Special Relationship (26 page)

“You are so silly,” she said, looking at her affectionately. “Look, at the moment, you are dating the rich celebrity fund ma
nager. Next week I might be having an affair with Prince Harry and I'll be the big story – so get over it woman and I hope you have a fantastic weekend.

“I'm really excited for you - and when
Hensen and Anderson merge – the companies that is - I'll expect a mega pay rise,” she laughed.

The next morning the ever-cheerful Christos arrived punctually and soon they were on their way to St Pancras for what Alex thought was going to be another fairytale weekend. She sat in the front seat again and they chatted cheerfully about it being her first trip to Paris and how excited she was to see the world's most romantic city.

“I'm a humble driver, Alex, but I get the feeling that you and Nick might be liking each other?” he asked impudently, but smiling with the charm of someone from a part of the world where enjoyment of life, and love of family and friends, came above all else.

“Christos! I'll report you to your boss,” she laughed.

“Ha-ha, he won't sack me Alex, he'd have to get the bus.”

When she had stopped laughing, she told him about the book she was reading The Magus which was set on the Greek island of
Phraxos. “I'd love to go there,” she said.

“
Phraxos? Never heard of it Alex. You sure it's an actual place?”

She thought. Maybe it's not, maybe it's just a fictional location. Like the character in the book she was finding it hard to know these days what was real and what was fantasy.

“Oh, I'll check the internet when I can,” she said.

“Don't worry, nowhere is more beautiful in the whole world than where I came from, blue skies, mountains, wonderful sea. One day I hope you and Nick will visit as guests of my family.”

She laughed and lightly slapped his arm. “I'd love to Christos - with Nick or not! - and I'd like to come to one of your big Sunday lunches with all your family and friends there.”

He quickly backed the car into a space barely designed for one of its size and carried her two bags through the main entrance to the striking gothic-style station and to what he told her was the longest champagne bar in Europe.

It was on the concourse separated from the rail line by just a glass screen. Nick, sitting at a table next to it, watched the trains with a childlike curiosity. He wore a light, tanned suit with white shirt and deep grey tie. His dark hair seemed to have grown since she'd first met him and it looked lightly waxed into a casual, unfussy style. He maintained enough facial stubble not to alarm more conservative business clients, but enough to add to his allure for those for whom his making of wealth was not his prime attraction.

He kissed her on both cheeks. “Bonjour,” he said as Christos put her bags down by the table and wished them a good weekend. They both thanked him and he went away smiling, looking forward to any gossip he might pick up on Sunday evening.

“You speak French?”

“
Mais Oui,” Nick said.

“Tell me what time our train leaves, in French,” she said sitting at the table.

“Mademoiselle, la... le train departes ... à...neuf...seventeen."

"
Mmm...perhaps a bit rusty?"

One of the impressive
Eurostar trains arrived at the platform opposite and Alex watched the people alight, the businessman, the tourists and then a group of excited French schoolchildren presumably on a day-trip to London. She looked away quickly.

Above her was the magnificent station roof built at a time when Britain ruled the waves, a two and a
acre-glass structure that stood today as testimony to the country's 19
th
century confidence.

She enjoyed history but she could never grasp how a little island off the coast of Europe built the biggest empire the world had ever seen, and invented much of the stuff that made up modern life.

Only Grand Central beats this, she thought as she took in the atmosphere of the station.

“We haven't got long to check in Alex so I'm going to forsake the
full English breakfast for smoked salmon and scrambled eggs which conveniently enough come with a glass of champagne. There are pastries and healthy fruit if you prefer.”

“No the eggs sound good,” she said before standing up. “There's something I want to see, be back in a minute.”

“OK, I'll just look after your bags,” he frowned.

She walked to the end of the concourse to see the 30-foot bronze statue 'The Meeting Place'
which depicted a couple in an amorous embrace. It was, she had read, portraying a French woman reuniting with her English lover, bringing together two different cultures.

The
frieze on which the couple stood showed startling scenes of solders departing and returning from war, a copulating couple, drunken vagabonds, and debauched figures from London of long ago. And then there were were depictions of the modern day, of struggling commuters, angry youth and a woman embracing her partner while looking over his shoulder at her mobile phone.

It fascinated her and she reached inside her jacket to pull out the words of the artist she had printed out the night before. The frieze, he had said, portrayed the joy and loves of human life and also its loss and tragedy.

She walked around the concourse before rejoining Nick. “Sorry,” she said. “I saw a thing on TV about the sculpture a long time ago and I've always meant to see it.”

“The couple in an embrace at the station. Are they meeting or separating?”

“They are meeting. She's French and he is English.”

“How do you know they are meeting?”

“Because they don't look sad.”

After breakfast,
he went to find a trolley and dragged the bags on to them. “You sure don't travel light,” he remarked. “Oh, and did you bring your passport?,” he asked as one of Britain's richest men pushed the trolley towards the Eurostar terminal.

“I maybe blonde, Nicholas, but I know that Paris is in France and France isn't part of the UK.”

“Just checking.”

He
apologised that he would have to take calls on some of the trip but that after his meeting was over he would switch off his phone off for the rest of the weekend.

While she looked out at the Kent landscape, she heard him arguing to someone about how an IT company,
with lots of money in the bank and no new ideas, should be making higher dividend payments.

