FULL NOVELXO Twenty-One Nights in Paris: Chapter 20
‘Ren is an unusual name. Is it short for something?’
She glanced up from the coat hooks made of horseshoes that she’d been admiring. She’d been waiting for this chance. ‘Actually, it’s short for Irena.’ She dropped her voice low. ‘I thought it was best if we didn’t make a big deal of it, but my name is actually Irena Asquith-Lewis, from the auction house.’
‘The granddaughter of Livia Asquith-Lewis? At my stand? I would roll out the red carpet if I hadn’t sold it last week.’
Ren was secretly relieved that Joseph didn’t seem to share Sacha’s problem with her wealth – or the difference between their finances. ‘Thank you, Joseph, but there’s really no need.’
‘My shop is so far below your… standard,’ he declared.
‘I love it,’ Ren insisted. ‘It’s… a labour of love.’ She hated to think what her grandmother’s opinion of this place would be, knowing that Livia could never acknowledge that these traders were colleagues, equals in every way that counted. And they had more grace about it.
‘I understand why you wish to keep quiet about your visit,’ Joseph said.
‘I’m sure it’s all right. My grandmother is just… overprotective and… to be honest, I’m enjoying being incognito for a little while.’
‘I won’t put you in my new Instagram,’ he said with a smile. ‘Although I might tell the grandchildren I don’t have that Irena Asquith-Lewis from the famous auction house visited my shop.’
‘Go right ahead,’ she said with a laugh at his tone. ‘How many children do you have?’
‘None,’ he said drily. ‘Adoption for gay couples has only been legal for ten years in France and, by then, my partner had unfortunately passed away. But I’ve known Sacha nearly twenty years and Nadia almost as long. Raphaël is everyone’s blessing, when he’s not getting into trouble.’
‘It’s wonderful that you have each other.’
‘Oui, oui, c’est vrai. Sacha was the most unusual boy when I met him.’ Ren pricked up her ears, thinking of Sacha’s confession the night before. ‘His father had died not long before and my husband, too. He didn’t say anything about himself for months, but every time I struggled with memories, Sacha quoted poetry.’ Joseph’s laugh was halting, as though the story still amazed him. ‘I wish I could have met Karim, his father.’
‘The taxi driver who loved books,’ Ren murmured.
Sacha arrived back, blowing on his hands against the chill, with a dusting of snow in his hair. He immediately admonished Joseph for being up on his feet and they bickered good-naturedly.
A bell rang somewhere in the distance. The constant clang of bells and the rumble of wheels over cobbles were the unmistakable soundtrack of the city – but it gave Ren a start to realise what time it was.
‘I have to go,’ she said, straightening. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She rummaged for the suit bag. That morning, she hadn’t cared that the dress would be crushed and her make-up would be a disaster, but now she felt a shot of panic. Could Grandmama take her dishevelled appearance as a reason to drag her back to England? She pulled out her phone to call Bilel, not able to meet either gaze.
‘Ren.’ She heard Sacha’s voice through her haze of misery and realised he must have said it several times. ‘What’s the matter? Where do you have to go?’
She made the mistake of looking at him and it all came flooding out – Grandmama’s phone call, her fear of being made to leave, the expectation that Sacha would be with her. She ended with, ‘I probably made a mistake… ever pretending that we… I should just get a grip and talk to her.’ Like an adult. Her relationship with Grandmama had never progressed to that of two mature adults, as though time truly had stopped when Ren was ten and their lives had changed.
The brush of his finger under her chin made her realise she’d squeezed her eyes shut. ‘Give me ten minutes?’
She gave a huff of surprise and a dazed smile. When was the last time someone had dropped everything and come running when she needed them? She bit her nails waiting for him, grimacing at the state of her manicure, but Joseph’s jolly assurances helped. True to his word, Sacha arrived back ten minutes later, clutching a vintage suit on a wire hanger.
