Weekend in Paris

by Robyn Sisman

  Just a stupid English girl here for the weekend, looking for a Frenchman to fuck. Molly swallowed and shook her head.

  “I know I hurt you. But when I hurt you, I hurt myself, too. Here.” He smote his heart with his fist. “Until that moment I did not understand how special you are. Look at me, Molly. Tell me you forgive me.”

  Slowly she raised her head, registering the sensuous curve of his lower lip, the perfect cheekbones with their hemispheres of shadow, those velvety eyes. He was so penitent, so passionate, so irresistible. “All right,” she whispered.

  His smile was like a shower of fireworks. He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it rapturously. He was absurd—adorable.

  “Tu vois? How easy it is to make me happy. And now—now I cannot let you go.” Reaching for her other hand, Fabrice wound both her arms around his back and pulled her tight to his lean body.

  “Stay with me, Molly,” he murmured. “Stay in Paris.”

  “I can’t!”

  “Why not?”

  “The train . . .”

  “Bof. ”

  “My ticket . . .”

  “Silly girl.” He bent to rub his nose against hers.

  “And—and there’s a job I’m interested in. In London. It’s important, Fabrice.”

  “Of course. But a day or two won’t matter, will it?” He rocked his hips teasingly from side to side. Her very bones seemed to melt.

  Molly closed her eyes, trying to remember why exactly she must go home, why it was impossible for her to stay. All that happened was that her forehead sank against his chest. His shirt was warm and smelled of Fabrice. She could have torn it off with her teeth.

  “Don’t we have fun together?” His breath tickled her neck. “Don’t you like me, just a little bit? Don’t you remember, in bed, how you . . . ?”

  Yes, she remembered. How could she forget? How dared he remind her?

  “Stop it, Fabrice!” She tore herself free. “How can you come here, torment me, make a fool of me, pretend you care about me—”

  “I don’t pretend!”

  “—when all the time you have—” it was humiliating to have to be the one to remind him “—when all the time you have Gabrielle.”

  “I swear to you, Molly—je te jure—it is over between me and Gabrielle. I feel it in my heart. Now that I have met you I cannot think of her. She is just a girl, nothing special.”

  “But you said—”

  He dismissed anything he might or might not have said with a toss of wild hair, and recaptured her hands. “You must not be jealous of Gabrielle. She does not touch me as you do. She does not have your beautiful blue eyes—your long blonde hair—your gorgeous breasts.” (Les seins superbes.) He gazed down at them in open admiration. “You are a woman, Molly. Gabrielle is . . . enfin , what one calls la carte bleue.” He flicked his fingers down his own chest in an unmistakable gesture: flat as a credit card.

  “Fabrice! That’s so mean.” But a giggle escaped her.

  “So. You will stay?” His eyes were alight.

  “What—just because you like my breasts?” Molly half laughed, half sighed with exasperation, twisting in his grasp, and caught sight of the couple who had been behind her, now disappearing through Passport Control. She had lost her place! The time was six thirty-seven. Her train left in eight minutes. “No, I can’t,” she said firmly, pulling her hands free. “You’re not serious, Fabrice.”

  “But I am! Écoute, Molly. When I first saw you on the boat, of course I thought you were a very pretty girl. Très sympa. It was fun to take you on the scooter. But you are right. I was not sérieux. It was you who said, ‘What shall we do tomorrow, Fabrice? ’ and you were so adorable that I was tempted. At the Rodin museum I had no idea . . . But then you touched my heart and, enfin, you made me want to paint you, to make love to you. And now you have tamed me, like the fox in Le Petit Prince. You cannot abandon me now.”

  Molly sighed. It was hard to resist the appeal in his eyes, the tumble of words from his kissable mouth. “You abandoned me,” she reminded him. “You made me go to your father alone. Today you acted as if I was a stranger.”

  “But I was wrong! You are right. I am weak, but you are strong. That is why I want you to stay—not for your sake, Molly, but for mine.”

  For his sake. Dazzled by this thought, Molly barely noticed his fingers sliding back into her palm. He admired her! He needed her. He said she was right. It was practically her duty to stay; priggish to refuse. Who was she to deny him, however he might have behaved? Unconsciously her fingers twisted and curled in his.

  “I will be different, Molly. Let me prove it to you. Just one more day . . . One more night. Then we’ll see . . .”

