Harm's Way by Celia Walden Read Free Book Online

from a fit of tears but not wanting to make it too easy on the parents. And I happily assumed that was the end of that.
    As it turned out, she did see him again, less than a week later.
    Beth and I had had dinner at Le Café, a little restaurant whose importance was explained by its definitive pronoun. Loud techno was blasted from speakers half the size of the place, and you were forced to wait patiently for the waiter to stop finger-drumming on the side of your table before he took your order. Subdued by an enormous slice of tarte tatin each, we trudged up the six floors of my apartment building a few hours later to retrieve a belt of mine Beth had insisted on borrowing. Breathless, and pretending to look forward to a night out when I secretly suspected we both wanted to stay in, we spotted a squat, slack-featured old man coming towards us down the stairs. Although I’d never met my infamous neighbour, Monsieur Abitbol, I knew without a doubt that this man with eyes like old marbles – so buried were the pupils beneath layers of cataract – was him.
    He must have been a different size once. Although he was barely five and a half feet, beneath his shabby linen jacket were shoulders you could sense had been wide. Now that his outline had softened he appeared to be wearing another man’s clothes. His skin, too, seemed to have become too big for him, and I could imagine it hanging in folds beneath his shirt. Not knowing what to say, and wishing to avoid looking directly athim, I mumbled a barely audible
‘Bonjour,’
only to be stunned by the tirade of abuse that streamed like bile from his thin-lipped mouth.
    â€˜How dare you say hello to me when you’re the reason I haven’t been able to sleep for weeks. Would you STOP that infernal banging, for God’s sake!’
    With that he pushed past Beth and me. We heard the rustle of his K-way, like emptying sacks of sand, gradually fade as he stormed down the stairs. I lowered myself on to a step, and stared at Beth before we both dissolved with laughter.
    â€˜He, he, he,’ Beth wheezed, ‘was accusing
you!’
    Incapable of speech, she was still clutching a rib when the well-groomed mother of three from the floor below opened her front door and stuck her head round to see what was going on. Three neatly spaced parallel lines appeared on her forehead, her eyes flat mirrors of colour repelling all humour. I apologised in between hiccups of laughter, and let us into the flat.
    That evening we had decided to try somewhere new: a place called Le Baron. As Stephen was to bring along Christine, a features editor from
20 Ans
– a cleverly marketed magazine aimed at oversexed, underactive teenagers aspiring to the grand old age of twenty – he was determined for us to go somewhere a little more straight. Le Baron was on Avenue Marceau. After paying fifteen euros to get in, the women were served free alcohol all night, while the men were obliged to pay. In Britain the place would have gone bust within a couple of hours, with ambulances queueing up to remove the intoxicated bodies of young females. Here, Parisian girls in tops just the right side of provocative sipped kirs, mindful not to raise their voices. They were precisely the type of womenwho brought out the British
salope
in me, and while I started dancing with a group of Belgian stag-nighters, Beth went to the bar to collect the first of our free margaritas.
    It was only when I began to feel the stiff leather of my shoe cutting into my toes that I realised how long Beth had been gone. I finally spotted her crossing the club towards me, empty-handed, and smiling like a lunatic.
    â€˜Where are our drinks?’ I shouted, surprised by the annoyance in my voice.
    â€˜Guess who I just saw?’ Beth replied.
    It was the man from Queen, standing several feet in front of her in the queue for the toilets. They’d chatted and exchanged numbers, but by the time she had come out