THE QUACK

Let me read for you! Skip introduction 4:12

When New-Boyfriend-Roman suggested a weekend away in Paris, I had two voices in my head.

One said, ‘Maybe it’s too soon to go on holiday. It’s only been a few months. Holidays are notorious for revealing details about a partner. What if he insists on getting a guidebook and spews out facts about every building? What if he brings a blow-up pillow for the Eurostar? What if he says words really loudly and slowly to the French waiters? “I WANT THE BRR-EEAAAADD. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”‘

The other voice said, ‘Oh-La-La, Mary. Stop overthinking and go to Paris.’

I listened to the latter. 

We took the Eurostar on Friday night. I came armed with a picnic; rosemary nuts and a travel-friendly bottle of rosé. Roman arrived with more luggage than he had ever brought on holiday.

‘I’ve never had to bring my posh shoes abroad before,’ he said.

We got to our hotel late and barged into the room (not through sexual tension, more so because we are over 30 and tired). We paused in front of the bed, where there was a display of red and white balloons.

‘Um, Roman, did you order balloons for the room?’ I asked. I had seen towels shaped as swans, but balloons, if anything, seemed impractical.

Roman seemed frazzled. ‘I asked for champagne on arrival and perhaps some decorations, but I didn’t know they meant balloons. I thought they meant…’

‘Towels shaped as swans,’ we said at the same time.

For the remainder of the weekend, the balloons floated around the carpet, in the way, like tiny pets. Neither of us had the heart to pop them.

We had, of course, written a to-do list for our trip. (We bonded over our love of lists.) Roman wanted to show me his favorite paintings. So off we went, hand in hand, on a crisp autumn day through the city. We arrived at the Musée d’Orsay, where there was a long queue snaking around the barriers, down the steps, and around the corner.

‘Well, at least we tried,’ I said, turning away. Roman pulled me back.

‘Where are you going?’ he asked, as if it wasn’t obvious.

‘There’s a queue.’

‘So?’

‘Well, it means we will have to wait a long time…’

‘And? It will be worth it. Come on!’

It wasn’t that I was bad at queuing. I just had my limits, and that queue at the Musée d’Orsay was an anaconda. Roman, though, was unfazed by it. One of our differences had been uncovered. I did not want to scare him off with my inner prima donna goblin (yet), so I queued.

Once we were inside, Roman marched us straight to his favourite painting, and then we some impressions of statues.

“See, it was worth the wait, wasn’t it?” Roman chirped as we left the museum.

Now that it was established that we were a couple who queud, there was no stopping Roman. We spent the next morning freezing our bottoms off, outside Musée de l’Orangerie. There was a family in front of us with three kids under the age of eight, fighting with sticks. Roman saw them as cute; I saw them as three extra people I had to wait behind. It’s not like they were going to go back to their friends and brag about how wonderful it was to see Monet’s Water Lilies.

(It was pretty wonderful to see Monet’s Water Lilies.)

I made the mistake of telling Roman that I hadn’t been inside Notre-Dame, so he insisted on joining the never-ending queue for that. And then the next morning, we were sitting in a café, sipping our black coffee and admiring the view of the Sacré-Cœur.

‘Have you ever been inside?’ he asked.

‘Y…yes,’ I lied. 

He tilted his head, unconvinced. It’s early days, but he was familiar with my fibbing face.

‘Right.’ He put down his coffee mug. ‘We’re going in.’

‘Noooo…’

He walked his new petty girlfriend up the steps to the Sacre-Coeur. To keep me entertained, he told me about a scene in John Wick where Keanu Reeves fought on the stairs we were climbing.

 

‘And then he fell all the way down, and the whole cinema was like…’

We got to the top.

Of course, everyone in the city seemed to be there. A long, long line roped around the landmark. And then it began to rain. Phew, nobody queues in the rain, I thought.

‘Come on,’ said Roman.

Oh, they do.

Roman took us to the back of the line. We huddled under a brolly as we shuffled toward the entrance. And this could have been romantic, if I wasn’t whining the entire time.

Once again, we went inside, and as we left, Roman said, ‘See, it was all worth it.’

I was sensing a pattern.

The other quirk (which Roman knew about but hadn’t appreciated how quirky it was until we set foot in France) was the plant-based diet I insisted on following. It’s easy in London; most menus have some sort of flavoured cauliflower or quinoa shaped into a burger. French chefs, though, don’t want to lower themselves to that level.

In the weeks leading up to the trip, we spent hours scanning menus on TripAdvisor. Even the vegetable dishes had some cheese snuck in there. We managed to find two restaurants: one called Hébé and the other, La Pérouse. La Perouse was dimly lit with patterned red tablecloths; there was a piano player, and an intimidating wine list that had as many pages as a dictionary. One bottle went for 30,000 Euros. When the sommelier returned to take our order, we asked for their ‘house-iest of house rosé, please.’

The third restaurant was left for me to find. After hours of scrolling through TripAdvisor, I thought I found one in the city centre, which could cater for vegans and normal people. Not their words.

On arrival, it seemed pleasant, but quiet. Very quiet. There was one other table with two people on. As we ate our starters, the other table paid and left. Don’t leave us!! For the rest of the meal, we wished for someone to come in – anyone. A single noise and we’d shoot our heads round at the door. False alarm. We kept our voices low, aware that our two waiters could hear our conversation. 

‘So, Roman,’ I whispered. ‘If you could meet any celebrity, who would it be and what would you say to them?’

‘Tom Cruise. I’d say, thanks for the films,’ he whispered back.

I finished off my plate of grapes. (It was the plant-based version of the raisin crumble.) We got the bill.

 ‘He booked the restaurant out for you,’ the waiter joked and laughed. His laugh echoed.

On the last morning, we visited the Eiffel Tower.

‘Have you been to the top?’ Roman asked.

‘Yes!’ I said, excited, because it was the only thing I had actually done before. I went up with my business studies teacher on a school trip. ‘But if you want to go up to the top …I’m happy to queue,’ I said. I saw the big old queue and gulped.

‘Nah. I’ve already been up there. Twice. Besides, it’s nice to admire it from the outside.’

Thank god.

We walked back to the hotel to collect our bags. Had we survived our first romantic getaway? I was worrying that I had become a little less appealing to Roman during our time away. I had been concerned about discovering unattractive details about him on our trip, but, upon reflection, it was I who was the pathetic queuer, and it was my millennial dietary requirements which resulted in us sitting in that dead restaurant on our final night in Paris.

‘You had a good time, right?’ I asked.

At that moment, an elegant, elderly woman with a neck scarf stopped us and started speaking in French.

‘Sorry, we speak English,’ Roman said.

‘Oh,’ the lady said, and then began to speak in broken English. ‘Never separate!’ She nodded at us to check that we understood her instructions. We nodded back, and she walked away.

I took that as a sign that we had survived the romantic getaway.

PREORDER AMY ELMAN DOESN’T FEEL SEXY