A Postcard from Paris

Having met at primary school, Beth was more like a sister. They had done everything together – sleepovers when schoolgirls, then gigs and parties as teenagers – before sharing a tiny flat in Edinburgh during their university years, and so Annie had never really thought about socializing in other ways, with the people at work, for example. Not that after-work drinks or office parties were her kind of thing, to be honest. Then after the split with Mark, Annie had become very insular, staying at home and only socializing with Beth. But Beth had been gone for three months now and Annie was feeling very lonely. She had found herself retreating back into the familiar cosy cocoon of comfort – sewing, embroidery, knitting, making things for her home – just as she had when Mark had abandoned her. It felt safe. And Annie knew where she was at when she stayed at home. Putting herself out there, socializing, dating, and all that entailed, was fraught with the possibility of getting hurt again.

‘I’m not worried, Mum … well, of course I am worried, but I’m also very concerned,’ Phoebe said, bringing Annie’s thoughts back to the FaceTime call and the screen on her laptop. ‘What were you thinking of, climbing up a ladder with a big pile of stuff in your arms?’ she added, her forehead creasing.

‘I was storing my decorating supplies – wallpaper books and paint colour charts, that kind of thing,’ Annie started, knowing she was a hoarder when it came to her interior design paraphernalia. She also knew that Phoebe cared, worried about her, overly so, but she had also always been clingy and a bit controlling too, and her need for control had intensified in recent years. It had started a year or so after Mark left and his promised weekly visits turned into fortnightly and then monthly, until sometimes he didn’t turn up at all. Phoebe would be waiting by the window, looking out for her daddy, who cancelled at the last minute, often because Carly wasn’t well, or needed him for some obscure reason or another, and Mark had taken the path of least resistance and done what she wanted. And this had created an insecurity in Phoebe. Losing a parent, effectively, would do that to a child, because although Mark hadn’t died, he hadn’t much bothered trying to be a part of Phoebe’s life either. And then not long after, or so it seemed, he was married again with two new children. Twins! And Mark’s visits to Phoebe fizzled out altogether, even though Annie had tried so hard to persuade him to be more involved, begged him too, on a couple of occasions, even though she knew she shouldn’t have to. It was heartbreaking though, seeing her child feeling so abandoned like that. Annie had felt quite helpless at times, especially as she had been trying to cope with her own feelings of loss for the life she thought she was going to have with Mark, the love of her life, or so she had thought when she was married to him.

‘Ah, I might have known it would be something to do with your hobby.’ Phoebe sighed and shook her head, as if she were a frustrated mother talking to her accident-prone child. ‘You do know that you could have fallen down the stairs when the ladder toppled over. You could have actually broken your neck! In fact, it’s a bloody miracle that you didn’t kill yourself, or worse still, end up paralysed with only the power of your blinking eyelids to communicate.’ Annie had to stifle a smile, not because it was funny to think of being paralysed, but because Phoebe genuinely looked absolutely flabbergasted, as she often did in situations like this, which in turn somehow always managed to make her perpetual exasperation seem comical. ‘Imagine that! I couldn’t think of anything more awful than being caged up inside your own lifeless body. And another thing, falling down the stairs is one of the most common accidents within the home. Statistics show tha—’

‘Well there you go, darling,’ Annie leapt in again, keen to end the lecture. ‘Lots of people must climb up ladders in their hallways every day. It’s really not that uncommon,’ she pointed out. Annie loved her daughter with all her heart, but Phoebe really could be very pedantic and dramatic at times. And Annie already felt foolish for falling off the ladder, having misjudged the distance from the loft-hatch opening to where the light switch was on the wall inside the roof. So when she had overextended her arm to flick the light on, she had inadvertently pushed her left leg outwards, wobbled before dropping the wallpaper books and paint colour charts and grasping the ladder in an attempt to save herself, but the ladder had toppled over and taken her with it. The fall had happened so quickly and Annie had felt fine after it happened, pulling herself upright and pottering downstairs to have a restorative cup of tea with a couple of chunks of chocolate. It was only when she woke up the following morning with a swollen, painful foot that she took herself off to the minor injury clinic for an X-ray and discovered that one of the small metatarsal bones had fractured, and so she had been instructed to elevate her leg and use cold packs to reduce the swelling. It really wasn’t a massive deal, and certainly not the catastrophe that Phoebe was making it out to be.

