They both swivelled around in their seats to look, their chairs scraping on the stone floor.
‘Stop staring. He’ll see,’ I hissed.
Too late; at that moment Mr Grumpy looked up and caught my eye, and from the way he lifted his chin slightly I could tell he recognised me too. Gosh, I was blushing. How ridiculous at my age.
‘Oh, is that the man on the train?’ Harriet said loudly. ‘The one who wasn’t going to Disneyland?’
I flapped my hands at her to shush.
‘He’ll hear you,’ I said.
Harriet shrugged. ‘I don’t care. Just because he’s handsome doesn’t mean he gets away with being rude. I’m going to give him one of my best hard looks.’
And she did.
Mr Grumpy looked up again just in time to benefit from this, and his mouth twitched with amusement before he went back to his notebook. Harriet might have been able to quell a lecture room last year when she was a professor, but that day it wasn’t working.
‘Croque monsieur,’ I said, shaking my menu at her to get her attention and wishing I hadn’t said anything. ‘I love that and surely here it will be even better?’
The others agreed – after Anna debated a bit about whether we had eaten too many carbs for one day already – that this was a good choice and surely wouldn’t take long to cook either. The waiter came and took our order, still without a word.
‘Parisians are supposed to be like that,’ Anna said, ‘different from French people. Perhaps it’s the same in all big cities. Maybe we should try and speak French more?’
I thought back to my university French all those years ago. I had the terrible feeling that my French was so grammatically old fashioned that I would probably sound like a character in a Jane Austen novel to a Parisian. Still, I would give it a go.
‘Merci beaucoup,’ I said as our food arrived. ‘Cette nourriture a l’air incroyable.’
Our waiter actually laughed at me before he walked away.
‘Gosh what did you say?’ Anna asked.
‘I just said the food looked good,’ I replied. ‘Perhaps I was a bit over the top; after all, it’s just a cheese and ham toastie with attitude.’
We tucked in and actually it was delicious, helped down by the carafe of wine which made everything seem better. We finished off with another nod to French life, double espressos, because even we knew that to order a latte or cappuccino this late in the day would earn us a positive sneer of disapproval and probably a refusal.
We split the bill and took turns to visit the loo, because at this stage in life all of us knew the importance of never missing an opportunity.
I glanced over towards Mr Grumpy as we left and he was still there, but by then he was head down, tapping away on his laptop. I wondered what he was doing, and being the nosey sort, I would love to have asked, and for a moment I seriously thought about it.
Maybe he was an academic on his way to a high-powered conference and had an important deadline. I had known all about those once upon a time. Perhaps he would be presenting some impenetrable paper on artificial intelligence or the bitcoin thing everyone was talking about. He might be refining his keynote speech.
Or he could be a writer who was working through his final draft, ready for an urgent publication date. What would a man like him write? Spy thrillers or war stories. The biography of some political giant.
Perhaps I could step to one side as I passed him, say something about turning up like a bad penny, small world, having a good day? But he didn’t look up at all; he just carried on typing, shifting in his seat a little, so instead I followed the other two out into the cool evening.
We had a train to catch. It wouldn’t be too much longer and we would be on our way, heading for the south of France.
It had been a splendid day so far, and all our plans were working.
My phone buzzed in my pocket and I pulled it out.
Ben
It’s raining and there’s a cat sitting in a cardboard box in the utility room. It must have come in through the cat flap. Do you have a cat? Should I feed it?
Me
No, and probably not unless you want it to adopt you. The cat flap has always been there. I didn’t install it. You’ve lived with me for nearly a year. Have you ever noticed a cat?
