Escape to the Little French Cafe: A laugh-out-loud romantic comedy to fall in love with

by Karen Clarke

  ‘So, what did Charlie think?’ asked Dad, pulling me back to the moment.

  ‘The same as you,’ I said. ‘That I should try and arrange an interview with Jay.’

  ‘Of course you should.’ Dad scoured the street, as though for spies, before closing the door.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Seeing if my taxi’s coming.’ He glanced at the watch that Mum had bought him for his fiftieth birthday, and I noticed he was wearing his leather jacket and boots and smelt of his usual shower gel (rather than Purple Seduction). ‘Should be here any minute.’

  ‘Taxi?’

  His gaze dipped away from mine. ‘I might be meeting a lady.’

  ‘A lady?’

  ‘In La Rochelle.’

  A tiny sigh escaped. ‘Is that what all the dressing up was about?’

  He nodded, a cloud of worry passing over his face. ‘She might be a bit younger than me.’

  ‘Why do you keep saying might?’ I said. ‘Either you’re meeting a lady, or you’re not, and she’s younger than you, or she isn’t.’

  ‘I’m definitely meeting a lady.’

  I crossed to the chair by the window and sat down, trying not to look like I was interrogating him. ‘How much younger than you?’

  ‘Not much,’ he said quickly.

  ‘Younger than me?’

  ‘Thirty-nine?’

  ‘Are you asking or telling me?’

  ‘OK, she’s thirty-nine.’

  I rubbed between my eyebrows where a headache was brewing. ‘Does she know you’re sixty?’

  ‘Yes, but I said I looked young for my age.’

  ‘Did you use that photo I told you not to?’

  He scratched his chin. ‘It wasn’t taken that long ago.’

  ‘It was taken before you went grey.’ I eyed his hair. ‘That’s why you dyed it.’

  ‘I didn’t want to disappoint her.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have, if you’d been honest.’ Sometimes, I wished I could delete the whole internet. ‘Once you’re face-to-face it’ll be obvious you’ve fibbed.’

  ‘Oh, Christ.’ He collapsed onto the arm of the sofa and smoothed a hand over his neatly swept-back hair. ‘Do you think I should call and tell her this isn’t my natural colour?’ His eyes flooded with worry.

  ‘Best leave it now,’ I said. His shirt was half-unbuttoned, revealing a gold chain nestling among his chest hairs, and the sight made me want to simultaneously hug him and replace the shirt with a woolly, high-necked sweater. ‘She’ll be so bowled over by your personality, she probably won’t even notice.’

  He brightened. ‘I’ve been working on that.’ He pulled a piece of paper from his jacket pocket. ‘I printed out a list of questions to ask in French.’

  ‘I thought you were going to stick to speaking English after last time.’ I recalled his despondent face as he’d recounted how, after dinner with a woman who’d travelled from Paris to meet him, he’d said, Je suis plein, thinking it meant I’m full and not I’m pregnant and ended the evening (and the chance of another date) by telling her he was sexually aroused, instead of keen to meet again. ‘Or you could use a translation app on your phone.’

  ‘That’s not very romantic,’ he said, as though asking for a condom instead of jam with his croissant was (another misunderstanding that had led to his companion walking away from their afternoon tea date without a backwards glance). ‘I’ve copied these questions off a website and checked the pronunciation, so I can’t go wrong.’

  Watching him mouth the words, typed in extra-large font – he wouldn’t want to put on his reading glasses – I was about to protest, when I heard the honk of a car horn outside. Dad shot to his feet. ‘That’ll be my taxi,’ he said unnecessarily.

  ‘Where are you meeting?’

  ‘Ars en Ré,’ he said, naming a nearby village. ‘I could have cycled, but didn’t want to get sweaty, and it didn’t seem worth getting the car out.’

  ‘Marie’s invited us for dinner at seven.’

  ‘You’ll have to go on your own, if I get lucky.’

  ‘That’s gross, Dad.’

  I waved him off, hoping the lady would be kind to him, and wondered if this was how it had been for my parents when I’d started dating. If so, it sucked, though I hadn’t given them much to worry about, thinking back. No pregnancy scares, or even a badly broken heart to contend with, before I met Matt. After breaking up with Henry, I’d had a couple of boyfriends, but I’d been the one to end things, not keen enough on either of them to give up my independence.

