Belle - Lesley Pearse [162]
As she looked out of the carriage window at the flat, bare fields she was reminded of a similar view in the hospital house where she’d been in Paris. She wondered whether the French police would help her get back to England if she explained to them what had happened to her.
Something told her that wasn’t a good idea. Hadn’t she learned yet that she couldn’t trust anyone?
Chapter Twenty-seven
The streets around the Gare de Lyon station in Paris were dimly lit and crowded with people who all seemed to be in a tearing hurry. It was dirty, noisy and smelly, much worse than Marseille, and Belle felt threatened by every man who glanced at her. On top of that it was very cold and starting to rain. There were hotels everywhere she looked, but there was nothing to say which were good, bad, expensive, cheap, safe or dangerous, for they were all equally shabby. She was very aware of her evening dress beneath her coat, and her shoes, designed to be worn indoors, were not suitable for traipsing along city streets. She was also hungry and very thirsty.
This wasn’t the Paris of her imagination, with wide, tree-lined boulevards, grand buildings, ornate fountains and beautiful shops and stylish restaurants. Everywhere was so grey and dreary, and it brought back the memory that this was the city where she had been raped by five men.
How could she have expected anything good to happen to her here?
She came to a restaurant and stopped to look in the window. It was as cheerless as all the others but it was very busy. Most of the customers looked like office workers, so she thought it might be good value for money.
Belle took a seat at a table with two girls who weren’t much older than her. They were neatly but plainly dressed, their hair scraped back from their faces. She smiled at them, and said bonsoir. They greeted her too, but returned to their conversation.
The menu meant nothing to Belle, so when the waitress came for her order she pointed to what looked like a beef stew on one of the girls’ plates. ‘S’il vous plaît,’ she said with a smile. The waitress frowned. ‘Je ne parle bien français,’ Belle added, feeling proud of herself for remembering that phrase.
As the waitress walked away, one of the girls asked if Belle was English. She nodded.
‘You one time in France?’ the girl asked.
‘Oui,’ Belle said, relieved the girl spoke English, even if not very well. ‘I’m scared because I don’t know which hotel to go to.’
The two girls looked at each other and then gabbled away in French together. ‘You want clean hotel, not too much francs?’ the first girl, the one with the darker hair, asked her.
Belle nodded.
The two girls consulted each other, then the darker one pulled a small notebook out of her handbag, tore out a page and scribbled on it with a pencil.
‘This one good,’ she said, handing it to Belle. ‘Not be scared.’
She had written Hôtel Mirabeau, rue Parrott, and drawn a rough map to show it was in the street which ran roughly behind the one they were in. She smiled at Belle. ‘Bonne chance,’ she said.
The Hôtel Mirabeau was as tired and shabby-looking as everywhere else. If it hadn’t been for a peeling sign swinging above the front door, Belle wouldn’t have noticed it as it was in the middle of a terrace, squeezed in between a bakery shop and a boot repairer’s. But it was too cold on the street to look further afield, and her feet hurt too, so she walked up the three steps, pushed open the heavy door and entered.
The front door opened directly into a small sitting-area-cum-hall with a reception desk. Belle stood there looking around her for a moment or two before ringing the bell on the desk. The room, and the staircase which led off from it, had dark red paper on the walls, which made it appear cosy, and made a good backdrop for the large collection of paintings hanging there. They were all farming scenes: men reaping corn with a scythe, men