A Perfect Paris Christmas - Mandy Baggot Page 0,66

looked at herself in the mirror. Not too bad for little sleep. Her eyes went back to Rach when an answer wasn’t immediately forthcoming and she watched her friend’s demeanour transform. The mascara encrusted, eye-liner ringed eyes turned into something from a soft-focus romance movie and her friend let out a breathy sigh.

‘Oh, Keeley, the ballet was… the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen.’

‘Really?’ Keeley answered. This was huge and surprising news coming from someone who didn’t often use the word ‘wonderful’ and, when Rach did use it, it was often about a basement flat that was as far from ‘wonderful’ as cubic zirconia was from diamonds.

‘Really,’ Rach insisted. ‘It was amazing. And, Keels, the big news is… I’d met Silvie’s son before. And so have you!’

‘What?’ Keeley stopped running the tap and paid proper attention.

‘Louis Durand is my hair hero Louis.’

Keeley didn’t understand.

‘Louis!’ Rach said again, all bright eyes despite her make-up spread across her face. ‘Louis who saved me from the revolving door. Louis who we bumped into at the afternoon tea. Louis who actually looked into my eyes last night instead of just staring at my boobs.’

‘Oh my God,’ Keeley said, palming her face.

‘I know, right?! But, instead of looking all the hotness like he looked over the chocolate eclairs… he actually looked terrible,’ Rach carried on.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘He was covered in blotches. Like seriously huge blotches. I don’t know, like he’d been attacked and stung by a thousand bees.’

‘Really?’

‘Really,’ Rach continued. ‘The poor guy was obviously a bit embarrassed about it. I don’t know whether it was a food allergy or a reaction to washing detergent or something but—’

‘Well, didn’t you ask him what it was?’ Keeley wanted to know. She checked her watch again. She didn’t have that long to get ready and those butterflies weren’t letting up. So much so, she couldn’t really focus on this conversation with Rach.

‘I did,’ Rach said. ‘But I’m pretty sure he made up his answer.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said he was allergic to penguins.’ Rach scoffed. ‘I mean, is that even a thing?’ She sighed. ‘It was a shame really, because, like I said, he did look me in the eye when we talked… well, the eye he could properly see out of.’

Keeley frowned, her thoughts immediately going to Pepe. Where had the animal ended up? And she had never asked Ethan what he had been doing with the creature in the first place.

‘I made the same look that you’re making right now,’ Rach said, swiping up one of her wipes from the dressing table. ‘And then I offered him some concealer.’

‘Only you,’ Keeley said, shaking her head.

‘But, despite the horrible hives, he was really funny and charming and he gave me tissues when I cried.’

‘You cried?’ Keeley remarked.

‘Yup, I cried at the ballet. I told you. It was… I don’t know… all kinds of beautiful.’

What was Paris doing to them both? Rach – strong, ballsy Rach – was crying over a dance performance and Keeley was riding on a too-small extinct animal on a children’s roundabout. And now she was planning to go running…

‘And… well… he’s actually suggested dinner one night,’ Rach blurted out. She rubbed at the make-up on her face like she was scrubbing at a grubby oven tainted by ten years of cooking Christmas turkeys. ‘But I didn’t know whether to say yes, because we’re here together, girls united, and I didn’t know if that would be OK with you.’

Keeley smiled. ‘Say yes to a dinner. Can you text him?’

Still scrubbing at her face, Rach nodded. ‘We swapped numbers and he asked all about you, but I didn’t tell him that much because, well, he’s going to want to hear it all from Kidney Girl herself, isn’t he?’

‘I’m not allowed to be Kidney Girl,’ Keeley reminded.

‘That’s right!’ Rach said, pointing with her finger as well as her wipe. ‘That was a test!’ She sniffed. ‘But, you know, you’ll have to go into it a little with Ferne’s fam, won’t you?’

‘What did you say about me?’ Keeley asked, checking her reflection again.

‘I told him that if there was one person in the whole world who was definitely worthy of one of his sister’s body parts, then it was you. I said you were all the kind and conscientious to a fault when it came to respecting your newly acquired organ… except when I led you astray.’

‘What did he say to that?’

‘He said,’ Rach began, one of her eyebrows raising, ‘that he could imagine I was