‘Right,’ Keeley replied. She felt the total opposite of empowered at the moment if she was honest.
‘So, you can either tell Silvie you’ve changed your mind and we can both head out for a walk and dinner at a nice brasserie…’
‘I’d like that,’ Keeley said. ‘But… I’d feel bad about letting anyone down at late notice.’
‘OK then, that’s decided.’ Rach said with a nod. ‘I’ll go to the ballet and meet Son of Silvie.’
‘God, I feel so much better,’ Keeley said, breathing out what felt like a whole tumult of anxiety.
‘Good,’ Rach said, nodding as she looked back to her reflection in the window of the balcony doors. ‘That’s settled then. Just promise to keep your mobile on – and not on silent – and let’s hope Son of Silvie is at least a little bit hot… and not too young for me.’
Twenty-Five
Dodo Manege, Jardin Des Plantes, Paris
Ethan was blaming tonight on the street girl. After he had emailed his lawyer asking for advice on Louis Durand’s plan to try and sell the hotel chain, he had gone out for coffee and ended up standing outside the orphanage he had grown up in. From the exterior it looked like an almost quaint Parisian townhouse – impressive steps to the front door, Juliette balconies – but behind the not-at-first-noticeable bars on the windows, it had been the kind of dwelling depicted in television crime dramas. Ethan had stood there, almost trying to look through the bricks of the building and vividly remembering the deep, rich, coldness he’d endured each and every day. A bone-chilling icy temperature no high tog duvet could ever fix and the kind of wicked, cruelty that carers who should never have been carers had doled out. Was it still going on behind that charade of a façade? Was this the kind of place the street girl came from?
Ethan shook his head now and took a sip from his take-out cup of coffee. He was thinking too much about the girl. Maybe she wasn’t an orphan or even in foster care. Perhaps she was just a thief and his feeling of false kinship was because of what was happening with the hotels right now. He should have guessed this was coming. Without Ferne here, the Durands were always going to revert to type. Rich people liked rich people. They didn’t like strays like him. Guttersnipes shouldn’t exist in their world. They turned a blind eye and willed extinction.
Endangered species. Ethan watched the menagerie of animals in front of him slowly rotating to music. Drawn to a carousel! Drinking coffee and refreshing his email inbox! What a life! Ferne would be laughing at him now if she were here. As hard as she had worked, she had played equally as much. She had always, somehow, been able to switch off as quickly as she switched on. And this children’s ride amid the Jardin Des Plantes was a throwback to his youth. The very place he had first met Ferne. These model animals on the ride were all extinct or endangered. Unlike the more familiar fairground horses, this circular whirl comprised of a dodo, a Barbary lion, a horned turtle, a panda and other animals dead, or on the brink of eradication.
A young Ethan hadn’t really thought about what these animals were when he had snuck on for a free ride, but Ferne had shown him the guide on a small plaque next to the roundabout. The animals had been as foreign to him as the girl who had ridden next to him. She had been all smart clothes and long words – even at that age – and he had marvelled at her mere existence. Back then, young, knowing nothing about a brighter, lighter world outside the walls of the orphanage, everything about the moments Ethan achieved when he snuck out felt exotic. The smell of the air, mingling with other scents that invigorated his soul – fresh, rich coffee he had never tasted but longed to, sweet pastries that sang of sugar and syrup, the water of the Seine, its smell a muddied mix of fresh water and for some reason, pigeons. Ferne smelled like a light summer’s day wrapped up in a covering of Chanel, a delicate perfume the exact opposite of the clawing brand the manager of the orphanage wore over her body like a second skin. Ferne was joy and hope with a laugh that could have made the sullenest tramp crack a smile at life. From that very first encounter, Ethan had wanted to find out exactly what it was that made someone so in love with being alive.
He swallowed another mouthful of coffee and watched a little boy, holding a snowman-shaped lollipop out into the air as he revolved around squashed into the seat of the turtle. The boy was wearing the purest of smiles on his face. And it was at that moment that Ethan saw her. Walking through the park, hands in the pockets of her red padded winter coat, was the woman he had chased the penguin with. The one he had left the map for. Keeley. He adjusted his stance, straightening up on the metal bench. Was that why he was really here? Because he knew he had marked this place on the map? No. That was madness. After all, if he had wanted to see her again, he knew exactly where she was staying. He took a breath, watching her pause, a few metres away. She took something from her pocket and unfolded it. The map. His map. So, she was following it…
*
This was it. Something called Dodo Menege. A roundabout. Cold-looking little children were currently circling around aboard manufactured animals to tinny-sounding music, looking either captivated or frozen in situ. Keeley was surprised this ride was marked down as a part of the hidden Paris she should see while she was here. What was so special about it? Although, maybe her penguin-chasing stranger’s X marking the spot wasn’t meant to be quite as specific. Perhaps he had simply meant to mark Jardin Des Plantes. Keeley had to admit that was beautiful even now in the winter when plants were few and far between. The large, ornate greenhouses had frost on their glass panes and the bushes and boughs of trees lining the pathways were jewelled with beads of December sleet. She imagined it would be even more impressive in the spring – lush green bulbs peeping out from beneath the earth – or summer – a riotous carnival of coloured blooms.
‘Bonsoir.’
Keeley jumped at the sound of a voice so close, jarring her rib cage and reminding herself that she still had bruises from her brush with the pavement. And that voice brought her right back to that moment.
‘Oh, it’s you.’ It was him, wasn’t it? In the half-light, the only illumination the small bulbs on the carousel, it could be that she had just acknowledged a beggar or a pickpocket as if he were a well-established friend.
‘Ethan,’ he greeted like it was possible she had forgotten his name. She hadn’t. Neither had Erica when they had caught up on the phone just before she ventured out on this walk. Erica had overemphasised the ‘e’ and said it loudly with a French accent that sounded like it came straight out of Croydon.
‘Hello,’ Keeley said, pure British.
He smiled. He had a nice smile to add to the other plus points – thick dark hair, grey eyes that somehow gave off both sexy sharp and deeply melty. ‘I do not want you to think I gave you that map so I could follow you around Paris.’
That thought hadn’t actually crossed Keeley’s mind. But was that what he had done? Was this statement bravado and bluff about it? How clever! Or frightening! Maybe her hair was still chemically ridden enough for her to use it to defend herself if necessary. He opened his mouth as if to speak again before she could think about how to reply.
‘I really did not do that,’ he said. ‘I can see you are thinking that might exactly be something someone would say if they had done that.’