A Perfect Paris Christmas

by Mandy Baggot

  ‘No.’ Ethan said, shaking his head as the lights and the sounds of the arcade all began to spin in his vision. He felt drunk all over again. Dizzy and hot and nauseous. He unfastened a button of his coat.

  ‘I would like the family to get together and—’

  ‘I said no,’ Ethan started. ‘How could you…? Why would you…? It’s not right.’

  ‘Ethan,’ Silvie said, getting to her feet.

  ‘No,’ Ethan said again. ‘I want nothing to do with… that. Nothing.’

  Fury forging him on, he turned away, tears making his eyelashes bristle. He was heading to the nearest bar. He might even smoke.

  Eight

  The Resting Hospice, Kensington, London

  A week later – December

  Keeley had Eurostar tickets for her and Rach, dated tomorrow, paid for by Silvie Durand. She had told her parents her decision and afterwards she had watched her mum eat wild blueberry jam straight from the jar with a dessert spoon. Her dad had comforted Lizzie and said all the good and positive things to ease his wife’s concerns but Keeley knew it was also to reassure her that she was doing the right thing. She still wasn’t completely positive she was, but she really felt that not taking the opportunity would be much worse. Not accepting would have meant a lifetime of wondering ‘what if’. This was a once only opportunity to find out exactly who her donor was and maybe feel a little more at peace with what had happened that one night.

  She paused outside Erica’s room and felt inside her bag for the turkey-flavoured crisps she’d bought plus the framed Nick Jonas photo. She was hoping it was going to soften the blow of her leaving for a while. She also prayed it would give Erica a small boost to keep her spirits up. The very last thing she wanted to happen was for her leaving for France to be a cue for Erica to give up. Keeley swallowed. She didn’t want to think about the possibility that when she got back Erica might be gone…

  Positivity. Seasonal cheer. She couldn’t let any other thoughts appear on her face or manifest in her disposition. It was all about Erica today. She knocked on the door and got ready for all the sass and shade. She waited a beat for a response but, when one wasn’t forthcoming, she opened the door and stepped into the room.

  Breath left her, almost audibly so, and Keeley was caught both trying to retract it and put a smile on her face at the same time. The mixed motion didn’t work and she coughed, almost choking on the dryness of her mouth. Erica looked terrible. Her Caribbean colouring was significantly depleted, her deep dark-brown eyes a lot more sunken into their sockets. Her eyes were barely open at all. Was she sleeping? Had the nurses upped her pain relief making her slip in and out of consciousness? No one had said anything when she had checked in at the desk. Then Erica turned her head, just a little, as if acknowledging Keeley was there.

  ‘Are… you sitting down… or what?’ It was pure Erica just on a much lesser level.

  ‘Yes,’ Keeley said quickly, stepping forward. She slipped the crisps back into her bag. She wasn’t sure something so sharp and spiky was quite the right food source for someone in Erica’s condition. ‘And I have a surprise.’ She brandished the photo of Nick Jonas in the glitzy frame Rach had given her. Rach had actually given her a pack of five that Adie was selling at the discount shop and Keeley hadn’t had the energy to refuse the bulk buy.

  ‘Sweet,’ Erica mouthed, drawing fragile fingers up to clutch the picture, a small smile on her lips. ‘Man, he looks hot in that photo.’

  ‘Shall I put it on your dresser?’ Keeley offered, about to take the frame back.

  ‘Not until I’ve held him a bit longer and… you know… imagined all the dirty.’

  Keeley smiled as she remembered a similar interaction with Bea over Timothée Chalamet. They had planned to watch Little Women together. ‘How are you today?’ She settled into the chair.

  ‘Still dying,’ Erica replied.

  ‘Still living actually,’ Keeley reminded, upbeat.

  ‘If living is puking into a cardboard bowl, sucking water off a lollipop sponge and talking to a shitty painting of a poodle.’

  ‘See!’ Keeley announced. ‘I’ve cheered you up already.’

  ‘I’ve called the big one Henry by the way,’ Erica announced, taking a long slow breath as if summoning up stores of strength from a back-up life generator.

  ‘Who?’ Keeley asked.

  ‘The big shitty dog in the painting! Keep with it!’

