Chapter 17
NOW
It was exactly a month since she’d arrived in Versailles, and her days had fallen into a pleasant pattern.
She woke up, as always now, in Henri’s bed and performed her now customary ‘wriggle-from-under-his-arm-without-waking-him’ manoeuvre, which involved an undignified slither onto the carpet.
Henri was a hugger, and she enjoyed being embraced for most of the night, other than the times when she’d wake from a dream of being suffocated to find his heavy arm draped over her ribcage, but it made getting up without waking him a physical challenge.
Once extracted, she went to the communal bathroom to shower, then to her own room to get dressed and to become Isabella, the alter ego she’d now perfected at work.
It had been payday a week ago, meaning she had finally got a bit more in the bank, and she’d splashed out on a few outfits in the boutiques close to work.
Today, she pulled on a belted skirt, teamed with a cotton blouse in pink and grey.
She styled her hair and quickly blow-dried it into submission, then put on a flick of eyeliner, a slick of lipstick.
She was worlds away from the jeans-clad student wannabe who’d hit the clubs last night with Henri, but dressing the part seemed to help her step out of one identity and into another.
The thought of the lies she’d been telling along the way, or the half-truths she’d allowed people to assume, made her pause – lipstick midway to mouth – as a rush of guilt overcame her.
She’d allowed her housemate to assume she was a twenty-something student, her employer to believe she was an experienced hotel manager.
She’d built two identities, neither of which was truly her.
But then she reassured herself that she had tried to tell Henri her real age and circumstances – twice – and that her comments had been laughed at and batted away.
And whatever illusion Claudine was under due to her somewhat enhanced CV, she was managing to do a good enough job to keep her exacting boss happy. And that was the point, after all.
Plus – and it was hard to admit this in her counterfeit circumstances – she was actually quite happy. Despite Pete. Despite the sale of the B might even want to meet him.
None of these things could happen if Bella was to continue feeling good about how her life was going.
‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘It’s not serious.’
Maybe it would become serious, eventually.
Last night at the bar where they seemed to spend most of their evenings, she had felt freer than she had in so many years.
Being there with the two of them putting the world to rights, she’d felt her troubles melt away – all the angst that had kept her up at night since she and Pete had split – all the self-recriminations and analysis had seemed not to matter.
Last night, she hadn’t been someone who’d taken a wrong turn.
She hadn’t messed her life up. She wasn’t Kitty’s younger, more disappointing sister, or Pete’s ex-wife.
She wasn’t even Bella, the youngster who lived in a shared house and had a minimum wage job, or Isabella, the executive manager.
She was simply herself, stripped of all the emotional baggage she shouldered every day, and completely present in the moment.
It wasn’t the wine either, she thought; she’d only had a couple of drinks – her headache was testament to that – but once she’d entered the bar, the whole atmosphere had lifted her. She hadn’t needed any chemical inducement to become part of the joyous whole inside Le Cocorico.
She managed to deflect Kitty’s questions by claiming to have arrived at the station five minutes before she really did.
Once duty call done, she pushed her phone into her bag, and thoughts of subterfuge and younger men out of her brain.
Then she stepped onto the train and became Isabella: ready for a day of serious work and poised for success.
* * *
On arrival, she nodded briefly at Mélodie on reception before summoning one of the two lifts.
When it arrived, she stepped in; it smelled strongly of the perfume of the last occupant: heady and expensive.
On floor one, the doors slid open and to her horror, a diminutive figure in a pink Chanel suit that sported three enormous black buttons on the front hobbled in, a small dog at her heels.
The dog looked at Bella with undisguised contempt.
‘Bonjour,’ the woman croaked, not looking up.
‘Bonjour, Madame Roux,’ Bella said, trying to keep her voice bright.
In reality, she felt a bit nervous: Yves had seemed terrified of the old woman and so far she’d managed to avoid spending more than a passing moment in her presence.
‘And Coco of course,’ she added, bending down to make a fuss over the dog, who endured her strokes with stiff suspicion before straightening.
Madame Roux raised her face to Bella’s. She was wearing thick make-up, bold red lips. Under her small pink hat, her white hair was pulled back into a bun. ‘Oh, so you’re the English girl,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘I suppose they’ve told you all about me.’
‘Not really.’ Bella tried to smile. ‘It’s nice to meet you.’