  “Oh, Fabrice, I don’t know—I can’t think!” Her voice rose in anguish. The final passengers had reached the stewardess, who hustled them through and glanced round for stragglers. Feebly, Molly flapped a hand to catch her attention. The stewardess widened her eyes and pointed urgently to her watch.

  Fabrice leaned his forearm against the wall above her head, blocking out everything except his own slim, dark, seductive grace. He brushed a lock of hair from her forehead and smiled into her eyes. “Forget the train. Forget London. My scooter is outside. We can go now.”

  Molly gazed back, mesmerized, as his fingers trailed behind her ear, down her neck, across her throat. She pictured herself leaving the noise and confusion of the station, walking out with Fabrice into the fresh evening air. She would climb onto his scooter and wrap her arms around him tight, tight. Together they would speed back into Paris, with the sky fading to pale rose over the high roofs. There would be fountains and cafés, life and laughter. They would talk, and he would listen to her. Later they would lie in some dark room in a tangle of urgent limbs and the voluptuous slither of skin against skin, and finally she would fall asleep with her ear laid against his beating heart.

  Yes! As he pressed closer, her body arched in surrender. What did it matter if he was weak? And a bit lazy. And a bit spoiled. No one was perfect. Mr. Darcy had humiliated Elizabeth. Mr. Rochester tried to marry Jane Eyre when he was already married!

  She could have Paris. She could have Fabrice—for a little longer, anyway. It was worth it even for one day—one night—one hour. Wasn’t it?

  “Will all passengers for the six forty-five Eurostar go to the platform immediately? This train leaves in four minutes.”

  But Jane Eyre had waited until Mr. Rochester was free. Elizabeth had refused Mr. Darcy until she understood his true character. People show their character in the way they behave. Who had said that? Molly closed her eyes, trying to remember.

  Now Fabrice was so close that their foreheads touched. She felt his breath on her lips. “Viens, Molly,” he whispered. “Come with me?”

  The seconds ticked by. Slowly, painfully, as if tearing skin, Molly raised her head away from Fabrice’s and opened her eyes. “If you had asked me yesterday,” she told him, “I would have said yes with all my heart.”

  “But what is different?” He clutched at her arm. “I am the same person.”

  “Yes. But . . . I’m not.”

  “I don’t understand. You want to stay. I know you do.”

  She shook her head. “I’m going home.”

  “But why?”

  “Because . . .” Molly hesitated. She saw her father standing in Luxembourg Gardens: I’m so proud of you I could roar. She thought of the photograph of herself as a little girl and the way he had handled it as if it were precious and important. “Because it’s not enough for me—a day, a night, ‘we’ll see.’ ” She raised her chin and looked him in the eye. “I think I’m worth more than that.”

  She watched the emotions cross his face: incomprehension, disappointment, hurt, anger—perhaps a flicker of acknowledgement. Then the warmth faded from his eyes. He stepped clear of her and turned away.

  “The Eurostar is leaving immediately,” called the stewardess, glaring in Molly’s direction.

  “F
abrice, I’m sorry, but I must leave.” Molly seized her case from the trolley. “Je viens—I’m coming!” she shouted to the stewardess. “Au revoir, Fabrice.” She put a hand on his arm. Even now she ached for one last, obliterating kiss.

  He twitched her away and stared at the ground.

  “Say good-bye to me at least,” she begged.

  “Two minutes to departure!”

  With a despairing sigh Molly turned and ran. The stewardess checked her ticket and frowned severely. “Vite, vite! You must run.”

  Molly was fumbling for her passport when she felt an arm hook round her neck, a scrape of stubble against her cheek, a frantic kiss on the corner of her mouth. “Here, this is for you.” Fabrice thrust something into her hand. “Good-bye, Molly. Je t’embrasse.”

  Bang! Her passport was slapped back on the counter. Molly jammed the package Fabrice had given her into her shoulder-bag, dumped everything on the X-ray machine and ran through the metal arch. As she picked up her belongings she caught a last glimpse of him, standing with one long thigh thrust forward, hands jammed into his pockets: a rebellious boy staring back with fierce, unsmiling intensity. She took a step backward, then another, finally turned into an archway, out of sight. She fed her ticket into a machine, pushed through the barrier and then was racing along a corridor, down some steps, and out onto the platform. Christ! It was completely deserted except for a man in uniform, wristwatch cocked, flag held aloft. Everyone else was on the train. Faces peered at her through the windows as she galloped clumsily past, case bumping against her leg, looking for her coach.