  ‘Oh,’ Keeley replied, looking to the awful picture. Perhaps she should take it down and put the Nick Jonas one there instead. Except Erica seemed to be hugging that one to her like it might be the man himself…

  ‘Thought it might as well have a name seeing as it’s the only thing that listens to me when you’re not around.’

  Keeley felt a prick of guilt in her chest like someone had stabbed her with an extra sharp and spiky bough of a spruce tree. And here she was about to tell Erica she wouldn’t be coming to visit for a while. The train ticket was currently open-ended and Silvie had booked a room at a hotel called Perfect Paris near the Eiffel Tower. It sounded so quintessentially French that Keeley had allowed herself to get a little excited for the holiday element of the trip. It was a country she’d never visited before and she was going with her best friend.

  ‘The fat nurse came in this morning to wash me,’ Erica carried on, trying to sit up a little, but flailing. Keeley leaned in to help her, supporting her shoulders and adjusting her pillows. ‘She smells so bad, man. Even I can smell her!’

  ‘Oh, well…’ What did you say to that?

  ‘I told her,’ Erica carried on. ‘I said “has anyone introduced you to Lynx Africa? Because it ain’t just for men, it’s for man-sized issues in the armpit region no matter what your gender and you… you are holding on to the perspiration problems of all the continents”.’

  ‘You didn’t!’ Keeley remarked, suppressing a laugh.

  ‘Just because the nearly-dead might stink a bit, doesn’t mean everyone here should let their standards slip, man. Before all this I never left my flat without Lynx under my pits and large-arse spray of eau-de-toilette.’

  ‘I remember,’ Keeley said. ‘But… what was it called again?’

  ‘Bronze Goddess. Like me.’

  ‘Do you have it now?’ Keeley asked. ‘I could get it out and we could spray some on your blankets.’

  Erica shook her head, vigorously at first, and then less so, as if the exertion had suddenly got the better of her. ‘I can’t… it doesn’t… it doesn’t smell the same anymore.’

  Keeley swallowed a lump in her throat. ‘I’m sorry.’ She knew a little of what it was like to have that aroma familiarity begin to slowly fade away. Her impaired sense of smell was another thing she had had to adapt to since the transplant.

  There was no easy way to tell Erica she was leaving, but delaying the news wasn’t going to make it any better. She needed to say something right now.

  ‘Erica…’ Keeley began.

  Erica turned her head, those large eyes surveying her now. ‘That’s your serious and concerned voice. What’s going on, man? The last time you had that voice was when you were softening me up because they said I was too wobbly to take showers anymore.’

  Keeley remembered. She also knew how much Erica loved to shower. Erica had said the joy was the combination of searing hot water, her favourite lemon shower gel and the chance to sing at the top of her voice. Bathrooms had acoustics to rival the best concert halls according to Erica. Keeley took a breath. ‘I’m going away for a bit. To Paris.’ She didn’t want to stop talking. She wanted to get it all out before Erica had any chance to react. She would deal with any fallout when she was finished. ‘The mother of my kidney donor contacted me and she’s offered me the chance to go to Paris and meet her. I didn’t want to say no. I thought it was the right thing to do to go and see her. To maybe find out a bit about who my donor was.’ She checked Erica’s expression, but her friend wasn’t giving anything at all away. ‘I’ll be away a w
eek or so. But I’ll be back before Christmas and I’ll… send you some postcards and I’ll FaceTime.’

  ‘Paris,’ Erica finally said, the word hanging a moment too long on her dry, cracked lips. ‘The home of the Eiffel Tower… and cheese… and all the good coffee.’

  ‘Yes,’ Keeley said. And Erica was never going to experience it. She felt terrible. ‘I’m sorry I’m going now. I replied to Madame Durand and then it all happened so quickly and Rach had to make sure her clients were introduced to Jamie and I had to shift a few things around with my schedule and… we both had to shunt Mr Peterson on to Oz and—’

  ‘Stop,’ Erica begged. ‘You’ve got “Desperate not to piss off the girl on her death bed” written all over your face.’

  ‘Well,’ Keeley began sadly, ‘I am… desperate not to piss off my friend.’

  ‘The clues were right there,’ Erica said with a sniff. ‘Girl. Death bed. It’s not like I’m gonna come back and haunt you.’ She managed a smile. ‘Or am I?’

