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He’d been tipped to go to Oxford or Cambridge, I recalled, a mysterious and exotic notion for the rest of us who were struggling to get good enough grades to stay on in sixth form, never mind considering Oxbridge.
‘How did he do it?’ asked Léo.
‘He ran up behind me when I was walking home one afternoon,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t work out what the hell he was doing. I imagined he would have been holed up in the library, or off doing some sort of extra-curricular activity for the very gifted.’
‘You were not used to the attention,’ said Léo.
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘I think I must have had confusion written all over my face.’
Léo laughed. ‘You should have played it very cool.’
‘Were you listening when I told you what I looked like?’
The accordion was still playing softly. As we walked along the curved streets of Montmartre, I began to daydream. I saw myself in a gorgeous cream-coloured building with the shutters of an apartment thrown open and a window box hanging off the ledge and on the cobbled street down below, somebody would be playing some mournful tune. Léo would be next to me and we would be laughing about something, the sweet smell of waffles and cherry blossom wafting up into the air. I snapped myself out of it. What was I doing?
‘I must know about the date with this … Gus?’ said Léo. ‘Was it good?’
‘I mean, I looked great. I’d slathered myself in my mum’s blue and lilac eyeshadow and had put my hair up into a high pony tail, like this,’ I said, showing him how I could pull my hair off my face so tightly that it looked as though I’d had a facelift. He raised his eyebrows and laughed, and I elbowed him playfully in the side.
‘And what was he wearing, can you remember?’
I thought back. ‘A checked shirt. Under a navy V-neck jumper.’
‘Classique.’
‘When he saw me, he shook my hand.’
‘Too formal?’
‘The film was terrifying, I remember that.’
‘You do not like scary movies?’
I shook my head. ‘Not at all. And he didn’t put his arm around me or anything. I had my hands over my eyes most of the time.’
‘He did not kiss you?’ he said, looking shocked. I didn’t imagine Léo had ever held back in that department.
‘Not that night.’
‘How long did it last, this romance?’ he asked, pointing to a beautiful entrance to a Métro station I was sure I’d seen in a film. I took a photo of its romantic mint green railings and glass-covered canopy. The classic green-and-yellow Métropolitain sign hung from its apex.
‘Oh, about three weeks.’
He looked impressed. ‘That long?’
‘He stopped talking to me one day, completely out of the blue. I cornered him in the science lab to find out why and he dumped me, right there, wearing a white coat and safety goggles.’
It was all so long ago, but I could still recall how I’d felt that day, how much it had hurt. How rejected I’d felt. Because I obviously wasn’t good enough for a straight-A student like Gus. How could I be, I remembered thinking, when I wasn’t even good enough to make my own father stick around? The two had felt linked in my mind, and it was always the same: I didn’t seem to be able to get over things the way other people could. Each little glitch, every little mistake, was another reminder that I was a girl that nobody wanted. Even if Dad hadn’t loved Mum any more, he could have carried on seeing me. That feeling of being discarded, or abandoned, had continued throughout my entire life. And I was sick of feeling that way; I didn’t want it to be like that that any more.
‘Let me take a photo of you here,’ I said, shooing Léo back. ‘I want you right under the Métropolitain sign.’
‘There are only two original entrances like these in the whole of Paris,’ he said. ‘They are called “the dragonfly”, for some reason. Perhaps they are modelled on their wings.’
This time he didn’t do a silly pose, he just put his hands in his pockets and hung his head and then looked up at me through his fringe and when I looked at him through the viewfinder, I honestly thought it might be one of the loveliest images I’d ever seen.
He checked his watch. ‘Come. If we run up this staircase we will see a secret square, one of my favourites in the city. Très artistique. Very nice views.’
‘What time is it now?’ I said, catching him up, watching his bag bob up and down on his shoulder.
