‘Oh my God,’ Keeley said, palming her face.
‘I know, right?! But, instead of looking all the hotness like he looked over the chocolate eclairs… he actually looked terrible,’ Rach carried on.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘He was covered in blotches. Like seriously huge blotches. I don’t know, like he’d been attacked and stung by a thousand bees.’
‘Really?’
‘Really,’ Rach continued. ‘The poor guy was obviously a bit embarrassed about it. I don’t know whether it was a food allergy or a reaction to washing detergent or something but—’
‘Well, didn’t you ask him what it was?’ Keeley wanted to know. She checked her watch again. She didn’t have that long to get ready and those butterflies weren’t letting up. So much so, she couldn’t really focus on this conversation with Rach.
‘I did,’ Rach said. ‘But I’m pretty sure he made up his answer.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He said he was allergic to penguins.’ Rach scoffed. ‘I mean, is that even a thing?’ She sighed. ‘It was a shame really, because, like I said, he did look me in the eye when we talked… well, the eye he could properly see out of.’
Keeley frowned, her thoughts immediately going to Pepe. Where had the animal ended up? And she had never asked Ethan what he had been doing with the creature in the first place.
‘I made the same look that you’re making right now,’ Rach said, swiping up one of her wipes from the dressing table. ‘And then I offered him some concealer.’
‘Only you,’ Keeley said, shaking her head.
‘But, despite the horrible hives, he was really funny and charming and he gave me tissues when I cried.’
‘You cried?’ Keeley remarked.
‘Yup, I cried at the ballet. I told you. It was… I don’t know… all kinds of beautiful.’
What was Paris doing to them both? Rach – strong, ballsy Rach – was crying over a dance performance and Keeley was riding on a too-small extinct animal on a children’s roundabout. And now she was planning to go running…
‘And… well… he’s actually suggested dinner one night,’ Rach blurted out. She rubbed at the make-up on her face like she was scrubbing at a grubby oven tainted by ten years of cooking Christmas turkeys. ‘But I didn’t know whether to say yes, because we’re here together, girls united, and I didn’t know if that would be OK with you.’
Keeley smiled. ‘Say yes to a dinner. Can you text him?’
Still scrubbing at her face, Rach nodded. ‘We swapped numbers and he asked all about you, but I didn’t tell him that much because, well, he’s going to want to hear it all from Kidney Girl herself, isn’t he?’
‘I’m not allowed to be Kidney Girl,’ Keeley reminded.
‘That’s right!’ Rach said, pointing with her finger as well as her wipe. ‘That was a test!’ She sniffed. ‘But, you know, you’ll have to go into it a little with Ferne’s fam, won’t you?’
‘What did you say about me?’ Keeley asked, checking her reflection again.
‘I told him that if there was one person in the whole world who was definitely worthy of one of his sister’s body parts, then it was you. I said you were all the kind and conscientious to a fault when it came to respecting your newly acquired organ… except when I led you astray.’
‘What did he say to that?’
‘He said,’ Rach began, one of her eyebrows raising, ‘that he could imagine I was very good when it came to leading people astray. Honestly, Keels, it was like an episode of Heist, without the Spanish subtitles.’
Now was the perfect time to tell Rach about Ethan. Rach had just told her all about her evening with Louis and now it was Keeley’s turn. Her solo walk following the mystery map had led her to a cosy dinner and trying to breathe in the essence of Paris. She took a breath and out came: ‘Well, strange things do seem to happen here.’
‘Like you being up at early o’clock. What are you doing awake at this time?’ Rach asked.
‘I’m… going for a run.’
‘You’re what?’ Rach turned to face her then, her skin still thick with wayward make-up, but now also red raw from all the attempts to take it off. ‘It’s a job to get you down the gym at the best of times and you hate the running machine.’
‘I don’t hate it,’ Keeley protested. ‘I just… like doing anything else a lot more. Besides, I’m not running at the gym, I’m going to run through the streets of Paris, taking in the sights and inhaling all the coffee smells.’ Straightaway she was back by the banks of the Seine, Ethan’s hands on her shoulders…
‘I thought you couldn’t smell much anymore.’
‘I can remember what coffee smells like. I’ll pretend.’
‘On your own? It’s not even light.’ Rach’s eyes went to their balcony doors and then her fingers were parting the curtains, revealing a few inches of barely light early morning. ‘I’m not sure you should be running on your own in the dark somewhere you don’t know. Lizzie would have a fit.’
Keeley sighed, turned on the tap again and began splashing water up and over her face. There was no doubt about it, Lizzie would definitely have a fit if she knew she was meeting up with a Frenchman she didn’t even know the surname of and had shared a handhold that was still giving her shivers every time she thought about it. But Rach was her best friend. She would totally get it. Why was she keeping this from her?
‘Get back to bed,’ Rach suggested. ‘Let’s have another hour of sleep, then we can get an early breakfast and ask Noel to take us somewhere. Silvie did say he was ours to call whenever we wanted.’ Rach threw the wipe down on the dressing table and clambered back under the covers. ‘How about Christmas shopping? I need to get gifts for my mum and my brother… and Roland if I want my plan to become his senior negotiator to pan out. If Jamie goes all out and buys him something from Sloane Street I’m screwed.’ Rach took a breath. ‘Or how about Notre Dame? I know we can’t go in it, but we can have a look at how the reconstruction is going.’
‘That sounds like a good idea,’ Keeley agreed, sweeping her hair back from her face and tying it into a ponytail. ‘After I’ve been for a run. I’ll only be an hour or so.’ And she still hadn’t mentioned she wasn’t going alone.
‘Ugh, really? You really want to run?’
‘I really want to run,’ Keeley answered.
‘Well… do you want me to come with you?’ Rach asked, eyes already closed, yawning as if she was going to drop back off to sleep again at any moment. ‘I will if you want me to. I don’t want your mum blaming me if you get kidnapped by an onion seller on a bicycle.’
‘Go to sleep, Rach,’ Keeley urged, checking her reflection in the mirror again. She definitely didn’t have time for a shower now.
‘OK, Paula Radcliffe, just don’t do an inappropriate piss and get arrested. And don’t get abducted. Text me if you’re going to be longer than an hour.’