‘Yeah.’
‘Me too,’ he’d said, his voice lazy and content.
‘No, I mean really.’
The eye opened again. ‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. Why not? I’m sick of working at Boots, and you’ve nearly finished your apprenticeship.’
He shook his head. ‘Nah.’
‘Give me a good reason why not?’
‘Um, I can’t speak French?’
‘You can a bit.’
‘Hardly. And anyway, what would we do?’
But she had the answers for him: they’d stayed in a B&B and paid eighty euros per night; that had seemed like a fortune! Surely, they could do that too? The house prices were low. Dad had given her a bit of cash when he’d moved in with Linda, calling it ‘an early inheritance’, though they’d both known it was guilt money.
‘You’re really serious, aren’t you?’ he’d said when they’d boarded the plane.
She’d shrugged. ‘Kind of. Yeah. I mean… I really think I could be happy here, Pete. I feel as if maybe this ismyplace.’
17
NOW
It was exactly a month since she’d arrived in Versailles, and her days had fallen into a pleasant pattern.
She woke up, as always now, in Henri’s bed and performed her now customary ‘wriggle-from-under-his-arm-without-waking-him’ manoeuvre, which involved an undignified slither onto the carpet. Henri was a hugger, and she enjoyed being embraced for most of the night, other than the times when she’d wake from a dream of being suffocated to find his heavy arm draped over her ribcage, but it made getting up without waking him a physical challenge.
Once extracted, she went to the communal bathroom to shower, then to her own room to get dressed and to become Isabella, the alter ego she’d now perfected at work. It had been payday a week ago, meaning she had finally got a bit more in the bank, and she’d splashed out on a few outfits in the boutiques close to work.
Today, she pulled on a belted skirt, teamed with a cotton blouse in pink and grey. She styled her hair and quickly blow-dried it into submission, then put on a flick of eyeliner, a slick of lipstick. She was worlds away from the jeans-clad student wannabe who’d hit the clubs last night with Henri, but dressing the part seemed to help her step out of one identity and into another.
The thought of the lies she’d been telling along the way, or the half-truths she’d allowed people to assume, made her pause – lipstick midway to mouth – as a rush of guilt overcame her. She’d allowed her housemate to assume she was a twenty-something student, her employer to believe she was an experienced hotel manager. She’d built two identities, neither of which was truly her. But then she reassured herself that shehadtried to tell Henri her real age and circumstances – twice – and that her comments had been laughed at and batted away. And whatever illusion Claudine was under due to her somewhatenhancedCV, she was managing to do a good enough job to keep her exacting boss happy. And that was the point, after all.
Plus – and it was hard to admit this in her counterfeit circumstances – she was actually quite happy. Despite Pete. Despite the sale of the B&B. Despite, somehow, everything.
She liked the way she felt about herself with Henri. Liked losing herself in him. After the bruising shock of Pete’s departure, the idea of being cherished was exactly what she needed.
She liked the person she was at work, too. Capable, doing a job that somehow suited her more than running the B&B ever had. She’d always been good at the visual side of things, the little touches that made guests feel more welcome or want to return. The practical side of things hadn’t been her forte. So the fact that a great deal of her job at present seemed to be improving the offering of the hotel by providing small luxurious touches was exactly in her comfort zone. Hôtel Benjamin was already quirky and bijou, but now customers were treated to locally sourced toiletries, flowers from a grower just outside Paris, and each room had a basket of complimentary baked goods and chocolates sourced from the nearby patisserie.
The only problem she had – other than the house sale and the lingering problem of the divorce with Pete – was the fact that however wonderful her life felt, she was still carrying around a nagging fear that things could come tumbling down. That her situation couldn’t be permanent because the person she was being wasn’t entirely ‘real.’
Downstairs in the kitchen she picked up a small cardboard box filled with home-made cupcakes for Yves who had been working tirelessly at her side for a month now. She hesitated for a moment, wondering if it might be seen as a bit weird, but shook her head. If there was one thing she knew, it was that there was never a wrong time for a bit of the good stuff.
Then, grabbing her handbag and deciding to risk leaving her coat on its hook – the weather was warmer now with only the occasional shower coming along to spoil things – she began the ten-minute walk to the station.
En route, she pulled out her mobile and made a call.
‘What time do you call this?’ Kitty’s voice was mock angry.
‘It’s eight o’clock!’
‘Yes, but that’s seven in England, remember?’
