A Perfect Paris Christmas - Mandy Baggot Page 0,87
worse still an orphanage exactly like the one he had existed in. The thought of sending her back to a place like that didn’t sit well at all, but what was the alternative? To know that she was going to be curling up in a cardboard box every night? To know that she would be cold, hungry, frightened to close her eyes or even more scared not to close them? Jeanne offered him a flyer now and he felt obliged to take it.
‘Le Cirque Pinder,’ Ethan read.
‘Look at the acrobats on the horses!’ Jeanne marvelled, face hanging over the flyer in his hands.
‘I didn’t know there was a circus in Paris at Christmas time,’ Keeley remarked.
‘This circus… it is on the outside of the city,’ Ethan said.
‘You’ve been to it before?’ Keeley asked.
‘Yes, once.’
It had been one of the first outings with the Durands. One of the orphanage-approved ones before he had made his own decisions about his future. They had picked him up in their fancy car from outside the wicked building. Pierre was driving, Silvie was dressed in a bright red dress with a fur stole around her shoulders, Louis in dark smart trousers, a shirt collar visible under a jumper with garish cartoon character braces Ethan felt he should have laughed at but was secretly a little envious of. And Ferne, she had been alive with excitement that they were going to the circus and that he was being permitted to go with them. She had been dressed smartly too – a pale pink dress with a matching wrap that should have made her look the age of her mother but had instead, in Ethan’s eyes, made her look like an advertisement for everything that was good about life. Ferne had chattered all the way from the centre of the city to the big top at Boir de Vincennes. We are going to see ponies who can dance. We will laugh so hard that our stomachs ache and Louis will burst his braces. And so it had been. Alongside Ferne and Louis in their fancy attire, Ethan in ragged jeans and a jumper that was too small for him, they had eaten hot dogs with the sweetest caramelised onion atop them and watched acrobats, magicians, clowns and daredevils complete amazing tricks of sheer skill.
‘Was it as amazing as it looks?’ Jeanne wanted to know, her grubby fingers inching over the photographs of horse, ringmaster and tightrope walker. ‘Sometimes, in photographs, things look better than they are.’ She sniffed. ‘Like all the photographs of Big Macs.’
‘It was amazing,’ Ethan breathed, being transported right back to that night. He could smell the sawdust, the spent gunpowder from the cannonball man, Ferne’s bubble-gum…
‘Can we go?’ Jeanne asked. ‘See the circus?’
Ethan passed the flyer back to her quickly. ‘No. Don’t be crazy.’
‘Why is it crazy?’ Jeanne wanted to know.
‘Because… I am… not… someone who should be taking you to the circus.’
‘Do you have to be a certain type of person to be allowed to go to a circus?’ Jeanne asked him. ‘A president? Like Macron?’ She turned up her nose. ‘Here. See. There are only prices for “adults” and “children”. No price for “presidents”.’ She raised her eyes to meet his. ‘You are an “adult” and I am a “child”. So we can go.’ Ethan watched Jeanne turn her attention to Keeley then. ‘You want to go to the circus, do you not?’
‘I should see what Rach wants,’ Keeley said, getting up from her seat. Ethan saw then that Rach was waving at Keeley from the doorway of the restaurant, her phone still placed against her ear.
As soon as she was gone, Jeanne jabbed him in the side with her elbow. ‘What are you doing? I am providing you with the perfect date night solution and you are not leaping on the opportunity.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Ethan asked her.
‘The circus! Take us to the circus!’ Jeanne ordered. ‘I want to see it and I will sit quietly, eating hot dogs and candy floss and sweets and we can get the grumpy guy at the hotel to look after Bo-Bo for the night and you can sit next to Keeley and keep staring at her like you have been doing the whole time since she arrived here.’
Ethan sighed. It seemed Jeanne was as astute as they came. ‘It is not a good idea.’