We'll Always Have Paris by Emma Beddington

Author:Emma Beddington [Beddington, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781447285786
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

PART THREE

‘I can hardly imagine anyone,’ Lady Georgia observed, ‘setting out deliberately for Brussels.’

Ronald Firbank, Vainglory

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La Peau de Chagrin

It feels amazing to be back in London, far, far better than I expected it to feel. My pride has been dealt a body blow (I can see no way of glossing over the fact I couldn’t hack it in Paris and that hurts), but every other part of me is filled with wild exhilaration. London! The moment we step off the Eurostar – having fought our way through the forest of French bureaucracy required to leave the country – is, for me, Dorothy entering Technicolor in Oz: everything is more vivid. We get into a taxi (a black cab! Farewell to the deserted ranks and impenetrably complicated automated telephone-ordering system of Paris taxis) and drive across the city to my dad’s house, across the river, bright with reflected lights, and I feel ready to burst into song.

Our flat could not be further from our Paris apartment. It’s a new build in a small block of four executive flats: light and plain, with big picture windows and laminate floors (farewell, splintery herringbone). The flat is entirely furnished with plain, unobjectionable, matching things that are not ours and it feels like a complete liberation. There is a whole, shiny, new fitted kitchen with fake granite worktops and pale-wood cupboards filled with Ikea plates and cups, not cockroaches, and a gleaming chrome and white-tiled bathroom. In order to get to our flat, which is on the fourth floor, there is a small, perfectly functioning lift that no one cares about. It is absolutely nothing I have ever aspired to, but I love it, giddily. The window to the front looks over Spitalfields market and Bishopsgate and I sit on the comfy sofa (so much better than the leather monstrosity we bought in a panic in Paris) late at night sometimes and watch the ballet of emergency vehicles, the staggering drunks and the prostitutes soliciting on the corner. I had no idea how much I missed all this, but it feels like a shot in the arm.

London isn’t brighter than Paris, but it’s grimy and familiar and satisfying. It feels as if a cloud of cartoon bluebirds is tweeting around my head as I sashay down Bishopsgate, past Benji’s and Tesco Metro and Snappy Snaps. I want to embrace every cashier at Boots in tearful gratitude and shake the hand of every goth in platform boots and every waxed-moustached chap in tweed and spats (there are lots of these around Spitalfields. Sometimes I even see Gilbert and George out for a constitutional; no one bats an eyelid). I love every angry drunk and every huffy commuter pushing their way up the escalator in Liverpool Street Station. The tiny brown mice are still running along the westbound Central Line tracks, I note with delight, and the Sweet Chariot is still dispensing overpriced Spangles and cola cubes. I’m a bit nonplussed by my own happiness, but familiarity has never felt so delicious.

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