Then
there was a call from Katherine in which she seemed to be reminding him of his need for security. At one point he said, “alone” and she wondered whether that was a reply to the question of who he was with. But the call was interrupted as they entered the 31-mile long tunnel and the train continued its journey under the seabed.

Nick pointed out of the window. “Pretty, this tunnel, isn't it. Don't say I'm not showing you the world.”

After they emerged into continental Europe, both their phones bleeped to inform them they now had connection with a French telecoms provider, and soon they were crossing the sparsely-populated farmland of north-eastern France. Villages, the odd town and imposing but lonely-looking châteaus split some fields from others, but for the most part people seemed few and far between.

“Phone off now,” Nick said. “Just d
idn't want to make a complete arse of myself this afternoon.”

“Don't worry, enjoying the scenery,”
she said from the opposite seat.

“And when in Paris what's on your list?” he asked.

“I looked at the internet last night. My list is so long we might have to be here for two months not two days.”

“Suits me,” he replied. “How comes you haven't hopped over, or under, the Channel, since you arrived in London?”

“Dunno, I guess too busy, and maybe I have just never met anyone to see it with.”

“And you have now?”

“Possibly,” she said looking at him with a smile. He gave a boyish grin back.

The outskirts of the city were dominated by large rather scruffy-looking apartment blocks and ther
e was hardly a spare space of any wall along the rail tracks that wasn't covered by graffiti. “It's funny, “ he said. “When most people think of Paris they think only of its beauty but the suburbs can be quite grim. There are areas which are effectively no-go zones even for the police.”

“
I read about the banlieues in the New Yorker. It has a charm, though doesn't it? There is something about its bleakness that I find, well, I don't know, bewitching?”

“Well, put the
banlieues on your list then, but I think we'd be safer in a car than on the metro.”

“Perhaps I'll leave them for my next trip,” she said.

As the train pulled in to the the Gare du Nord, he suggested they took two cabs, one for her and the bags to the hotel, and the other for him to his meeting at La Défense.

“The hotel is on the Avenue
d'Iéna,” he said, writing the name on a serviette, “but the driver will know it.” He switched on his mobile which promptly bleeped several times. “Any problems just give me a call, remember to put 44 in front of my number and leave out the first zero. You'll need some euros,” he said reaching for his wallet.

“Already sorted,” she said. “Got some at the bank yesterday.”

He found her a cab outside the station and, after the bags were in, she kissed him on the lips.

“Je
suis scared,” she laughed.

He hugged her. “Don't worry, it's twenty minutes and the driver speaks good English. The hotel has your name and you'll just have to fill out the registration card.” They kissed again, this time prolonging the moment, before she straightened his tie, smiled at him and got into the back of the cab. As it pulled away, she looked round to see him getting into the taxi behind.

Looking out of the open window it didn't take her long to appreciate the city. Car drivers bleeped at each other as though there were a prize for who could be loudest and longest, while in the cafes along the boulevards and avenues, people leisurely sat drinking coffee and eating croissants nonchalantly watching the madness go by.

The buildings in the back streets near to the station largely consisted of six to eight-storey grand houses, most of them converted into apartments with balconies protected by black-metal balustrades and often furnished with plants and green foliage.

When her driver was stopped in traffic, making rude gestures out of the window, cursing the other road users, she became aware that the young men here felt no need to hide their macho desires. They certainly weren't scared to look, and one blew a kiss at her and started calling something out in French as she prayed for the traffic to move.

“
Êtes-vous d'Angleterre?” asked the driver.

“Sorry, I'm not very good at French.”

“You are from England?”

“Oh, I live in England, but I'm American, from New York.”

“That man liked you. Said he would like your phone number.”

“I think my partner would not be happy,” she replied.

He laughed. “In Paris, having a boyfriend or a husband is not so much of, how you say, 'an issue'?”

Alex took the comment in the light-hearted manner in which it was delivered and she smiled back.

“You have been here before?” he asked, looking in the mirror.

“No, first time.”

“You'll like it,” he said.

“I think I will,” she replied, smelling the freshly-baked bread streaming towards her from the patisserie opposite.

After passing the impressive neo-classical temple La Madeleine, the city opened up into the wide expanse of the Place de La Concorde.

“Champs-Elysées," said the driver, pointing to the impressive promenade stretching from where she caught a glimpse of the Arc de
Triomphe and the skyscrapers of the financial district behind. Where Nick most probably is, she thought.

The car carried on and turned to follow the River Seine. And she was awed by The Eiffel Tower's magnificent presence above the city. She had read that eminent Parisians hated it when it was first built, one so much that he lunched at the restaurant on the second floor because, he reasoned, it was one of the few places in the city where you couldn't see it.

The driver pointed out that they were now in the Avenue de New York. "We named it after you, especially for your visit," he laughed.

"Ha, and I saw the Rue de
Londres earlier and that's where I live now, so the city really has made an effort."

"Just for you, mademoiselle, but no more than you deserve."

He was either flirting with her or working for a big tip and, since she both hoped and guessed it was the latter, she sorted through her bag to work out the euros she'd need to pay the fare with a generous gratuity. He seemed more than pleased with the notes she handed him. "Merci beaucoup, mademoiselle, and please enjoy your stay."

The doorman welcomed her in French and carried her bags to reception.

"Bonjour," she said self-consciously to the woman on reception. But her accent clearly sounded less authentic that she had hoped as the receptionist replied "Good day, madam."