Chapter Eight
Chloe’s ability to create stories was only matched by her compulsion to overanalyse people’s words, to look for hidden meanings. It was exhausting, but she couldn’t help it. As someone once said, ‘Maybe when the author says the curtains are blue, they just mean the curtains are blue.’ But Chloe always wondered why the curtains were blue.
Right now, she was wondering whether Joel’s words about cream were just for fun, despite that look in his eyes.
But surely he’d assume she’d never condone cheating, let alone be that girl, on his stag, after she’d told him the reason for her own broken heart? So his words had to be just for fun, right?
Or, more likely, she reasoned, it was a ploy to derail her attempt to get the truth out of him. To scupper her mission to encourage him to fly in the face of all those expectations and be himself, and to hell with strict families and military fathers. To admit he was about to make an enormous mistake.
Then she realised that while she’d been staring into space overanalysing, his cheeky grin had only got bigger. Unless she was very much mistaken, those words weren’t just for fun.
Her eyes widened. Did I really just say he can lick cream off me if he’s a good boy? Yes, she had said that, and what was more … realisation dawned … she’d meant it. One hundred per cent.
She smiled slowly. ‘Shall we move on? This way, I think. I reckon the entrance might be along there.’ She pointed to where the boundary took a sudden sharp turn.
As they walked, a voice in her head started to protest, but Chloe was off down the road of rapid rationalisation. If Joel did do something sexually creative with cream, she wouldn’t in fact be doing to Zara what Dan had done to her. Because this marriage Joel was hurtling into wasn’t about love, it wasn’t coeurs et fleurs . It was a feelings-free arrangement from which they would both benefit; it was for the sake of appearances, for family honour. Plus , if Zara was happy to turn a blind eye to Joel’s boyfriends, a one-night stand in Paris with a florist from Huddersfield wouldn’t even dent her hard little heart, never mind break it.
Chloe had never experienced that wild, free, let’s-try-all-the-things lifestyle enjoyed by more adventurous young people. She’d lived at home during her university years, for the sake of her student debt and to be close to Dan.
What a waste.
Just one lover in all her twenty-six years. That was quite possibly tragic.
Around them, the City of the Dead’s inhabitants were a reminder that life was short. It was time to stop existing, start living. Beginning now. A chained-together one-night stand with added cake, with a beautiful guy who was nice, and fun, and quite sad and very noble, in beautiful Paris … what possible reason was there not to?
Like Edith Piaf, she’d regrette rien.
As they approached the perimeter, they could hear the occasional car, the sound easing them back into the world of the living, beyond the wall.
And there it was. A small, green, wooden door next to the large metal gates.
‘Key?’ she said.
Joel produced it from his jeans pocket. ‘There’s a bolt too,’ he said, pointing. Chloe bent her knees, balancing on her haunches, and he crouched down beside her. With her free hand she wiggled the bolt until it slid back.
Their heads were almost touching; she sensed his eyes on her face and turned to meet his gaze. He was so close; his breath was a gentle warm breeze on her lips.
‘Chloe?’ he said softly.
Her heart leapt into her mouth. ‘I’m sad,’ she blurted. ‘It’s not been my usual quiet walk home, but … well, it’s been kind of lovely. Unexpectedly lovely, considering how it started with you vomiting on my feet.’
He smiled. ‘Does that mean I can stop apologising now?’
‘Yes. But in return …’
His smile faded.
Needing to touch him, she lifted her hand and stroked his hair back from his forehead. ‘On the far side of that door, we’re going to have a truth fest.’
He frowned. ‘A what? And can we just find out if this key actually opens this door?’ He stood up, pulling her with him.
‘Right, yes, but like I say … Joel, do you believe that everything happens for a reason?’
‘No, I don’t – that’s bollocks.’
‘I don’t know; maybe you’re right. But I have this odd feeling something’s at play; like, I’ve been sent here tonight, to … talk to you. To make you think properly about what you’re about to do.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
He wasn’t getting into the spirit of this. Not at all. She pursed her mouth. ‘So I’m not in fact an angel sent from heaven?’
A smile pulled at his lips. ‘I didn’t say that. I think you may well be. Or perhaps it was the other way round. Maybe I was sent to help you rediscover your sense of humour?’
She rolled her eyes. He was deflecting her again. He didn’t want to talk. He was actively avoiding it, pushing against it. Perhaps she should just give up. Maybe like he said, this in fact wasn’t a special moment in time, a real-life Midnight in Paris/Brief Encounter mash-up. Maybe there was no magic in the air, no unseen force propelling them together. The probability of a full moon turning the cemetery into their private silvery wonderland was one in twenty-eight. Quite high, really.
And it wasn’t fate but just coincidence that the guy she was shackled to wasn’t a minger, or dangerous, or stupid – that he was in fact gut-meltingly gorgeous and nice and funny and …
‘Or maybe I was sent to help you rediscover something else,’ he said.