‘Good,’ he says, sitting opposite me, his chin lifted, showing off his strong neck and jaw.
‘You look very comfortable in these surroundings,’ I comment, to which he smiles, a smile that suggests he’s entirely at ease wherever he goes.
He looks at me for a moment, just long enough for a butterfly to stir in my stomach. ‘Your beauty would complement any room.’
‘Hardly,’ I laugh, not quite sure where to look.
‘Nobody has told you that before?’ he asks, his eyes locked on mine.
‘No,’ I answer, my cheeks flushing, feeling distinctly Scottish to his French.
‘But you have such poise, and style.’
‘Maybe it’s all the yoga I do,’ I laugh, trying to brush off his attention. ‘And any style I have comes straight from my mum.’
‘Your mother is also beautiful, but you have thatje ne sais quoi,no?’
Nicolas is not the first to comment on my supposed ‘air of mystery’, which is in fact the opposite – shy,reserved, often uncertain – a world away from aloof or mysterious.
I’m searching for the right thing to say in response, aware of Flynn chatting to someone beside me, when Nicolas takes out a card and hands it to me.
‘Call me, let me take you out for drinks,’ he says, and he stands to leave, leaning in to kiss me again on my cheek.
‘Thank you—’ I begin, a little breathlessly.
I’m about to tell him I plan on taking the walking tour, but I’m cut short when the doors to the library are thrown open and a man, with immaculate silver hair, hawk-like eyes and a cravat, who I can only presume is Christopher Rose, enters with an exhausted-looking Ginny behind him.
14.
FRAN
‘Cleaver Square, Kennington, please,’ I say nervously to the driver of the black cab, hailed for me by the hotel doorman.
‘Certainly, madam,’ he replies with a cockney twang.
I take a moment to make myself comfortable, the back of the taxi feeling too roomy for one, putting on the seatbelt and placing my open handbag neatly beside me. The postcard of the Moulin Rouge pokes out from the pages ofThe Hunchback of Notre-Dame, and I look at it, as I did most of yesterday evening, questioning why I didn’t keep it when Alistair gave it to me, and what it means: a sign that I’m meant to find him?
All I know for certain is that I was compelled to get out of bed this morning before Elsa was even awake, to sneak out and hail a cab for Kennington.
‘You’ve made an early start,’ the driver says, glancing in the rear-view mirror.
‘As have you,’ I deflect, through the open glass partition.
‘Part of the job – early mornings or late nights are the busiest times, and I’ve never been a night owl.’
I refrain from telling him that I’ve always been more of a night person than a morning one. Ever since I left Edinburgh at eighteen to study English in London, I’ve slept late and worked later. Often I was the last student in the library, more accustomed to working to the whirl of the floor cleaners than to the sound of birdsong. But this morning I felt I had no choice but to be up early, before Elsa and Carly awoke from the festivities of the night before, to slip out of the hotel and journey towards my past.
‘What brings you to the city?’ he asks, as we wind our way down Shaftesbury Avenue, the street cleaners tidying up the rubbish of the theatre-goers and Soho revellers from last night. It reminds me of Saturday nights as a student, going out for drinks and on to a gig, and of the few years I worked in the city as an editorial assistant at a small publishing house, going to talks or the theatre after work, before returning to Edinburgh to care for Mum.
‘I’m here for work, just an overnight visit,’ I reply, not wanting to get into the details of the book train to Paris, or indeed this taxi ride into the past.
‘What line of work are you in?’
‘I’m a novelist.’
‘Anything I would have heard of?’
I check to see if he’s wearing a wedding ring, which he is. ‘Your wife might have; I write romance novels.’