  Keeley took Erica’s fragile hand in hers then, not worried for showing sentimentality Erica usually shied away from. ‘You are going to be strong,’ she said firmly. ‘You are not going to go anywhere until I’m back here holding your hand again. You and… Nick Jonas and Henry… you’re going to find the strength to hang on and I’m going to keep you posted on every single thing I get up to in France.’ She gave Erica’s hand a gentle squeeze. ‘OK?’

  ‘Whatever,’ Erica answered with a sigh.

  ‘Don’t make me call the smelly nurse back in here,’ Keeley warned. She watched Erica’s lips turn into a small grin.

  ‘Take me with you,’ Erica ordered.

  ‘What? I…’ Was she serious? Erica couldn’t get out of bed anymore. She didn’t really think she could manage travel, did she? And it wasn’t as if she really could.

  ‘Not like that, man!’ she said with a bit more fierceness than she had shown earlier. ‘I mean… do it for me too. Your trip. Imagine I’m there with you, inhaling all the coffee and trying all the perfumes and eating all the cheese. Even though neither of us can smell anything.’

  ‘I will,’ Keeley said positively. ‘I absolutely will.’ She’d try to go a little easy on the cheese…

  ‘OK then,’ Erica replied, eyes brightening considerably. ‘I’ll hang on to Nick Jonas and ugly poodles, craving turkey dinners, while you hang out with all the hot French dudes and suckle souffle.’

  Keeley laughed. ‘Suckle souffle?’

  ‘I’m glad you questioned that rather than the French dudes. I want action on this trip of yours. One of us has to be getting some.’

  Keeley let go of Erica’s hand and picked her handbag up off the floor. ‘I got you something else. I don’t know whether you’ll be able to eat them but…’ She produced the packet of turkey crisps.

  Erica’s eyes lit up and there really was a visible injection of vigour about her now. ‘Open them up. Now. If I can’t manage to swallow I’ll just enjoying the licking.’ She grinned. ‘But, you know, in France, you make sure you swallow. I mean it. All in, remember? Every time.’

  ‘I promise,’ Keeley answered. ‘All in. Every time.’

  Nine

  La Barbouquin, Rue Denoyez, Paris

  Ethan bit into his breakfast sandwich and simultaneously forked up a portion of pancakes and put that into his mouth too. This was what a hangover needed. Houmous and salsa with fresh vegetables and a tomato confit, plus pancakes covered in deliciously sweet fruit. And coffee. Lots of coffee. He shucked back his head, inhaling all the goodness of the ingredients, willing the restorative powers to the internal organs that he was sure had taken the hardest of hammerings.

  The last few nights were a little sketchy in his mind, in so far as he wasn’t really sure what events were part of which evening or when and where he had landed at what time. Everything was changing and he was standing still watching it happen. It was like he was the lone audience to a horror movie and that film was his life. Silvie was going to rinse Ferne out of Perfect Paris and someone who now owned one of Ferne’s body parts was going to come over and act all grateful and grief-stricken. They might even try and exploit Silvie’s grief once they found out about the hotel chain or the money her husband, Pierre, had left her when he died. Ethan tried to focus again on the enjoyment of his meal. He didn’t even know whether this person was a man or a woman. But, really, who cared? Whoever it was meant nothing to him and he wasn’t about to play a part in this creepy My Long-Lost Transplant Family scenario.

  Louis Durand was arriving today. Silvie had sent Ethan an email. Not a text. An email. Business-like and professional. Definitely not the same way you would message a so-called family member. Even a family member who had lost their temper before they had finished pink shrimps. The Durand with the Devil’s horns was due to fly in later today. And Ethan’s priority today was preparing. He checked his watch. Noel was late. But, as that thought unsettled him for a moment, his gaze met the door of the café and his assistant was right there. Seeming to be fighting with the wind at the glass door, Noel finally pushed his way into the premises, his entry bringing a gust of icy draught to the comforting warmth. Noel’s usually perfectly tamed hair was everywhere and his bright purple scarf had come out from the confines of his wool coat and was only just clinging on to his neck, its length trailing to the floor. Ethan waved a hand before shovelling in more pancakes.

