Chapter 10
10
Lucie must have drifted off at some point because she was aware of waking up at the first glimmer of daylight. Her eyes opened and for a moment, she struggled to work out where she was. In a car… which car? Then she looked around and saw her passengers, realised what a crick she had in her neck and remembered exactly where she was and what she was doing.
She also remembered last night and having that little cry in the small hours. She brushed all those thoughts to the side now. Wasn’t everything always so much worse in the small hours? In the daylight, you could pick yourself up and get back on with the business, and even the welcome busy-ness, of creating another day.
Beside her, Zoe was stirring, and even Deva seemed to be coming round from his deep slumber.
‘Morning everyone, how does coffee and a French pastry sound?’ she asked in brightest mumsy tones. ‘Shall we go in and see what they’ve got?’
So the little trio headed for the services building where loos and sinks were used, and steaming cups of coffee and crispy apricot and chocolate pastries were bought. And then Lucie remembered that Deva was gluten-free, so she went back to the counter and managed to find him a packaged chocolate-coated rice cake.
Deva had brought the map book along with him and as they ate and drank and started to come back to life watching the sun come up and the sky lighten, he studied the route they would take today.
‘So…’ he began. ‘I know the satnav is going to guide us round to the east of Paris, on the ring road, the Périphérique, but I’ve just plotted the route that goes around on the west side and it only takes twenty minutes longer.’
Zoe was quick to ask the obvious question. ‘And why would we want to go west and take a route that’s twenty minutes longer?’
Deva propped his face up on his hands, his eyes began to scan out of the big glass windows and something of a dreamy expression came over his face. ‘Because if we take the western route, then we would be able to make just a very small detour down the Avenue de la Grande Armée and into the Place Vend?me.’
Lucie and Zoe stared at him, desperate for some further explanation as to why they would drive into a busy city, no doubt absolutely jam-packed with traffic, and make today’s long drive even longer.
‘If we went to the Place Vend?me,’ Deva continued, ‘we could actually stand outside the Ritz Hotel where Coco Chanel lived for thirty-four years. Then we could walk down the Rue Cambon’ – his voice seemed to go both quieter and higher – ‘and we could go into Chanel’s original Paris boutique. And this would honestly make several of my dreams come true in just twenty minutes or so. It’s just a tiny little detour. And it will be completely amazing and totally worth it.’
Zoe picked up her coffee cup and said, ‘Deva, if you can convince my mum to drive the Beast the long way round Paris and stop off in the city centre, I will need to take some lessons from you.’
‘I don’t think it would be very sensible…’ Lucie began.
‘And I rest my case,’ Zoe said. Then she drained her coffee cup and put it down on the table with a harsh tap.
Lucie felt riled by this. Really, was this how Zoe saw her now? Just a boring, middle-aged mum, who never did anything remotely interesting ever? Mrs Totally Safe and Staid?
She wanted to say something like: Do you know I used to party with all the London cool people? Or, I once helped Jarvis Cocker sneak out the back of a nightclub to avoid the press … But she realised, with something of a jolt, how long ago that was. And how mildly desperate she would sound.
So instead, she asked Deva, ‘Have you ever been to Paris?’
‘No, never, but I am desperate, desperate , to go. Please, even just fifteen minutes in the Place Vend?me and you will be my favourite auntie forever,’ Deva wheedled.
This made Lucie laugh.
‘And what about us, Zoe… We went to Paris when you were about ten, didn’t we?’
‘I only remember Notre Dame and Disneyland,’ Zoe replied, ‘and literally begging you to get me a Mickey Mouse balloon, which I held in the car all the way home.’
Lucie laughed again: ‘Disneyland! Oh my God, I hated that place so much. I swear I saw French Minnie Mouse smoking a cigarette. And it rained relentlessly all day long. The entire day, not one single break in the rain. Everyone was wearing those yellow capes they had for sale there.’
‘Yeah, even I remember that,’ Zoe chimed in. ‘Dad loved it though. He went on every single ride – even the teacups that were obviously for babies.’
‘Yes, he did,’ Lucie recalled.
‘Always up for an adventure,’ Zoe said.
‘Always taking the risks,’ Lucie countered. But she felt jolted by this comment too, and wondered if those were the roles that she and Miles had fallen into over the years – the risk-taker and the wife who played it safe. But if you’d built a life with someone who was always taking risks, was it so surprising that you would be the one who was dotting i’s, crossing t’s and paying attention to the details – checking the insurance policies, making sure the household bills were paid, setting the budgets, reining him in? If only she’d done more of it, she couldn’t help thinking. If only she’d asked to comb through the accounts of his many different businesses – dotting those i’s, doing the sums, checking repayments and interest rates. Maybe it wouldn’t all have gone so badly wrong.
But she wasn’t Mrs Miles any more, so her decisions didn’t all need to be safe and sensible to counterbalance his. No, she could decide for herself. For the first time in years, she could ask herself, ‘ What does Lucie want? ’ and act on the answer.