  Sighing, I decided I might as well make a cup of tea and headed into the sun-filled kitchen, my favourite room in the house. Dad had painted the ceiling beams a cheery red, in contrast to the plain white walls, and the wooden worktops and open shelving – crammed with jars, tins, packets and mismatched crockery – gave it a cosy feel. A lot like his parents’ kitchen, I’d realised, the first time I saw it. There was even a photo of Nan and Grandpa Bright on the windowsill, keeping a smiling eye on everything. They wouldn’t have approved of Dad being here without Mum. They’d thought the world of her though. Sadly, Mum’s mum, in her foggy-minded dotage, had reverted to her initial conclusion about Dad: that all police officers were corrupt.

  Dad’s notepad lay open next to the fruit bowl and I smiled as I read his latest list of contrasts between real life and TV policing, which he’d titled Facts VS Myth.

  Crimes are rarely solved in an hour

  Real police don’t jump from moving cars

  Female detectives rarely wear tight trousers and high heels

  Officers don’t beat confessions out of suspects

  Banishing a half-formed plan to grind out a few sentences for Expats, I decided instead to make a start on writing up Dad’s list in a more book-like format, perhaps in a chatty style: It’s funny how on television, a crime will often be solved in between commercial breaks, which in most cases is actually less than an hour. But I had only just filled the kettle when my phone began its old-fashioned ringtone.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mademoiselle Bright?’ It was a man with a voice that brought to mind late nights in smoky jazz clubs, though I’d never been to a late-night, smoky jazz club in my life.

  ‘Oui?’

  ‘Nicolas Juilliard,’ he said, his French accent comically sexy. ‘I believe you have a very important proposal you wish to discuss.’

  Five

  ‘Monsieur Juilliard, thank you so much for calling me back,’ I gushed in French, clattering the kettle onto the worktop. ‘It’s so good to finally speak to you, um… in person.’ I stumbled with the phrasing, certain I’d said with our voices instead of in person, and repeated the sentence in English, as I knew he was bilingual.

  ‘Mon plaisir, Mademoiselle.’

  ‘Please, call me Natalie.’

  ‘Natalee.’ I’d heard my name spoken many times, but never like that – as though we’d just tumbled into bed together. Heat flooded my face and I was glad he couldn’t see me. ‘Blushing idiot’ was never a good look. ‘I’m guessing it is about ze actor ’oo is staying in Saint-Martin.’

  I almost dropped my phone. ‘How… how did you know?’ I realised at once how naïve I must sound. Of course a man in his position would have his ear to the ground, or sources who would pass him information.

  ‘I’ve known for some while ’e was going to be filming over ’ere.’ His deep voice was laced with amusement. ‘We ’ave wished to interview Jay Merino for a very long time.’

  ‘But you never have.’

  ‘Non.’ He sounded regretful. ‘But it ees a perfect opportunity now ’e is in the country. We ’ave been in contact with ’is people and ’e is thinking ’e might be ’appy to talk to us, finally.’

  Damn, damn, damn. ‘Have you already set up a meeting?’

  ‘Non, but ’e requested to see some of our work a leetle while ago and ’as now expressed an interest in meeting Fleur Dupont.’ Again, I was glad he couldn’t see me as I sla
pped my forehead and mouthed a very bad word. Of course if Jay Merino was going to grant anyone an interview it would be a veteran profile writer like Fleur. Beautiful, award-winning Fleur, in her geek-chic glasses, who’d once been photographed lounging on a shell-shaped inflatable in a swimming pool with Brad Pitt while he talked about his marriages. The interview had been reproduced around the world.

  ‘What’s her angle going to be?’ I was being wildly over-optimistic, but there was an outside chance that Jay might still refuse to talk to her.

  ‘Angle?’

  ‘He won’t talk about his private life.’ I said it with as much conviction as I could summon. ‘Not even to Fleur Dupont.’

  His laugh was warm and gravelly. ‘And yet, he’ll talk to you? An unknown, ’oo once wrote about a man being attacked by a magpie on ’is way to work, and a lady going to ’ospital because she ate so many spicy foods her stomach exploded.’ I didn’t really believe he’d check out the links I’d sent him, and now I wished he hadn’t.

