Flagey in Winter E-Book

Simon Mundy

• Herausgeber: Hay Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 304

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

The Café Franck in Brussels' Place Flagey puts people at their ease – artists with European politicians and their assistants, tousled intellectuals with bar staff, twenty-somethings in need of a job with thirty-somethings who have one. Set in 2013, Flagey in Winter is a comedy of manners that takes place in the European Parliament itself, in bars where love and politics rub shoulders, and in the Italian Dolomites.

Leseprobe

Flagey in Winter

simon mundy

illustrated by

ewgeniya lyras

hay press

hay press

10 High TownHay-on-Wye HR3 5AE

an imprint of

Renard Press Ltd

124 City Road, London EC1V 2NX

United Kingdom

[email protected]

020 8050 2928

www.haypress.co.uk

Flagey in Winter first published by Hay Press in 2024

Text © Simon Mundy, 2024

Illustrations © Ewgeniya Lyras, 2024

Cover design by Will Dady

Simon Mundy asserts hismoral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental, or is used fictitiously.

Renard Press is proud to be a climate positive publisher, removing more carbon from the air than we emit and planting a small forest. For more information see renardpress.com/eco.

All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced, used to train artificial intelligence systems or models, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the publisher.

EU Authorised Representative: Easy Access System Europe – Mustamäe tee 50, 10621 Tallinn, Estonia, [email protected].

flagey in winter

This story is set in 2013, before governments in so much of Europe began to behave even more obnoxiously than usual

Who Is Who

Principal Characters

Catrina Assistant to Gwyneth Price MEP

Patrice A barman in Café Franck, Flagey

Damien Another barman in the same

Elise A student and barwoman in the same

‘Fidel’ van de Looy An occasional professor

Nikita A gallery owner

Mercedes Nikita’s assistant

Rory McBain A journalist

Agnestina A student

Flamand A poetic student

Artur Elise’s brother

Tyron Wangstrutt An American lobbyist

Bruno Inchcombe Assistant to Tony Sanderson MEP

Mariana Assistant to Esko Nystrom MEP

Saskia van Katwijk Assistant to a Dutch MEP

Gwyneth Price An MEP from Wales

Roberto Vincenzi An MEP from Italy

Esko Nystrom An MEP from Finland

Leontios An MEP from Greece

Amelie Poitiers A French film star

Lucia Redetti An EU commissioner

Previously…

as they say

in all transatlantic drama series

…in Flagey in Autumn

Catrina bumped into Mercedes and annoyed Saskia, moved jobs in the European Parliament, dumped Bruno and acquired Patrice. Esko became a political leader, though reluctantly, and was surprised by film star Amelie. Roberto sidled away. Mariana did things she regretted. Nikita hired Mercedes to help in her gallery. Flamand and Agnestina fell in and out of love. Fidel fumed and found Elise.

I

Sunday

First Thing

The sixth of January was always going to be a head-under-the-duvet sort of day. For a start (which most people wished it hadn’t), it was freezing in Brussels, with a bitter north-westerly driving a mixture of sleet and spiky snow against any window foolish enough to open curtains to it. Christmas and good cheer had long since dissipated (except for the ex-pat Russians, for whom it was Christmas Eve), and among the Scots, Hogmanay hangovers had just about made their final retreat. The only good thing about it was that it was a Sunday.

Catrina’s head was as firmly under the duvet as it was possible to get without suffocating. She would have liked the cover to have been supplemented by the comforting contours of her Belgian barman, Patrice, but it wasn’t. He had left to start the coffee machines at Café Franck at the corner of the Flagey arts building before the light crept up. Instead Catrina had to make do with the limited support of her sturdy English hot-water bottles, now warming her with less power than she would have liked.

Cradling the flannel and rubber against her chest, she wondered whether it was worth emerging from the dark and risking the chill long enough to boil a kettle. The advantage was that she could come back to bed with a refreshed bottle and a mug of tea. The disadvantage was that she might shiver to death in the process. A glance at the Big Ben alarm clock by the bedside light told her it was nine-thirty. No need to rush, then.

