Alice’s phone starts buzzing and she pulls a face as she looks at the screen. ‘Sorry, I’ll just be one sec.’ She puts the phone to her ear and wanders away.
I’m left watching the Dodo Manège and realising that this – everything we’ve just been talking about – is entirely new territory. We never spoke about any of it originally, I’m sure of it. And it makes me wonder: will it affect what happens later? After all these fresh conversational twists and turns, will everything still pan out the way it did first time round?
The thought of how this night ended originally makes my stomach churn. I want to do the right thing – I really do – but I have no idea what that is. Because, as shameful as it is to admit, I have thought about this night a lot over the past six years. Half the time it comes back to gnaw guiltily at me as I lie beside Daphne in bed. But the rest of the time, it makes me wonder what might have been. How my life could have turned out if I’d stayed here.
My head is throbbing suddenly. I close my eyes and press my hand against them, enjoying the coolness of my palm. When I open them again, my gaze falls on the little wooden hut next to the crêpe stand. It’s a cutesy Christmas stall, decorated haphazardly with tinsel and fairy lights, selling all sorts of cheap, touristy festive gifts. And then I spot something I recognise.
The snow globe.
I walk over to the stall and pick it up. I bought this thing for Daphne first time around. It must have been at this exact moment, when Alice was on the phone. I thought it would make a funny, cheesy Christmas present – a nice thing to send back in reply to her card. I had no idea that I’d be posting it three days later feeling sick with guilt about what had happened tonight.
I give it a gentle shake, and hundreds of tiny snowflakes begin swirling gently around the miniature Dodo Manège. It’s a tacky little thing, really. I wonder where it is now. I wonder if Daphne kept it.
‘C’est combien?’ I ask, without looking up.
A gravelly voice replies, ‘Oh, you can have that one on the house!’
I glance up, and almost inevitably, there are two bright blue eyes twinkling back at me.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
‘Bloody hell …’
I stare in disbelief at the old man’s crumpled smile, half hidden inside his scraggly grey-gold beard. ‘You gave me the shock of my life there. Although I guess I should have been expecting it.’
The watch-seller laughs. ‘You should indeed, young man.’ He smoothes down his reindeer tie, and leans towards me conspiratorially. ‘I think I make rather a good French souvenir salesman, don’t you? People seem to be buying it, anyway. Which is more than I can say for the souvenirs themselves. Haven’t shifted a single bloody thing all morning.’ He starts whistling ‘Good King Wenceslas’ as he rearranges some Arc de Triomphe-branded oven gloves.
My brain is still frazzled from the conversation with Alice, and I find I don’t really have the patience for the watch-seller’s trademark enigmatic cheeriness right now. ‘What are you doing here?’ I ask bluntly.
‘I just wanted to stop by and wish you a merry Christmas,’ he says. ‘It’s all part of the service.’
‘And what exactly is this service?’
He gives a throaty chuckle. ‘Oh, I can’t go into that at the moment, I’m afraid.’
‘Right. And I’m guessing you still can’t tell me why all this is happening, or when it will end, either?’
The old man tosses a Louvre-shaped paperweight into the air and catches it. ‘You guess correctly, young feller-me-lad. Even if I wanted to, we wouldn’t have time.’ He nods over at Alice, who is still circling the Dodo Manège with her phone clamped to her ear. ‘Your friend there is going to be walking back over in approximately’ – he checks his watch – ‘one minute twelve seconds.’ He stops juggling his merchandise and looks at me. ‘All I really wanted to do was check in and see how you were getting on. I realise this experience can be somewhat … overwhelming.’
He tilts his head and gives me a kindly – almost paternal – smile. That faded photo of Grandad Jack flashes back into my head again. The similarity is actually pretty eerie.
I’m on the cusp of bringing it up – asking if we’re somehow related, maybe – when the old man says, ‘So, come on: how are you coping, then?’
‘I, erm … OK, I guess.’ I shrug. ‘I mean, it’s not difficult to figure out why I’ve come back to this particular day. Something … happened here, first time around. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot over the years. I was actually thinking about it in that pub in 2020, when I met you. I was wondering whether I’d made the wrong decision today, whether I ended up with the wrong person. And I guess, since I’ve come back here, maybe it means that I did.’
The old man scratches at his beard with a miniature Eiffel Tower. ‘Hmm. That’s one way of looking at it.’
‘Is it the right way or the wrong way?’
‘Well … that’s not for me to say.’
I groan loudly, and he laughs again, his blue eyes sparkling. ‘You’ll figure it out,’ he says. ‘Just give it time. And speaking of time … I’m afraid ours is up.’
He taps his watch and glances behind me.
I turn to see Alice approaching, and as I turn back, the watch-seller is delivering an enthusiastic sales pitch to a passing couple in what sounds like perfect French.
I slip the snow globe into my jacket pocket just as Alice reaches my side.
‘Sorry about that,’ she sighs, dropping her phone back into her bag. ‘My boss won’t even leave me alone on bloody Christmas Day. I’m the only one in the office next week, so there’s tons to do. Anyway …’
She loops her arm through mine, just like she did all those years ago when we were heading to the maze. The watch-seller breaks out of his sales pitch to shoot me one last crumpled, twinkly grin.
‘Come on, then,’ Alice says. ‘We’re going to be late for our next stop.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
We are late.
We arrive at the tiny Champo cinema on Rue des Écoles almost ten minutes after the film has started. We edge our way down the aisle towards the only free seats, muttering ‘Excusez-moi’ and ‘Je suis desolé’ at the disgruntled people standing up for us.
The cinema screen is lined with tinsel, and it’s showing the same film we saw first time round: a schlocky Christmas romcom called The Holiday, starring Cameron Diaz. As we sit down, I remember that it’s dubbed into French, so I’m expecting to pick up exactly as little of it as I did originally.
‘Shit, sorry, I thought it was subtitled,’ Alice whispers. She nudges my elbow. ‘Good practice for your French, though, right?’
‘Yeah, exactly. No worries.’
I sit there in the darkness watching Jude Law gabble incomprehensibly in someone else’s voice, my hand almost touching Alice’s on the armrest. I remember so clearly how excited I felt at this moment the first time around. It wasn’t only the mystery agenda; it was also the fact that this was starting to feel like a proper date, rather than two old friends spending Christmas together because they didn’t have anyone else.