Alice-Miranda in Paris 7 (2 page)

‘I’ll say. Paris is so beautiful,’ said Jacinta, as the children passed yet another magnificent row of townhouses. ‘It’s no wonder they call it the City of Love.’

‘I think they call it the City of Light, don’t they?’ Millie corrected her.

‘Love, light, whatever. When I’m older I want to be proposed to under the Eiffel Tower.’ Jacinta glanced back towards Lucas, who was dawdling along with Sep. ‘Did you hear what I said?’ she asked.

‘What?’ the boys replied in unison.

‘The Eiffel Tower, my proposal?’

Sep and Lucas shrugged.

‘Oh, forget it.’ Jacinta rolled her eyes. ‘You’re such . . . boys!’

Millie and Alice-Miranda exchanged giggles.

A small group of students from Winchesterfield-Downsfordvale Academy for Proper Young Ladies and Fayle School for Boys made up the Winchester-Fayle Singers. The choir had formed in the months since the schools’ very successful joint production of
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
. Led by Fayle’s English and Drama teacher, Harold Lipp, and accompanied by Winchesterfield-Downsfordvale’s Music teacher, Cornelius Trout, the group had quickly grown into an accomplished ensemble. Mr Lipp had been thrilled to receive an invitation to bring the group to perform in Paris during Fashion Week, when the world’s best designers show their seasonal collections to the rest of the world. This year the organisers were keen to involve choral groups to give the festival a very different sort of flair. The Winchester-Fayle Singers hadn’t been the organisers’ first choice, but when another choir had pulled out at the last minute, Mr Lipp was offered the opportunity by his sister, who worked for the event.

So, twenty students and eight adults from the schools had arrived in Paris early that morning and been dropped in the centre of the city, from which point Miss Grimm had led them on a very long walk. Their bags were being delivered to the hotel, so they’d be there when the rooms were ready later in the afternoon. The choir had a week to explore the city and prepare for their series of performances.

Millie and Alice-Miranda walked ahead of the other girls, quickly catching up to the headmistress.

‘Excuse me, Miss Grimm,’ said Alice-Miranda. ‘May I ask where we’re going now?’

‘Notre Dame.’ Ophelia Grimm pointed towards the Île de la Cité, a small island in the middle of the Seine. ‘Mr Trout has organised a practice session for himself on the organ in preparation for the performance and I thought we could listen while we tour the cathedral. I’m sure that his playing will be wonderful as always,’ she said. ‘Although I do hope he keeps that ridiculous hand waving to a minimum,’ she whispered to herself.

Alice-Miranda and Millie overheard her and smiled. They both thought Mr Trout’s extravagant organ playing was a highlight of each week’s assembly.

The group continued walking until the top of an enormous building came into view.

‘Is that it?’ said Millie. Her eyes were on stalks.

‘Yes, it certainly is,’ Miss Reedy replied. The English teacher was walking right behind Millie and Alice-Miranda. ‘It’s gorgeous. And so much history. Did you know . . .?’ Miss Reedy launched into one of her monologues, firing facts like a volley of cannonballs.

Millie loved looking at the buildings but, unlike Alice-Miranda, she wasn’t especially interested in knowing every last detail. She decided that she would rather wait for Jacinta and Sloane than listen to Encyclopedia Reedy. She stopped to take a photo, while Alice-Miranda and Miss Reedy went ahead.

‘Can you believe that we’re really here?’ Millie asked as she slid between the two older girls. ‘Paris in the summer. It’s lovely, isn’t it?’

‘My mother always promised that she’d take me to Paris one day, but I doubt that’s ever going to happen now, seeing that she and Daddy are getting divorced,’ Jacinta huffed.

‘But Jacinta, you’re here in Paris, so she doesn’t need to bring you,’ said Millie, shaking her head. ‘How is your mother, anyway?’

‘Much better than I thought she’d be,’ Jacinta replied. ‘You know she’s taken up gardening with Nosey Parker, which is a bit of a pain because Mrs Parker has turned up on the back doorstep every weekend that I’ve been home. She insists on me giving her a hug and a kiss and calling her Aunty Myrtle. It’s horrible.’ Jacinta shuddered, and then looked thoughtful. ‘Sometimes I worry that Mummy will get tired of living in the village and start to look for a new husband. I’d like her to stay around now that we’re finally getting to know each other better. She’s quite good fun sometimes.’