Catrina transferred the warmer of the two water bottles to her feet. It didn’t help much. Something was going to have to give because, in this state somewhere between colder in bed and frozen out of it, she couldn’t even daydream straight. From somewhere deep in her psyche Catrina’s Derbyshire Peak District ancestors were telling her in disgusted voices not to be so soft. She was bloody lucky to have a sheet, let alone a duvet – and if her feet were cold she should put three pairs of socks on. Catrina groaned and, not for the first time in her twenty-three years, told the ancestors to piss off.

They took umbrage, but they had a minor victory too. Catrina grimaced and swung her feet out of bed and straight into her furry Pussy-Cat slippers, grabbed a jumper from the floor, flicked the switch on the electric heater and stumbled to the tiny kitchen. Once the kettle was filled and heating she ran back to bed. Maybe the ancestors were right about the socks. She wished she’d had the sense to bring the thick woollen hill-walking ones from home back with her to Brussels after the Christmas holiday. It was true they’d never fit in any of her town work shoes, but just now they’d be toe savers.

An hour and a half later the room had warmed sufficiently for Catrina to have progressed through the tea, snooze and shower stages to actually being dressed: leggings, jeans, T-shirt, two jumpers, two pairs of socks, at least, and scarf. Outside the weather remained discouraging – if not quite a reason for total inaction.

The trouble was that, although she was ready for the day, the day did not seem to be really ready for her. Apart from a need to tidy and clean the flat (top, middle and bottom of the list for every weekend, but rarely achieved) there was not a lot to do. She could loiter in Café Franck while Patrice worked, but that seemed a little unimaginative. She could phone around and see if anyone was wanting a visit, but that was hardly likely. Most of her Brussels friends were in couples. There was her Finnish colleague at the European Parliament, Mariana, but she was so intense she was more than likely to prefer spending her Sundays reading Schopenhauer behind closed curtains than pootling around with Catrina.

‘If in doubt, procrastinate’, thought Catrina, and made herself more tea – backed up this time with toast and Marmite, a breakfast she dared not have in Patrice’s presence without bringing down a stream of anti-British culinary derision on her head.

Feeling suitably rebellious she had an extra slice. Guilt soon set in as she put the offending jar of salted brewer’s waste back, all the way back, into the cupboard above the sink. And with guilt came the need for expiation. She looked at the weekend’s mess of grimy plates and sediment-encrusted mugs and sighed. Cleaning the kitchen had better be the morning’s activity. It was as dreary as the weather, and just as inevitable.

She had just finished the plates, knives, spoons and assorted implements, and was refilling the sink with mugs when she heard the chirrup of her mobile phone from somewhere near the bed.

Where, though? She looked first in desperation at her soapy hands, then round the kitchen for a towel, gave up, wiped herself half dry on her jeans and launched into the phone-search operation.

It was not in her bag, and there was no sign of it in the bed, caught in the duvet or the pillows, but it rang still from an impenetrable hiding place. Catrina grew frantic and swore.

The ringing stopped. Now, though, she was just cross. Phones cannot be ghosts. She searched her clothes and clothes drawers, even though the ring had come from the bed. She searched the bed again, lifted the pillows and the mattress. Nothing. She peered underneath. Nothing there except her trainers, still wet from the previous night melted snow. She pulled them out to dry on top of the radiator, and as she upended them, out tumbled the mobile, landing with a thud on to the rug – not the feared crash on to the hard wooden floor.

Its owner swore again and looked at the missed call number. Not one she recognised, but at least not international. She dialled, and after two rings it was answered.

‘Hi Catrina.’

‘Hi… um, sorry, who have I rung?’

‘Mariana. Didn’t you recognise my voice?’

‘Stupid of me, I know, but I’m afraid not,’ said Catrina.

