‘Bo-Bo has been through a trauma,’ Jeanne responded, dropping a piece of cake into the dog’s mouth. ‘It is not every day that you almost die and then come to life again. It is like Jesus being reborn.’
Ethan looked at the still-slightly-grubby-looking girl, the beanie hat low on her head, her clothes baggy and loose on what he knew would be the tiniest of frames.
‘Is your girlfriend coming to see Bo-Bo?’ Jeanne asked then, sneaking another slice of cake from the whole of one Ethan had bought to share.
‘My girlfriend?’ he asked.
‘She promised to come for the Survivor Party,’ Jeanne stated. ‘Bo-Bo survived. She would want to celebrate with us, no?’
Celebrate with us? What was that sentence? There was no ‘us’, not with him and this scrap of a child and a dog with more lives than it was supposed to have. Not with Keeley. Was there? He had never really ever been part of an ‘us’. He had always kept things casual in his relationships, lightweight. He told himself it was living for the moment, but in reality he suspected it was more a case of not living for an undiscernible future. With life taking unexpected turns every single day, it was better not to hold on too tight to anything.
‘She is not my girlfriend,’ Ethan answered. ‘We have only just met.’
‘But you like her,’ Jeanne said, mouth moving around the cake. ‘I can tell.’
‘Well, I can tell that you have been eating a lot of room service while you were in the room I gave you. There is ketchup on your cheek and cheese souffle down your jacket.’
‘You said that I could “be your guest”.’ She sniffed. ‘You look a bit like that grumpy candle thing in Beauty and the Beast.’
‘Most guests do not binge-eat five or six main meals or stream as many movies.’
‘What do they do?’ Jeanne queried, letting Bo-Bo nibble crumbs from her cakey fingers. ‘Look out at the boring Tour Eiffel while they hold hands and kiss and whatever else.’ She clamped her hands around herself then, acting an embrace, and began to make the most hideous wet kissing noises with accompanying moans. ‘Je t’aime. Oh, je taime.’
‘Jeanne!’ Ethan ordered, taking her hands away from her smooching. ‘Stop that.’
The girl laughed and picked up her giant mug of hot chocolate, almost dunking her face in it. He couldn’t keep her at the hotel for very long. But where did she belong?
‘Where is home for you, Jeanne?’ Ethan spoke his mind.
‘Is she coming?’ Jeanne asked. ‘Your not-girlfriend?’
Classic avoiding the question. Something he had been quite the master at in his time. Sometimes he still was.
‘She said she would,’ he answered. ‘I think she is wanting to see this transformation of Bo-Bo with her own eyes.’
‘It is a Christmas miracle,’ Jeanne agreed, ruffling the dog’s ears.
‘Jeanne,’ Ethan began. ‘You cannot stay at my hotel forever.’
Her eyes grew larger still then and even Bo-Bo seemed to turn his head and show interest in something other than the cake. This dog really had made a miraculous recovery. There was no sign of injury on him at all.
‘So, it is your hotel! You… are a millionaire!’
Jeanne has spoken rather loudly and now there were definitely other customers trying to tune in to their conversation over the gentle Christmas carols coming from a radio.
‘I am not a millionaire,’ Ethan insisted. He wasn’t. But also he rarely took notice of how much money he did have. Because, when you had lived on the street, wealth meant something else entirely. It wasn’t a bank balance or stocks and shares. It was lukewarm discarded coffee. It was leftover food from bins. It was not feeling too scared to fall asleep for a few hours in the dead of the night…
‘I would feel like a millionaire if I could give people a room in my hotel and let them sign up to Disney Plus,’ Jeanne told him. Bo-Bo barked as if in agreement.
For a second Ethan felt good about her statement, and then he realised exactly what Jeanne had said. ‘How have you signed up to Disney Plus?’
She touched her nose with her finger smearing cake crumbs across it.
*
‘Let me get this straight, once more, before we go in,’ Rach began, halting Keeley outside the eatery. She blew out a breath. ‘We are meeting up with some guy you met on the street outside our hotel, who you also rode on a fairground ride with and ate dinner with, and went for a run with – where a dog was half-killed and then somehow got revived – and this is the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’
Keeley nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘But I still don’t know why you didn’t tell me,’ Rach moaned. ‘Would you have told me if I hadn’t seen his name flash up on your phone?’
‘Of course I would,’ Keeley said straightaway. She would have. Probably. Eventually.
‘So, who is he?’ Rach continued. ‘Because you haven’t said all that much apart from listing out a lot of really really random things that have happened that I didn’t know about.’
Rach was right. Who was Ethan? Now Keeley felt a little silly. She didn’t know anything about him. Except that she thought he was the best-looking guy she had ever seen and he listened to her, intently, with those eyes resting on her, looking as if he were reading her spirit. She had asked him what he did, but earlier Bo-Bo had taken priority.
‘I… don’t know,’ Keeley admitted, putting her hands into the pockets of her coat and bunching up her shoulders against the cold wind. This area was unlike the surroundings around their hotel. There was graffiti on the shopfronts and bright mosaic planters on the pavement giving off a real grungy bohemian vibe. It was definitely another ‘hidden Paris’ location to mark on the map if it wasn’t on there already.
‘Keeley!’ Rach exclaimed. ‘Random men are usually my thing. You usually tell them your full name, your address, your first pet and that you’ve got a weakened immune system.’
That was all true. Slightly exaggerated, but all true. Keeley jutted her chin out a little. ‘I didn’t do any of those things.’
‘Wow,’ Rach said, looking a little impressed. ‘Really?’
‘Really,’ Keeley replied. ‘He doesn’t even know I have to look out for symptoms of gout. Now, can we get inside because it’s turned freezing out here.’
Thirty-Seven
Keeley wasn’t sure what she was even doing here, meeting up with this mysterious man, a child who could be a runaway and a dog who had defied all the usual life/death rules of engagement. She also wasn’t sure about Rach being here either. Inviting Rach into this odd situation was giving the whole scenario validation and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. It made her slightly odd friendship with Ethan less throwaway and more what-might-this-be-like-if-we-carry-on-meeting-up. And the reason she was supposed to be in Paris was for Silvie not for seeing potential mates. She swallowed as she pushed the door to enter. Was that how she saw Ethan? As a potential mate?
Her insides told her yes, that’s exactly how she thought of him, particularly now, looking at him sitting in a snug corner of the unconventional café-cum-bakery-cum-bookstore. There were so many books and things pickled in jars amid the books. It was like being part of a fairy-tale, perhaps Alice in Wonderland, where items were calling out ‘drink me’, ‘eat me’ or ‘read me’. And there was Ethan, dressed in that familiar business suit with waistcoat looking smart, but also somehow beatnik and avant-garde. He was completely fitting in with his surroundings though, wiping a serviette over Bo-Bo’s chin as the revived dog threatened to dribble on the table.