All About Us by Tom Ellen

Author:Tom Ellen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-08-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Seven

‘Bloody hell …’

I stare in disbelief at the old man’s crumpled smile, half hidden inside his scraggly grey-gold beard. ‘You gave me the shock of my life there. Although I guess I should have been expecting it.’

The watch-seller laughs. ‘You should indeed, young man.’ He smoothes down his reindeer tie, and leans towards me conspiratorially. ‘I think I make rather a good French souvenir salesman, don’t you? People seem to be buying it, anyway. Which is more than I can say for the souvenirs themselves. Haven’t shifted a single bloody thing all morning.’ He starts whistling ‘Good King Wenceslas’ as he rearranges some Arc de Triomphe-branded oven gloves.

My brain is still frazzled from the conversation with Alice, and I find I don’t really have the patience for the watch-seller’s trademark enigmatic cheeriness right now. ‘What are you doing here?’ I ask bluntly.

‘I just wanted to stop by and wish you a merry Christmas,’ he says. ‘It’s all part of the service.’

‘And what exactly is this service?’

He gives a throaty chuckle. ‘Oh, I can’t go into that at the moment, I’m afraid.’

‘Right. And I’m guessing you still can’t tell me why all this is happening, or when it will end, either?’

The old man tosses a Louvre-shaped paperweight into the air and catches it. ‘You guess correctly, young feller-me-lad. Even if I wanted to, we wouldn’t have time.’ He nods over at Alice, who is still circling the Dodo Manège with her phone clamped to her ear. ‘Your friend there is going to be walking back over in approximately’ – he checks his watch – ‘one minute twelve seconds.’ He stops juggling his merchandise and looks at me. ‘All I really wanted to do was check in and see how you were getting on. I realise this experience can be somewhat … overwhelming.’

He tilts his head and gives me a kindly – almost paternal – smile. That faded photo of Grandad Jack flashes back into my head again. The similarity is actually pretty eerie.

I’m on the cusp of bringing it up – asking if we’re somehow related, maybe – when the old man says, ‘So, come on: how are you coping, then?’

‘I, erm … OK, I guess.’ I shrug. ‘I mean, it’s not difficult to figure out why I’ve come back to this particular day. Something … happened here, first time around. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot over the years. I was actually thinking about it in that pub in 2020, when I met you. I was wondering whether I’d made the wrong decision today, whether I ended up with the wrong person. And I guess, since I’ve come back here, maybe it means that I did.’

The old man scratches at his beard with a miniature Eiffel Tower. ‘Hmm. That’s one way of looking at it.’

‘Is it the right way or the wrong way?’

‘Well … that’s not for me to say.’

I groan loudly, and he laughs again, his blue eyes sparkling. ‘You’ll figure it out,’ he says. ‘Just give it time.

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