‘Are you doing anything? I mean now?’

‘Well, not really. Washing up.’

‘Up?’ Mariana asked.

‘The mugs and things.’

‘Nothing important, then.’

‘It is if you live here.’

‘Of course.’ Mariana paused. She always found talking to Catrina difficult. She never knew whether the Englishwoman was trying to be funny or not. ‘Perhaps we could meet when you have finished.’

If Mariana had been in the room she would have seen Catrina shrug. ‘OK. Any particular reason? I mean, we’ll probably see each other in Parliament tomorrow. Did you have a good New Year, by the way?’

‘Yes – you see, that’s why I wanted to meet. I had a great New Year, and I think I have a new boyfriend.’

‘And?’ Catrina was still baffled as to why Mariana thought this necessitated a meeting. It wasn’t as if they even liked each other very much.

‘He’s English. I don’t perhaps understand him so well sometimes. I thought if you could meet him you could tell – am I being foolish?’

‘I probably could,’ admitted Catrina, ‘but would it make a difference? After all, he’s going to be your boyfriend, not mine.’

‘Please?’

It was a very un-Finnish request, Catrina realised. ‘If you really want me to, sure. When?’

‘Could you come over to Flagey? Perhaps after twelve-thirty?’

‘All right. Patrice is working there anyway, so he can give his opinion too.’

‘Will that help?’

Catrina wasn’t sure, but the opinion was likely to be given whether or not it helped. She rang off and went back to the sink. Now the day had purpose. She would even have to hurry.

Her telephone rang again. It was Mercedes, her Spanish best friend, with exactly the same request.

First with the News

There was a smile of anticipation and an element of relief as Guus van de Looy (‘Fidel’ to everybody except his cable TV audience) settled into his usual place by the radiator and window in Café Franck.

He lined up his coffee and his small dark beer and refolded the Sunday newspaper into his preferred format – halved lengthwise and then folded across in a way directly opposite to that intended by its publisher. Fidel was alone and settled in his routine and, had he bothered to realise the fact, was happy. At the very least he felt untroubled. Elise, his younger girlfriend, was spending the first couple of weeks of the new year skiing in the Dolomites with her brother.

Skiing was not Fidel’s idea of fun. Although his stringy fifty-something figure didn’t show it, exercise of any description was not an activity that he sought. He was happy enough to sit back and admire Elise’s lithe and supple frame demonstrating some of the moves she had observed in her Modern Circus Studies. That was his excuse, anyway – and when she had suggested that he go with her to the Italian snow Fidel had demurred, arguing that he was bound to slip on icy pavements on his way back from a day on hot spiced wine.

In truth his real reasons were more complicated. He was fairly certain Elise’s brother disapproved of her new relationship, and even Fidel himself was anxious. Thirty years separated them, yet their first three months as neighbours and lovers had passed tests of friction and disagreement without ever being badly threatened. Take them out of their daily lives, living in flats one above the other up the hill from Flagey, though, and Fidel was nervous that the cracks might begin to show. So he had refused the kind invitation, citing pressures of work, and had settled back into his bachelor ways.

As an excuse it was pretty feeble. He hadn’t been in to his department at the university since storming out of a lecture many weeks before the end of the previous term. He had announced his resignation publicly, but neither the authorities nor his students seemed to have noticed.

Admittedly they could be forgiven. He had pottered into his office occasionally to pick up books and periodicals. He had carried on supervising his masters students by email and Skype; essays had been marked and returned, reading lists updated. During the months of his absence two lengthy articles on urban social disintegration had appeared in worthy journals, one of them based in Paris and famous enough to set the tight world of French academia chattering. Fidel had found himself on mainstream political shows for both radio and television, not just his weekly hour of cable obscurity. His failure to turn up for staff meetings was greeted with quiet relief by colleagues, who tended to smirk and put it down to his late discovery of his libido.

In Fidel’s mind his resignation was a fact. In everybody else’s mind he was just off campus and out of their hair for a while.

