Chapter 5
Mebel has always thought of Paris with two exclamation marks following it.
It’s never just Paris. It’s Paris!! Land of beauty and romance and dreams. When she thinks of London, she takes away one of the exclamation marks.
London! Not as magical as Paris, but exciting in its own way.
As she said to Alain, she loves the West End theater and there is, of course, Harrods, Fortnum all she knows is that they are very much not farming beautiful shops from which she can source an overpriced calfskin handbag with golden hardware.
An excruciating half hour of farmland follows, and finally, they turn off the highway (or the motorway, as the driver calls it) and the houses appear.
But these houses are what Mebel, as generous as she is trying to be, can only describe as “humble.” Built out of red bricks, they are all uniform, small and cramped, with tiny windows.
The car turns down one street, then another, and another, and Mebel half wonders if she’s even still in England.
How is it possible that this is the same country that boasts marvels like Big Ben and Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey?
These buildings are nothing like the ones in London, and against the backdrop of the funeral gray English skies, the sight is almost too depressing to behold.
The cold air is wreaking havoc on Mebel’s eyes, and she’s just applied some eye drops when the car comes to a stop.
Mebel stays there, unmoving, blinking away the eye drops.
The driver gets out, yawns, and stretches outside, as though oblivious to the rain steadily drizzling around him.
He opens the door for Mebel and she starts.
“Here we are, luv,” he says.
“What?”
“The Saint Honor Cooking School, yeh?”
“Saint Honoré School of Culinary Arts,” Mebel says, pronouncing it the way the French do.
“Right, that’s the one. Out we get then, luv.”
Mebel has no choice but to step out gingerly, curving her body to protect her precious Dior handbag, even though she knows it is futile against the rain.
She looks up at the building in front of her, half hoping that it would be half as gorgeous as the one in Paris.
But there’s no such luck. The Saint Honoré School of Culinary Arts, Cowley, is a humble affair, located in what looks like a converted block of old English houses.
She turns back to the driver, about to ask him if there’s been a mistake, but her words catch in her throat as he flings her beloved suitcases out of the cab and onto the curb.
“Cheers,” he says, and with that, he ducks back into the cab and drives away.
Mebel looks around her at the relatively empty street.
There’s no one to help her with her bags, and the rain, though not heavy, is unrelenting.
It is now that Mebel realizes that in addition to being damp and miserable, she is also freezing.
It is barely September. What in the name of autumn is going on?
Teeth chattering, she grabs the nearest Louis Vuitton suitcase and drags it down the driveway and into the building.
This reception hall is a far cry from the one in Paris.
No one talks in hushed voices and no one is walking around like they’re on their way to some important meeting, namely because there is only one person present—a short middle-aged woman with mousy brown hair shorn into an unforgiving bob is dozing off behind the reception desk.
“Excuse me?” Mebel says, and the woman jerks up with a snort.
“Oh, hello!” she says, grabbing a pair of glasses from the desk and shoving them onto her face. “Are you”—she checks her notes—“Mebel Tan—Tana—”
“Tanadi,” Mebel says. “Yes.”
“Ah yes, of course. We’ve been expecting you.”
Despite the gloom that has settled over Mebel in the past few hours, the words “We’ve been expecting you” bring about a wave of relief so intense that she almost breaks down then and there.
“You have?” she says in a wobbly voice.
“Yes, Mr. Moreau called ahead to let us know you’d be arriving today. I’m Agatha, I’m the—well, I do everything around here. I’m the building manager, the school registrar, what have you. You need anything, you come to me.”
Mebel thinks of the numerous people the Paris branch had on staff.
There had been at least six that she could see in the reception hall alone, and probably more bustling about behind the scenes.
And in this one, all they have is…Agatha.
Agatha smiles at her. Mebel thinks of Simone, the cool French receptionist. Well, to be fair, Mebel would much rather deal with Agatha than Simone.
Having come to this conclusion, she smiles back at Agatha, whose smile widens in response.
For a moment, the two women grin with manic nervousness at each other, then Agatha stands.
“Well! We’ve got your room all ready for you.” She spots Mebel’s suitcase and says, “Oh good, you’ve got just the one bag. Our rooms aren’t very big, I’m not even sure if it can fit that suitcase, but we’ll—”
Grimacing, Mebel says, “I have more bags.”
“Oh? Where are they?”
“Outside.”
Agatha has not struck Mebel as the athletic type.
There is a softness about her and she wears shoes that can only be described as orthopedic, and yet as soon as she hears the word “outside,” she bursts into a sprint that would put Usain Bolt to shame.
Before Mebel’s brain can even catch up with what’s going on, Agatha is out of the building, shouting, “You can’t just leave fancy bags like these outside, not in Cowley! ”
Mebel hurries outside, the Dior handbag bouncing off her arm, the goldware jangling as she jogs after Agatha. To her horror, Agatha is shouting, “Get back here, you villains!”
Sure enough, Mebel spots two youths sprinting away, each one carrying one of her Monogram Louis Vuitton suitcases on his back.
“No!” Mebel cries. But even she knows that it’s too late, that there is no point in trying to run after them.
The boys are too fast and too far away for her and Agatha to catch up to.
And anyway, these Ferragamos were made for the runway, not actual running.
And so Mebel stands at the end of the driveway and watches helplessly as two of her Louis Vuitton suitcases disappear down the street and round the corner.
The sight is so surreal that Mebel can’t quite grasp the magnitude of it.
What did she have in those two suitcases?
God, please let neither be the one that has all her handbags.
She doesn’t know what she would do without her bags.
What if—oh no—what if they were the ones that contained her underwear?
Mebel glances at Agatha. As friendly and warm as Agatha has been so far, Mebel doubts that she’d be comfortable sharing her underpants with Mebel.
“Oh dear,” Agatha says, trudging back toward Mebel.
She is breathing hard, her hair plastered in a sweaty mess to her forehead.
“I’ll help you file a police report about this, but I’m afraid that’ll probably be the last time we see those boys and those beautiful suitcases of yours.
The coppers here are hopeless. Have you got any valuables in there? ”
“Both the suitcases and the insides of the suitcases very valuable, yes,” Mebel says.
She must be in shock. If this had happened to her while she was traveling with Henk, she would be in absolute pieces.
But somehow, something is keeping Mebel together in this moment, and she doesn’t quite know what it is.
Maybe it has to do with the fact that, compared to losing a husband and a forty-year marriage, losing two suitcases full of stuff isn’t quite as horrible?
Or maybe she’s in denial. Whatever the case, something allows Mebel to merely shrug.
She grabs hold of the one remaining LV suitcase, the two carry-on bags, and the hatbox and says, “Well, at least now I know all my things can fit inside my dorm room, ya?”
As it turns out, Mebel is wrong about that.
She suspects that she might have been too optimistic about the size of her room as Agatha leads her up a flight of the narrowest staircase she has ever gone up.
The staircase is so narrow, in fact, that both of Mebel’s shoulders brush against the walls as she walks up backward, dragging her heavy suitcase and cursing whoever designed this godforsaken building.
When she finally reaches the second floor, Agatha leads her down a stuffy hallway, speaking in a hushed voice as she walks.
“These are all accommodations for our esteemed students, like yourself,” Agatha says.
Mebel is confused by how closely spaced the doors are to each other. They pass by six doors before Agatha stops at number 9 and says, “Here you are.” She unlocks the door and pushes it open. “Ta-da!”
Do not cry, Mebel tells herself for what seems like the hundredth time that day.