‘It’s not though, is it? And some of it is my fault.’
‘Oh, Rach, it’s really not.’
‘It is!’ Rach carried on. ‘Because if I hadn’t made such a fuss about you not being Kidney Girl on this trip you might have just – I don’t know – met Ethan and told him straightaway about the transplant and Silvie and Ferne and then…’
‘And then I might not have had the most amazing time of my life getting close to him.’ Keeley sighed. Because that’s what she imagined would have happened if Ethan had known from the beginning. He would never have looked at her the same way. Would never have got to know the her she had managed to be since she arrived in France.
‘Well,’ Rach said, ‘like I said after the fourth cup of coffee before we ran out of sachets in the room, if Ethan cares about you like he says he does, then nothing you tell him this morning is going to change that.’
Keeley nodded at her friend, but she didn’t really believe that. Silvie had said Ethan had never wanted to meet the recipient of Ferne’s kidney. She pointed towards a hut a little further ahead of them. ‘Handbags.’
‘You’re changing the subject.’
‘I need to, Rach, seriously,’ Keeley said, taking the deepest of breaths. ‘Tell me something that’s going to take my mind off this.’ She clamped her hands to her body where her scars were. She turned to Rach then, remembering she hadn’t asked her a thing about her evening. ‘How did it go with the VIP client?’
‘OK,’ Rach said, beaming a lot more than the word ‘OK’ really warranted.
‘I’m sensing there’s more to this.’
‘It’s the Bradburys!’ Rach announced. ‘Confidentially of course!’
The Bradbury family were a big deal in the area. Kind of like a legitimate version of the Wallaces in Gangs of London.
‘The Bradburys only want to deal with me. Not Jamie. Not even Roland. Me. And they said, they might even have a few contacts they could recommend my excellent house searching expertise to!’
‘Rach, that’s brilliant!’
‘I know! And I’m thinking, I definitely need to ask for a pay rise if I’m going to start attracting clients of that kind of notoriety or, if Roland starts being a skinflint about it, perhaps I need to start thinking about my own agency. Maybe working from home at first and then, well, I don’t know, it’s just an idea. But I’m excited!’
‘I’m excited too!’ Keeley said. ‘It’s amazing.’
‘I know! So I… drank some tiny bottles of alcohol from the minibar and then I needed something else. So, I ordered some fizzy wine on Silvie’s account which I totally will pay for and…
‘And?
‘And after I finished the fizzy wine I phoned reception and I spoke to Antoine again,’ Rach said, her voice shaking a little. ‘And I kept speaking to Antoine and he was as completely annoying as he always is and still I kept talking and talking and winding him up and…’ Rach seemed to have to stop talking to catch her breath as she thumped the handbag back down on the stall.
‘Rach, what happened?’ Keeley put a hand on her shoulder.
‘Antoine came up to the suite,’ Rach whispered, her eyes glistening with something Keeley couldn’t quite translate.
‘With more alcohol?’ Keeley was hoping the concierge had sensibly brought coffee instead.
Rach nodded. ‘A very nice bottle of Burgundy.’
Keeley gasped then, hands flying to her lips. ‘I’ve just realised… you haven’t called him Antonie!’
Rach nodded again. ‘I know! And, after a while, he didn’t call me Rash.’
‘Rach! Tell me!’
‘I kissed him,’ Rach exclaimed. ‘I kissed Antoine.’ She gripped Keeley’s arm. ‘And he kissed me back. And… I was wearing my pyjamas.’
Sixty-Two
Ethan Bouchard’s apartment, Paris
‘How do I look?’ Ethan spread his arms out in the centre of his living area, not so far off from being able to touch the walls with his fingertips. Bo-Bo let out a bark, then preceded to try and leap up, his paws on Ethan’s dark jeans. ‘Down, Bo-Bo!’
‘You look fine,’ Jeanne answered. ‘Although you smell like maybe you have rolled around for a hundred years in a pine forest.’
Ethan slapped his cheeks. He had shaved. He had put on aftershave, perhaps a little too much. He couldn’t help it. His insides seemed to be filled with hundreds of tiny fleas performing like they were members of a circus troupe. Whatever was wrong, whatever concerns Keeley had, he could ease them. He would tell her that he felt what they had together was so special. He could not have imagined the way she had reacted to him ever since they had met, how her body had reacted to him only a few nights ago…
‘Relax,’ Jeanne ordered him. ‘You are making me feel nervous and I cannot make paper chains if my hands are shaking so much I cannot use the scissors.’
Ethan paid more attention to what she was doing then. Laid out on his coffee table were strips of newspaper, magazines, a cereal box and some tin foil. Jeanne appeared to be cutting into each of them, making hoops and connecting the circles together in a chain. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Getting a little Christmas in this apartment,’ Jeanne said with a sniff. ‘You have nothing.’
Ethan looked around the living room as if expecting to see at least one greetings card or something else festive he had overlooked. But it was true, there was nothing. Despite the lack of space, he usually had something in here. He sighed. Ferne had always been the one encouraging him to decorate. But Ferne had liked to decorate everything, even if it wasn’t Christmas. ‘Let me get you something from the hotel.’
‘The snowman that tips his hat?’ Jeanne asked, all bright eyes. ‘Or the reindeer that shakes its head?’
‘I am not sure there is the space for any of those in here.’
Jeanne screwed her nose up. ‘Do you not eat Christmas dinner either? Because the turkey and potatoes and gravy will not fit?’
Ethan sank down to the sofa. ‘Jeanne, I can find you something more than plain cardboard and tin.’
Jeanne raised her head from what she was doing and Bo-Bo looked up from the cleaning of his bottom. ‘You do not think my paper chains will be good enough?’
‘No,’ Ethan said, quickly. ‘Of course I do!’
‘I made them with my auntie. If she was my auntie.’ She sniffed again, getting back to work with the scissors. ‘She put on her record player – songs from the church, a choir and organs – and we sat by the fire, eating buche de Noel and making chains to hang around the house from whatever there was.’ Jeanne smiled. ‘One time we made pompoms with wool.’
Ethan nodded. ‘We made pompoms often at the orphanage. In fact, we made pompoms for almost every occasion. Perhaps it was because wool was the only substance we could not attack anyone with.’
‘Hmm,’ Jeanne mused. ‘You obviously never tied up any of the staff.’
Ethan got to his feet again. ‘I do not want to hear anything else.’ He smiled at Jeanne then. ‘But when I come back, perhaps I can help you make some pompoms. I remember how.’