavily blackened in the style of Princess Diana in the Panorama interview. Not too bad for a woman of her age. It was just a shame that she had to go to the dinner alone. But then it was sometimes quite sexy to arrive separately. Jean-Laurent would catch sight of her across the room and be struck by how attractive she looked. ‘Bonsoir,’ he would say, ‘on se connaît, je crois,’ I believe we’ve met.
She emerged, phoenix-like, from the steam of the bathroom and picked up her coat from the cupboard in the corridor. On her way out, she stuck her head round the kitchen door to say goodbye. Charles-Edouard waved his hand in a bored, mechanical impersonation of a g
reeting. So young and yet so cool. Could you be postmodern at the age of seven? Pierre-Louis stuck his lower lip out and looked injured at her leaving. Asa glanced up from the chicken nuggets she was disdainfully flipping on to two plates. You could tell she had a difficult relationship with food from the way she held the pan: carelessly, as though it had nothing to do with her.
‘Bye, see you later,’ she said offhandedly.
Not even a second glance to take in her generous employer’s extraordinary transformation from housewife – she would use the word – to fantastically elegant creature en route to a dîner en ville. It wouldn’t hurt her, would it, just to say something along the lines of ‘You look great’, after all the bolstering that Laura had given her in her interminable journey towards renewed self-esteem.
‘Don’t wait up, we’ll be late,’ she said shortly, before stepping out of her small, domestic arena to join the big wide world. She slammed the door and pressed the button to summon the cranky old lift.
Laura parked the car close to Notre Dame cathedral and walked the short distance across the bridge to the lie Saint Louis. Even after three years in this city she still got a thrill from its charm, its sense of history. Every time she turned a corner to go down another dimly lit street with unfeasibly quaint shops, she expected to see a cast member from Les Misérables come swashbuckling up to her in baggy white shirtsleeves. It was a look that the French intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy had adopted for a good few years in the nineties, and Laura had always made a point of watching the telly when he was on.
She found Francine’s building, which was so ancient it seemed to be leaning forwards in a Disneyish take on the seventeenth century. The code worked, and the heavy door clicked open, releasing her into an inner courtyard with a stone staircase leading up to the Duvalls’ apartment.
One interesting fact that Laura had noticed about the French was their fondness for rather nasty reproduction Louis XV furniture. Naturally the eighteenth century was France’s heyday – they’d done nothing as glamorous since, and who wouldn’t have wanted to live at the court of Versailles? But those gilt bow-legged chairs looked quite wrong in the modern world, which didn’t stop the French from stuffing their apartments full of them as a reminder of the grandeur that was once theirs. Even a spanking new apartment bought off-plan from a developer could be home to a fake escritoire.
