Christmas at Tiffany's (43 page)

There was no Vélib docking station nearby. ‘You just hold the bikes. I’ll be back in a sec,’ she said, darting inside.

She reappeared a moment later holding two ice-cream cones.

‘Ice cream? Really?’ He took the cone she held out to him. ‘No wonder you and my sister are friends,’ he said, shaking his head.

‘Shut up and try it,’ she said.

Henry took a bite out of the top, his eyes blinking rapidly as the tartness of the orange mixed with the chocolate that was so rich and creamy, it was more like a ganache. ‘Bloody hell!’ he exclaimed as soon as he was able.

‘You see?’ she smiled, taking her own bite. ‘That’s worth staying for, isn’t it?’

‘Suzy would
kill
me for saying it,’ he said, looking at it as if it held magical powers. ‘But yes. What
is
it?’

‘Berthillon ice cream,’ she said, beginning to wheel her bike away. ‘It’s made on Ile Saint-Louis, a family-run business. Widely regarded as the best ice cream in Paris.’

‘The best in France, I’d say. I’ve never tasted anything like it.’

They walked along slowly, their bikes resting on their hips as they ate their ice creams. They hooked a left, and Henry could see the river ahead of them.

‘I know where we can sit,’ he said, pulling forwards slightly.

They stopped at the lights and waited to cross.

The pedestrian lights flashed green and they crossed over, wheeling straight on to a footbridge. Unlike all the other grand and flamboyant bridges in Paris, this one, the Pont des Arts, wasn’t embellished with gargoyles or gilded statues or hewn from limestone. It was a humble footbridge with wooden planking and black wire sides, and all the way along brass padlocks had been fastened to the links by lovers as tokens of commitment.

‘Been here before?’ Henry asked, as they lay the bikes on their sides next to a bench. It had a great view upriver to the Eiffel Tower.

‘Of course. It’s the only bridge where you can sit down in the middle and not get hit by a bus.’

They sat on the bench together, eating the ice creams in happy silence, watching a barge sail beneath them. It had a shiny red Fiat Punto parked on the back.

Henry eyed the huge bike padlocks. ‘Hey, you still wearing your Christmas present?’ he asked.

‘Of course.’ She fingered the necklace delicately. It had become her soothing habit here, much like brushing her palm over the camomile lawn in New York. ‘I love it. I never take it off. But it really was way too much, Henry. I mean – a Tiffany’s necklace, for heaven’s sake!’

‘It’s not like it was gold or diamonds or anything,’ he shrugged. ‘Can I see it?’

‘Sure.’ She leaned forward slightly, holding it out towards him.

‘No, I mean – can I . . . hold it?’

Cassie hesitated. ‘Sure.’

She unclasped it and handed it to him. It had such a comforting weight, it felt strange taking it off. It was warm from her body heat.

‘I don’t understand what the message on the back means, though. What’s Maiden’s Blush?’

Henry raised his eyebrows at the question as he read the words on the back. ‘You mean you don’t know?’

‘Uh-uh.’

He tipped it in his hand slightly so that the charm slid off the chain. ‘Hold that for a sec, will you?’

She took it as Henry stood up and walked over towards the railing.

Cassie laughed as he turned his back to her, fiddling about in his pockets, and she realized the intention of his joke. ‘Oh, stop being such a copycat, Henry! Even you wouldn’t put a Tiffany’s charm on this bridge!’

He looked back at her and winked, attaching the locket to one of the links. ‘There!’

She stopped laughing as her eyes confirmed her worst suspicion, and she ran over, horrified. ‘Henry! It’ll fall! The lock doesn’t work! I’ve been keeping it on the . . .’ She stopped and stared down at it. The arm was fastened shut and supporting the full weight of the dangling pendant.

She touched it lightly, terrified of knocking it into the river below, but to her amazement it was locked solid. She turned back to him. ‘How did you get it to lock?’

He shrugged. ‘With my supernatural strength, clearly,’ he quipped, flexing his arm and showing off a mighty impressive bicep.

