The Last Dress from Paris(96)
“And then I realized, I don’t want us to be something that exists in an email inbox. Not when the way I feel about you is so real. I think we should give it a try. Slowly. That’s if you want to?” The corners of his mouth gently curl upward, and he looks at me through that mess of hair that hangs sexily over his eyes. “If I am wrong, or you don’t want to, or it’s too soon, I can just go, and you don’t have to feel awkward. It will be my mistake.”
Still my brain won’t function. It’s like the performance back in front of Dylan has sapped me of all intellect, so I throw caution to the wind and use my lips to make the point instead. I kiss him exactly as I have always wanted to be kissed. Tender at first, nervous and unsure, but building so that within seconds my whole body feels like it is blending into his. Our kiss is deep and spontaneous and greedy, and I have to pull back from it because, before I know it, I’m almost on his lap and I’m not sure I want us to be the sort of people who straddle each other in the middle of a busy café in Soho.
“How long are you here?” I laugh, raising a hand to my lips to gauge how far across my face my lipstick is smudged. He reads my concern and runs a thumb just under my lower lip, signaling all is good with another quick kiss.
“Not long. Work can only spare me for a few days.” His hands are resting on my thighs, making my entire lower body tense with desire.
“Where are you staying?” I know where I’d like him to be staying.
“Somewhere cheap and cheerful in King’s Cross. It’s not the Athénée, but it’s close to the Eurostar terminal, so it works.” He orders us two cappuccinos, and I take the opportunity while he’s chatting to the waitress to study his face. Only then does my brain start to get creative again.
I imagine him taking shape in my life, like a Polaroid slowly developing. He’s there, waking up in my bed, washing up in my kitchen, curled up with me on a long lazy Sunday afternoon when we are enough for each other, the distractions of the outside world completely superfluous. He’s there, every day, kissing me awake in the mornings and burying his face into my neck as we both drift off into sleep late at night.
What I don’t want to see is the wide expanse of the sea that separates us and how we will overcome that. For now, it fills my heart with so much happiness to think this man woke in his bed in Paris this morning, decided he had to come and see me, and changed any plans he might have had so he could. Can this actually be happening? Am I really the sort of woman that these things happen to? Maybe I am, and I just never gave myself the chance to let them happen to me before.
“So, did you make it to the V and A? Did you see the final dress?” His eyes are keen, and I’m touched it’s one of the first things he asks me about.
“Yes!” I had emailed him a quick update about Granny’s role at the British embassy in case it could help with tracking down any info about Antoine, but he doesn’t know the latest developments. “So, we think my grandmother was pregnant. The final dress wasn’t exactly for her—it was a christening dress. The question is, if we are right, what happened to the baby?”
“Wow.” He pauses for a while and lets the implications of this latest news wash over him. “Have you asked her?”
“No, it doesn’t feel like a conversation to have over the phone. I’m due to see her tomorrow, so that will be my chance, but there’s no guarantee she will want to tell me.”
“Am I being stupid, could this baby not just have been your mother?”
“That was my first thought, but Mum was born in 1958. We know from the dress notes that it was made in 1954, so no, the dates just don’t add up. I think we can confidently dismiss that theory.”
“Who, then? Does Veronique have any ideas?”
“The options, as we see them, are this: The baby was Albert’s. As much as we believe that’s not the case, theoretically, it could be. Or the baby was Antoine’s, and when my grandmother returned to London, she left him or her there with him. But there was no birth recorded at the time she was still with Albert. Nothing we’ve read online around the time they were married and both living at the British embassy residence says anything about children—and it would have been news, surely? Veronique checked too. As far as the official birth registrations in Paris are concerned, it was a childless marriage; the family tree comes to an abrupt end. The other option is that the baby was born and adopted, in which case we have no idea of the adoptive parents’ names to search for. Or we have to consider the option that the baby didn’t survive, for whatever reason.”
Leon rubs his chin and looks down toward his feet. “I don’t think it’s Antoine.” He shakes his head. “I mean, I’m not saying he can’t be the father, but I don’t think he raised the child.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I did some research myself, like you asked me to. The only Antoine I can find with any association to the British embassy in Paris around the time your grandmother was there is an Antoine du Parcq. His name appears on some of the published guest lists for official events, and he is captioned on some of the photographs, although it’s never clear which one he is in the pictures.”
“Okay, go on.”
“That wasn’t terribly conclusive, but after Alice left Paris in 1954, this Antoine briefly attended the National School of Fine Arts.” He reaches into the rucksack that’s sitting on the floor, wedged between the legs of his stool, and pulls out his laptop. “Let me show you.” He clicks until a map of the Saint-Germain area of Paris loads.