I Should Be So Lucky (29 page)

‘I should have gone for flats like you have,’ Lisa said on the tube, looking at Viola’s shoes. ‘These aren’t that high, but if we do a lot of walking I’m going to regret every millimetre of heel by the time the day’s half over.’

‘It’s Paris – you could buy some others?’ Viola suggested, feeling quite joyfully frivolous.

‘In August?’

‘What’s wrong with August?’

‘Paris is pretty much closed in August, or so I heard.’

‘Not shops? You’re kidding me.’

‘Dunno. Something I read. Everyone Parisian goes away till autumn.’

‘Oh, they can’t, not all of them. I don’t believe it. The place will be packed with trippers. So if it’s shut, why are we going then?’ Viola began to wonder if this was a good idea. Lisa couldn’t be serious. Nobody closed down an entire city just because the residents liked a holiday.

‘Toby said it’s the cheap season. He sounded as if that was a top plus.’ Lisa wrinkled her nose and grinned. ‘Doesn’t sound promising, does it? I was hoping for a Eurostar champagne breakfast. I’m thinking we’ll buy our own.’

‘So Toby is … yours? What’s mine called?’

‘Oh he’s Ed, a mate of Toby’s – I think he said they work together, something to do with marketing. I wish I knew more about him than that. Sorry, Vee. I don’t know anything about Toby either, though I’ve seen a photo and read his version of what he’s like, but you can usually take that as a piece of fiction. I think on the DateMate site the only thing we had in common was being Pisces. If yours is a total dog you can …’

‘What? Back out?’ Viola interrupted. ‘No, I wouldn’t do that to you. I mean, what would you do with the two of them?’

‘Um …’ Lisa smirked. ‘Well, it’d be a first. And now that the divorce is final I did promise myself I’d try pretty much anything, tee hee. I’m a new woman, me.’

Ed and Toby were there to meet Lisa and Viola as arranged at the top of the tube escalator at St Pancras, and Viola immediately wondered why they were dressed as if they were heading for the seaside, each of them wearing baggy cut-off combats, polo shirts and trainers. Ed’s shins were so white they reminded her of the stems of leeks. Viola could just imagine Naomi’s face, all pursed up, cat’s-bum style, in disapproval of the overcasual take on what to wear to one of the world’s most elegant capitals. Viola and Lisa were both in dresses, Lisa’s a caramel and white shift, Viola’s a blue flowered Jigsaw tea dress, both of which would be more than up to lunch in the swishest of Paris’s restaurant
selection
. The men were a few years younger than Viola, late twenties like Lisa, she’d guess – maybe that would do to excuse the sartorial lapse. Ed’s right forearm had a tattoo of a running tiger that looked as if it had been drawn by someone who was only at the apprentice stage of the craft. The inside of his other wrist had a heart with an unreadable name in it. Could be worse, she decided charitably, it could have been a swastika.

‘Hello,
laydeez
!’ Toby greeted them, arms up as if to hug them both at once and waving a clanking Tesco bag. ‘Are we in for a top day out!’

You couldn’t, Viola reasoned,
not
be excited about getting on a train in one country to go to another. As their party boarded and found their seats she felt quite zingy about the day, in spite of the not-so-lovely appearance of Ed and Toby and the fact that they were in the cheapest seats. That didn’t matter at all – it wasn’t as if it was a long trip. The main thing, she told herself, was simply to get there and then enjoy the city and forget about family, stalkers, Greg (ouch) and
everything
. Also she must – she decided – try to get past her first impressions of Ed and Toby: there was a lot more to people than their dress sense – she mustn’t be snobby about it, even if Ed’s shirt did have a Tottenham Hotspur badge where classier versions might have a little polo player or a crocodile.

‘So much for champagne,’ Lisa murmured to Viola as Toby unloaded cans of lager from the Tesco bag and
spread
them out across the table. ‘They don’t serve it in Standard class.’

‘Here’s breakfast!’ Toby said, pulling packs of Scotch eggs out of the bag. ‘Sorry, girls, these are as close as I could get to a proper fry-up. Neat thinking, huh? That’s what you get in marketing. It’s all about solutions.’ An elderly couple across the aisle were dealing with a flask of coffee and steaming croissants from the station coffee shop and gave them a disapproving look. Viola sympathized.

By lunchtime, Viola had concluded that you could see a lot of Paris from the open top of a bus but you didn’t get to see inside any of the museums, or the galleries; nor did you get to sit in the Jardin du Luxembourg with fancy ice cream, or stroll along the Left Bank thinking about the poetry of Baudelaire and the theatre life of Colette.