  “The doors will close automatically in a few moments,” announced a heavily accented voice from the loudspeakers.

  A steward leaned from a doorway and grabbed her ticket. “Get on here,” he said. “You’ll never make it to your coach.” She slung her case onto the high step and seized the handrail. Seconds after she had climbed aboard, the doors slid closed. A whistle blew. The train began to move. Molly stumbled her way down the aisle in search of her seat, panting with exertion.

  “Well run, lass.” She recognized Mr. “I Love Paris,” comfortably ensconced by a window with a styrofoam cup of tea. His wife beamed a motherly smile. “So you decided to come home, after all?”

  “Yes,” said Molly, and burst into tears.

  28

  It was getting dark now. Molly sat with her chin in her hand, watching the plains of northern France skim soundlessly past the reinforced glass of the train window. The horizon rose and fell in gentle curves, feathered with poplar trees. Thumbprints of cloud smudged a shimmering opal sky. Idly, her mind elsewhere, Molly absorbed the unfamiliar details: steeples shaped like witches’ hats, rather than the four-square towers she was used to; dainty, biscuit-colored cows instead of the black-and-white hulks that grazed the patchwork meadows at home; pylons stalking the railway line in towering cats’ cradles of wire and steel. With every rushing mile, shadows deepened across the landscape. France was fading—retreating before her eyes. Paris had gone for good. She felt disoriented, in limbo, strangely sluggish after the emotional tempest of her departure.

  For the first half-hour of the journey she had been too upset to take her seat under the curious eyes of strangers. Instead, she had first of all lurked in the luggage area between her coach and the next, head ducked to the window to torture herself with the sight of Paris slipping away. Each tall house with peeling paint and rusting balcony, each narrow street with scooters tilting through traffic, a glimpse of Sacré Coeur glowing pink in the sunset, brought a fresh gush of tears. She should have stayed with Fabrice, after all. No, no, it would never have worked. But he had looked so beautiful, and so sad. And she was so miserable. One thing was for sure: she would never fall in love again.

  Then, just as the heart-wrenching charm of the view disappeared under an assault of tower blocks and semi-industrial clutter, a voice announced over the loudspeaker, in both English and outlandishly accented French, that the buffet car was now open. Molly realized that she was starving, having eaten nothing since her breakfast croissant with Armand. Wiping her cheeks with her sleeves, she made her way through the swaying coaches and found the owner of the voice, chirpy and smartly jacketed in white, presiding over a service hatch and a small area of waist-high tables bolted to the floor. It was odd to be speaking English again. She blew the last of her euros on hot chocolate and a ham baguette, and carried them over to an empty table by the window. The darkening fields flew past, overlaid by her own ghostly reflection.

  What had Fabrice really felt about her? The tormenting question went round and round in her head. Had all that drama at the station been just another game—another whim, like taking her on his scooter in the first place? Molly munched her sandwich thoughtfully. She was proud of herself for having the courage to leave. But there was a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach that no amount of hot chocolate could warm. Fabrice—a fabrication? Had she made it all up—the romance, the attraction, the feeling that there had been something special between them?

  So many wonderful things had happened to her in Paris. She had found her father. It was incredible what a difference it made simply to know who he was. The shadow of doubt under which she had lived for so long had finally lifted. There was no dark mystery, no shameful secret. On the contrary, she had a brand new family to meet—grandparents, half-brothers, perhaps a whole network of uncles and aunts and cousins. Damn! She should have asked if he—Jonathan—her father—had brothers and sisters. She would ask, when she saw him next weekend. She could even ring him up and ask him now! She wouldn’t do it, of course, but the knowledge that she could was so dizzying that Molly clung to the edge of the table.

