Cinn slid the number out of his wallet. “Will your dad mind the international call charges?” He was banking on Auri covering the astronomical charges that he was surely racking up on his own line. With a raised eyebrow, Julien gestured broadly to the space they occupied. “I think he’ll just about be able to afford his newspaper still, yes.”
Phone to his ear, Cinn paused. “Is it still the same number at the beginning, to make it connect to England? What button do I press next?”
Julien sighed, walked over, snatched the receiver and scrap of paper, and proceeded to jam the buttons. Passing the phone back, he returned to his seat. After a long silence, the phone rang.
And rang.
And rang.
And rang.
It disconnected.
“I’ll quickly try once—”
“Well, we have to go now, anyway,” said Julien, snapping his work shut and catapulting up.
“I thought we had anoth—”
“I’ve just remembered how long it takes to walk there. We don’t want to be late.”
Cinn placed the phone back into the holder. “Okay…” he said slowly. “I’ll go get my coat.”
Although Julien’s palace seemed to float by itself in some distant rural location, the walk to civilisation was strikingly quick. With every step, Cinn’s excitement at the prospect of sightseeing grew.
“Oh, can we go to the—”
Julien put his hand up. “Non. Don’t say it.”
Cinn scowled. “You don’t know what I was about to ask.”
With arms crossed, Julien sucked in a deep breath before declaring, “You were about to ask me to take you to that giant iron eyesore that blights Paris’s skyline. The epitome of overrated tourist traps. Who in their right mind would want to spend precious time staring at a bunch of metal beams stacked together?”
“I actually thought we could goup—”
“And the crowds! There are so many other beautiful places in Paris, but no, everyone just has to go gaga over that rusty lattice. It’s a symbol of hype over substance, and I refuse to contribute to the madness.”
Cinn snapped his mouth shut as they continued onwards. The long walk into the city centre seemed to be suspiciously convoluted, but what did he know? He allowed Julien to drone on about annoying tourists, the ‘decrepit’ Parisian metro system and their overflowing rat and pigeon problems all the way to a bike rental store, where they met Elliot and Darcy.
To his surprise, Darcy threw her arms around him. Cinn weakly returned the gesture, patting her back.
“You survived!” she said.
Julien cackled. “Well, he hasn’t actually met my father yet, so…”
Their first activity of the day was to hide in a side alley with their rented bikes, while Julien installed some sort of new invention he wastrialling on the spokes of each of them. Attached to the hub, it looked like a twenty-four legged spider.
“They should give us a little boost,” he said with a proud grin that Cinn couldn’t help but smile back at.
“We’re not entering the Tour de France today, Julien,” said Elliot. “I’m sure we could have managed.”
“Now we canmanageeven more effortlessly.”
Dodging weaving traffic and navigating through the chaotic maze of honking horns and impatient drivers, they cycled in tandem across frighteningly busy city streets. The mopeds whizzing past, pedestrians darting unpredictably, and the cacophony of street sounds created a pulse of frenetic energy that was almost overwhelming, even for a seasoned Londoner like Cinn.
When they reached the Seine, hopping off to push their bikes alongside the river, Cinn breathed a sigh of relief.
“Well?” Julien demanded. “Did it work for you?”