‘The best bargain, this, don’t you agree, laydeez?’ Ed said. ‘All of Paris spread out below us, and chauffeur-driven too.’ Toby and Ed sprawled across the seats, faces up to the hot sun and turning redder by the minute. By the Eiffel Tower the two of them had downed the last of the lager, and by the time the bus stopped at the Louvre they’d taken their shirts off and their pale chests were getting as blotchy as their faces.

‘Let’s go and sit down the front,’ Viola whispered to Lisa as a party of Americans got up and left the bus. She and Lisa went and sat in front of a group of German
trippers
, telling the men they thought the view would be better and that not to bother to move, they were OK.

‘Any view would be better than Toby’s naked torso,’ Lisa said as they settled on the front seats. ‘God, this was
such
a mistake. I’m so sorry, you must hate me for this!’

‘Hey, it’s only a day out of our lives, what can it hurt? And it’s quite fun really – a kind of see-it-all view of the city for the horribly lazy. We could just abandon them both, I suppose, but they’ve got all the travel arrangements and ticket things. I’m fine with sticking it out – after all, there might be another hundred facts about marketing that Toby can tell us. Lunch soon anyway, surely. It’s getting pretty late and I’m starving. Any idea where they’ve booked? Or even if?’

Lisa giggled. ‘Probably McDonald’s!’

‘Wouldn’t surprise me. No, really, we’re going to get off this bus at the next stop if we have to drag them; we’ll get into a cab and go up to Montmartre. It’ll be touristy enough for the blokes but pretty enough for us, and there are loads of restaurants. OK with you?’

Lisa looked back to their half-naked escorts. ‘Oh yes. Anything’s fine by me, just so long as they put some clothes back on. I am
so
complaining to DateMates about this. I didn’t think I’d need to specify that I’d quite like someone who knew about keeping his top on in public. Jeez.’

More lager. Where did they put it? At the kerbside restaurant under a shady awning, Viola ate her steak
frites
and salad and drank red wine and wondered if men’s bladders were actually four times the size of women’s, given the amount of liquid they could put away. She also thought how lovely it would be to be doing this day trip with someone to whom she felt a tingling attraction. She’d guess Greg wouldn’t be guzzling beer by the gallon and complaining about the waitress not speaking English, although he might be eyeing up the neat grass by the funicular and considering how much better it would look as a wild-flower meadow. She watched Toby trying to get the attention of a living statue, a girl entirely in white, dressed Marie Antoinette-style and perched as still as a pillar up on a plinth, occasionally winking at any man who took her fancy. She didn’t wink at either Toby or Ed, though on the plus side they did at least have their shirts back on.

‘I could do with a sleep,’ Toby said as the waitress took their plates away. He then took hold of Lisa’s hand from the table and moved it down to rest on his thigh. ‘Or at least a lie-down.’ He smirked at her. Viola watched Lisa wriggle her fingers free and pick up her wine glass.

‘We could go to Sacré-Cœur. If you’re tired you could sit down in there while we look around,’ she told him.

‘Nah, you’re all right. Course, we should have booked a two-dayer, then we’d have a hotel to go back to. If I’d known we’d get on this well … you know?’

Lisa smiled politely. Ed moved his chair closer to Viola’s but it got stuck in a grating on the pavement and
he
lurched across the table, sending lager bottles crashing to the ground.

‘Shit, sorry!’ he said. ‘This chair’s fault – it’s wonky tat.’ Waiters appeared with dustpans and brushes and Viola was relieved that Toby agreed it was time to pay and go. ‘Been here too long anyway,’ he said, collecting up their credit cards to divvy up the bill. ‘It isn’t a late train. That would have cost another ton. You don’t want to spend a bomb on date one, do you? Just in case …’ He winked at the living statue and she made a hissing noise at him.

‘I’ve pulled!’ he said, punching the air.

‘I don’t think so, love,’ Lisa told him.

‘Oh, sorry, darling,’ he apologized, giving her a clumsy hug, ‘that was wrong of me. I’m already with a beautiful woman, couldn’t want another.’

‘Not one all painted in matt emulsion anyway,’ Ed agreed as they headed down to the funicular. ‘Things would get very messy. She’d get stuff all over your Mr Man.’

‘Just the way I like it,’ Toby chortled.
Mr Man?
Viola caught Lisa’s eye and they burst into unstoppable giggles. Toby took this as encouragement and put his arm round Lisa, who wriggled free on the pretext of adjusting her shoe strap.