Quarter of an hour later he had finished and replaced the first of his black coffees – three was the morning’s quota before he allowed himself to switch fully to beer or to contemplate anything more intellectually taxing than the newspaper.

Outside the window the Sunday market was in full swing in Flagey’s paved square. At eleven o’clock the music was turned up a notch and the early families, desperate for distractions for children in pushchairs, were supplemented by genuine food shoppers and ambling couples not deterred by the January chill or the driving sleet.

Fidel ignored it, as he always did, and returned to his newspaper. The sport, travel, business, arts and lifestyle sections were all extracted and placed under his chair. The last two would be glanced at later, just in case there were events and trends he would have to be aware of when asked for comments. There was a fine line between having a reputation as a crusty commentator and being out of touch. But about sport, business and trawling through winter advice for summer beaches, he cared nothing whatever.

The books pages were read intently and gave the most pleasure – especially those pieces where fellow academics were elegantly demolished. Fidel himself had never written a book, but he had participated in many demolitions. There were two in this edition of the paper, finally appearing after sitting on the editor’s desk since October. Their author could barely remember writing them, but he grinned as he reread his own scalpel-sharp wit (as he hoped the world would think of it).

He would have been horrified if he had been told he was an egotistical old bitch – and even more horrified if a critic had lambasted him in the same way (maybe that was secretly why he had never published anything longer than an essay) – but Fidel loved to turn a sharp phrase, and he read his pieces again, sipping his beer with renewed satisfaction and feeling that he could abandon coffee early as a reward. Now that the reviews were published the fees would be in soon; nothing startling, but for a combined total of over a thousand words in Belgium’s main Sunday newspaper, nothing to be sniffed at either. Perhaps even another beer did not do the occasion justice. Maybe he might risk a vin mousseux. Or two.

It was only when he was finishing the second review for the third time that he noticed the asterisk above the last word and the italicised note from the sub-editor below.

*See News, page 6.

Fidel was baffled, but followed the instruction.

He searched page six, trying to find an article that could possibly be relevant to his review of a book with the deeply un-newsworthy title Some Reflections on Proto-reactionary Tendencies in Closed Urban Minorities.

Nothing looked very promising. There were items on constitutional-reform proposals (a regular that never seemed to actually go anywhere), metro trains prone to breakdowns (of which the same was said) and a call for Belgium to contribute more to international peace-keeping operations. Fidel wondered if this was it and the asterisk note had been a joke – an editor’s comment on his reviewing style. Then he spotted his own name in a paragraph-long piece far down the furthest column on the right.

It was headlined ‘New College Breaks Fee Barriers’, and read:

Moves are far advanced to offer students an alternative to fee-paying or state-run education. Using all the facilities of the Internet, the Collegium Gratis Brusseliensis (CGB) will support itself by advertising, sponsorship and subscriptions to its publications – however, enrolled students worldwide will pay nothing. In a controversial move, likely to cause protests in the German community, students will be able to submit work in French, Flemish or English. Several well-known figures are understood to be considering resigning their conventional academic jobs to join the new college, among them Guus van de Looy, who is also an occasional contributor to this journal – see page 47.

Fidel read the paragraph with mounting alarm.

Change of Direction

Sitting immediately behind Fidel in Café Franck, Flamand was hiding – not from Fidel (whom he did not know) but from his girlfriend Agnestina. Former girlfriend – he really must start thinking of her as that. He must put her firmly behind him, consign her to his autobiography, a paragraph or two to explain the turmoil of his first term at university and the intensity of the poems written in the few weeks of their whirlwind affair.

Flamand could pinpoint exactly the moment he had fallen out of love. It had been when Agnestina had blamed him for not being on time in this very café when he had not only been there but had been early. The café’s CCTV system had proved that he had bent down to pick up a pencil at the crucial moment and been slightly hidden from view by a large woman a moment later. Agnestina had not bothered to wait and check again, to linger for a few seconds, even, and, when the issue had been settled in Flamand’s favour by the bar staff the next day, had continued to act as if it had been his fault. Flamand had been civil, of course, but as his obsession evaporated, so did his need to see her.

