A Place for Us by Harriet Evans Read Free Book Online Page A

expensive—but this was the Île Saint-Louis, of course it was eye-wateringly expensive, and it was for Madame Poulain. No expense spared was very much Madame Poulain’s motto, though she kept track of everything she gave Cat to the nearest cent, and nothing was bought for Madame Poulain that Cat might share. This was made very clear, always had been: Cat shopped at Lidl or Franprix. She smiled as she waited to pay, catching sight of the rows of Dijon mustard. That was why Paris was civilized, despite its many annoyances. In a tiny convenience store you could still find five different types of moutarde de Dijon: mais bien sûr.
    •   •   •
    “ Bonsoir, Madame. ”
    “ Ah, bonsoir, Cat herine. Ça va? ”
    “ Ça va bien, merci, Madame. J’ai pris le vermouth. Je vous offre un verre? ”
    “ Oui, oui. ” The old woman gave a great guffaw in her wingback chair as Cat gingerly put the tissue-wrapped bottle down on the great old sideboard. If she asked the question she most desperately wanted to right away, Madame Poulain would get angry. If she waited just a minute, she would be pleased.
    Cat drew in a short breath, took a glass off the shelf, and said, “Your medicine, Madame—all’s okay for me to pick it up tomorrow, yes?”
    “Sure.” Madame Poulain stubbed out her cigarette. “Tell them to check it this time. I’m sick of the wrong dosage. I am ill. It must be correct.” She lit another cigarette. “Can you make me the drink before you run off again? I mean, of course I know you’re so terribly busy but . . .”
    “Sure,” said Cat, trying not to smile. The first time she’d come to Madame Poulain’s apartment, overlooking the Seine south toward the Latin Quarter, she had been overawed by the vast airy space, the wooden beams, the old shutters with their carved iron handles, the fretwork on the balcony. Then, as now, the only items on the old mahogany dresser (from Vichy, acquired in shady circumstances by her father, a coward and a traitor, about whom Madame Poulain was only able to speak by expectorating heavily into her ashtray afterward) were menthol cigarettes, an ashtray, and cough syrup. Which, Cat had often thought since, pretty neatly summed up her landlady.
    “Was it busy today?” Madame Poulain stretched out in the chair, flexing her long, clawlike hands.
    “The market was crowded. But we were not busy. Henri is worried.”
    “He should be worried. Now that this fool is in charge we are all doomed. That I should live to see socialism annihilated in this way. When I was a child we would have called that man a fascist. Ha!” Madame Poulain dissolved into a fit of coughing, which consumed her for some time. Cat fetched her a glass of water and poured her vermouth, all the while anxiously listening for other signs of life in the apartment. She could hear nothing.
    Eventually Madame Poulain’s hacking subsided and she shoved aside the proffered glass of water, grasping the vermouth. Cat passed her her pills and she swallowed each one laboriously after much sighing, followed by raspy gagging. It was the same every night, had been for these last three years. Olivier had hated Madame Poulain, the couple of times he’d met her. Said she was a fake, a phony. Her family were collaborators. How he knew this Cat had no idea, but Olivier’s biggest bête noire was phonies. One of his many ironies.
    Don’ t think about Olivier. One . . . two . . . three . . . Cat looked around the room, counting objects to distract herself. She knew what to do now. When Olivier barged into her thoughts as he did so often, she had a rotating carousel of images with which to distract herself, otherwise . . . otherwise she’d go mad, get so angry she’d smash something. She thought of Winterfold. The Christmas when she and Lucy had made the snowman with a beach-bucket-shaped head, covered in sand from the previous summer in Dorset. The walk into the village on an autumn day when the leaves