After an afternoon of lazing along the banks of the Seine and managing not to see a single famous painting, any couture shops or the inside of any glorious
church
, Lisa whispered a heartfelt ‘Nearly over,’ as they climbed on to the train for the journey home. Ed and Toby had sorted the seating as they boarded, so Viola and Lisa were ushered into seats opposite each other by the window and the men sat beside them. Viola felt a bit trapped. On the plus side, Ed hadn’t so much as tried to hold her hand, and in spite of the shirtlessness and the industrial volumes of beer he’d been reasonably polite. She was glad all expenses had been evenly split and even if the day wasn’t to be one of her life’s travel highlights exactly, it was different and fun and had given her a very sharp reminder of the sort of man she wasn’t going to be looking for. If she ever was, that is.

‘Work tomorrow.’ Ed sighed, watching the edges of Paris slide past. ‘Early meeting about feasibility and management indices.’

‘He means how many phones their branch has sold this month,’ Toby said, rather sneerily.

‘I don’t flog phones, knobhead,’ Ed snapped, then turned to Viola. ‘Sorry, long day. How was it for you?’

‘Interesting,’ she said, opting for honesty. ‘Excellent lunch.’ Well, it had been.

Opposite, Lisa had closed her eyes. Viola watched as Toby took the chance to have a good stare at Lisa’s breasts. His hand was under the table, aiming for Lisa’s thigh, and Viola wondered if she should give her a gentle kick, wake her up so she could deal with him in whichever way she chose.

‘Sweet, aren’t they?’ Ed’s mouth was too close to her ear and she shifted sideways a bit, but almost hit her head against the window. ‘All paired off now. Neat,’ he murmured at her. ‘You’re one hot lady, you know.’

If I’m hot, she thought, it’s only due to the weather.

‘You like me. I can tell,’ he persisted. Across the table, Lisa slept on, Toby’s eyes following the rise and fall of her chest. Viola said nothing, concentrating on the fact that it was now less than half an hour to St Pancras, and then she could escape.

‘I know you do, don’t deny it. I’m making you gooey in your wee-wee, aren’t I?’ He was almost slathering in her ear now and was reaching for her hand.

‘
What?
Er, no, you’re absolutely not!’

Lisa woke up with a jump. ‘All right, Vee? Are we nearly there yet?’

‘Not long now. I … er … I think I’ll just go to the loo. Won’t be long.’ She picked up her bag and pushed past Ed.

‘Don’t keep me waiting,’ he said, smirking.

‘I’ll come too,’ Lisa said.

‘You’ll have to climb across me.’ Toby spread his legs out and leaned back.

‘No, I won’t; you’ll get up and let me out, like a gentleman,’ she told him.

‘Oh, I love a strict woman.’ He grinned, complying, but stroking her bum as she passed.

‘Oh God, you won’t believe this.’ Viola managed to
keep
her laughter in till they were out of range and she could tell Lisa what Ed had said.

‘
No!
Eugh!’ Lisa giggled. ‘How are we going to lose them at St Pancras? They seem to think we’re gagging for it. Any idiot can see we’re so not.’

‘Too right. I don’t want to be introduced to Ed’s
Mr Man
.’

‘Aaagh, don’t!’ Lisa laughed.

The train was slowing now. ‘Where are we? It didn’t stop at Ashford, so …’

‘Ah, Ebbsfleet.’ Lisa peered out of the window as they pulled into a station. ‘Are you thinking what I am?’

‘Yep. Definitely. Come on.’ Viola and Lisa raced along inside the train till they were a couple of carriages further away from their dates, and when the train stopped they opened the door and jumped out, dashing for the shelter of the exit and hiding behind a drinks machine till the train pulled out again without them, and without leaving two bewildered men looking up and down the platform.

‘Did it!’ The two of them high-fived each other and then looked around.

‘And now,’ Viola said, ‘the bit we didn’t think of. How the hell do we get home from here?’

TWENTY-FIVE

‘YOU
HITCH-HIKED
? HONESTLY,
Vee, you have
no
sense at all, have you?’ Viola really shouldn’t have told Kate, because she knew quite well what her reaction would be, but when Kate turned up a couple of days later with swatches of curtain fabric plus a heap of estate-agent details and a request for an opinion about flats, it was somehow irresistible.

‘Hey lighten up, Kate, I wasn’t on my own. I was with Lisa and we were fine. We got a lift in a truck full of music equipment all the way to the O2. Lisa’s seeing the driver for a drink tonight
and
he can get her tickets to shows.’