She thought of all this in the split second it took to lift her head.
“I will,” she said, returning Mme. LeGuarde’s steady gaze. “I will have good memories.”
- - -
Thierry staggered back and many of the passersby stopped and cleared a space; I grabbed his arm, and thankfully a strong-looking man with a beard helped me lower him to the ground, as he made horrible sounds. I pulled out my phone and stabbed 999 over and over again, but it didn’t go through, and I felt as if I was in a horrible nightmare. The bearded man took my phone and showed me how to dial 112 instead. It hadn’t even occurred to me that the emergency number might be different, but when the operator answered in French, I suddenly found myself struck completely dumb and unable to talk. Thankfully the man took the phone back from me and barked our location into the mouthpiece.
Behind me, a woman who introduced herself as a nurse had put a scarf under Thierry’s head; he now appeared to have lost consciousness. I crouched down and held his hand, whispering in English that everything was going to be all right, even though I didn’t know whether it would be at all. Someone came along and shouted “Thierry Girard”—it wasn’t till much later I thought that only in Paris would someone recognize a chocolate maker in the street—and many other people stopped after that and looked concerned and murmured to each other. Somebody took out a phone, and the man with the beard growled and called them a filthy name till they sidled away, head down. The nurse, thank God, climbed onto him and started doing chest compressions. I swore with everything I had in me that I was going to attend a St. John’s Ambulance course, just like they’d suggested every year in the factory. The idea of having to give fake mouth to mouth to Mr. Asten, the first aider, was so repulsive we had just laughed and scoffed every time it had come up. I vowed now that I would take it and make everyone else do it too, just as long as…as long as he was all right. He had to be all right.
Seconds or minutes later, thank God, I heard the ambulance. The nurse had told us to hang on, that he was breathing and that the guys who were coming would know a lot better than us, and sure enough they jumped out. Then they looked at Thierry and looked at the stretcher and shook their heads and there was some conversation. I still felt trapped in a nightmare, shouting at them to get him in, as they made increasingly clear that they couldn’t get him onto it.
Finally, one of the paramedics, taking over for the nurse, and the man with the beard called six strong-looking men out of the crowd. They wheeled the stretcher back into the ambulance and secured it there, then the men altogether carefully lifted Thierry’s enormous bulk inside, as I sobbed with relief and felt cross that Alice and Laurent between them hadn’t done something, hadn’t insisted on him curbing his appetites and his greed. Then I remembered that I myself that morning had watched him eat four cream buns and most of a loaf of bread and a glass of cider and smoke three cigarettes. I could no more have told him not to than fly to the moon.
The paramedic motioned me inside, and I was torn. I needed to get back to the shop to tell everyone what had happened and—oh God—contact Laurent. I didn’t even have his telephone number; he’d zoomed off into the night without warning. But of course I had to go with him. Someone had to.
- - -
The smell of hospitals doesn’t seem to change so much from country to country. The paramedics called ahead, and when we got there, they had a much larger stretcher brought down from somewhere already. I trailed along uselessly behind, then got sidelined by an administrator who needed all his insurance details, none of which, of course, I had. I didn’t even realize the medical system was different here, that you couldn’t just turn up. And there was nothing in my phone, not even the number of the shop. The administrator made it entirely plain and clear that I was a someone simply trying her luck who had no business snarling up her morning with my boss’s inconvenient heart attacks and I was fervently thankful that, despite its faults, the National Health Service would just fix you without shouting at you for paperwork first. Suddenly I became terrified they were going to ask for a credit card, until finally one of the nurses brought in his wallet, which she went through with practiced ease until she found a green card that was obviously what she was looking for. She then gave me the glad eye, as if I’d known all this and had been keeping it from her.
And after that, there wasn’t much to do but go in search of an Internet connection or a phone book or anything that could get me in touch with the shop. Except I didn’t want to travel too far from Thierry’s side in case something happened or he simply needed a hand to hold. From time to time, I would dart into a corridor in search of a phone box, as every so often a young doctor would come out and in polite and slow English ask me if I knew his blood type or whether he was diabetic or whether I could sign a consent form. It was horrible; I had no idea of the number for directory inquiries, and after a few stabs at it, I sighed and nearly threw the phone down, as it dropped another bar and came close to running out of charge.
Eventually, there was only one thing I could think of. I called.
- - -
Claire sounded half asleep and groggy when she picked up her home phone. It was a relief though, firstly that she was there, and secondly that she was obviously getting some sleep. At times in the treatment, she couldn’t sleep at all.
“Anna!” she said, clearly delighted to hear from me. “How are things? I’ve been thinking about you! How are you getting on? How are you settling in?”
I made a mental note to write her a long—very long—email as soon as I had the time, but right at that moment, I had no time.
“I’ll tell you everything,” I said quickly, “but right now I’m in a bit of a tight spot and first of all I need to ask you something really quickly and then I’ll call you back, okay?”
“Well, yes, all right,” she said, sounding a bit taken aback. “Is everything all right?”
“I’ll call you later,” I said. “But please, can I ask you—do you know the shop telephone number? Uhm, I’ve come out without it. Do you have any way you could track it down?”
There wasn’t even a moment’s pause. Not a second.
“54-67-89-12-15,” she rattled off.
I couldn’t hang up straightaway.
“You know it by heart?” I said.