It was morning. A cold frost had coated the streets of Paris overnight, but, despite the plummeting temperatures, a bright blue cloudless sky spelled wintry sunshine to come.
Ethan had skipped into the restaurant half an hour ago and was delighted to see the festiveness coming together in the flagship hotel. There were wreaths of blue and silver flowers hanging from every available space that wasn’t taken up by their traditional artwork, there were ornate posies of icy branches and royal blue pearls in small glass vases on every table and there was a decorated tree in reception, thankfully slightly smaller than the one he had removed to the Tour Eiffel hotel.
Sitting at a table for four, he took a sip of his black coffee almost giddy with excitement. He was back in control. Thanks to a penguin. Laughing quietly to himself, he replayed in his mind the video he had filmed of the chaos ensuing after Louis had found Pepe in his bedroom last night. He supposed some might think it juvenile to pay one of the maids to let the animal in, then capture Louis’s distress for Ethan’s personal viewing pleasure but… it felt good. Whatever scheme Louis and Silvie had cooked up between them with regard to the hotels, it would not hurt to have his nemesis feeling wrong-footed from the outset. And, Ethan would get to see just how out-of-sorts Louis was this morning, as Silvie had arranged this breakfast get-together.
‘Bonjour, Monsieur Bouchard.’
Ethan looked up from his croissant and coffee and smiled at Noel.
‘Bonjour, Noel. It is a beautiful day to be alive, non?’
Noel looked a little confused as if he was trying to decide if Ethan’s words were a sarcastic prelude to an official warning.
Ethan laughed. ‘What is wrong? This hotel is looking great! The Tour Eiffel hotel is looking great! The others all have plans to implement this week…’
‘You are too full of cheer,’ Noel admitted. ‘It makes me uneasy.’
‘Well, my friend,’ Ethan said, raising his coffee cup in the air, ‘perhaps it is something for you to get used to. I intend to fully embrace the season this year and that is to begin with smiles on the faces of all Perfect Paris employees. But, as with every good business, the management shall take the lead.’ Ethan cleared his throat, then, adjusting the lapels of his suit jacket, he smiled wide, holding it then elongating it until he felt like he was impersonating The Joker.
‘If you were not my boss, I would tell you that that was terrifying,’ Noel replied, deadpan.
‘You can tell me,’ Ethan said, taking a drink of his coffee. ‘I will take it only as a compliment.’ He watched Noel wrap another brightly coloured scarf around his neck and fasten his coat as if he was leaving. ‘What are you doing? Are you going somewhere?’
‘That is why I am here. To tell you I have been drawn away on other business this morning.’
Drawn away on other business? ‘What?’ Ethan asked. ‘Drawn away by who?’
‘Madame Durand. She has VIP guests staying at Tour Eiffel she wants me to take on a tour today.’
Ethan felt the first turn in his good humour. He was the manager. What his staff did – particularly his right-hand man – was down to him, not Silvie. And who were these VIP guests? Could it be someone they were bringing in to replace him. A hotel manager out of the family who would be only too willing to obey Louis’s orders? Ferne had never wanted the hotels to be without family management overseeing the core of the chain. Yet again, his best friend’s ethos was being challenged now she was out of the picture.
‘Was there something you needed me to do?’ Noel asked.
‘I wanted to go through the accounts with you.’ Ethan hadn’t exactly planned for that, but it would be a good idea to get Noel’s take on where they could be saving a little more or spending a little less.
‘Well, I told Madame Durand, quite politely, how much I had on my list of things to achieve today, but she was insistent that I do this instead. Very insistent, in fact,’ Noel elaborated.
The coffee on Ethan’s tongue felt completely bitter now. Again, it felt like he was being played.
‘I should go,’ Noel said. ‘You can call me if you require anything urgent, but I would prefer it if you did not. Sometimes I can completely lose my flow on a tour when that happens and if these guests are important to the hotel then…’
‘You go,’ Ethan replied, more than a little put out. ‘I will ring the accountant if I need to.’ He watched Noel leave the restaurant and then pushed his croissant away from him. His appetite was completely lost.
He didn’t have long to mope however as Silvie and Louis were being greeted by the maître d’ at the door. He sat a little taller in his chair and tried to resurrect some of the simple triumph he had felt after watching the video of Pepe. His two guests were walking swiftly. There were no smiles on their faces. Ethan quickly got to his feet, not liking the feel of this approach.
‘Bonjour, Silvie. Bonjour, Louis. Welcome back to Paris!’ Ethan stuck his hand out to Ferne’s brother.
‘Sit down, Ethan,’ Silvie ordered.
He hesitated, wondering whether to obey or not. He remained standing but retracted his arm now the handshake wasn’t forthcoming.
‘Is something wrong?’ Ethan asked. It was then, as the words left his mouth that he took a better look at Louis. The man’s complexion was covered in harsh red welts, his eyes glazed, one of them a little closed like he had done a few rounds with Anthony Joshua. What had happened to him?
‘Of course there is something wrong!’ Silvie snapped. ‘Look at Louis.’
Ethan didn’t want to look at Louis. He’d rather Louis was where he should be – on the other side of a very large body of water. He carried on with his visual inspection though, his brain desperately attempting to come up with something to say that would sound concerned and completely innocent. Because this – whatever it was – couldn’t be because of a penguin, could it?
‘Mon Dieu! Pickpockets are getting more and more violent these days,’ Ethan said in sober tones. ‘Did they get away with anything?’
