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Chapter 7
It was now 8.10, according to the huge clock on the front of the station. God, it was like time was standing still. Even from out here the continuous announcements about trains arriving and trains departing and whistles blowing felt as though they were drilling into my brain. The rain had slowed, at least, and had morphed into the sort of fine, misty drizzle that made Paris look all foggy and romantic. Would I have felt differently about being here again, I wondered, if the circumstances had been different? If Si had been with me? If we’d come to see the sights together, had got the lift to the top of the Eiffel Tower to take photos of the view? I wondered whether I would have been able to forget about the past and let myself appreciate it for what it was. Because I couldn’t find much to like about Paris. It had a darkness about it, although I suspected that might come from inside of me as well as from the city itself. Although, I had actual evidence now that bad things happened to me here: there had already been the missed train, the twisted ankle and the stolen phone. I could only imagine what terrible event fate might throw at me next. The sooner I could get out of this place, the better.
After killing a few minutes by wandering aimlessly around outside the station entrance probably looking highly suspicious, I noticed a blonde-haired woman wearing a peacock blue cardigan running across the forecourt and there was something about her that reminded me of Alison the bridesmaid. Not that I could recall her in much detail. She was very pretty; I remembered thinking that at the hen weekend. Even shorter than me, maybe 5’1” or 5’2”. Northern accent; I thought she’d said she was from Manchester originally, and had moved to Berkhamsted after her parents divorced and her mum got re-married to some local business owner. She was an old friend of Si’s family and after getting a first at Cambridge, she was now in corporate law (or something). I felt a stab of envy about how sorted she sounded and then instantly berated myself for comparing myself to other women. It was nobody’s fault but my own that I was stuck in a job I hated. The thing was, though, loads of people were in the same boat. They had bills to pay and kids to feed and had long ago given up on any dreams they might have had. If I wasn’t careful, I knew I’d end up being one of them. I wondered how things were going at the wedding, whether whatever drama she’d been texting Si about in the middle of the night had been resolved. I thought about them all getting ready in Catherine’s room without me, sipping champagne as they struggled to keep her calm. I would have been flitting in and out, getting drinks and passing on messages and reassuring an increasingly irate Catherine that I’d done everything she’d asked me to. Si and I would have been smiling at each other over some ridiculous demand she’d made.
‘Hannah!’
I turned my head, imagining I’d heard somebody calling my name. It couldn’t have been, though, since as far as I was aware, not a single person I knew was in Paris.
‘Hannah! Over here!’
And then I spotted Léo, standing next to a motorbike, a helmet in his hand, his hip resting against the bike’s frame.
I gave him a half-hearted wave, wondering where he’d magicked the bike up from so quickly. I supposed he must live nearby. Unsure what to do next, I went to walk away, back inside the station. When I glanced over my shoulder, I saw that he was jogging across to me, stepping straight out in front of a taxi.
‘Va te faire foutre!’ shouted the driver, braking sharply. He beeped his horn but Léo waved him off, seemingly not bothered that he’d narrowly escaped death.
‘Un moment, Hannah!’ he called to me.
I stopped. What did he want now?
‘Hi,’ he said, coming to a stop in front of me, catching his breath.
‘Hello.’
‘What have you been doing?’ he asked conversationally, the motorbike helmet lodged under his arm.
‘In the thirty minutes since I saw you last? Not much, funnily enough,’ I countered. What did he think I’d been doing?
The air was still hazy with rain but when I held out my hand to catch some, it was so fine I could barely feel it. The air felt warmer, too, as though there was a chance the sun might break through.
‘Oh, right,’ I said as it dawned on me what he wanted. ‘You came back for this,’ I said, unzipping the hoodie.
He put his hand out to stop me. ‘Of course not. It is yours to keep.’
I looked at him quizzically, ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes,’ he said with a slow smile.
‘Do you always give your stuff away to complete strangers, then?’ I asked, tucking my hair behind my ear.
‘Not usually.’
It wouldn’t surprise me if there was a plethora of other women wandering around Paris wearing items of his clothing.
‘I have been thinking,’ he said. ‘You must report your lost phone to the police. If you have insurance? Otherwise you will have to buy another. They are expensive, non, these phones?’
I hadn’t thought of that, of course, what with being eternally disorganised. I presumed I did have some sort of insurance, though, because my monthly repayments cost a fortune and I was always complaining about them, particularly because my direct debit came out right at the end of the month. I sighed; he was right. I’d at least need some sort of crime reference number, or whatever the French equivalent was, if I was going to submit a claim. I couldn’t really afford not to.
‘Would I need to go to an actual police station, do you think?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course.’
‘Isn’t there one inside the station?’
‘There was once, but it is closed now. There is the central police station in Rue Louis Blanc, not far from here.’ He gestured vaguely in the direction of the city.
‘Couldn’t I just ask a police officer? There must be loads of them inside,’ I suggested. I had the creeping fear that I was going to leave the station, get stuck filling in form after form and miss the next train, even if it wasn’t leaving for several hours.
