‘So,’ she says, lighting a long, thin cigarette. ‘Are we doing today in English or in French? You did say you needed to practise. On pourrait au moins essayer?’
‘Erm … Je …’ I give up instantly. This whole situation is confusing and surreal enough in my native language. There’s no way I can possibly stagger through this minefield of a day in French. ‘Sorry … can we just stick with English for the moment?’
She sighs in mock disappointment. ‘Honestly, Benjamin. Call yourself a Parisian?’
I can’t help laughing. ‘Not really, no.’
‘Well, you’ve only been here three months, I suppose,’ she says, ashing her cigarette. ‘Give it time.’
‘You’ve been here, what … two years now?’
She wrinkles her brow. ‘A year and a half. I told you last week.’
‘Yeah. Sorry. You did.’
She takes another long drag on her cigarette as she looks at me. ‘I still can’t believe you’re here, Ben. That we’re here together, on Christmas Day. It’s mad.’
As I meet her eyes, I feel a flicker of the excitement I felt on this day originally. ‘Yeah. It really is.’
It was four days earlier that I’d bumped into her. I was sitting outside another café in the Marais, trying to cure my crippling writer’s block by taking my laptop out of the apartment for once. But all I could focus on were the irritated glares the waiter was throwing me, possibly due to the fact that I’d only ordered one small coffee in four hours. I was on the brink of calling it a day, snapping my MacBook shut and heading home, when I heard a familiar voice from across the street.
‘No way … Ben!’
I looked over, and there she was. Alice from uni.
I hadn’t seen her since we’d left York in 2008. We’d been so close during that first term, but once I started seeing Daphne, we’d gradually drifted further and further apart. By third year, we would barely even exchange a nod if we passed each other on campus.
But the truth is: I still thought about her. As the years passed, I checked in on her Facebook from time to time – which was pretty pointless, really, as she barely ever posted. I’d seen she was working for some big-time marketing company, but she hadn’t mentioned anything online about living in Paris. So when I saw her across that street, grinning from ear to ear and looking even hotter than I remembered, the shock quickly gave way to heart-pounding excitement.
I guess it was partly because I was having such an awful time at that point. I was missing Daphne like mad and getting zero work done, in a city where I knew literally no one. I was lonely and confused and miserable, and suddenly here was a friendly face I hadn’t seen in years.
The odds of randomly bumping into her must have been millions to one. It felt like fate.
It still does.
The waiter approaches our table, tapping his notepad with a pencil.
‘Bonjour, monsieur. Qu’est-ce que vous voudriez?’
I clear my throat and decide to have a go at wheeling out my rusty French. ‘Oui, bonjour. Er, je voudrais un chocolat chaud aussi, s’il vous plaît.’
He smirks and rolls his eyes. ‘Do you want whipped cream?’
‘Non, pas pour moi,’ I say, refusing to cave in.
‘What about marshmallows?’
‘Non, pas de …’ I look at Alice.
‘Guimauves,’ she says, smiling.
‘Pas de guimauves pour moi,’ I tell the waiter firmly.
‘OK, one hot chocolate, no whipped cream, no marshmallows, coming up.’
‘What am I doing wrong?’ I ask as he walks away. ‘No matter how hard I try, they always reply in English.’
‘Your accent’s a giveaway,’ Alice says. ‘Even when you speak French, you still sound like Hugh Grant.’
‘How come you’ve nailed it so perfectly? You sound like Thierry Henry.’
She laughs and her Amélie hair bounces gently above her shoulders. ‘Merci beaucoup. Je vais prendre ça comme un compliment.’
God, she looks good.
It’s all coming back to me now: how knocked out I was to see her again. She had changed so much since uni. Not in looks, particularly, but in the way she carried herself. She was more confident, more self-assured. At York she’d been funny and outgoing, but there was always an air of self-consciousness about her. Even when she flirted with me, I could sense it was slightly guarded; she’d hold just enough back for it to not be awkward when nothing happened. Maybe that was why we never got it together at uni – neither of us was bold enough to make the first move.
Whereas now – here in 2014 – she’s like a different person. I remember thinking at the time that it must have something to do with her new job. She told me all about it in that first café – how she’d seen off four other colleagues to get this promotion to her company’s Paris office. She didn’t mention money, but I remember sensing that she was probably earning truckloads. Despite knowing nothing about fashion, I can tell that her clothes must have cost an arm and a leg.
She had transformed from this self-deprecating hoodie-clad girl I used to cook sausage sandwiches with to a Gauloisessmoking businesswoman who could speak fluent French with a ridiculously sexy accent.
And, honestly, it knocked me for six.
I suddenly realise that I am openly staring at her. But rather than looking away, embarrassed, like the old Alice probably would have, she’s looking right back at me, with a wide smile on her face. I snap out of it and feel my cheeks start to redden as I glance down at the pavement. ‘So, what’s the plan for today?’ I ask, just to fill the silence. ‘Are you going to show me how real Parisians do Christmas?’
I can remember precisely what the plan for today is. Every single step. And the thought of how it ended first time around makes my skin prickle. I can’t even tell if I’m excited or anxious. Probably both.
‘Oh, I’ve got it all laid out, don’t worry,’ Alice says, finishing her
