The Shock

I wake in a room I wouldn’t have chosen to sleep in. Curtains the colour of excrement block out the sun, and the carpet is a nauseating kaleidoscope of blue and orange swirls. I guess it’s cheap. Earning money from writing in Paris is like milking a dead cow. Laurent hints there are plenty of waitress jobs for pretty girls, but there are plenty of waiter jobs for boys who look like him, too.

I’m alone. Laurent likes to walk the Parisian streets in the cool first light, returning with coffee and pastries from Patisserie Frederique. As though conjured by my consciousness, the heavy door creaks open and he walks in, holding a grey plastic tray. He looks different. Serious. He puts a little table over the bed and places the food on it. Eggs and bacon in congealing grease.

‘I can’t eat that!’ I say, horrified.

‘You always say that,’ he tuts, ‘But you always do eat it.’

I have to admit I’m hungry, and it tastes better than it looks. I expect Laurent to join me in bed, but he is opening the curtains, straightening up the room.

‘How is your breakfast Mrs Garnier?’

Mrs Garnier!

‘So, you’re planning to make an honest woman of me?’ I ask coquettishly. I know his reply,

‘I’ll make a dishonest woman of you first,’

I lean back, expecting his body on mine, but he smiles, sadly,

‘You always say that, too. Let’s get you up, shall we?’

I must have been dancing for hours last night; my body feels stiff, achy, slow.

Laurent pulls off my awful nylon nighty; then to my surprise, puts a loose top back over my head.

‘You don’t often put clothes on me!’

‘Just every day,’ he mutters, busy with buttons and zips.

‘Now, let’s do your hair.’

I walk over to the dressing table and scream. An old lady screams back at me. A wrinkled old hag with hair so white it’s almost yellow, like the dead chicks Albert used to feed his snakes.

‘Who is this? What have they done to me?’

Laurent sits down, but it’s no longer him. It’s Nigel, who looks after me.

‘Don’t worry Mrs G, it’ll be a good day. Albert’s coming today.’

Albert? With the snakes?

When I am dressed, hair brushed and arranged in the day chair, the door opens again and a nice-looking man comes in holding flowers. He looks like Laurent, but older.

‘Morning Mum, how do you feel?’

Mum? I have a child? As though in a dream, I remember the years of waiting, hoping, failing, then two blue lines. Now this man is calling me Mum.

‘You’re my son?’ He nods. ‘And you are an author, remember?’ He points to the back of the room, at a shelf of books with my name on them. He smiles like it’s a gift he likes to give me. Tears stream down my cheeks,

‘Sorry, it’s just a shock. Such a wonderful, incredible shock.’