  Her sandwich was finished, and she was tired of standing. She fitted a plastic lid onto the remains of her hot chocolate, retraced her steps and located her seat, one of four surrounding a gray Formica table. It was embarrassing to appear at this late stage. Molly whispered an apology to a Japanese lady, who had to stand up and move into the aisle so that Molly could slither into her window seat. Though she did so as unobtrusively as possible, she was aware of flickering glances from the other two passengers—a middle-aged woman clicking at her laptop in the seat opposite, and a youngish guy on the aisle, reading a book. But both were soon absorbed again, and the Japanese woman resumed her conversation with her friends across the aisle, leaving Molly to pursue her own meandering thoughts.

  Alicia was coming to London: that was something else to look forward to. She pictured them going to bars and clubs together, having adventures, doing all the things Molly had thought she’d do when she went to London but had been too timid to attempt alone. But now she’d have a mate.

  Oops! She’d just remembered Malcolm. She might have to see him, too, if Alicia persisted in her perverse attraction. That could be a bit embarrassing, though funnily enough the “stupid secretary” label no longer rankled. She knew now that it wasn’t true. Anyway, by then she might have landed an exciting new job. Molly drained the last of her hot chocolate and sat up excitedly. A literary festival! She’d have to mug up on hot writers and popular taste. Her eye strayed to the guy diagonally opposite—mid-twenties, tousled brown hair, rangy build under a faded blue sweatshirt: what was he reading, for example? Something about the SAS, probably, or one of those novels about how vulnerable and fundamentally decent men were under the loutish exterior. Molly slid down in her seat until she was practically horizontal and cocked her head to squint at the title. Whoa, War and Peace! His eyelids suddenly flew up. Gray, amused eyes looked straight into hers. Molly turned away.

  Where was she? Oh, yes, the new job as assistante to Armand’s “old friend” (ho ho). Molly pictured herself in some lavish country hotel, sitting with Will Self over breakfast (or “oleaginous orgy,” as he would no doubt call it), before running upstairs to check that Zadie Smith was quite happy with her pillows. It sounded perfect, but could she do it? What would she say at the interview? Who could advise her?

  She woul
d ask her father. The thought struck her as so brilliant and satisfying she gaped at her reflection in the window. “I asked my father,” she practiced in her head. “Yes, my father said . . .” No, even better: “My dad . . .”

  And what about her mother? How shocked she would be when Molly revealed her great discovery. But it would serve her right for being so cruelly secretive and overprotective all these years. Molly toyed with the idea of ringing Armand’s flat later tonight and seeing if her mother was there. It would be fun to catch her out, explode a bombshell into her “little adventure.” How guilty her mother would feel—how alarmed and exposed that her secret was out at last. There would be no more nonsense about Biarritz: she would jump on the next train home.

  Don’t be too hard on your mother. Her father’s words reproved her. Molly shut her eyes for a moment, trying to imagine the girl he had described—Frankie: beautiful, carefree, twenty years old—who had found herself pregnant and given up everything to devote herself to her child. To Molly. It couldn’t have been easy. It wouldn’t be what one would choose. She might not have done everything right. But having made the decision, her mother had stuck by it with all the bravery and fierceness she possessed. Molly felt a rush of affection, and with it came a startling new perception. They were both caught in the old “Molly and Mum” trap. It wasn’t just Molly who longed to escape: her mother did, too. That’s what her bolt with Armand was all about. Molly had the power to recall her—but how much better to prize open the jaws of the trap and chuck it away for good. If she could let her mother go free, with love, to footle around with Frenchmen or do any other daft thing she fancied, wouldn’t that prove that she herself was truly grown up and in no further need of smothering? Besides, whenever her mother went away, even for a night, she always brought Molly a present: the one from France ought to be spectacular.

  Crikey! How could she have forgotten? Molly bent down and felt in her bag for the package Fabrice had given her. She drew out a long narrow cylinder wrapped in a plastic bag and secured with rubber bands. She snapped these off, pulled off the plastic and unrolled the paper inside. It was a drawing of herself—nude! More than nude—voluptuous, languorous-eyed . . . beautiful. Molly stared in wonder. Was this really her, this sensual creature with her rounded stomach and full breasts, lying with her hands clasped behind her head? The drawing was erotic, but there was character in it, too. Fabrice had captured her shy defiance and the kindling fire in her eyes, with delicacy and affection. He had signed and dated the drawing: this professional touch made her smile. But what moved her most was the inscription across one of the top corners: “Pour Molly—la plus belle et la plus gentille de toutes les filles.” For Molly, most beautiful and kindest of girls.