An hour later they were in the living room, a pizza box and two bottles open on the table between them. Everything had become pleasantly soft-focused and wibbly in the early evening light. She’d learned that Odette poured wine at a local bar most afternoons and that Henri was studying classical literature.
‘It is completely useless in the modern world of course. But it doesn’t matter,’ Odette confided in her, ‘he is rich, and his parents could pay for him to study his whole life if he wishes to.’
‘Ah, but they have other plans for me,’ Henri said darkly. ‘They pay for me, so they feel they own me.’
Odette laughed. ‘See? Too much literature. Henri, you are becoming quite dramatic!’
Bella was no longer feeling awful about her lies. Everything was mashed up in a state of blurry contentment. No need to tell people about ex-husbands, or B&Bs, mortgages or bank accounts with scarily small balances.
So they thought she was twenty-something, and on some sort of work experience or gap year? She leant back against the buttoned leather of the chesterfield. Perhaps this was one of those times when she was allowed to be a little loose with the truth, when she could be – for once – whomever she wanted to be without having to live up to anyone’s expectations. She’d thought back to that final exchange and hated herself.
Nobody here could compare her to Kitty. Nobody knew that she had just 200 euros left in her bank account and would have to make it stretch. Nobody knew that she’d accepted a job without fully knowing what it would entail.
So maybe it would be fun to be twenty again she thought, allowing her eyes to meet Henri’s and feeling a shiver of something long forgotten. If only for a little while.
11
NOW
‘Oh my God, you’re alive!’ Kitty’s voice was carefully upbeat, but there was a definite edge to it.
Sitting on the bed as she tried to paint her toenails, the phone balanced between shoulder and ear, Bella grimaced and almost lost her grip. ‘Sorry. Sorry,’ she said, her tongue flicking at the side of her lips as she concentrated on applying yellow varnish to her big toenail. ‘I meant to call but?—’
‘You texted to say you’d arrived in Versailles and were going to the house. Then nothing!’
‘Yeah, things kind of—it’s been eventful.’
‘I know, but still… You can’t go from calling me every day to ignoring my calls after going to live in a house of strangers.’
When she put it like this, Kitty had a point. ‘Yeah, sorry.’
‘It’s OK. Well, it is now. Now I know you’re not lying in the gutter somewhere.’
Bella had slipped after going out for drinks last night and had almost fallen face first in the gutter, but it probably wasn’t a good time to tell her sister this. ‘Not quite.’
‘So,’ Kitty settled into her usual tone. ‘Tell me all about this new job. It starts tomorrow, doesn’t it?’
‘Yeah. I mean, it’s no big deal. Just an admin job, really… probably.’
‘Probably?’
‘I mean, yes. It’s an admin job. Like I said. I mean, I don’t have to prepare or psych myself up or anything.’
‘In Versailles?’
‘Paris.’
‘Oh là là!’ her sister replied in a thick French accent. ‘You must tell me more about this glamorous role!’
Bella laughed. ‘Not sure it’s that glamorous. But it’s in this little boutique hotel which does look pretty cute.’ She described the building, narrow but tall, like many of the buildings in Paris, attached on one side to a restaurant, on the other to an insurance office. Despite its apparent diminutive frontage, it had twenty rooms.
‘And your job title?’
What was this? An interrogation? But Kitty had always been curious (she and Mum had used to laugh and make comments about curiosity killing the cat), and also had a rather scary sixth sense that detected when she was being lied to. ‘It’s… oh I don’t know. PA or something.’
‘Sounds good.’ Kitty’s voice was impressed. ‘How did you land that?’
‘I’m not completely useless, you know!’
