A Perfect Paris Christmas - Mandy Baggot Page 0,11

still eyes down towards the contents of her concoction, hair almost touching the plate. Keeley wasn’t sure she was going to get any more conversation from her mum at the moment. She moved her gaze to her dad.

‘Well,’ Duncan said softly, pouring himself another glass of wine, ‘she sounds very nice. She said… that over the past year, after her grieving, she had done a lot of thinking. And, she has decided, that she would really, really like to meet you.’

Lizzie tried to muffle her sobbing with a tissue she had plucked from her sleeve, but Keeley could still hear. Her donor’s mother wanted to meet her.

‘I…’ Keeley began. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘She wants you to visit her… in France,’ Duncan carried on. ‘Paris, actually.’

‘Paris,’ Keeley said, nothing really sinking in.

‘That’s where she lives,’ Duncan said. ‘That’s where… Ferne was from.’

Keeley shook her head. This was all too much. She now wished the wine was alcoholic. She reached for her glass anyway and took a sip. Her donor was from France? She had never known any details of who had donated her kidney. Her mum hadn’t been able to donate after a small brush with cancer some years ago and although her dad was willing and able, the match wasn’t as perfect as it might have been. Then, almost magically, someone on life support at the very same hospital Keeley had been admitted to, someone who was not going to recover, had provided a lifeline. Amazingly, they were a high marker match in blood type, tissue type and cross-matching. Keeley had got incredibly lucky that one night while someone else’s world was splitting at the seams.

Lizzie raised her head a little. Her eyes were red and still leaking tears, the serviette pressed hard to her nose.

‘Keeley, it’s completely your decision what happens next,’ Duncan told her.

‘I don’t know,’ Keeley said. A shiver ran over her and she felt a pull from inside of her. That also happened now and then. It wasn’t like the ache or the pain, it was almost like an acknowledgement. Some sort of internal ripple effect when she thought about how her life had altered from the night of the crash.

‘You don’t have to decide anything, Keeley,’ Lizzie said, voice a little robotic. ‘Nothing at all. It’s too fresh and it’s nearly Christmas and…’

‘Lizzie,’ Duncan interrupted. ‘Come on, that isn’t fair.’

‘I’m just saying,’ Lizzie continued, battling her emotions. ‘This kind of pressure might be too much for Keeley right now.’

‘I think that decision is Keeley’s to make, Lizzie,’ Duncan said, making direct eye contact with his wife. ‘Don’t you think?’

Keeley watched her mum again. She looked about ready to crumble like breadcrumbs into stuffing mixture. This moment wasn’t the moment to be making any decisions. Keeley took a breath and reached for the tureen on the table. The only thing to do right now was to do the very British thing and keep calm and carry on.

‘Can I have some more cauliflower rice?’

Five

L’Hotel Paris Parfait, Opera District, Paris

‘The red or the green? Or the… green swirls on the red? Or… the red swirls on the green? Or, I know it is a little out there, but maybe, perhaps for something a little different, we could think of… electric-blue and silver?’

Ethan Bouchard popped another sugared almond into his mouth from the glass bowl he had drawn nearer and nearer to him throughout this meeting with his assistant, Noel. Then he placed a finger on his top lip and his thumb to his chin in a pose he hoped showed ‘thoughtful’. As Noel had shown him swatch after swatch of fabric, Ethan had sucked in a sugar high to stop his eyes from glazing over. Filling his mouth with hard-boiled goodness was to stop him being sick or immediately reacting with the disdain he usually felt when Noel was trying to get him to make a decision about something Ethan considered mundane. And what constituted ‘mundane’? Literally everything in his life since his best friend and business partner, Ferne, had died. He sucked on this latest sweet and finally cast a glance at the fabric books Noel was proffering at him. Why was he doing this again? What was the point? Life was mean and it was cruel and everyone died in the end.

‘What exactly is this for again?’ Ethan asked, moving the sweet from one cheek to the other. He was bored and he was hungover. He could feel the alcohol floating from his system