And in any case, Annie was very pleased that she had been up in the loft as she’d had a little sort-out of the boxes stored up there and had come across one of her old childhood scrapbooks crammed full of colourful postcards from around the globe. So when she had finished comforting herself with the chocolate chunks, she had enjoyed a marvellous half-hour going through her old postcard collection and looking at all the exotic locations that family and friends had visited and, knowing that she collected postcards, had sent one to her especially. It had been Annie’s ambition to travel, but she hadn’t been able to afford to as a single parent when the children were young.

Annie glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece above the log burner, seeing that it was almost time for the interior design challenge programme she loved; it was her favourite TV show. And it was the semi-final this week which she had been looking forward to, so she really didn’t want to miss it.

‘Did you call for anything in particular, darling? Or just for a chat?’ Annie asked as a preliminary to wrapping up the call as quickly and as politely as she could.

‘Yes, I did, Mum, I called to ask you something very important. I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, since you had that nasty chest infection last winter that went on for weeks, do you remember?’

‘Um, yes, vaguely,’ Annie replied slowly, wondering where this was going.

‘And, well …’ Phoebe paused and flicked her eyes away, as if searching for the right words. ‘… I’ve spoken to Johnny about it too.’

‘Oh, how is he?’ Annie asked, always keen for snippets of information about her youngest child. Johnny, two years younger than Phoebe, had just started his third year at university, and the last time she’d had a proper conversation with him was when he turned up at Christmas, three months ago. Aside from the odd text message on her birthday or Mother’s Day, contact from Johnny was extremely rare indeed. That was OK, though, and Annie didn’t begrudge him his independence, even if she did miss him dreadfully, but she would never cajole or guilt-trip him into coming home to see her. Especially when he was most likely having the time of his life with his new friends as he travelled to obscure locations to dig up the ground as part of his geology degree course.

‘Um, he’s good. Busy doing whatever it is he does, most likely sitting up all night playing Fortnite, eating yesterday’s pizza and being fascinated by a pile of rocks with all the other nerds,’ Phoebe said, uninterestedly. ‘Anyway, he agrees that you must come and live with me!’

‘Live with you! Whatever for?’ Annie sat upright.

‘So that I can look after you, of course. Just until your broken foot is better. And then I thought we could find you a bungalow nearby. Somewhere close so I can pop in a few times a day to check on you. It makes perfect sense, Mum. With Aunty Beth gone and you being all on your own now. And I know you love all that amateur interior design stuff that you do, but you’re not getting any younger so you really shouldn’t be up ladders changing your wallpaper and trying out different paint effects any more, and you don’t need a three-bedroom house either. You could sell it and buy a little bungalow, or a garden flat … you know, somewhere without any steps. Or a loft hatch for you to fall from! Think of your future. Property up here is way cheaper than down there, so you would have a nice big lump sum left over to save as a nest egg for the future. For your retireme—’

‘Retirement!’ Annie laughed. ‘Don’t be silly. That’s a long way off. Nearly two decades away. And I have a job. Here, in London. It would take hours to commute every day from where you live, in Yorkshire.’

‘Yes, I know, but it’s only a boring office job. And you hate it. You’ve always said so. Mum, you’re a workaholic. And it’s not healthy. So it’s about time you did something else. Besides, lots of people retire at fifty these days so you’re practically there. Think of all the interest that nest egg could earn for you. Plus, who wants to work in an office their whole life?’

‘But it’s my job! And I’ve worked hard for it,’ Annie said, recalling the late nights of studying she had done when Phoebe and Johnny were little, in order to gain the necessary qualifications to work as a bookkeeper in the accounts department of a big firm of solicitors in London. It wasn’t her intended career; that had been interior design and she had studied hard for it at university to gain an honours degree. But she had found it impossible to forge a sustainable career in interior design straight from university, with a young family to care for and Mark often away on his various trips, so she’d eventually given up on trying to set up her own interior design company. Fast forward a few years to when she found herself a single parent with two school-age children, she took a series of part-time jobs that fitted in around school hours and then studied at night when they were asleep. Mark had never contributed enough financially, and so when Annie had managed to eventually find her first full-time role in the law firm in the City of London, life had become a whole lot easier without the worry of debt for the three of them. Even if she had been completely exhausted for much of that decade.

