The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris Read Online Free PDF

just asked one, and then he gave me a smile and a wink—I have no idea what the wink was, maybe it was his “style”—and floated on to sit on Claire’s bed.
    It was time to go home. After dreaming of being set free for so long, I suddenly realized I didn’t actually want to go. Or rather, that it would be weird to lose the institutionalized days of drugs and meals and physio and not having to focus on anything else but getting better.
    Now I had to face the world again and find a new job. It was a feature of the settlement that I didn’t go back to Braders, presumably in case I had another one-in-a-million freak accident. If anything, I would have thought I’d have been a safer bet than other people, statistically speaking.
    And I was going to miss Claire. We’d chatted more and more in French, to the annoyance of almost everyone, and it was truly the one good thing in my life, demonstrating that I could learn something, that I had a new skill. Everything else was just dread. There weren’t any jobs, I knew that much. Cath said I could come and sweep up in the hairdressing salon, but that paid about absolutely nothing, and I wasn’t that good at bending down without falling over yet. On the upside, I’d lost about fifteen pounds. That was the only upside. But I wouldn’t recommend my method of losing the weight.
    I told Claire about my worries, and she looked pensive.
    â€œI’ve been thinking,” she said.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œWell,” she said, “I knew…I knew someone in Paris who worked in chocolate. It was a long time ago though. I don’t know what he’s doing now.”
    â€œOoh,” I said. “A young flirtation?”
    Her thin face took on a little color.
    â€œI don’t think that’s any of your business.”
    â€œWhere you madly in loooove?”
    We’d gotten to know each other well enough that I could tease her, but she could still get a teacherly glint in her eye. She did so now.
    â€œHe is not very good at writing letters,” she mused, glancing out the window. “But I will try. I shall ask Ricky to use that email thingy when he comes. You can find anyone these days, can’t you?”
    â€œYou can,” I said. “But if he’s a friend of yours, why haven’t you gone back to Paris for so long?”
    Claire’s lips pursed.
    â€œWell, I was busy raising a family. I had a job. I couldn’t just jump on a plane whenever I felt like it.”
    â€œHmm,” I said, suspicious. She was very touchy all of a sudden.
    â€œYou could though,” said Claire. “You can do whatever you like.”
    I laughed. “I don’t think so. Hopalong Cassidy, that’s me.”
    - - -
    I realized later that the impact—the emotional impact—of the accident didn’t really hit until I went back home to Mum and Dad’s. In the hospital I’d been, well, special, I suppose. I’d gotten flowers and gifts and was the center of everyone’s attention, and people brought me drugs and asked after me, and even though it was kind of horrible, I was being taken care of.
    Home, though—it was just home. The boys clattering in late at night, grumbling because they had to share a room again; Mum fussing around, steadily predicting doom for my chances of finding another job and how they would cut disability living allowance, to which I said, “Don’t be stupid, I’m not disabled,” and we both looked at my crutches, and then she would sigh again. My face in the mirror: my pale blue eyes looked so tired, and my fairish hair, without its usual highlights by Cath, just looked colorless. I had lost weight, but because I hadn’t moved around at all, I just looked slack and saggy sometimes. I used to love putting makeup on to get ready for a night out, but it had been so long I’d kind of forgotten how, and the drugs had made my skin so