The Last Dress from Paris(23)
I pick up my phone and text Veronique.
If I’m to solve this mystery, I need your help, Veronique. Are you in?
She responds immediately with a line of thumbs-up emojis.
Yes I am, Lucille! I’m here for you, whatever you need!
I think I love her already.
* * *
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I must be the only person in the whole of Paris who wastes my Sunday chained to a laptop in my hotel room. Perhaps I’m more like Mum than I care to admit. Obviously, news of my late arrival back to London goes down spectacularly badly with Dylan, who shows precisely no interest in my emerging story idea. He’s not concerned about my deadlines as such, just his next freebie trip. This time it’s him; his wife, Serena; their two kids, Ben, nine, and Holly, six; and of course the nanny, so they can off-load all the childcare. I’ve organized so many of these trips for him now that I know every one of their passport numbers by heart. I can tell you exactly what their springer spaniel will need at the kennel in the time they are away. I can probably recite the brief to the cleaner without calling it up on-screen, I’ve delivered it so many times.
In three days, they all depart for five nights of skiing in Courchevel—and I’m the wet lettuce who has to liaise with the hotel public relations team to ensure everything is organized, minute by minute, with zero room for error. Return flights, private limo transfers up and down the mountain, massive supply of anti-sickness pills on hand, lift passes, ski and boot hire, Serena’s spa bookings, the kids’ ski school sessions, all restaurant reservations, one husky excursion, a group ice-skating outing, and God help me if any of it isn’t micromanaged and little Holly doesn’t get her chocolat chaud on time. Last time they went skiing, Dylan actually messaged me from the resort to report how disappointing it was that there was “no boot-warming service” and moaned that it made getting the kids to the slopes each morning “a living hell.” All I could think was where I’d like to shove his ski pole.
I thought when I took this job and became a travel writer on travelsmart.com I might actually get to do some travel. That was the carrot that was dangled to me at the interview, anyway. But no, it seems I just organize it all for the boss. I’m a glorified PA who gets tossed all the minor writing assignments no one else wants, usually with an unspeakably tight deadline. But might that change, if I deliver a piece at the end of this trip that shows him what I am really capable of? Maybe then I will be assigned a bigger piece. I’m craving a complicated itinerary to somewhere no one’s heard of, multiple stops, visa applications, tightly timed internal flight connections. I’d like to see my name sitting proudly at the top of the site for once, not a small extra reporting by credit at the bottom, where no one can see it.
Anyway, it may have taken most of the day, but the bookings are done and I am now ready to attack this city first thing tomorrow morning.
I decide to treat myself to something astronomically expensive from the minibar and climb into bed with it just as a text lands from a number I don’t recognize.
You have to come back to the shop. I’ve spoken to my grandfather, he knows the Maxim’s. I’m so sorry I didn’t help you yesterday. Come tomorrow. We open at 11 a.m. It’s important. Leon
The thought of seeing that rude guy again does not fill me with any joy whatsoever—but the idea of some much-needed progress to report to Granny does. I take a few undignified gulps of peppery red wine and let its warmth and this good news lull me into a wonderfully sound sleep.
* * *
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Come Monday morning, I pay much more attention at Bettina the second time. It’s impossible not to when the place is so chock-full of things most of us would have decluttered from our homes without a moment’s hesitation. There is a break in each of the clothes rails that run on either side of the shop where two large dressing tables, minus their stools, sit. They are overflowing with all sorts of curiosities. What look like original designer’s sketches with fabric measurements annotated up the side are stuck to the wall next to cards filled with postage-stamp-size swatches of brightly colored materials. There is a run of names added to the former, and I wonder if they are the models who wore the gowns, or the women who made them. There is a framed black-and-white photograph of a model in a tweed jacket circulating a small room of immaculately dressed men and women, every pair of eyes focused intently on her. I glance past it to original invitations to Dior’s new season collection shows dated 1952 and a stack of old French Vogues from around the same time. A box of weathered paper dress patterns spills onto one table that is strewn with old mismatched buttons, what I think are enamel jewels, and an aerial shot of Paris that is doubling as a tablecloth. It’s impossible to tell if this is a deliberate display or the result of years of neglect.
“Thank goodness you came back” is the greeting I get this time. Leon, as I now know he’s called, comes striding out from behind the counter and ushers me onto a stool on the opposite side of it. This better be worth the blisters that are now covering both my feet.
“I need to explain a little about my grandfather so that what I have to tell you makes sense.” He’s keen, nothing like the man I encountered on Saturday.
“I’m all ears.” I allow a little cockiness to enter my voice now that my presence seems important to him.