To all of this Agnestina was oblivious, and now, sitting at a table at the other extremity of the L-shaped bar, was equally ignorant of Flamand hiding around the corner. To say she had not noticed his desertion in the last weeks of term would not be quite true. There had been moments when she had wondered at the lack of texts and voicemails, surprised that there had been no invitations, but she had put that down to the pressure of end-of-term essays that were overwhelming her too. Then everyone had dispersed for Christmas – in her case to the family in Mons – and only now were her friends drifting back to Brussels, ready for university life to start again.

Flamand finished his coffee, used the torn biscuit wrapper to mark the place in his book and went to the bar for a refill. Patrice, serving at the other end of the bar, spotted Flamand as he waited for an espresso to filter through, and waved him around. Flamand shook his head and stayed where he was.

‘You don’t like that end?’ asked Patrice, when he had eventually finished serving his more conveniently placed customer and found a suitable occasion to venture north.

‘That end is fine,’ admitted Flamand, ‘but perhaps this morning I prefer to—’

‘Wait alone?’ completed Patrice, with half a flash of inspiration. ‘What will you have – café au lait, as usual?’

‘No, my usual has changed. Black and double, please.’

‘If you say so,’ shrugged Patrice, wondering what had happened to the young man over the Christmas break. Perhaps he had just grown up. Certainly his taste in coffee had.

He brought back the fresh cupful and, as Flamand handed over two euros, said, ‘Your girlfriend is in here this morning too, you know.’

‘I know,’ said Flamand, without peering round to find her. ‘Former girlfriend.’

‘Ah!’ said Patrice, closing the subject like all good barmen and moving on to the next customer. A few minutes later he had the time to glance in the other direction, over to Agnestina, intent on her computer in the far corner by the window, nearest the entrance to the concert hall. She really was lovely, thought, Patrice. That shade of hair which made it hard to tell if she was a blonde on the edge of being a redhead or a brown so light that it was impossible to decide which of the three colours dominated at any moment. He could hardly fail to notice her cascading long hair because she rarely left it alone, twirling and fiddling, tying it behind, piling it on top of her head then letting it fall down her back again.

She had clearly dumped her young admirer, Patrice assured himself. Her self-assurance, her poise, her absorption, her gorgeousness made the alternative too absurd to contemplate. Flamand was simply not in her class.

As though she had intercepted his thoughts, Agnestina looked up and caught Patrice looking at her. She held his gaze without expression for a moment before letting the briefest and slightest of smiles play at the side of her lips. Patrice gave her an equally tiny nod of recognition in return before returning to his duties with brisk efficiency.

Agnestina thought about their exchange for a second, looked back at her computer screen and the page of Facebook titbits she had been scrolling through, then clicked it to the screensaver and strolled over to the bar.

She was third in the queue, but Patrice was expert in taking several orders at once if it suited him, so there was hardly a pause between her reaching the counter and his acknowledgement. ‘Mademoiselle?’

‘Hallo.’

Patrice nodded, then carried on with his work at the coffee geyser, giving her an occasional look over his shoulder in case she wished to give him her decision about drinks.

She didn’t.

The queue was served and Patrice was free to face her. ‘It is nice to see you again. Did you have a good New Year?’

‘Yes, I think so,’ she said. ‘And you?’

‘Nothing special but, you know… it was OK.’

‘You have a girlfriend?’ she asked suddenly.

Patrice smiled. ‘Yes, I think so. Why?’

‘I thought you would be too busy.’

‘I am never too busy for a beautiful woman, mademoiselle, but it is true that at the moment one in particular occupies most of the time when I am not serving here.’

‘I see.’

‘And you have a friend too, I seem to remember?’ he asked.