Sloane and Millie nodded. Things between Jacinta and her mother had been tricky for as long as they’d known her. In recent months Jacinta’s parents had separated. Her mother, Ambrosia, had settled in nearby Winchesterfield, where her once extravagant lifestyle was trimmed as tightly as a hedge at Queen Georgiana’s palace.

‘Maybe your mother will find a job to keep her busy,’ Sloane suggested.

‘Yeah, right,’ Jacinta scoffed. ‘I don’t know what she could
do
, other than dressing up and looking glamorous, and she’s way too old to start a modelling career now.’

‘She might surprise you,’ Sloane said. ‘My mother still does the odd catalogue here and there.’

‘And
you
said that it’s totally embarrassing to see her parading around in nanna knickers for the entire world to see,’ Jacinta retorted.

‘Well, at least she’s doing something,’ Sloane hissed, ‘which is more than I can say about
your
mother!’

Millie didn’t like where the conversation was heading. Jacinta and Sloane had been so good lately. No one wanted to see a reappearance of their former selves. ‘Have you been to Paris before, Sloane?’ Millie asked quickly.

Sloane began to nod and then, thinking better of it, she shook her head. Sometimes old habits were hard to break and fibbing was the hardest of all. ‘My mother hates Paris. Daddy brought her here when they were first married and Mummy imagined that it would be like her favourite old movie,
Roman Holiday
, except in Paris, of course. But it was a huge disappointment. Daddy says that when he opened the door of their hotel room, Mummy shrieked and marched downstairs, yelling, “How dare you put us in a broom cupboard, that’s just not on!”’ Sloane imitated her mother, hands flying, hair bouncing.

Millie and Jacinta laughed. ‘I wonder what our rooms will be like,’ Sloane said. ‘I’m not having a broom cupboard either, you know.’

‘I don’t think we’ll have much choice,’ said Millie. ‘As long as there’s a bed and a hot shower we really shouldn’t complain. Unless you want to end up sleeping in a park.’

‘Ha ha,’ said Sloane. ‘Miss Grimm wouldn’t do that.’

Ophelia Grimm’s ears pricked up on hearing her name. She turned and looked at the girls behind her. ‘What wouldn’t I do?’

Millie’s stomach grumbled and she seized the chance to change the subject. ‘Let us starve,’ she said.

‘Of course not, Millicent. As soon as we’ve toured the cathedral and heard Mr Trout’s recital, we’ll have lunch.’ Miss Grimm had stopped on the path and was waiting for the group to catch up so they could cross the road together. ‘I hope you like crepes.’

Millie licked her lips. ‘Yum!’

The children walked in two lines along the footpath across the Pont d’Arcole, one of the numerous bridges that zigzagged across the river Seine. In the distance, the wailing of sirens grew louder and, as the group turned to see where the noise was coming from, a convoy of three police cars sped across the bridge beside them and skidded to a halt outside a townhouse.

‘Cool,’ one of the Fayle students, George ‘Figgy’ Figworth, called out.

‘I wonder what’s going on,’ Millie said.

‘Probably a murder,’ Figgy replied.

‘As if.’ Sloane rolled her eyes.

Mr Plumpton overheard the young lad’s comment. ‘Master Figworth, I think you have a rather overactive imagination.’

Fayle student Rufus Pemberley added his two cents worth. ‘Well, maybe someone stole that
Moaning Lisa
painting.’

‘Goodness me, you two should be crime writers.’ Mr Plumpton shook his head.

‘And it’s the
Mona Lisa
, Sherlock Holmes,’ said Sloane. She pulled a face at Rufus.

‘It’s been stolen before, you know,’ Figgy said. ‘Some Italian guy just walked out with it and kept it for two years.’

Mr Plumpton frowned. ‘Yes, that’s true, Master Figworth. But how did
you
know that?’

‘I read it somewhere,’ the boy replied.

