Flights of Angels (30 page)

They’d barely said a word to each other since leaving Whitby behind. Now, as the Eurostar pulled out of Waterloo station, Claudie wondered what on earth had made her agree to come on this trip. After all, a weekend in Paris had connotations written all over it, and Claudie wasn’t naïve enough not to realise it.

She sat back in her seat, glancing quickly over to Simon. He’d helped her with her suitcase when they’d got on the train, but he didn’t seem in a talkative mood. A feeling of deep guilt suddenly overwhelmed her. She shouldn’t be here, she thought. She shouldn’t have let Kristen get away with it.
She
didn’t want to be here, and she was more than sure Simon didn’t want her here either. But there was no going back now, was there? Not unless she got on the next train back to London as soon as they arrived, and that seemed such a waste, didn’t it?

She stared out of the window but there weren’t any answers to be seen in the endless blank fields. She had to work this one out for herself. Maybe they could go their own ways once they got to Paris? That would be the best solution. Simon could do his thing, and she could do hers. Perfectly simple. Paris was a large enough city so they wouldn’t be likely to trip over each other every five minutes. Claudie felt a small smile creeping up on her. Sorted.

No. Not quite. What about breakfast? She didn’t want him to feel that she was crowding in on him. This was his holiday after all, and they were bound to have rooms next door to each other? She’d probably spend the entire weekend eavesdropping on him, listening out to hear when he left his room and checking if the coast was clear before she surfaced from hers.

Claudie chewed her lip and looked around the carriage. She’d bet her bank account that nobody else was in the same predicament as she was. How did she manage it? One thing was for certain, free trip to Paris or not, she was going to throttle Kristen when she got back. She’d heard of matchmaking but this was really pushing it to extremes.

She looked around at the other people, trying to guess their own personal circumstances. There might not be any passengers eating smelly egg sandwiches, but there was an awful lot on mobile phones. Everywhere Claudie looked, someone was speaking into his or her little finger. Most were wearing pinstripes and ties, and all looked as dull as ditch water. But then Paris, for some, was a business trip.

Claudie was just about to close her eyes against all her worries when, under the soft glow of the pink lamp on the table, five tiny figures appeared. Claudie blinked, looking up at Simon as if he might have spotted them, but he was staring out of the window.

‘Guess what!’ Jalisa cried. ‘We got our special dispensation!’

Claudie stared down at her in surprise.

‘It took some doing, mind,’ Bert said. ‘We’ve been up half the night filling the forms in ourselves.’

‘And we all had to write an essay on why this trip was so important,’ Lily said.

Claudie’s eyes widened. Angels having to write essays? Wonders would never cease.

‘But don’t worry. We won’t make a nuisance of ourselves. We just wanted to let you know we can come with you,’ Jalisa said.

‘Thank you,’ Claudie mouthed, and watched as Lily and Mary disappeared only to reappear at the table adjacent to theirs where two middle-aged businessmen had set up office.

Lily and Mary stood hand in hand on a copy of the bald man’s Financial Times and pulled faces at him.

Claudie tried not to laugh but failed miserably.

‘You all right?’ Simon asked, looking at her with a great deal of concern.

‘Fine,’ she said, feeling herself blush. ‘Sorry. I always laugh when I’m nervous.’

Simon gave her a little smile. Claudie glanced quickly over at Lily and Mary again, grinning as they blew raspberries and stuck their tongues out at the pair of ponderous businessmen.

It was very hard to think about picking up a book or a magazine when five angels were doing their best to distract you. Bert and Mr Woo were playing snap and, for once, seemed to be getting along quite nicely, and Jalisa was filing her nails with the tiniest emery board Claudie had ever seen. But Lily and Mary simply refused to behave themselves. Claudie tried to beckon them away from the businessmen’s tables, but they were taking absolutely no notice of her. One of the men, in particular, had caught their attention. He was wearing half-moon glasses and was doing a bit of laborious two-fingered typing on his laptop. But that’s not what was interesting the Tudor twins.

His tie hovered over the table, just begging to be pulled, and Lily and Mary didn’t waste any time with such an obvious opportunity. Mary grabbed hold of it. Lily helped, and together they picked it up until the tip was dangling over the man’s cup of coffee. Claudie watched, her mouth parting in anticipation of what they were about to do.

