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Finally, with her outfit decided, Mireille went to the laundry cupboard and chose a small blue hand towel to pack in the bag. She might, after all, want to freshen up at the station.
Arrival
It was the smell of the place that did it. Sure, there were announcements in French and French voices murmuring all around her, but it was the particular cocktail of smells: the warmth of dark-roasted coffee beans and browned butter, the nose-tickling perfumes and the murky underlay of cigarette smoke, that made some signpost in Claire’s brain swivel on its rusty hinges and point to Paris. It felt like walking through the back of the wardrobe, crossing the threshold to a place where expectations were different or maybe gravity had just a fraction less pull. Anything might happen here, because the rules – at least some of them – didn’t apply.
‘I need to pee,’ she said, motioning towards the toilets.
With her bag propped on the damp counter, Claire took stock of her appearance in the mirror. Even to herself, she looked tired. Her blue eyes were red-rimmed, and her skin was even more pasty and freckled than usual. She rubbed at the three parallel wrinkles that had, only recently, furrowed into her brow. It was thinking that did it, she thought. Thinking was the thief of youth. Her shoulder-length fair hair, on the other hand, looked kind of nice – a bit too much like a newsreader, maybe, a bit fake – but that would last only as long as the blow-dry.
To her left and right, women readjusted their foulards and glossed their lips. They were making the best of themselves in a way that Claire had never managed to grasp. She was taller than most of them – that was something – but broader in the hips and bigger boned. These women seemed so neat. They seemed to take up less space while still commanding more attention, as though they had been compressed and polished into a harder, shinier type of human.
She combed through her hair, enjoying it for just a second, and dabbed a little Vaseline onto her lips – then, leaning in, rubbed the remainder into a dry patch below her right eye.
* * *
Ronan, when she found him, had two train tickets in one hand and a bottle of water in the other.
‘There’s a train in five minutes,’ he said, holding out the bottle. ‘Are you up to running?’
She took a sip, then a long slug. ‘Thanks. I was parched. Yeah, let’s go.’
He shouldered his way through the crowds, and she followed in his wake. Good job she’d opted for a pair of runners, however touristy she might look. As Ronan stepped onto the train ahead of her, a low klaxon sounded. He turned and grabbed her hand, pulling her close. The doors hissed and banged shut at her heel.
They found seats, and Claire looked up at the RER B train line illustrated on a poster above their heads. This was the train she’d taken every Saturday, and sometimes Sundays, too, on her sightseeing trips to the city.
‘I still can’t say it,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘RER, I can’t roll my r’s.’
‘Ah, you can. It’s easy:err-uh-err.?.?.’ He executed a perfect pronunciation and looked at her with an expectant grin.
‘R. Uh. R.’
‘That’s pathetic. What exactly did they teach you here?’
‘How to make French toast.’
‘You do make excellent French toast, it must be said.’
‘And Kir Royales.’
He laughed. ‘Kirrrr Rrrroyale, you mean.’
She pretended to pout, and he put his arm around her waist and pulled her closer so that their hips pressed together.
‘Hmm, I think I’ll keep you.’
‘Of course, the French don’t call it that.’
‘What?’
‘French toast. They call itpain perdu.’
‘Lost bread. The poetry of it.’
‘I know. We can’t hold a candle to them.’
