Chapter One
Paris, Autumn 1963
Alexandra still couldn’t quite control her excitement. She was in Paris! True, it was only for twenty-four hours, but the October day was bright and full of possibility. She loved Paris, although she’d only visited it once, years ago, when her nanny had taken her, so that she, the nanny, could visit her boyfriend. Paris had made a deep impression on her and she was enjoying every moment of being there.
Tomorrow, she would get on a train to Switzerland and go to a finishing school, or whatever her well-meaning, unimaginative guardians thought was a good idea. But today was hers and she’d already done quite a bit of exploring.
She pulled the belt of her mac a little tighter as a gust of wind caught her where she stood at the foot of Montmartre, looking up at the Sacré-Cœur, thinking how beautiful it was. She was about to set off up the very many steps towards it when she heard a little scream behind her. She turned to see a pretty young woman with blonde hair, her hands held against her face in a gesture of horror. There were potatoes and onions rolling away from her feet and a broken string bag in her hand. She was on the verge of tears.
‘I can’t believe this!’ the woman wailed. ‘You think a day has started badly and it just gets worse and worse!’
Alexandra couldn’t ignore her. The woman didn’t seem much older than she was at just twenty, and was obviously very upset. She was also speaking English, albeit with an American accent.
‘Come on! It’s all right. I’ll help you.’ Alexandra crouched down and started gathering up vegetables into the skirt of her mac.
‘It’s so kind of you to help,’ said the woman, sounding slightly less as if she were about to cry. ‘But unless you’ve got a bag, we might as well just leave all this here!’
Alexandra looked at her lap: the woman had a point; she couldn’t walk with all this clutched to her stomach. ‘We could fill our pockets, I suppose. Oh, look at that garlic!’ Accustomed as she was to tight little garlic bulbs, the large purplish item, the size of a tennis ball, reminded her of the cookery course she had recently finished in London. The first thing Mme Wilson had said was how pathetic the garlic was in England. This garlic was very obviously French.
‘Take it if you like,’ said the woman. ‘I have no pockets. I’m never going to get to use it now.’
‘I’m sure things aren’t that bad,’ said Alexandra soothingly. ‘Put what you can in your handbag—’
The woman waggled a tiny box purse in Alexandra’s direction.
‘OK, my pockets, then. And I can put some in my handbag, although maybe not the cabbage.’ Alexandra’s bag was an antique postal bag and was fairly capacious but not big enough for something the size of a human head.
‘It’s so kind of you, but I haven’t got anything I could put vegetables in. I don’t even know why I bought them. I’m supposed to be having a dinner party tonight and I don’t have a menu! I can’t cook and I can’t even shop for one! My husband is going to be so disappointed in me.’
‘Is he quite a new husband?’ Alexandra felt he must be, given how young this woman was.
‘Very new. And at this rate I wonder if we’ll make it to a year. Tonight is the first big dinner party he’s asked me to arrange and I’ve already failed!’ The woman was still distressed but not weeping. ‘Look, can we go somewhere and get a drink? Even just a coffee? I haven’t spoken English to anyone except my husband – and of course he’s American, like me – since we got to Paris. And that wouldn’t be so bad except I don’t speak French!’
Alexandra was naturally kind-hearted and couldn’t ignore the appeal from this young woman who must have been terribly lonely. ‘Why not? Here’s a nice café – have you had lunch? I haven’t. And I do speak French. Not perfectly, of course, but well enough.’ Alexandra was hungry. Keen to enjoy every minute she had in Paris, she had got up too early to be given breakfast at her pension, and had done a lot of walking.
‘Oh! I would so love to go somewhere and not have to fight with the waiters to make myself understood!’ said the woman. ‘My name is Donna, by the way.’ She put out her hand.
‘Alexandra,’ said Alexandra, shaking Donna’s hand briefly. ‘Now, let’s eat.’
When they both had plates of steak frites and a bottle of wine in front of them, and had eaten several mouthfuls in silence, Donna put down her knife and fork. ‘I’ll just tell you my story quickly,’ she said, ‘then I want to hear about you.’
Alexandra smiled. ‘Go on then.’
‘Well, I grew up in Connecticut. Married young to a very nice man, Bob, who my parents approved of, and then his job sent him to Paris. Which sounds so romantic, and it is really, but not when you don’t speak the language, your husband is out all day and you have no friends. I have no one to talk to except the maid and she doesn’t speak English – and hates me! My parents aren’t happy about me being so far away and keep writing letters asking if Bob can’t be transferred back to the States. Well, it’s my mother, really.’ She paused for breath. ‘That’s pretty much me summed up. Paris is a beautiful city and I’d love to get to know it better,’ she sighed. ‘Now it’s your turn.’
‘You haven’t told me about the dinner party yet,’ said Alexandra, ‘but I will give you the salient facts about me. I grew up in London and don’t have any parents, although I do have relations who look out for me. I was living a lovely life with friends in a big house owned by my family, and now I have to go to Switzerland.’ She paused. ‘The relations found out I wasn’t behaving in a way they considered suitable, so they’ve told me I must buckle down and do what they say.’
Put like that, it didn’t seem very dramatic, but at the time it had been awful. She’d been away at the wedding of her close friend Lizzie, and had come back with David, fifteen years older and her best friend, to see the house blazing with light. After she had stopped worrying that the house had been burgled, which took about two minutes, she realised her relatives from Switzerland had let themselves into the family property. Her and David’s easy life was over. David didn’t even go back into the house; he went to stay with a friend until the coast was clear. Fortunately the relatives hated London and didn’t stay long, but their orders to Alexandra were clear; she must go to Switzerland the following month.
‘That’s awful that you don’t have parents! But you do have relations? Why didn’t they take you in when your parents died?’ asked Donna.
‘I don’t know, but I’m really glad they didn’t. I had lots of nannies and people to look after me, and I didn’t mind. My relations want what’s best for me, absolutely, but I would never have been happy living with them.’ Alexandra had to have a sip of wine to help her recover from the thought. ‘They’re very straight-laced and buttoned-up. I’m a bit of a free spirit.’
‘Gee!’ said Donna. ‘That sounds so – dashing!’
Alexandra laughed. ‘It was fun, particularly when I met my special friends at cookery school.’
‘You’re a trained chef?’