‘I know you’ve worked hard, Mum. You always have,’ Phoebe said, seeming to soften, ‘so then even more reason to slow down a bit. You don’t need to be a workaholic these days. It’s not like you’ve got a mortgage any more, thanks to Granddad leaving you that money to pay it off—’

‘Darling, please, I don’t want to retire at fifty. Yes, my job is boring at times … and it’s not that I wouldn’t love for us to be a bit closer to each other, but …’ Annie let her voice trail off as she tried to get her head around what Phoebe was really saying. That she was past it, with no real life of her own, and so should retreat gracefully to become a husk of the woman that she once was! Or so it seemed in that moment.

‘Well, just think about it for now,’ Phoebe persisted. ‘That’s the beauty of having a basic life, you can just pack it all in without too much trouble. It’s not as if you have loads going on down there anyway, especially now that Aunty Beth has gone away. And you haven’t got a boyfriend or any pets or whatever to worry about.’

A long, ominous silence followed.

Did her daughter really think that she was incapable of looking after herself? That her life was basic? Practically over with. And ‘pop in to check on you’! Annie felt affronted. Embarrassed even. ‘Popping in to check’ was what friends and family did for properly old people. People in their eighties or nineties with mobility issues or in the early stages of dementia. People like Joanie next door with her halo of white curls and collection of hand-knitted cardies. Not that Joanie had dementia, far from it, she was vibrant and whip-smart and Annie loved spending time with her playing rummy and putting the world to rights. But since slipping on some ice and fracturing her hip last Christmas, Joanie did struggle to get upstairs these days and so was mostly living downstairs now, having converted her dining room in to a bedroom. Whereas, Annie was a perfectly healthy 49-year-old, albeit with a surgical boot on her left foot, but she wouldn’t need to wear it for much longer in any case. She had an appointment at the fracture clinic in a week or so and then there would be no stopping her. She already had her eye on a gorgeous pair of new wedge sandals to treat herself with once the ugly boot was no longer needed.

‘You could give up your job!’ Phoebe kept on. ‘Or how about you help me out at the gym? You know, only if you really wanted to keep busy that is. I could do with a part-time receptionist to cover the phones when I’m teaching classes or with my personal training clients. But it’s not vital. You could join some clubs, the WI, or there’s bound to be a committee of some sort at the parish council, that sort of thing, just to keep your hand in. You could even sign up for a course at the local college, they’re sure to have something to interest you. Upholstery or curtain-making, for example. It would get you out socializing and meeting new friends. And then when you do retire you’ll have a ready-made friendship group. Staying active, that’s the key to a successful old age. As soon as you give in and sit around all day doing nothing but watch the telly, that’s when the dementia sets in.’ It seemed Phoebe had the next twenty years or so all planned out for Annie. ‘Why don’t I drive down and pick you up?’

‘Phoebe,’ Annie started, coughing discreetly and reaching for the remote control to pause the start of the interior design programme. She suddenly felt slightly disconcerted as she had been watching rather a lot of TV recently; the Netflix gift card had been a genius idea from Beth. And her focus hadn’t been as sharp as it usually was; the intricate knitting project she was attempting had been a struggle and she had even given up on the file that she had been working on from home today. But, hang on! She inhaled and let out a long breath to clear her head. She wasn’t old. Yes, she was tired and jaded and missing her best friend, plus she hadn’t had any time off work in ages. They had been extra busy over the last few months; it was the same every year, with all the divorce cases coming in after the Christmas break, and so she hadn’t managed to book a holiday. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she had been away, and if she was really honest with herself then, it was probably true … she had become a workaholic.

‘Phoebe, it’s lovely of you to offer to look after me, but really there’s no need. And besides, you’re busy with the gym. Plus I’ll be off to Paris soon—’

‘Paris!’ Phoebe’s face froze on the laptop screen. ‘What on earth do you mean? Mum, you can’t go to Paris,’ she puffed, incredulous.