  ‘I’m good with people.’ I had a childish urge to win him over. ‘I’m a good listener.’ Wasn’t that what Jay Merino once told me?

  ‘These people, they approach you with their story,’ he said, pleasantly. ‘You do not ’ave to draw them out, Natalee. I know ’ow it works. My friend’s son, ’e worked for one of those magazines in London.’ His tone implied exactly what he thought of those magazines, and I wondered why he hadn’t already hung up when it was clear from his throaty chuckle he was simply indulging me. Why he’d rung me at all, if Fleur was on the case. Perhaps he was having a laugh at my expense, and wanted to share the exchange with her when he got off the phone. That was if she wasn’t interviewing the Dalai Lama, or Beyoncé.

  ‘I write a column too.’ I was aware how lame it sounded. A column hardly qualified me to interview an A-list actor.

  ‘Yes, it’s that leetle magazine for foreigners living in our country.’ He paused. ‘I ’ave seen it.’

  ‘Really?’ Maybe he’d read the piece I’d devoted to food, all about the places where you could find the best bread and cheeses in the area, tied in with an amusing anecdote about struggling to do up the zip of my jeans after living in France for three months. I linked my columns to my blog, and that one had trended on Twitter for about three seconds.

  ‘Your writing ees very capable,’ said Nicolas, not unkindly, but it still felt like a slap. Capable was one of those words like pleasant, or nice. It meant not noteworthy. ‘At Magnifique we demand a very high standard of writing, and a…’ I heard the clicking of fingers as he presumably sought the right words. ‘A certain je ne sais quoi.’

  Naturally. ‘I’m British, like Jay Merino.’ I cringed, recalling the people that Fleur had interviewed. Probably only a handful had been French. One had been a notoriously media-shy Russian astronaut, and rumour had it that Fleur had learnt to speak Russian ahead of their meeting. ‘What I mean is, he may be more likely to speak to a fellow countryman. Or woman.’ I ground the heel of my hand into my eye, wishing I was as capable at the spoken word as I was at the written one. It was my writing that had won me a permanent job at Chatter, where I’d been on a work placement, after filling in when one of the staff writers went on maternity leave, and I hadn’t got as far as having an interview since leaving. It was probably just as well. I was clearly rubbish at selling myself.

  ‘I think you need a better angle than sharing a place of birth with Jay Merino.’

  My cheeks fired up again. ‘Well, as it happens, I have one.’

  ‘Oh?’

  I hesitated, anxiety fluttering in my throat. I doubted that Jay would remember an encounter I was attaching too much significance to – plus, my previous requests for an interview had been turned down – but I had a hunch that if I could wangle a face-to-face meeting, he might just agree to honour the promise he’d made to me all those years ago.

  ‘I know him,’ I said, concentrating on keeping my voice steady. ‘We were practically neighbours growing up.’ Liar, liar, pants on fire.

  There was a pause at the end of the line. I imagined Nicolas running a hand through his attractively greying dark hair and slow-blinking his heavy-lidded eyes. (I’d seen photos of him, where he was referred to as ‘charismatic’ and ‘France’s sexiest man over fifty’.) ‘You know Jay Merino?’

  ‘From a long time ago.’ At least that much was true.

  ‘Yet you ’ave never interviewed him.’

  ‘No, but only because I’ve never had the opportunity before.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘We, er… we lost touch.’

  ‘But surely ’e would ’ave granted you an interview if you’d made contact wiz ’im?’ Nicolas persisted. ‘If you know ’im “from a long time ago”?’

  It was clear from his implied quote marks that he didn’t believe a word. ‘Actually, I ran into him, here on the island.’ I bit my lip, imagining Dad’s disapproval. He’d always encouraged me to be truthful, whatever the consequences. I’d never been a hustler, like some of the people at Gossip that Jools had told me about, who’d have sold their own grandmothers to get access to a celebrity. It was why I’d preferred ‘real-life’ writing back then, even if the people I’d talked to had never been near a red carpet in their lives.

  ‘You ran into ’im?’

  ‘Yes, and we got chatting, and when I told him what I did for a living, he offered me an exclusive.’

  ‘Why did you not say this straight away?’