Mr Plumpton was impressed. Perhaps the lad was more of a scholar than people gave him credit for.

Miss Grimm led the group along the footpath towards the police cars that were now parked untidily across the road.

A tall man with salt-and-pepper hair rushed out of the front door of a townhouse. A young woman wearing a red and black polka dot skirt, white blouse and perilously high red heels followed behind him.

‘
Nous avons été volés
,’ the man shouted.

‘What did he say?’ Millie asked no one in particular.

‘I think he just said that he’d been robbed,’ Mr Plumpton replied.

‘Cool,’ Figgy said again.

‘I don’t think that fellow would agree with you.’

Miss Grimm wasn’t keen to walk into the middle of a police investigation, so she led the children to the other side of the street.

‘That poor man seems very upset,’ Alice-Miranda commented to Miss Reedy. The child turned to look at him again. ‘I think I’ve seen him somewhere before.’

‘I don’t recognise him,’ Miss Reedy replied. ‘But that doesn’t mean much. You’ve met a lot of people, Alice-Miranda. It’s entirely possible that you’ve come into contact with him before, knowing your parents’ connections.’

One of the policemen pulled out a notebook and began to ask the man some questions.

By now the children were too far away to hear the conversation.

‘Come along, everyone,’ Miss Grimm turned and called to her charges. She was eager to get inside the cathedral and away from the drama outside. Police sirens and speeding cars were not on her list of sightseeing priorities.

Alice-Miranda’s mind was ticking over as she tried to remember where she could have seen the grey-haired man. If Miss Grimm hadn’t been in such a hurry she might have run back and introduced herself, even though her French wasn’t very good. But the headmistress did not intend to stop.

The children, flanked by their teachers, walked into the cathedral. The drama outside was forgotten as an invisible cloak of silence wrapped around them.

Somewhere in the gallery, a boy began to sing; the purity of his voice sent shivers through the visitors below.

Alice-Miranda shuffled through the crowd to stand beside Millie. Both girls gazed up into the vast space.

‘What do you think?’ Alice-Miranda whispered.

‘Oh my goodness, it’s beautiful,’ Millie gasped.

Fabien Bouchard blinked. He rolled over, shielding his eyes from the bright light that flooded the room.

‘No,’ he groaned. ‘I was having such a lovely dream.’

‘What were you dreaming about this time?’ his mother asked as she tied back the last curtain on the three double-height windows.

‘Football,’ Fabien answered.

‘Oh my darling, football is for children and sweaty middle-aged men. At least you could dream about something important, like fashion. Half the day is gone and you have masterpieces to create,’ she said.

The woman was dressed in tailored black pants and a simple black silk top. Her thick, ebony-coloured hair was pulled off her face in a low chignon and her pale face was free of make-up. Although there were some fine lines around the edges of her green eyes, she looked younger than her forty-three years.

‘But I’m exhausted,’ the boy sighed.

‘I know you are, Fabien, but we must work hard to repay your uncle’s kindness. If it weren’t for him, I don’t know where we would be.’ The woman stood for a moment, staring out of the window and onto the street below.

Fabien sat up and watched her. ‘Mama, are you all right?’

She spun around and walked over to the enormous bed, then perched on its edge. ‘Of course. It’s just that there have been so many sacrifices, Fabien. But soon you will have everything you have ever wanted.’

All he wanted was to go home to Guernsey. He doubted that was what she meant.

She leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. ‘You need to get up and make your mama proud.’

‘Will you come to the show?’ he asked excitedly.

She pulled away and crossed her arms in front of her. ‘I’m sorry but it’s just not possible. Maybe one day.’

Fabien’s face fell.

‘Please don’t look like that,’ she begged.

Fabien pushed himself back against the pillows. ‘I shouldn’t have asked. Now you’re upset.’

‘No, I am not upset, Fabien. I just can’t come. That’s all. Now, hurry up. The day is wasting and I need to talk to you about some of the designs. Your Uncle Claude will be back soon.’

She hurried from the room.

Fabien threw off the covers and swivelled his feet to the floor. He pulled on some trousers and a shirt without even pausing to admire their beautiful cut and cloth, and followed his mother down the hall.