‘Of course I can. I’m looking forward to it actually,’ Annie told her, remembering the bubble of excitement mingled with anticipation when Joanie had asked if she’d ‘be a dear and go and take a look for me? I don’t like flying, and sitting on a train that goes under the sea really isn’t for me. Not with my hip. I dread to think what would happen if the train broke down in the middle of the tunnel. I’d never make it out of there if we had to be evacuated on foot. And if you don’t mind me saying so, dear, you could do with a break. You’ve been looking very pasty these past few weeks.’ Joanie had never been one to mince her words.

Annie had been round at Joanie’s house a few Saturdays ago, sharing a morning coffee and a slice of her homemade Victoria sponge, when the postman had knocked on the door with a letter that had needed signing for. After reading through all the details, Joanie had called the firm of solicitors in London where the letter had come from and discovered that she had inherited an apartment in Paris! The will also included a boarded-up dilapidated old shop, or boutique as they said in France, directly underneath the apartment. But whatever the state of it was, it was now Joanie’s. To do with whatever she pleased.

Reading between the lines, Annie had taken this to potentially mean that Joanie could have inherited a serious financial burden that the executor wanted to offload. But after verifying her identity and signing a pile of paperwork, Joanie found she was now the legal owner of a one-bedroom apartment in an eighteenth-century stone building located on a cobblestoned private pedestrian street off the Place de la Bastille, accessed through a grand archway, and she wanted her neighbour and good friend, Annie, to go and check it all out for her. Joanie had offered to pay for travel and a hotel, but Annie knew she needed to step out of her comfort zone and try to put the spark back into her life and so was more than happy to fund her own trip. She would make a holiday of it, and so had booked herself into an Airbnb place with an English-speaking host called Marguerite. From there, she could visit the apartment and report back to Joanie with her findings and recommendations before doing all the wonderful Parisian sights.

‘Looking forward to it! What do you mean, Mum?’ Phoebe reiterated, leaning closer to the camera so that Annie could see the frown lines on her daughter’s alarmed face. ‘And why do you look all glowy and perky all of a sudden?’ Silence followed. ‘Ah, hang on! Don’t tell me you’re going to Paris with a man! Is that it? Mum, have you met a man? Why didn’t you say?’ Phoebe’s eyes lit up momentarily, before she added, ‘Oh, please say you didn’t meet him online. You do know those dating sites are riddled with con artists. Catfishing and all sorts goes on. They are only after your money, you know. If you’re feeling lonely, then why don’t you let me set you up with a proper profile, a nice picture and all that. I could help you find the perfect partner. Or better still, if you move up here then I could introduce you to some of the men who come to my gym. Geoff! Yes, Geoff is very nice. He’s divorced, fifty-something so a bit older than you. But still in pretty good shape and he’s not bad looking for an older bloke. And he likes cooking, fishing and doing crosswords. How exciting! Mum, you could have a wonderful romance and a partner to hook up with and do fun things like … go to the cinema, or to a nice restaurant, afternoon tea at the garden centre—’

‘Phoebe! Stop it! Please. Darling, there is no man. I’m not looking to meet a man. Well, not unless the right one came along …’ And certainly not one like Geoff, Annie thought to herself. Sitting around doing crosswords wasn’t her thing. Fishing definitely wasn’t. Plus afternoon tea at a garden centre was something she was looking forward to doing when she actually retired, in about twenty years’ time. Mind you, the cooking might come in handy as Annie wasn’t a keen cook, preferring to pierce a cellophane lid and wait for the ping of the microwave, or to try out a lovely café or restaurant whenever she could. ‘I’m going to Paris on my own.’

‘Then I’ll come with you. If you really want to see Paris. But you can’t go on your own …’ Annie thought Phoebe looked genuinely concerned now.

‘I’ll be fine. Please try not to worry, sweetheart. I’m only going for a fortnight and I can call you while I’m there,’ Annie assured her, trying to sound light about it, even though inside she was starting to wonder if two whole weeks away from home, her comfort zone, was a good idea after all.

‘A fortnight! But what if something happens to you?’

‘I’m sure it won’t. And I’ll send you a postcard. A postcard from Paris, you’d like that. Do you remember when you were little—’

‘No, Mum. That was years ago. I don’t collect postcards any more. And nobody sends postcards these days.’ Annie was sure Phoebe actually looked aghast at the idea, and suddenly she felt foolish, behind the times. Maybe she had become too insular, past it, on account of her ‘basic life’! ‘Even Aunty Beth knows that – did you know she emailed me a gorgeous film of her doing all the sights in Australia, so I could see them too. How cool is that?’