‘I’m serious, Henry. I’ve never been able to lock it. I was supposed to change it in New York before I left, but then Luke . . . the point is, it was broken.’

‘Oh. Well, get it fixed here, then. There’s a Tiffany’s in the deuxième.’ He took another bite of his ice cream.

‘Well I was
planning
to, smartypants, but that’s going to be tricky now that it’s welded to a bridge,’ she said sarcastically.

‘Do you not know how to use a key?’ he asked slowly, as though she was stupid.

‘There is no key!’ she cried, exasperated.

‘Huh?’

‘It never came with a key. I wore it on the safety chain, and somehow you’ve managed to secure it to a bridge!’

‘No key?’ He looked back down at the tiny pendant fastened to the side of the bridge. He planted a hand on his hip. ‘Huh.’

Cassie groaned as words failed her. He was beyond aggravating. Sometimes it was as if he was still sixteen.

She crouched down and peered closer at the pendant, trying to fathom a way to unlock it, but though it was tiny compared with the huge bike padlocks covering the rest of the bridge, it was still solid silver and not giving an inch. She looked back up at him. ‘I’ll have to contact the head office and get a key for it. There must be a serial number or something. I’m sure someone in the office has contacts at Tiffany’s.’

‘Well, you don’t need to worry about someone coming along and nicking it. If we can’t get it off, no one else can either. Not without taking wire-cutters to the bridge.’

He went to sit back down next to the bikes. Cassie stomped after him.

‘I can’t believe you just did that!’ she said sulkily, refastening the silver chain round her neck. ‘I loved that necklace.’

‘How was I supposed to know it didn’t . . . Hey! Have you got a sister I never knew about?’ he asked.

Cassie turned just in time to see a bus stopping on the Quai Malaquais. She turned back. ‘Oh that. It was a favour to Kelly,’ she said flatly. ‘I kind of owed her.’

‘You’re a
model
now?’

Her eyebrows shot up. ‘What are you saying?’

He blanched at the indignation in her voice. ‘I don’t mean that you couldn’t be a model, Cass. Of course you could. You’re a babe! But it’s . . . well, it’s . . .’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, don’t hurt yourself,’ she muttered, giving a heavy sigh. ‘Luke took them. The model was high as a kite and they needed someone and I was there and Luke . . . just insisted.’

‘Oh, I bet he did,’ he muttered stonily. He cast her a sidelong glance. ‘He really likes taking photographs of you, doesn’t he?’

Cassie bit her lip, a furious blush running up her cheeks. ‘Mmmm.’ She didn’t want to go into it. It was bad enough going through a divorce, let alone this litigation as well.

They sat in silence for a minute. ‘You got an injunction though, right?’ he asked.

‘For here, yes.’

‘What do you mean – for here?’

‘He’s got copyright in the pictures. Technically he can use them. But French privacy laws protect the individual, so he can’t show them in the exhibition over here.’

‘But he can elsewhere, is that what you’re saying?’

‘Theoretically. And he’s touring the exhibition worldwide. I’ll have to go to court in every country he shows in and get individual injunctions if I want to stop him.’

‘Sonofabitch!’

‘Yeah.’ She shrugged, the crisis over the Tiffany’s pendant now forgotten as the full strain of this more pressing situation bore down on her again. The simple fact was she couldn’t afford to keep hiring lawyers to stop him. Her savings had been all but used up. ‘And that’s not even the worst of it.’

‘It gets
worse
?’

‘American
Vogue
wants to publish them – the editor is finally getting her revenge on me for the whole show fiasco. I take it you heard about that?’

Henry nodded.

‘Well, they’re doing a “Muse” issue, and Luke’s kindly telling her I’m his.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘I hated him on sight.’

‘Yes, I know. I don’t blame you. He was a prat towards you.’

‘Glad you noticed. I was worried I was growing a sensitivity gene.’

Cassie chuckled. ‘Do you know what he thought the padlock was for?’

‘No.’

She looked at him. ‘A chastity belt.’