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ the man yelled as soon as he saw what had happened. Lily and Mary went running for cover as the man retrieved his tie from his cup and did his best to squeeze the excess liquid from it. Claudie watched in amazement. Things like that happened to her all the time: pens disappeared, her sleeve would catch on a doorknob or she’d step on a piece of chewing gum she could have sworn wasn’t there a minute ago. Did that mean that she was the unwilling participant in an angel’s practical joke?

She glared down at Lily and Mary as they returned to her table, but they merely grinned back at her, knowing she couldn’t tell them off in front of Simon. So she decided to close her eyes against them and, with all the excitement of the day so far, she fell into a deep sleep.

By the time they’d pulled into the Gare du Nord, and had snaked their way round the taxi queue, it was after eight o’clock. Claudie, despite her sleep on the train, was exhausted, and would have fallen asleep in the taxi too if the driver hadn’t been slaloming his way through the centre of Paris as if competing for Olympic gold. Claudie felt quite carsick by the time they stopped outside the hotel.

‘I’d forgotten how bad French drivers were,’ she said as Simon picked her suitcase up from where the driver had dumped it on the pavement.

‘You’re calling your own nation?’ he said with some surprise.

‘I’m only French by nationality, not by nature.’

He looked at her and smiled, and there was something behind his eyes that Claudie couldn’t quite read. What was it? Had he finally resigned himself to the fact they were going to spend a weekend together?

‘I think he likes you,’ a little voice sang. Claudie looked down and saw Jalisa sitting on her suitcase as Simon carried it towards the hotel. ‘Yep,’ Jalisa said, gazing up at Simon, ‘he definitely likes you!’

Claudie shook her head and followed Simon through a pair of large iron gates.

‘This is beautiful,’ Claudie gasped. ‘I can’t believe you won this!’

‘Neither can I,’ he said, looking up at the rosy red brick of the hotel and the myriad windows winking in the lamp light. ‘I thought it would be a dump miles from anywhere.’

Simon opened the door for her and they walked into a large hotel lobby stuffed with antiques.

‘It’s like heaven,’ she said in a quiet voice.

‘Oh, no,’ Jalisa laughed, ‘this is
much
posher than heaven!’

Claudie hovered in the background whilst Simon checked in. When he turned round, he handed her a key. Room twenty. He was in room twenty-one. Both were singles.

Claudie felt herself breath a sigh of relief as they made their way to the lift, doing their best to squash into the small space with their luggage. She’d read her fair share of romance novels whilst a teenager, and had lost count of the number of stories where the hero and heroine had been thrown together in the last double room left in the hotel. But they weren’t in a novel, and Claudie certainly didn’t feel very heroine-like as she rubbed sleep out of her eyes and struggled to stifle a yawn.

As the lift began to move, Claudie glanced down at Jalisa who was still smiling up at Simon. She was doing a great job of balancing on her case, but Claudie didn’t like the twinkle in her eye. It was as if she was planning something.

‘Do you want to go out somewhere and eat?’ Simon asked.

Claudie thought of the room and bed that awaited her. If they went out to eat, she couldn’t avoid talking to him, and she really didn’t know what to say. She still couldn’t believe that she was with Simon instead of having a girly weekend away with Kristen, and felt sure that he was just being polite. Anyway, she needed some time out. Alone.

‘I’m not really hungry. I think I’ll just have an early night.’

‘Okay,’ Simon said, his voice alarmingly blank.

‘Pssst!’ Claudie frowned down at Jalisa. ‘Go out to eat, you idiot!’

Claudie she shook her head gently. She couldn’t believe the cheek of that angel sometimes, and was beginning to wonder why on earth she’d thought it a good idea to ask the angels to come to Paris with her.

When the lift doors opened, Claudie was still staring angrily at Jalisa.

Simon led the way down the narrow hallway decorated in a sumptuous red and gold wallpaper, and placed their bags outside their rooms.

‘Well, here we are,’ he said.

‘Yes.’ Claudie stared at the two doors. There was barely room for another door in between them.

‘So I’ll see you in the morning? Breakfast is seven thirty to eight thirty.’

‘Okay,’ Claudie said, forgetting her plan to tiptoe around his timetable.