  ‘It is eight in the morning,’ Noel greeted, peeling off his scarf and coat and sinking down into the banquette seat opposite Ethan. ‘I should be at the hotel. I have four tours arranged this morning. Then there is Francois, he is having so much of a crisis about his latest quiche creation he telephoned me at 3 a.m. talking about the consistency of his onion ganache. And we are down three chambermaids. Three.’

  Ethan smiled at him. ‘Relax, Noel. Take a breath. Have some pancakes. I will get another fork.’ He had to blot out everything else and maintain a little bit of upbeat.

  Noel raised an eyebrow. ‘What has happened? Are you sick?’

  ‘No,’ Ethan replied. ‘I am invigorated.’ It was more like single-mindedly determined for Ferne’s brainchild to continue to honour everything she had been.

  ‘That is why you came here? To a café that looks like an ancient bookshop with graffiti on the walls outside?’ Noel indicated the bookshelves that lined the interior of the café.

  Ethan felt insulted on the café’s behalf for Noel’s words. They were here because Ethan loved this place. La Barbouquin was almost his fantasy of what a home should look like. From the bright graffiti art on the outside of the building, to the eclectic style inside. The café was a hodgepodge mix of mismatched chairs and tables with an assortment of different styles of lampshades hanging from the ceiling. There was a multitude of reading material – hardbacks, paperbacks and magazines – most dogeared and pre-loved. There was retro wallpaper and papier mâché heads, jars and plants, teapots and art. You could imagine it as the living space of a close-knit family with every decoration and ornament there for a reason. Nothing went together, except somehow maybe it actually did.

  ‘I like it here,’ Ethan said, picking up his sandwich and taking a bite.

  ‘I do not,’ Noel answered. ‘And I almost lost a shoe sliding on the cobbles.’ Ethan noticed then that his assistant was not fully sitting on his seat. His weight was balanced as if in the hope not to catch anything – dust motes, germs, history – from the slightly worn fabric. ‘Plus, this place feels like it holds the breath of a thousand forefathers.’

  Ethan smiled. Yes, Noel was right. But he liked that. The café felt like it had origins, a tale attached to every piece of furniture. Ethan had somehow always felt comforted by the age as well as the well-worn state of the things here. It was relaxed. It did not conform. No one asked questions of it. He drew his focus back to Noel. ‘I want you to tell me who does Christmas the best here in Paris.’

  Noel looked at him a little strangely. ‘You know that our biggest competitor is Ma
rriott.’

  ‘That was not what I asked,’ Ethan said. ‘I want to know who you think does Christmas the best.’ He thought about his own question. ‘I do not mean only hotels. I mean, think of everywhere. The stores… the markets… restaurants.’

  Noel seemed to then muse on the question, staring into the mid-distance and moving his head a little to the left, then a little to the right, then back to centre again.

  ‘Well,’ Noel began, his voice even and thoughtful, ‘Galeries Lafayette is always the most exuberant. In my humble opinion, they have all of the bright and ostentatious, with that giant Christmas tree decorated like they have piled up hundreds and hundreds of multicoloured macarons and sprinkled them with stardust. Or, one year, the tree was made to look like a gigantic cupcake version of Candy Crush, with doughnuts and lollipops and pretzels…’

  ‘Do you think something like that would work for Perfect Paris?’ Ethan asked. ‘A large centrepiece that will immediately catch the eye?’ Ferne would have approved of that, wouldn’t she? Something the press would talk about. Something different and flamboyant. Something others would follow in the wake of…

  ‘No,’ Noel said crushingly. ‘Where would we put it in the Opera hotel? Last year we removed the flower display in the foyer because it was not amenable to wheelchair users.’

  ‘What else then?’ Ethan asked. The sweet taste in his mouth was starting to sour a little, his enthusiasm waning. Why was this so difficult? He needed the hotel to have something in the works before Devil Durand arrived. At the moment there wasn’t even any of the blue and silver Noel had waxed so lyrical about a few days ago. For someone who had demanded that Christmas needed to start now it felt like an oversight.

  ‘I have ordered the blue and silver reindeer for the dining room,’ Noel said, allowing his bottom to make actual contact with the seat. ‘The smaller lead reindeer is animatronic. It will turn its face to the open room and engage its mouth to the tune of “Walking In A Winter Wonderland”.’