‘I thought so. I am not so sure now. He has lost interest, I think.’

‘Really? I find that hard to believe.’ Patrice’s gallantry was turned up to maximum and, since Agnestina had still failed to give him an order he took matters in hand and gave her a glass of vin mousseux. Agnestina was surprised but gratified.

‘For me?’

‘Of course – for a happy New Year.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I don’t think you ever told me your name. I am Patrice.’

‘Agnestina.’

It was at that moment that Mercedes bustled into the room, followed closely by Catrina.

Being Metaphorical

In Esko Nystrom’s apartment across the lake from Flagey, the actress Amelie Poitiers was in the throes of an unexpectedly tearful goodbye. She was parting from her Member of the European Parliament for the first time in nearly two weeks, and she found herself blubbing like a schoolgirl in love with the art master at the end of term. There was no particular reason to be upset. She had a film to make, but this involved spending two months in the south of France around Cap Ferrat, and Esko had agreed that there was no very good reason why he should not join her there for a long weekend in ten days’ time.

But in fact, there was a very good reason why escaping to the Riviera at the first opportunity in the New Year with his film-star lover might be not quite so clever for Esko. He had just been elected leader of his political group in Parliament, and such a jaunt might seem too like the antics of his flamboyant Italian predecessor to be to his colleagues’ liking. They had, after all, elected him to bring a touch of austere Finnish Lutheranism to the role – at least, in theory. While an appropriate degree of gravitas and dependability was hoped for, there was also the realisation that getting their small group of thirty Social, Liberal, Enterprise and Ecology (SLEE) members talked about in the general press of Europe was an uphill task. So just a touch of stardust was no bad thing. Not too often on the Riviera, though, and no sunbathing with (or in) magnums of champagne.

Amelie had pointed out that even on the Riviera nobody was stupid enough to try to sunbathe in early January. Esko’s reply – that as a Frenchwoman she should know that he was being metaphorical – earned him his first display of actress temperament.

Theirs had been a whirlwind romance in the best traditions of the genre. They had met in October at a film-festival screening across in the Flagey Centre where, at the reception which followed, she was the guest of honour and he had failed to recognise her after watching her act on film for two hours. Within three days they had found that the press had declared them an item and, rather to their own surprise, they had agreed.

Since then reality had taken over. Amelie had been busy until close to Christmas promoting her latest film. Esko had been dealing with the political fallout from the ousting of Roberto Vincenzi after charges of corruption had surfaced in Italy – charges that Vincenzi refuted to the extent that he had done nothing the rest of Tuscany’s public servants weren’t doing – using his expenses other than for the strictly authorised purpose. This had cut little ice with the puritanical Germans, and Esko had been shoved into Vincenzi’s place, almost whether he liked it or not. Meanwhile, at home in Finland his wife Rikka was cementing their estrangement by equally publicly toying with a tenor from the Helsinki Opera. (Esko was starting to realise every thought of her was prefaced by the word ‘meanwhile’.)

He had returned to Helsinki for the Christmas break to find himself portrayed there as the poor cuckold. His parents were embarrassed, his friends sympathetic. Esko’s relaxed response – that it was probably all for the best and that anyway, he was too busy with new interests in his life to worry about it – was treated as commendable but unbelievable martyrdom; just what they would expect, but a repression that would cause trouble later in his forties. After all, he had been so in love with Rikka for years!

Rikka, though, was now intent on a domestic political career and local celebrity which made Esko an irrelevance. Worse – once he had been made leader of his party in Brussels he was competition! What if he came home and moved seriously into the national arena? For Rikka, who assumed, like all those who love power, that everybody was as ambitious as she was, the prospect was intolerable. When Esko had tried to tell her, over a last drink in what had been their shared flat in Helsinki’s most newly fashionable district, that his acquisition by Amelie made this less, not more, likely, she simply didn’t believe him. It was all a plot to thwart her.

