‘Listen to me, Jeanne,’ Ethan said, putting his hands on her shoulders. ‘Never apologise for being here, understand?’
‘Did you?’ Jeanne asked him, swallowing her mouthful of food.
‘Did I what?’ Ethan breathed.
‘Ever apologise for being here.’
Sucked back into a reverie he would rather forget, Ethan recalled the mantra he and the other children had been made to chant at the orphanage. Be seen not heard. Speak only when spoken to. Respect elders. Think not of yourself. It had been drummed into every child until it was the very first thing Ethan thought about on waking and the last thing that drifted through his mind as he prepared to go to sleep. It had broken him. Eventually, he had decided to leave the roof over his head for a life on the street where nothing was guaranteed, not even his next meal… It had scarred him, there was no doubt about that. But he had moved beyond it. With help from Ferne. One person’s belief in him had made all the difference.
‘I know you are like me,’ Jeanne continued as Bo-Bo began to sniff around a stall offering crafts made from old off-cuts of wood. ‘Or you were like me, in some way.’ She bit into more brioche. ‘People like us know each other. You watched me in the hotel, trying to get the chocolates from the Christmas tree. Perhaps I was not subtle enough, but really I think you noticed me because you had been in the same situation yourself once.’
He put an arm around Jeanne’s shoulder, steering her out of the path of a man on a bicycle. Bo-Bo popped his snout out from under the stall. ‘I was like you,’ Ethan admitted as they continued to walk. ‘I never knew who my parents were. I was left outside an orphanage when I was a baby.’ He sucked in a breath. ‘I was there for ten years until I could not stand it anymore.’
‘Where did you go?’ Jeanne asked.
‘Well,’ Ethan began, moving towards a glazed ‘shopfront’ with armchairs, dining chairs and all manner of seating outside it. Some of the chairs would not have looked out of place in a banquet hall, others seemed like they once belonged in a school. ‘When I was eight, I snuck out of the orphanage one day and I met a girl…’
‘Oh, please,’ Jeanne stated. ‘Not a romantic story. I cannot stand it. It is enough with the making love hearts with your eyes at Keeley.’
‘No,’ Ethan said. ‘It is not a romantic tale. It is a tale of friendship and… family.’ He thought about Ferne, but also he thought about Silvie and Pierre and… Louis. They had been the only family he had known and despite still feeling he was a little bit of a cuckoo, they had been there for him. ‘I had two years of visiting a very nice home in the suburbs and being taken on outings you could only dream of.’ He smiled at Jeanne. ‘With food you definitely dream of.’ He plumped down into one of the armchairs and spread his fingers over the fabric on the arms. It was rich, sumptuous green velvet but with small threadbare patches that seemed only to enhance its appeal. ‘But after each visit, I would go back to that freezing, soulless place where the people who were supposed to care and look after made it clear I was no better than something that was stuck to the sole of their shoe, and I would long to be anywhere but there.’
‘You lived on the street?’ Jeanne asked, sitting down in the chair opposite, Bo-Bo deftly leaping up onto her lap.
‘I lived on the street,’ Ethan answered with a nod. ‘I spent weekends with the family that took me out for visits, but I never moved in under their roof.’ Perhaps by refusing that offer – because it had been offered – he had made himself the cuckoo. That self-appointed status he was always using as a default position. ‘Perhaps I should have.’
He hadn’t realised he had said those last words out loud until Bo-Bo let out a bark and brought him back to the now. Jeanne hadn’t said anything and he wanted to get across to her the point he was trying to make in all this. ‘I see your independent nature, Jeanne. I know you think you are tough and you can take on the world, but do not be afraid to take help from the world too.’ He swallowed, watching her features soften and her fingers squash the food in her hands. ‘I cannot be anything formal to you. My life, it is still as up in the air as it has always been. I do not have myself together.’
‘You own five hotels,’ Jeanne stated.
‘I part-own five hotels and, believe me, that job gets more difficult by the day.’
‘You said I could stay… for a bit,’ Jeanne reminded him, her tone cutting him to the quick. ‘You said we could go to the circus.’
‘I did,’ he answered. ‘You can, and we are, tomorrow evening.’
‘Then what is this “I cannot be anything formal to you” speech about if it is not to get rid of me already?’
Ethan sighed, his body resting so comfortably in the old part-worn chair. It was like it was a piece of his own furniture, its cushions moulding to the shape of his body. ‘I would like to help you, Jeanne. Like someone once helped me. But we do not have to become a deep part of each other’s lives.’ He was not ready to be someone’s role model or moral guidance. ‘I will be your… benefactor. You can stay at my apartment whenever you like, there will be food in the fridge, but we will not always sit around the table together sharing anecdotes of our days.’
‘That would be the worst,’ Jeanne agreed with a nod.
‘And you should go to school,’ Ethan told her.
‘What?!’
‘That is my condition of you sharing my space.’
‘But what about Bo-Bo. There will be no one to look after him all day,’ Jeanne started to protest, wriggling with the dog still on her lap. ‘And the school will want many forms filled in with who I am and where I come from and who is my guardian and—’
‘Jeanne, do you think this will be my first time making up a story to suit my purposes?’
‘What will I learn at school that I will not learn from the streets… or working at a hotel? There are five of them for you to choose from. I do not mind starting from the very bottom. I can clean.’
Ethan studied her, chocolate somehow now all over her face. She was so young. He had no idea how young and he wasn’t sure the girl really knew herself…
‘We will do a trial,’ Ethan told her. ‘You will share my apartment between now and the end of the Christmas holidays and, if the arrangement is acceptable, you will commit to school.’
He watched her mulling over the suggestion. He could almost see her brain working things over. The pluses, the minuses, if this attachment to his offer was really going to be what she wanted. Of course she could flee into the night at any time, or she could stay for the duration of the festive break and then flee into the night and renege on the whole idea. But, for now, he was guessing Jeanne had nothing to lose and he would at least know she was safe for a while. One less kid on the pavements of Paris with no one looking out for them…
‘Bo-Bo sleeps with me,’ Jeanne said suddenly. ‘In the bed. Not on the floor or on a fancy dog bed he will hate. With me.’
Ethan shrugged. ‘He was meant to sleep with you last night, but he ended up in my bed. And he snores.’
‘You have terrible taste in jam,’ Jeanne countered. ‘Strawberry is the best. Not this horrible bitter orange in the cupboard.’