  Because I just made it up. ‘I… I suppose I—’

  ‘You didn’t want to give away that ’e was out running,’ Nicolas interrupted, and I realised he’d misunderstood (I doubted Jay Merino went running; he might be seen). ‘’E would not want this to be widely known,’ he said, as if he didn’t quite believe it either. His voice thickened with curiosity. ‘You are quite the dark ’orse, Natalee. ’Ave you offered this anywhere else?’

  ‘No, no, it’s been my dream to write for your magazine since I moved to France,’ I said. I could tell he was the sort of boss who commanded adoration and loyalty from his staff, and probably got it. ‘I’d love to work for you full-time,’ I rushed on. ‘I could come for an interview, if you like.’

  ‘We ’ave a good team ’ere, Natalee,’ he said, kindly. ‘I do not need new writers.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘You ’ave no skill at this.’

  My spirits drooped. He was right. Interviewing someone of Jay’s calibre was way beyond my experience level and yet… I knew I could do it, given a chance. ‘Then why did you even bother calling me back?’

  ‘I’m intrigued by you, Natalee. I ’ave read all your emails,’ he said. ‘You are very, persistent. And passionate.’ He sounded mildly amused. ‘I wanted to ’ear your voice.’

  ‘So why not give me a chance?’ I ignored the last bit, which sounded like something a lover would say.

  ‘Like I say, we are in talks with Jay Merino.’

  On impulse, I said, ‘OK, well, I’m going to interview him anyway, and I’m sure other editors won’t be so picky about my lack of experience. In fact, I’m certain they’ll pay top dollar…’ Top dollar? Who was I? ‘… for an interview written by someone who knew the actor before he was famous.’ It was a wild gamble, considering I’d yet to speak to Jay, but if Nicolas believed I really knew him, he might just give me a shot.

  ‘I admire your tenacity, Natalee.’ His tone ripened into admiration. ‘I think I would like us to meet.’

  My heart jumped into my throat. ‘Meet?’ Too squeaky. ‘At your office?’ I was going to Paris! I would book a ticket online, and then—

  ‘I would not expect you to come all zis way.’ I felt a blast of disappointment. ‘La Rochelle, tomorrow evening at seven.’ He named a Michelin-starred restaurant I knew only by reputation. ‘Bring me proof that you know this man, Natalee, and I’ll consider your proposal.’

  * * *

  I couldn’t settle after Nicolas had hung up. I kept rushing to the windows, staring
first at the empty street, then at the stone-walled garden at the back of the house, before dashing through the living room and up to my bedroom, where I sat on the chair by the wardrobe, before jumping up and racing back downstairs.

  My breathing was heavy, my heart beating too fast again. How was I supposed to get proof I knew Jay Merino at such short notice? Or, at all? I could hardly call his hotel and ask to speak to him directly. Could I?

  I rooted my phone from my bag, found the number of the hotel and tapped it in, but hung up before it rang. No one was supposed to know he was there, for a start. Reception were hardly going to put me through, and I had no chance of getting past his manager, or security detail (I’d read that in the early days, he’d employed a bodyguard after a stalking incident) even if I said I was a good friend – which I wasn’t.

  Maybe it would be better to turn up in person. I could watch the hotel and wait for a sighting, then contrive running into him, just as I’d told Nicolas I already had. Maybe seeing me would trigger a memory from that historic evening. I didn’t look that much different these days, even if he did. Just to be sure, I checked out one of the photos of him online – the promotional shots for his previous films. He wore his dark hair cropped close to his skull, which made his cheekbones stand out, and his jaw – which I hadn’t remembered as being so defined – was bristly with stubble. His narrowed eyes looked almost black as they glared into the camera, and his expression was fierce – like a man on a mission to kill. (The bad guys responsible for the death of his wife and son, which was the over-arching theme of the franchise. There seemed to have been an awful lot of people involved, the reasons as yet unclear.) He was dangling out of a helicopter in the shot, so unlikely to be smiling, but I couldn’t picture him grinning in a friendly fashion. In every picture, most of them stills from film-shoots, he was either blank-faced or scowling, and in one – a grainy shot, taken with a long lens – his mouth was wide, almost filling his whole face, as if he was roaring.