Esko had returned to Brussels before New Year exhausted. When Amelie announced that she had had just as much of her parents and cousins in Paris as she could stand, the solution was clear. They would hole up together at Flagey until work resumed. It was, after all, where no one would expect them to be. Brussels – at least the Brussels of the Europeaninstitutions – should be deserted, and all good French movie actors should be on the beaches of Martinique or Guadalupe.

They had been untroubled. They had read a lot, slept a lot, made love a lot.

Now real life was cutting in, and Amelie wanted real life to go away. With two suitcases by her side and a taxi waiting outside in the driving sleet, Amelie sobbed into Esko’s shoulder as he kissed her neck and hair.

Eventually he murmured, ‘I suppose you should go, or you’ll miss the plane.’

She shrugged. ‘So what? There’s another one in an hour or two.’

‘Then you will be late arriving and people will be angry.’

‘Let them be.’

Esko admitted to himself that she had a point. After all, what was the point in being a star if you couldn’t be unreliable? Two days late would be a problem, two hours barely even noticeable. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Let’s get the ticket changed and you can go this afternoon, after some lunch.’

Esko was being reasonable. It was the only thing Amelie hated about him. She burrowed deeper into his shoulder. There was a long pause.

‘Do you want to do that?’

Amelie mumbled.

‘Is that a yes?’ Esko whispered.

‘No.’

He was flummoxed. ‘So…?’

‘If I don’t go now I won’t go at all. There is no point postponing this till later.’

‘One more kiss, then we’ll go.’

She obliged. At length Esko prised her away and began to carry the suitcases out of the apartment and down the stairs. ‘Do you want me to come to the airport with you?’

‘No, absolutely not.’

‘You’re sure?’ he asked.

‘Yes… I mean no… Could you?’

‘Of course.’

He dumped the cases at the bottom of the stairs and went back for his coat. So they had lunch together anyway, with Amelie amazed to find that they were shown without even asking into the VIP area because the airline check-in man had seen her latest film only the night before and had fallen in love with her even faster than Esko had managed.

Dismissing Nations

Mercedes and Catrina were almost in step as they entered the café together and, beaming, strode to the bar where Patrice was just finishing handing Agnestina a glass of bubbly white wine. Neither of them gave the student so much as a glance.

‘You look happy,’ remarked Patrice, tearing his eyes away from Agnestina’s retreating figure.

‘Why wouldn’t we be?’ asked Catrina.

‘Of course you should be. But it is cold outside and you have just walked from nice warm apartments.’

‘If you think back five hours you’ll remember that my flat is neither warm nor nice,’ Catrina pointed out.

Her lover considered saying something gallant, but in the end just shrugged and asked, ‘Coffee?’ He had already turned to start the process before there was an answer.

‘I’d better look for a table,’ said Catrina. ‘It’s fuller than I expected. I’m not sure it’s going to be easy to find one for three of us.’ She moved off and began to survey the room. There was an unattractive table for two in a distant corner, masked from the outside world by a curtain. Catrina went for it and bagged an extra chair from nearby. She sat with her back to the door and main area of the room, feeling that Mercedes would need to spot her new boyfriend and then seat him close.

Patrice carried on with his train of thought as he laid out the tray and loaded the coffee saucers with spoon, sugar and biscuits. ‘So you have good news?’

‘Nothing really,’ said Mercedes, still smiling so hard it made the statement absurd. ‘I think I may have a new man in my life, that’s all.’

This time Patrice’s gallant side was up to the task. ‘In which case, that is news indeed. Congratulations. Will we meet him?’

‘I hope – at least, he should be here very soon. That is why I wanted Catrina to be here. I want to know what she thinks.’

‘Oh?’ Patrice looked mildly puzzled. He knew Catrina and Mercedes had become firm friends, but he was surprised Mercedes needed her to vet her acquisition so early in the year.

‘He’s English, you see. From Scotland,’ she said, thus committing a worse gaffe than calling a Catalan Spanish.

‘So!’ That explained the matter.