‘Say eight o’clock then? Shall I knock for you?’

Claudie nodded.

‘Night, then,’ Simon said, handing her the key and opening the door into his own room.

Claudie walked into her room, closing the door behind her and leaning against it. Oh, God. Had she sounded ungrateful? Had she been completely antisocial in not going out to dinner with him? Would he send her home on the first train in the morning?

‘You should have gone out to eat!’ Jalisa sang up at her from her suitcase.

‘Jalisa!’

‘Just making an observation.’

‘Well I’d thank you not to. I feel bad enough about it as it is.’

Claudie walked into the room and smiled as she saw that the rest of the angels had already made themselves comfortable on a small dressing table next to the bed. It was really a home from home for them, wasn’t it?

‘Jalisa’s right,’ Mary said hesitantly.

Claudie sighed and crossed her arms. ‘If I’d known you lot were going to spend the weekend matchmaking me, I’d never have asked you to come along.’

‘Now, fair’s fair, Claudie,’ Jalisa said. ‘We had no idea that you’d be here with Simon, did we?’

‘I suppose not.’ She looked at each one in turn, trying to read their faces for clues, but they weren’t giving anything away. Perhaps she was being a little harsh on them. After all, it was highly unlikely that they would have been able to predict circumstances like the one she now found herself in.

‘We’re just trying to help you have a good time,’ Jalisa reiterated.

‘Well, of course I’ll have a good time. I’m in Paris!’

‘Then why aren’t you going out to eat with Simon?’ Lily asked.

‘He looked so disappointed,’ Jalisa told everyone.

‘Did he?’ Claudie frowned.

Jalisa nodded vehemently. ‘Yes, he did.’

‘Oh dear. I didn’t mean to be so rude. Do you really think I should have gone with him?’

‘No harm in that?’ Mr Woo said.

‘No,’ Claudie agreed, ‘it’s just that I feel a little uncomfortable. I don’t think I should be here at all, and I’m sure he’s feeling the same way.’

‘How can you be so sure?’ Bert asked. ‘What man in his right man wouldn’t want to be in Paris with a beautiful woman?’

Claudie bit her lip. She wasn’t at all sure she was ready to be thought of as a beautiful woman.

‘I think that’s what’s bothering her,’ Lily stage-whispered.

There was a few moment’s silence. Finally, Jalisa spoke.

‘Look, you’re not going to sort anything out by sitting in this hotel room, are you? I think you should just go out. Stop worrying about everything - just
do it!
’

‘Just do it, huh?’ Claudie tried to listen to her own inner voice but, with the constant chatter of the angels, it was almost impossible to hear. ‘You think I should go?’

The angels gave a group nod.

‘Bite the bullet!’ Bert said.

‘Take the bull by the horns!’ Mary chipped in.

‘And loose yourself in those eyes the colour of a Whitby sky in winter,’ Jalisa giggled.

Claudie glared down at her. ‘How do you know about that?’

‘Never mind! Now get a move on.’

Claudie ran through to the bathroom to tidy up. They were right. There was only one way to face the situation, and that was to face the situation.

She barely had time to notice her plush surroundings as she sent a toothbrush round her mouth like a washing machine on spin cycle. A quick slick of lipgloss and an even quicker brush of the hair, and she was ready.

She stood back from the mirror, watching as her chest heaved in anxiety. She could do this, couldn’t she? Everyone was behind her. This was the right thing to do, wasn’t it?

She walked back through to the bedroom.

‘Good luck!’ Bert called, giving Claudie a rather lascivious wink.

She grabbed her handbag and room key and stepped out into the hall. A few deep breaths took her outside room twenty-one where she knocked at the door and waited.

But there was no answer. Simon had already left.

Simon walked out of the hotel and under the cool arches of the Place des Vosges. There were still plenty of people about, dipping in and out of the boutiques, or sitting in the restaurants that spilled onto the pavements. Simon decided that if his wallet was to survive his free weekend, he’d best stick to something a little off the tourist track.

After ten minutes of wandering around the back streets and dodging scooters, he found a nice impersonal bar where he ate by the window, watching the world parade past in pairs. And suddenly he felt more alone than he had done in months. Paris had that effect on people. It was a city made for couples, not a sad single guy who had won a competition and been set-up by his best friend.