‘Ethan, this is not—’ Silvie started.
‘No,’ Louis interrupted, his face a picture of fury. ‘They did not get away with anything. Nor will they while I am here.’
The man couldn’t have been clearer. Louis knew what he had done. Ethan couldn’t explain the state of the guy’s face, but Louis knew that the penguin arriving in his suite had been down to him. Ethan continued quickly. ‘We thought about putting notices up to warn the customers but you do not want to scare people. Customers in fear of having their valuables taken are not customers who will linger and relax over the cocktail menu.’
‘This is an allergic reaction,’ Silvie said, finally sinking into a dining chair as if the weight of the world was hanging from the beaded pearls at her neck. ‘A severe allergic reaction.’
‘Oh?’ Ethan exclaimed in his best slightly surprised voice. He didn’t want to ham it up too much. He settled for ‘faintly astonished’ rather than ‘reaction to a shock pregnancy’.
‘Someone put a penguin in Louis’s room.’
‘A what?’ Maybe pretending he didn’t even know what a penguin was a little over the top.
‘You know exactly what my mother is talking about.’
Louis’s face was reddening even more considerably now, but Ethan suspected that was down to anger rather than a second strain of the reaction.
‘Sit down, Louis,’ Ethan urged. ‘Take the weight off your feet. Ease your…’ He paused briefly. ‘Boils.’
‘This was you!’ Louis said. ‘I know it was you!’ He wasn’t sitting down and he was pointing now. Ethan stood his ground, trying to look a little overwhelmed by the reaction.
‘You knew that I was allergic to penguins,’ Louis continued, ‘So you arranged for one as a welcome committee.’
Ethan put a hand to his throat and set his face to aggrieved. ‘I do not know what you mean.’
‘You came,’ Louis said. ‘Back then, that day we all went to the zoo as a family. We fed the penguins and then…’ He stopped talking like the topic of conversation was becoming too much for him.
‘Then?’ Ethan urged. He didn’t remember Louis being allergic to the creatures, only that he had run away from them, slipping and sliding on the ice, his gloved hands over his ears. Ethan had laughed. Ferne had laughed too. Until Silvie had told them both to stop. That had been a little after Monsieur Durand had died. At that time, the laughs were few and far between. Pierre Durand had been tough but fair. The man had a hard exterior that was instantly off-putting, but when someone had earned his trust he had slowly let himself ease open like an obedient clam. Ethan couldn’t say, even now, looking back, that Pierre had ever welcomed him, but the man had seemed to accept his presence – and Ferne’s desire for it – in a way Louis never had. Ferne’s father had been motivated by money, exactly like his son. Retiring from his fast-paced career running his executive chauffeur service hadn’t suited him and the moment he tried to relax, switch off, embrace this slower pace of life, a heart attack had claimed him.
‘You did this,’ Louis repeated. ‘I know you did.’
Ethan scoffed, shaking his head. ‘Come on, Louis. I am twenty-eight years old. You speak of such childish things.’
‘Childish things that you would commit! Like you always have! You are like… Peter Pan!’ Louis snapped.
‘OK,’ Silvie broke in. ‘That is enough. Quite enough.’ She raised a hand, taking the fabric of Louis’s coat between her fingers and encouraging him to sit down.
‘Well,’ Ethan began, dropping into a chair too, ‘I had no idea the meeting was to begin this way. Compared to a fairy-tale character. How very grown up.’ He straightened his waistcoat. ‘I was thinking we were getting together to establish plans for Christmas at the hotels. You will see I have made a start and—’
‘We are here for that,’ Silvie agreed.
‘But it is more,’ Louis piped up, reaching for the coffee pot and squinting his good eye in an attempt to focus on the pouring.
‘Louis,’ Silvie said. ‘Let us order some breakfast and have a little coffee first.’
‘So sentimental,’ Louis whispered, shaking his head. ‘That has always been to your detriment, Mother. Father always said that business must be done with the brain and the brain should never be connected to the heart.’
Ethan felt like he was watching rather than participating now. That Silvie and Louis were privy to something he did not know about. And he did not like that. ‘What is going on?’ He looked from Silvie to Louis then back again. Silvie opened her lips, but it was Louis who voiced the next words.
‘I told my mother that I am here to help shape the future of Perfect Paris but, well, I lied,’ Louis said, full of nonchalance.
‘Louis,’ Silvie attempted to interrupt. ‘We need to talk about this a lot more before anything is firmly decided.’
‘No, Mother, we need to make decisions to secure your comfortable retirement.’
Now Ethan really disliked this turn in conversation and, again, he felt like the bystander, the fly on the wall, the child at the top of the stairs at the orphanage listening to the beatings. He pushed his teeth into his tongue and willed the iron taste of blood on his taste buds. How much damage to Louis would two penguins have done?
‘We touched on this at our lunch last week, Ethan,’ Silvie said softly, leaning forward a little as if to draw his attention away from Louis for a second. ‘If you had stayed I would have explained further but—’
‘You told me at lunch,’ Ethan began, the blood rushing through him powering every word, ‘that you were meeting the person who has Ferne’s kidney.’ He could barely bring himself to say the sentence, rage threatening to consume him. ‘After that announcement, I am afraid that there was nothing else I wanted to hear.’
‘Ethan, I—’ Silvie started.
‘We’re going to be selling the brand, Ethan,’ Louis said bluntly. ‘By the beginning of next year, I want all the hotels gone.’