Catalan Mercedes was not sure if she was reading the new man in her life right – whether his interest was genuine or whether he was just pretending to like her by adopting that infuriating false intimacy that young Englishmen used to counter their reputation for cold aloofness.

Patrice became conspiratorial. ‘Soon you and I will need to compare notes. We must see if having an English woman and an English man as a lover have similarities.’

‘We shall,’ smiled Mercedes, ‘but perhaps not just yet.’ Patrice bowed as he placed the full coffee cups on a tray and Mercedes carried it over to the table.

The matter was forgotten as an influx of churchgoers, their Sunday suits and stern dresses at complete odds with the jeans and fleeces of the relaxed and less religious regulars, filed up to the bar and kept Patrice busy at the coffee machine.

The question Catrina put to Mercedes after they had licked the first of the coffee froth from their lips was almost the same as Patrice’s. ‘What’s he like, then – and does he have a name?’

Mercedes grinned slyly. ‘I don’t think I want to tell you – you must make up your own mind. He should be here in a minute.’

‘All right, but in that case, where did you meet him? Did he come into the gallery? Does he come to the vernissageevenings? Have I seen him there already?’ In fact Catrina had only been to two vernissages – the same two at which Mercedes herself had been on hand since starting as assistant in Nikita’s gallery a little way up the hill towards Avenue Louise from Flagey.

‘No – at least, not as far as I know. I’m not even sure he likes art.’

That was black mark number one in Catrina’s book. She was no great expert herself, but she knew contemporary art was becoming central to Mercedes’ world, and couldn’t see a relationship lasting in which the boyfriend stood around private views looking bored at best, sneering at worst (which was likely, given that Nikita had a thing for artists who were nothing if not challenging).

‘I met him shopping.’

‘Shopping?’

‘Yes – is that surprising?’

‘Well, I suppose not. I mean… What sort of shopping? Was he looking for shoes, or buying loo paper, or stalking around the girls’ underclothes floors in Printemps?’

‘No! Catrina, you’re not being fair. He was choosing chocolates in the Place Sablon. He asked me which I thought were the best.’

‘Why?’

‘Why – I don’t know. Because I was there?’

‘Because you are pretty and he wanted to chat you up, more like.’

Mercedes was tiring of the English woman’s cynicism. ‘Why shouldn’t he?’

‘Sorry.’ Catrina realised she had gone too far. She was projecting her own wariness on to her friend, and anyway, her meeting with Patrice would never have happened if her own clumsiness had not covered Mercedes in mint tea, so she could hardly complain about accidentalmeetings. Not everything in life came about through formalintroductions that would have seemed suitably decorous to Jane Austen. She took a gulp of coffee, nibbled the sweet biscuit and said, ‘I just hope he wasn’t targeting you, I suppose.’

‘Maybe I made sure he did,’ confessed Mercedes. ‘He’s very handsome, and I’m so bored with Spanish boys.’

‘Oh, so he’s not Spanish?’

‘Not even Latin. Very northern, in fact.’

‘Is that why you want my opinion so badly?’

‘It could be.’

Catrina paused and looked into her empty cup. ‘I’m really not the best person to ask, you know. I mean, if he’s German I’m prejudiced, if he’s Danish or Swedish he’ll bore me to death. I’ve no time for the Poles, the Dutch or the Lithuanians.’

‘British?’

‘God no! Though I suppose the Welsh can be all right,’ she conceded, ‘and the occasional Scot.’

‘So that leaves me a man from Finland…’

‘Not Esko, surely?’

‘Don’t be silly… Estonia, Latvia, Flanders or Ireland.’

‘You could try an Icelander or a Norwegian.’

‘Not in the EU,’ Mercedes pointed out. They were both laughing now.

‘I’ll get us more coffee.’ Catrina stood up and carried the empties back to the bar. Patrice had disappeared for moment into the back room, so she ordered from his colleague Damien without involving herself in any conversation.