‘Look, I don’t want to promise we can stop in Paris,’ Lucie began, ‘but if we make good time on this part of the journey’ – she registered the excited hopefulness on Deva’s face, not to mention the surprise on Zoe’s – ‘then maybe we can take the detour.’
‘That is amazing!’ Deva exclaimed.
‘Really?’ Zoe asked.
‘Maybe…’ Lucie clarified, ‘if we make good time.’
Zoe gave some sort of raised eyebrow, smirk expression at Deva that Lucie understood immediately. Obviously, Zoe didn’t think she would, so maybe Lucie needed to prove her wrong.
Deva got to his feet, coffee cup in hand, and urged them up. ‘C’mon, no time to lose. Time to get a shift on.’
As they walked out of the station and climbed into the Jag, Deva regaled them with a volley of facts and information.
‘Coco Chanel opened her first boutique on Rue Cambon in 1910 when she was twenty-seven years old. The first thing she designed was hats and they were hugely popular. Then came comfortable jersey tunics, then the radical trousers, bathing suits, jackets with pockets and handbags with straps. I mean, she was wearing trousers and bathing suits when both were considered a scandal,’ Deva told them.
‘And what about No 5?’ Zoe asked as Lucie pulled the Jag with a huge new tank of petrol back out onto the main road. ‘When did that arrive on the scene?’
‘First created in 1921,’ Deva replied. ‘It’s probably fair to say that it only went mass market after the Second World War though, due to the involvement of the Wertheimers, who were her business partners. She gave the perfume out free to the American GIs liberating Paris. She was a revolutionary designer, no doubt about that, but she also had a genius for marketing. All those legendary quotes she gave to newspapers and magazines, building her brand. And the perfume – that was so that everyone could have a piece of Chanel, even if they couldn’t afford couture, and it was the perfume that made her so incredibly rich, fabulously rich.’
After a little pause, he added: ‘She was the Duke of Westminster’s girlfriend for ten years.’
‘Really?’ Lucie was surprised that she didn’t know this.
‘Yes, and maybe, if she’d been able to have children, they would have married. But, in the end, he left her for a much younger woman who gave him an heir.’
Lucie felt her hands grip the steering wheel a little tighter. Those words had led her thoughts to Miles and Jacasta, and now she was wondering, would Jacasta want a baby? Was Zoe facing the prospect of a sibling twenty-eight years her junior? And how would Lucie feel about that? Probably even more middle-aged and cast aside and irrelevant.
‘So, are you planning to work in fashion when you graduate, Deva?’ Zoe asked. ‘It sounds like you should, sounds like you know so much about it.’
‘Uh, well…’ Deva began, and both Lucie and Zoe couldn’t help noticing that at this question, all the enthusiastic energy seemed to drain from him and once again nervy, uncertain Deva was back. ‘I-I don’t know about that,’ he said. ‘I mean, I know almost everything about Coco, but fashion…’ He glanced down at his sweatshirt. ‘Not sure about that. I’d like to work for one of the big production companies that puts on musicals, but I know just what my mum and dad will think…’ He trailed off.
‘Oh, never mind that,’ was Zoe’s robust response, ‘you’ve got to do what you want to do and not worry about what your parents think.’
Lucie glanced at her daughter, stung by yet another warning not to interfere in her life, but Zoe just kept her eyes ahead on the road. When she looked back at Deva, he was giving a non-committal shrug, and then his headphones went back on.
The miles ticked by. There was another stop near Amiens, dictated by Zoe’s small bladder and the Jag’s thirsty engine, but then they were back on the road with less than an hour to go till Paris. Looking at the time, Lucie guessed they would be there by 11a.m., and this was earlier than she’d expected.
As the signs for the Périphérique began to appear, signalling the choice between going west or going east, she was still undecided. This was a very big, ungainly car. She tried to imagine driving down narrow streets or reversing into a parking space. Really, it would be so much easier to stick to the motorway, bypass Paris and carry on south towards the village in the hills where they were stopping for the night.
Adventures always come with difficulties, unforeseen snags, extra costs, headaches, even tummy bugs. You remembered the highlights, though – the view, the meal, the moment – and hopefully, you would forget the extra effort or any troubles. If she was standing in the Place Vend?me, would she still be replaying the effort of weaving through the traffic, finding a parking space, or working out how to put euro coins into the meter?
‘Do we have any euro coins?’ she wondered out loud.
‘What for?’ Zoe asked.
‘Parking.’
‘Are you serious?’ Zoe turned to her. ‘Are we going to do this? Are we going to go into Paris, Mum? In this beast?’
Lucie smiled and pushed down the indicator decisively. ‘Yes!’
‘Deva!’ Zoe leaned over and tapped her cousin on the arm. ‘Aunt Lucie is heading west! Coco Chanel here we come!’
Deva swiped off his headphones and let out a yelp of excitement.