‘Ha!’ the woman laughed. ‘Nice to meet me indeed! Now I know they can’t have told you anything.’
Bella smiled fully at this. Madame Roux seemed completely harmless.
‘I’m sure they’d have only said nice things.’
Madame Roux laughed again, a single syllable bark. ‘They do not understand me. I try to help. Offer advice. But people are afraid of hearing the truth.’
‘Oh, I’m sure that’s not true. It sounds as if you are very kind,’ Bella said, smiling.
‘What’s that you’re wearing?’ The old woman leant forward and inspected Bella’s neat black skirt and floral blouse.
‘Oh.’ Bella looked down. ‘Just some… work clothes.’
‘I can see that.’ Madame Roux looked her up and down carefully. ‘You know, that horrible blouse does nothing for you. That colour washes you out. The pattern is ugly. You look dull. You need something red, vibrant.’
‘Oh.’
‘And the fit,’ Madame Roux shook her head as if Bella were completely beyond help. ‘It drowns you. And the skirt is too long.’ The little dog sniffed Bella’s shoe slightly, then also seemed to turn his back as if even her feet hadn’t passed muster. ‘The whole effect is quite, quite dowdy.’
‘Oh well, it’s just a work outfit,’ she said, tugging self-consciously at her blouse.
There was a silence, then, ‘But you are young. You shouldn’t be afraid to be bold. Life is too short.’
Bella had actually thought the print on the blouse was quite bold, but suddenly it looked drab, formless in the mirrored back wall of the lift.
‘Don’t be disheartened, mon petit,’ her companion added. ‘You can always go shopping.’
‘That’s true,’ Bella managed to say.
‘Well, good day,’ Madame Roux said when she exited on the second floor.
‘Yes. Thank you.’
Yves was hovering near the lift when it reached the third floor and she turned towards her office, feeling as if every last bit of confidence had been drained from her body.
‘Salut.’ He held out a paper cup from a high-end coffee shop. ‘I bought you an Americano. I hope that’s OK?’
She smiled. ‘Yes. Thank you.’
At least someone seemed to be on her side…
A few moments later, she took her laptop across to Claudine’s office and knocked on the door. Inside, Claudine was sitting at a desk that looked completely clear – Bella’s was already starting to look messy, she’d have to attend to it later – her porcelain hands knitted together in front of her.
‘Bonjour, Isabella,’ she said in French. ‘You are ready?’
‘Yes,’ Bella replied. ‘I’ve put together some initial ideas for the pitch. I can start making calls after the meeting.’
Claudine nodded approvingly and leant slightly backwards on her wheeled chair, as if somehow a weight were being lifted from her. ‘Wonderful,’ she said, gesturing to the projector and encouraging Bella to start.
It was as if Bella had stepped outside of her body and was looking at herself with new eyes.
Smartly dressed, a little tired around the eyes, confident.
She talked about her vision, what they’d need to do – first steps, next steps, final steps.
And she could see in Claudine’s face that her new boss was impressed.
‘Magnifique! This is a great start. You definitely have a gift for this industry, Isabella. I am very confident that we will be moving forward brilliantly with you steering the ship.’
Bella realised she was grinning like an idiot, so reined in her smile a little to look more self-assured than flabbergasted. ‘Thank you.’
‘We will celebrate,’ Claudine said. ‘Are you free to go for a drink after work?’
Bella thought of her aching limbs, of the fact that she had been hoping to scuttle back on the train and collapse in a few hours’ time either in her bed or Henri’s. But looking at Claudine, she realised that this was one of those pivotal moments. Her boss was making a gesture of friendship.
There was only one answer she could give. ‘Oui!’
‘Wonderful, wonderful.’ Claudine leant forward a little over her desk as if imparting a secret.
‘You know, it has been a long time since I was able to go out. My husband and I, we separated a few years ago, and it is difficult with such a big job to find someone new. Some of the other staff at the hotel, they go out but – pah! – they are babies. It will be nice to refaire le monde with someone on my level.’
Refaire le monde – remodel the world, Bella’s brain quickly translated. She smiled, wondering what Claudine might have thought had she seen her the night before in Le Cocorico, behaving to all intents and purposes like one of the ‘babies’ she was describing.
She would have to be careful tonight – not drink too much and definitely not give too much of herself away. But if it was reinvention Claudine was interested in, she was definitely becoming an expert at that.