‘Wow!’ Annie said, impressed and delighted for Phoebe, but then cross with herself for feeling a little put out that Beth hadn’t sent her a film too. ‘Very cool,’ she confirmed, ‘I’d love to see the sights of Australia …’

‘Oh, um … sure, I’ll send it on,’ Phoebe said nonchalantly, clearly not realizing that Annie felt left out. She inhaled and let out a long breath. It was ridiculous to feel jealous; she wasn’t 12 years old and in a school playground any more, yet still … she missed her best friend so much.

‘So why are you going to Paris then?’

‘To check out Joanie’s new apartment and then have a look around Paris. I’ve always wanted to travel and so now is my chance.’ Annie explained about Joanie’s inheritance, trying to sound much more confident than she felt about travelling on her own, while Phoebe stared very solemnly at the screen, taking it all in.

‘Well, it sounds very clandestine to me,’ Phoebe said, eventually. ‘And why doesn’t Joanie go there herself?’

‘You know she’s getting on and her mobility isn’t what it used to be. Besides, she has no intention of living in the apartment in Paris – she has other plans.’

‘Then doesn’t she have a relative who could go?’ Phoebe squinted, as if interrogating Annie. ‘It seems weird that she wants a neighbour to go for her.’

‘No. There’s nobody else. She doesn’t have any children or relatives and her friends are all elderly too. Anyway, I’m happy to go for her; she trusts me and we are friends after all. And have been for a very long time. I want to help her out. Isn’t that what friends do for each other?’

‘Hmm, she’s always put upon you. Do you remember when she had that fall and you ended up at her house practically every night doing everything for her.’

‘And I was happy to do that too,’ Annie said, thinking how mean her daughter could be sometimes. Joanie had been a godsend back in the day when Phoebe and Johnny had been young, often babysitting at short notice and never accepting payment, always happy to step in when Annie had a rare evening out or had to work late. So it was the least Annie could do now to go and take a look at an apartment in Paris. It was hardly a hardship; in fact it was exciting and she felt delighted to have the opportunity. She loved nosing around properties and had spent many a happy Sunday afternoon, cosy by the log burner, searching through Rightmove looking for her dream ‘doer upper’.

‘But what about the person who left her the apartment? Beatrice Archambeau, did you say?’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Annie nodded.

‘Who even is she? Surely she must have had some family, and by the sounds of it Joanie knows nothing at all about the woman. What if it’s some kind of elaborate hoax to make Joanie pay to refurbish a Parisian apartment which they then steal from her?’

‘It’s not a hoax, Phoebe,’ Annie said, firmly. ‘The solicitor here in London has been very thorough and I’m to collect the keys and paperwork to the apartment from a Monsieur Aumont, an avocat – that’s the French word for solicitor. He’s the executor in Paris dealing with Beatrice’s will. I’m making lunch for Joanie next week so we can discuss it all before I go to Paris, so I guess I’ll find out more about the apartment and how Joanie has come to inherit it then. And no doubt the avocat will tell us more about Beatrice Archambeau when I get there.’

‘Hmm,’ Phoebe pondered, then, ‘ah, but what about your foot? I’m not sure you can fly with a fracture.’ And Annie was sure she spotted a fleeting flicker of triumph on her daughter’s face, and if she was perfectly honest with herself, it irked her. Why couldn’t Phoebe be happy for her? Yes, she understood Phoebe’s insecurities with having a distant dad, and Annie felt that she had done everything she could to ease them for her – organizing and paying for courses of expensive therapy sessions over the years and giving her as much love and attention as she possibly could to make up for her missing father. As children, Phoebe had always had the biggest chunk of Annie’s time over Johnny, with her numerous cheerleading lessons and tournaments. Phoebe had become fascinated with cheerleading at a young age, after watching a reality TV show about a squad of impossibly athletic girls and boys in an American high school. From then on, the three of them had spent practically every weekend travelling around the country so Phoebe could compete and add another trophy to her impressive collection that was now housed in a display cabinet in the reception area of her gym. But Phoebe was an adult now, and with a boyfriend who adored her, a successful business of her own, a lovely home and busy social life. So she really did need to try to be happy, instead of always looking for a reason not to be, or so it seemed to Annie.