I Heart Paris
Lindsey Kelk
For Mabel, Kara, Joel and Chloe – hope you’re
not too ashamed of me when you’re old enough
to read this
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Acknowledgements
About the Author
By the Same Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
CHAPTER ONE
New York hadn’t even attempted to cool down in the three days that I’d been away. When my friend Erin had suggested we get away to her beach house for a long weekend, I almost threw myself out of her eighteenth-storey office window to get there quicker. But three days beside the seaside only made it harder to be back in the sticky city. I’d only walked two blocks to the subway and my heel had slipped into the melting, sludgy tarmac between the paving slabs three times already. Ick. It almost made me long for a wet summer Saturday in Wimbledon. Almost.
In this cloying heat, the only way I could cope was to wear as little clothing as possible whenever I had to be outside, and spend as much time worshipping at the altar of the air-conditioning unit as humanly possible. Today’s survival ensemble was pretty much nothing more than a really long pale pink vest from American Apparel and a bangle. The bangle was to show I had actually put some thought into getting dressed and hadn’t just wandered out in my underwear. Back in London, I would never, ever have left the house in something so skimpy, but it was just too hot to worry about bingo wings. When I left the house, I didn’t feel as if I’d forgotten to get dressed. Right now, I was one towelling headband away from the crazy lady that liked to sit outside the twenty-fourhour deli opposite my apartment in her dressing gown and bra.
Once I was safely on the air-conditioned train, I flailed around elegant as ever, hanging from the pole in the centre of the carriage and swapped my shoes for the ever-present flip-flops in my Marc Jacobs satchel. I thought back to the precious moment when the bag had come into my life. I had treasured it more than anything else I’d ever owned, I never put it on the floor, always checked that pens had their lids on, lip glosses weren’t leaking and there was no way on God’s green earth, I’d have ever put a pair of dirty street shoes in it. Rummaging around for my left flip-flop, I wanted to shed a little tear for the unravelled stitching and the used subway cards, crumpled napkins and dozens of half empty packs of chewing gum that now littered the lining. Classy.