Henry went still at this. Then he held his hands up. ‘Okay, I admit it. I’m a spy working for your mother.’

Cassie burst out laughing. ‘You are a ridiculous man,’ she giggled, elbowing him in the ribs.

‘Ah well, you’re not the first to have said it,’ he smiled, watching her before frowning a little and looking away.

‘What?’ she asked, feeling his attention drift.

‘Nothing.’

‘No, tell me. What?’

‘Well, it’s this . . . this whole Paris Cassie look you’ve got going on. It’s freaking me out.’

‘I
knew
you hated my hair,’ she muttered, holding her hands over it defensively.

‘No, it’s not that per se . . . Well, okay, yes it is . . .’

She tutted, annoyed.

‘It’s more that you’ve done precisely what I told you not to do – tried to reinvent yourself when there is absolutely nothing about you that needs to be fixed.’

Cassie froze at his words. ‘Well, sorry to have been so disobedient,’ she wise-cracked finally.

‘In fact the only good thing about your hair is that it’s right for Venice.’ He shook his head and looked upriver.

‘Venice?’ She turned and looked at him. ‘What are you on about? I’m not going to Venice.’

‘No, but you should.’

Cassie blinked at him. He had an ice-cream moustache across his top lip. ‘You’ve got a . . .’ she indicated to her top lip. He put his finger to his own and found a smudge of ice cream.

‘Mmmm, bonus,’ he quipped.

‘Don’t tell me there’s a list for Venice too,’ Cassie said.

‘Well, there’s going to be. I’m taking Lacey there for our honeymoon.’

Cassie slumped down a bit. ‘Venice. For your honeymoon. That is so romantic.’ They sat there for a moment, then she turned to him, perplexed. ‘But what’s that got to do with my hair?’

‘Don’t you remember? You told me in New York that you thought you might be a brunette there, with a bob. And you’d wear flat shoes like Audrey Hepburn and eat prosciutto for lunch and read the papers on a balcony at breakfast.’

Cassie stared at him in amazement. ‘I can’t believe you can remember all that!’ she exclaimed.

Henry shrugged. ‘Eidetic memory.’

‘That figures. So what’s your Venice list going to say then?’

‘I don’t know yet. That’s why I’m going out there – to draw it up.’

‘You are? When?’

‘Tonight.’

‘Tonight!’

‘Mm-hmm.’

‘Oh.’ She immediately tucked away her growing idea of cooking him dinner – the duck Claude had done with her last week.

She felt him sit up a little, then sink down again.

‘What?’

‘No, nothing.’

‘Go on – say.’

‘Well, I was just thinking that you should come with me.’

‘To Venice? Don’t be mad!’

‘Why? I’ve never been there before either, so I could do with a bit of help.’

‘I don’t think Lacey would be too happy about it.’

‘I don’t see why not. Why’s it any different to being out here with you right now?’

She tipped her head to the side. Good point.

‘We’re old friends, Cass.’ She felt him grin. ‘Unless of course you’re worried you can’t trust yourself around me.’

She gasped and gave him a sharp jab in the ribs with her elbow. ‘Dream on!’

‘Right then,’ he laughed, thoroughly amused by her indignation. ‘Well, that’s settled. We’d better get you packed.’

‘But wait . . . I can’t just . . .
go
.’

‘Why not? It’s Easter weekend. It’s only an hour and a half’s flight from here and you don’t have to be back at work till Tuesday. What reason do you have for not enjoying an adventure in Venice?’

Cassie shook her head. She couldn’t think of one.

‘So come on, then,’ Henry said, picking up their bikes. ‘Come on!’

They touched down at Marco Polo just before nine and caught a water taxi across the lagoon. The sun had set less than an hour previously and the sky was still alight with flaming clouds dragging towards the horizon. The silhouette of the city, like Manhattan’s, was instantly recognizable by the grand domes of the basilicas which glowed like celestial orbs in the sunset, and candy-striped canal poles threw long, rippling shadows on to the water.