‘Bilel is out the front,’ he said. He took her hand as they raced for the doors of the arcade, as though he’d forgotten that they didn’t have to pretend yet, but Ren wasn’t about to point it out to him.
Bilel hurried to turn off the radio when they’d opened the doors, but Ren insisted he leave it on, wondering why she’d always travelled in silence in the past. They crossed the eighteenth arrondissement to a soundtrack of Ed Sheeran and David Guetta, with the odd interruption for Mariah Carey and Michael Bublé with their Christmas crooning. Bilel hummed in tune and Ren pestered him until he sang along with the lyrics he knew, his deep voice making her smile.
As they swung past the Moulin Rouge, looking faded and strangely unhappy in daylight, a hip-hop track came on. Sacha was looking out of the window, but his fingers tapped to the beat. Bilel bobbed his head and they shared a smile.
‘Do you like hip-hop?’ she asked. ‘Do you call it ’ip-’op?’
‘Hhhhip-hhhhop,’ Sacha said carefully. The ‘o’ was still delicately formed in his French accent. ‘Growing to like hip-hop is a danger of the job.’
‘Oh? Do you work in radio? Are you a journalist?’
‘No,’ he said emphatically.
‘Go on,’ she prompted as his fingers continued to tap. ‘Don’t you know the words?’
He inclined his head and cleared his throat, joining in when the second verse began. As she’d suspected, he knew every line. It felt strangely like a serenade as he punctuated the lyrics with his hands and the words flowed off his tongue in rhythm, too fast for her to have any idea what he was saying.
When the verse ended and the chorus cut back in, she applauded raucously. He laughed with her, their shoulders shaking against the seats.
‘Impressive!’ she said.
He held up a dismissive hand. ‘I like that song. And rap can be like poetry, especially in French.’
‘I doubt my grandmother would agree,’ she said with a chuckle, but her amusement kept her nerves at bay.
The contrast was stark when they slunk into the opera house to a dramatic soundtrack of Verdi’s Don Carlo. From the warren of chaos that was the Marché aux Puces, they entered the marble grandeur of the Opéra Garnier, hurrying through the ornate rotunda with its mosaic floor and continuing to the imposing staircase. The staircase broke off into three directions at the top, like something from Hogwarts – if Hogwarts had been built under Napoleon III. Sacha was so busy gaping at the gold leaf and the stucco and the floating chandeliers bathing the foyer in light that he tripped and fumbled for the marble banister. She had to admit the enormous atrium was intimidating, seven storeys high, with its painted ceiling and opulent décor.
Ren was tempted to laugh at the absurdity of taking Sacha from the neuf trois, with his beard and tattoos and his taste for hip-hop, to the ballet with Grandmama, but she knew her grandmother would not be laughing.
They found the bathrooms and disappeared inside to change. Something had certainly changed by the time they emerged again and warily inspected their reflections in the floor-length mirror in the corridor.
Sacha tugged at his collar and grimaced at the patterned silk bow tie. ‘Your reaction doesn’t fill me with confidence.’ The suit was a little tight across his shoulders and too long in the trousers. Grandmama would notice.
‘You look good.’ That was part of the problem. She liked how unpolished he still looked, stuffed into the suit. But that wasn’t a good enough reason to make him uncomfortable. ‘Ten out of ten,’ she said to lighten the moment. ‘Although it’s a low three for the tie.’ She untied the twisted mess he’d managed himself, looping the silk smoothly and retying the knot.
‘You used to do that for Charlie,’ he said bluntly.
She fumbled the knot and had to start again. She nodded, taken aback by how seldom she thought of Charlie, now. Certainly, she’d never felt such tangled desires while tying Charlie’s tie. Sacha’s jaw was tight, and his Adam’s apple bobbed as the backs of her fingers brushed his throat.
Suit or not, he made her weak-kneed, and she was afraid that Grandmama would see how he affected her. But wasn’t that the idea? She was so confused.
He frowned at his reflection. ‘C’est terrifiant,’ he said under his breath.
