“I am sure,” said Claire. “I will sort everything out. And I can pay for it.”

She could. Richard had been utterly fair, and her teacher’s pension was good, and she had an annuity she’d had absolutely no ability to spend which, she realized dryly, was a great thing for the insurance company and the country as a whole.

“Well, you can take the train now,” said Patsy. “Ricky and I did it when we were dating. Mind you, I didn’t like Paris at all. So rude, everyone always pushing past you and everything so expensive, and I didn’t even think the food was that good. You couldn’t get a decent curry, I’ll tell you that. Or a cab.”

Claire suddenly felt exhausted. She loved Patsy, but couldn’t possibly explain to her why getting a cab in Paris could only ever defeat the point. Or maybe it did. Maybe they’d completely built over it, like the new shopping center in Kidinsborough that had turned into a kind of derelict drug run within five years. Or the pedestrian plaza, which was mostly used now as somewhere for people to be sick on a weekend. It was where the ambulances parked up.

Under the Eiffel Tower, there was an old-fashioned carousel. It didn’t move very fast, it creaked a lot, and it made its own music. The children had adored it—they had their favorite horses and animals and loved the second story, reachable through a child-sized curved wrought iron staircase, even though it rotated even more slowly than the one underneath it. She wondered if that were still there.

“Well, nonetheless, I want to go.”

“Well, let me talk to the Eurostar people. They must have some way of taking sick people.”

“I don’t want to take the train,” said Claire, in a moment of sudden realization. “I have to take the ferry.”

“But that will take much longer and be much more dangerous,” said Patsy. “I mean, if you can afford it, you should go first class.”

Claire saw her favorite nurse, Montserrat, come up the path and attempted a wave. Somehow just having made the plan was already making her feel better about things.

“No,” she said. “I shall take the boat. I have friends in Paris. I think they can help.”

So fortunately, Alice was incredibly grateful for everything. Ha, was she a bugger. Honestly, getting a smile out of her would be like getting her to eat something; her entire mouth was a no-fly zone.

“Is it better?” she asked carelessly.

“Is he better?” demanded Frédéric, as if he was going to hold all of the chocolate hostage until he knew.

Under Alice’s enormous sunglasses, she looked very drawn.

“He is…he is a little better,” she admitted. “Well, he is no worse. And the stents appear to have taken and, well…” Her lip curled slightly. “Every day he loses a little weight. But I wish…” She looked away. “I wish he would wake up and say something, dammit.”

This sounded not ideal. I knew a little bit myself about waking up in the hospital, and I knew, courtesy of Dr. Ed, that the quicker you managed to do so, the better it was all around. I was suddenly tempted to ring Dr. Ed, find out if that friendly manner was all it was supposed to be. But I didn’t, of course; he wouldn’t have remembered my name.

“What does his doctor say?” I said.

“Why, are you a professional?” snapped Alice. Every time I gave her a bit of credit for being under stress, she managed to use up every bit of it and eat into my meager reserves of respect even more.

“No,” I said. “But I’ve spent a lot of time in the hospital.”

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked bluntly. Everyone was staring at me.

“Nothing, it doesn’t matter,” I said quickly. I didn’t like people bringing up my hilarious comedy injury. It hadn’t been the least bit funny to me.

Alice sighed. “She says, ‘Wait and see, Madame, wait and see,’ as if I have the least option to do anything else. Then she goes off to lunch.” She glanced around. “Anyway. As long as you are managing not to make a complete disaster going on here, I suppose this is a relief.”

She stalked off.

Frédéric, whose jolly manner was nearly restored and who was almost making up in flirting with female clients what Thierry used to do in charming them, said, “That was the nicest she’s ever been to us.”

- - -

I, on the other hand, was utterly at the end of my tether, exhausted by the end of the day. News of Thierry’s illness had made the papers, which just made us busier than ever, which struck me as counterintuitive, but nonetheless, there were a lot of happy-looking tourist children standing outside, and even when Frédéric abruptly told people that today they had a choice of orange or orange, everyone seemed to take that as an acceptably French thing to say.

I scrubbed and cleaned and cooked and mixed—although Benoît too helped me immeasurably and silently in the back of the greenhouse—and by 7:00 p.m. felt ready to collapse into bed. If Sami was holding an impromptu masked ball or something, I was going to kill him.

I was last to leave, locking up with the heavy metal key in the large bolt grille—it looked rather like the front cover of a huge old-fashioned lift—when I heard the scooter roar up right behind me. I didn’t pay it any attention at first—they were ten a penny around here—but it came to a stop right behind me.

“Merde,” came a gravelly voice.

I turned around. Laurent was standing there, looking wild-eyed. I turned back again. I was sick of him and his stupid feud with a man lying unconscious in a hospital bed.

“Has everyone gone?”

“Yes,” I said, as sarcastically as possible. “Everyone has gone. Everyone important has gone.”

He blinked a couple of times as I turned back around to finish closing up.

“Oh,” he said. “Only…only…he’s woken up.”

I turned around. Even though I was utterly exhausted, and filthy, and cross to see Laurent, I couldn’t help it; a huge grin split my face.

“Truly!”

“Truly. He’s not saying much, but he’s swearing and demanding beignets.”

“Oh! Well. That is brilliant!”

“We’re not out of the woods,” he said gravely. “Well, that’s what M. le Médecin keeps saying. But he looks…he looks a lot less gray, like a dead elephant.”