Harm's Way by Celia Walden Read Free Book Online Page A

he had gone.
    â€˜His name is Christian,’ said Beth gleefully, ‘and I’ve invited him to my birthday do next Friday.’

Three
    The following week passed effortlessly. I had difficulty believing it was already a month since I’d moved to Paris. It was the beginning of July, and the nights were long and balmy. June had been relatively mild, and being able to sit outside after work for the first time that year made it feel like evenings had just been invented. Girls wandered serene and beautiful through the streets, gracefully accepting compliments. A crop of new films appeared in cinemas, all of which I wanted to see, and unknown songs made me turn up the radio. Life was laced with idle pleasures.
    At work there had been a groundbreaking moment: Céline had volunteered some information about her private life. She showed me, with a perfectly buffed almond nail, a magazine picture of a handbag, which she had instructed her boyfriend to buy her for her birthday. I did my best to display interest. Not only did Céline have a boyfriend, one who perhaps was in the habit of buying presents for her, but she also liked handbags, a facet of her life which aligned her with roughly ninety per cent of the female population.
    After work on Thursday, I ran down to Colette on rue Saint Honoré, managing to slip through its forbidding doors five minutes before closing time. The doorman let me in with a blind tilt of his head and a subsequent, imperceptible shake, as if to say: ‘Lady, if you’re not going to devote proper time to your shopping, I’m not sure we can helpyou.’ Spotting the cream silk camisole that had enraptured Beth the week before, I pulled it off the hanger and over my head. Its broderie anglaise straps came down far too low in front, but would be ideal for Beth’s fuller chest. Stores in Paris are not invariably friendly places, especially when you are keeping the staff there after hours. Unable to bear the glare of the assistants any longer, I made my way swiftly to the till.
    It had taken longer than usual for the museum galleries to empty that Friday, and by the time I’d gone home and changed, Beth’s party had long since started. In a sepia-coloured dress with thin straps that Beth had given me, I’d climbed the five floors of her building buoyed up by the appreciative glances I’d received in the street.
    â€˜It looks perfect,’ said Beth seriously, pointing a dangerously slanting glass of Pastis at the outfit. ‘Turn around.’
    She was already well on the way to being drunk, and more striking than I’d ever seen her.
    â€˜Is he here yet?’ I whispered.
    Beth mouthed ‘No’, a fraction out of sync with the movement of her shaking head. ‘I don’t think he’ll come.’
    It was a question – and one that I couldn’t answer. Her mouth was wet and shiny, with tiny crystallised clusters at the corners indicating an earlier
friandise.
    â€˜Just assume he won’t and anything else will be a nice surprise,’ I suggested, giving Beth’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze and enjoying the fact that for once it was me playing the sensible, advisory role.
    In the kitchen Stephen was taking out of white paper boxes intricate petits fours from the patisserie across the street. Iperched on a bar stool and quizzed him about his evening with the magazine editor.
    â€˜Ugh. Remind me never to get involved with anyone in women’s magazines again,’ he moaned. ‘Just when you think they’re actually interested in what you’re saying, you realise they’re plying you for information about what it is to be a man so as to have something to take in to a conference on gender issues the next day.’ He licked a piece of jellied salmon off his thumb dejectedly. I laughed.
    â€˜So do you reckon this Christian guy is actually going to turn up?’
    â€˜Doubt it,’ said Stephen,