‘You do look pretty terrific.’
‘I said terrifying, not terrific. I don’t think Signor Armani will be signing me for his next campaign.’
‘I don’t know…’ she said. ‘I’d buy anything Armani wanted to sell, if you’re modelling it.’ She turned to go before she said anything else stupid.
‘Am I—’ He ran an agitated hand through his hair. ‘Do you still want me to be an… inappropriate boyfriend? Or should I try to… fit in?’
‘Let’s just aim to get out unscathed,’ she said. Ren held out her hand and he took it and they walked, shoulders bumping, back down the steps to meet Grandmama.
The matriarch’s greeting was exactly what Ren had expected. ‘Good, you didn’t linger in the foyer. I asked Bilel to check for photographers, but, for the matinée, they were thankfully scarce.’
‘Hello to you, too.’
Livia blinked. ‘Did you expect a warm welcome when I had to blackmail you into meeting me and allow you to bring your… lover? And you are so late, I started to suspect you weren’t coming.’
‘I’m sorry about that, I… we got caught up.’ Ren blushed at the images that vague suggestion produced in her mind, especially after last week’s misunderstandings at afternoon tea.
‘We need to take our seats,’ Livia said flatly and took off to promenade up the grand staircase, wielding a cane that Ren had never seen before and she hoped was just for effect.
Ren had the distinct impression that they walked in a circle to reach their seats, Grandmama striding nonchalantly ahead through the gilded Salon du Glacier with its painted ceiling and glowing Christmas tree. Sacha was slack-jawed, gazing at his surroundings, and Ren couldn’t help wondering if that had been Grandmama’s intention.
Their seats were in a private box, with champagne on ice that neither Ren nor Sacha dared to touch first. He folded himself into a seat and tugged at his ill-fitting jacket. Livia eyed him pointedly as she took her own seat, but of course she was too well-bred to mention to his face that he should have waited until she’d sat down.
‘Are you a connoisseur of the ballet, Mr Mourad?’ she asked in a barbed tone.
‘I… No, I would not say that.’
‘You mean you have never attended the ballet before, am I right?’ She continued without waiting for him to answer. ‘They say the first time you experience the ballet, it can feel like love at first sight.’ Ren stared, wondering what Grandmama knew about love at first sight. ‘I trust you will enjoy the performance.’
Sacha managed a vague grunt in response. Ren had no better idea what he should have said. If she felt out of her depth, she couldn’t imagine how he felt. Grandmama finally settled back in her seat and Ren took a breath.
‘Will the chandelier fall, tonight?’ Sacha whispered to her, a wry glint in his eye.
‘What?’ Livia asked down her nose, although his comment hadn’t been directed at her.
‘Le Fantôme de l’Opéra,’ he explained with a twitch of a smile. ‘Is he here tonight? Or still down in his underground house?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I do hope you will hold your tongue during the performance.’
Ren flushed with embarrassment at her grandmother’s rudeness. ‘Is that something about the history of the theatre?’ she whispered.
He nodded. ‘Some real events during the construction of the Palais Garnier inspired Gaston Leroux’s novel, which Mr Lloyd Webber adapted with such success.’
‘The chandelier really fell?’
A twitch of his lips suggested her expression was comically wide-eyed. ‘A man was killed.’
‘The phantom?’
Livia looked daggers at them as the lights went down but Sacha calmly ignored her, leaning over to whisper in her ear, ‘You know the Phantom of the Opera dies at the end, don’t you? In the novel, he dies of love.’
She turned to reply, finding their faces close. She licked her lips and brought them to his ear to whisper, ‘These French romantic heroes can be so useless – just quietly expiring instead of standing up for themselves and their feelings. I think I suspected it ended tragically, but thank you for confirming that I never want to see it.’
Was his amused gaze tinged with affection? Ren moved reluctantly back against her own seat and waited for the curtain to ascend on a ballet she must have seen at least ten times. But this time, everything felt different.