“May I ask why?” Alain says, and his voice is so kind and his face so earnest that Mebel finds herself wanting to be honest with him, this stranger she has just met.
“I need to win my husband back,” she says simply.
Alain’s eyes soften. “I see. And going to culinary school will do that?”
Mebel gives a firm nod, her lips pressed together into a thin line. “Yes.”
“All right. Well, then let’s do that—”
Mebel brightens.
“—in Cowley.”
Mebel slumps in her seat. “Ah.”
“I’m afraid it is our only option. Shall I book you a Eurostar ticket for London?”
“You say it’s not in London.”
“It isn’t. You’ll go from Paris to St. Pancras International in London, and from there, you will take the bus to Ox—”
“A bus?” Mebel gasps.
Alain pauses, his eyes lighting up with what she could’ve sworn is silent laughter. “Yes, Mebel, a bus. Have you ever been on one?”
Mebel thinks hard. “When I was six, my parents take me on double-decker bus to tour London.”
“There you go. These are not so different. You’ll take a bus to Oxford. I believe the bus from London to Oxford stops at Cowley. From there, you may take a local bus—”
“A local bus?” She can’t keep the scandalized tone out of her voice.
“Or a cab. It will be a ten-minute ride from the bus stationto where the school is.” Alain glances over at Mebel’s mountain of suitcases and says, “Or perhaps you might want to take a cab from St. Pancras International all the way to the school.”
“Oh! Is that possible? Then, yes, that one. I choose that option.”
“Wonderful. I will help you order a Eurostar ticket. In the meantime, let’s get you a car to Gare du Nord station.”
The next few minutes are a flurry as Alain makes several calls, and before Mebel knows it, a cab pulls up outside the school, and a beleaguered Frenchman steps out and flings her Louis Vuitton suitcases into the trunk and the remaining pieces into the back seat with savage abandon. Alain assures her that the school in Cowley has been notified to expect her arrival and that she now has a first-class Eurostar ticket to London, and soon, Mebel is bundled into the cab. She waves dazedly at Alain, and she is off, trundling down the beautiful Parisian streets once more, only this time, as she looks out the window, she is no longer filled with the excitement and fizz of being in Paris. Instead, she gazes out with a sense of loss and bewilderment and the wordsWhat the hell is happening?echoing through her mind.
Chapter 5
Mebel has always thought ofParis with two exclamation marks following it. It’s never just Paris. It’s Paris!! Land of beauty and romance and dreams. When she thinks of London, she takes away one of the exclamation marks. London! Not as magical as Paris, but exciting in its own way. As she said to Alain, she loves the West End theater and there is, of course, Harrods, Fortnum & Mason, Burberry, Vivienne Westwood, and all the other stuff that makes LondonLondon!
Unfortunately, Cowley is very much not London. As Mebel’s black cab takes her down the wet London streets, she watches with increasing dread as the buildings around her dissolve from majestic architecture to more sedate buildings to factories and then, to her horror, to fields where sheep roam freely. Rain pours from the gloomy skies in a steady patter. For the next hour or so, Mebel gapes out the window and tries to hold back her tears as the sheep turn to cows, then to agriculture. She doesn’tknow what the massive fields of yellow flowers are; all she knows is that they are very much not farming beautiful shops from which she can source an overpriced calfskin handbag with golden hardware.
An excruciating half hour of farmland follows, and finally, they turn off the highway (or the motorway, as the driver calls it) and the houses appear. But these houses are what Mebel, as generous as she is trying to be, can only describe as “humble.” Built out of red bricks, they are all uniform, small and cramped, with tiny windows. The car turns down one street, then another, and another, and Mebel half wonders if she’s even still in England. How is it possible that this is the same country that boasts marvels like Big Ben and Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey? These buildings are nothing like the ones in London, and against the backdrop of the funeral gray English skies, the sight is almost too depressing to behold.
The cold air is wreaking havoc on Mebel’s eyes, and she’s just applied some eye drops when the car comes to a stop. Mebel stays there, unmoving, blinking away the eye drops. The driver gets out, yawns, and stretches outside, as though oblivious to the rain steadily drizzling around him. He opens the door for Mebel and she starts.
“Here we are, luv,” he says.
“What?”
“The Saint Honor Cooking School, yeh?”
“Saint Honoré School of Culinary Arts,” Mebel says, pronouncing it the way the French do.
“Right, that’s the one. Out we get then, luv.”
