The Other Side of Stars

Extract from January’s Great Read:The Other Side of Starsby Clemency Burton-Hill.

He had gone to the gala performance of Phedre at the Theatre du Chalet as part of a British Embassy delegation; he couldn’t even remember now what the occasion had been. A fuss had been made before the curtain went up, though, because due to the indisposition of the famous star, a relatively unknown young actress was stepping in at the last minute to play the title role. People had felt cheated, but in the event the girl has been remarkable.

At that point in his life, Oliver had known almost nothing about the theatre – being more used to observing politicians at the dispatch box. But he had grasped as much. There had been a dinner in the Elysee Palace afterwards, and this Eve Lacloche had been invited with some of her fellow cast. Although her physical loveliness was the most obvious thing about her, it had become increasingly apparent, as the evening wore on and she had held her own in a room full of male statesmen and diplomats, that she was not just a pretty face, But while Oliver’s colleagues had fallen over themselves to try and catch her attention with garrulous witticisms and verbal one-upmanship, the twenty-seven-year-old Oliver had found himself tongue-tied whenever he tried to open his mouth.

And yet, over the course of the dinner, he had gradually become aware that a pair of beautiful green eyes were truning towards him with increasing regularity. And the feeling of being looked at, even just looked at by this creature had sent a peculiar thrill through him. Although he has had a number of girlfriends at Oxford and Sandhurst, and was, to the ribbing of his mates in the embassy, apparently quite popular with the prettiest girls in Paris, it was something inexplicable and almost unsettling that Oliver felt stir within him as the girl threw her dark head and laughed, then cast her dizzying green gaze on him before asking him a question across the table.

‘What about you, Monsieur?” she was saying, her English husky and almost comically sexy. ‘Where do you stand on the issue? I hear you are quite the rising star of the British Embassy here,’ There were good-natured jeers from down the table and Oliver blushed hotly. Taking a great slug of Dutch courage in the form of vintage Bordeaux on offer, he told himself to pull himself to-bloody-gether and nodded at the sommelier for a refill.

‘Pas de tout’, Mademoiselle Lacloche,’ he declared – he’d checked her place card instinctively to make sure she was indeed, still ‘mademoiselle’, and had been absurdly (he recognised) relived to discover she was.

‘I believe you are the only star in this room.’ He smiled, she smiled, and at that moment a bolt of electricity had passed across the table between them, ‘As for where I stand on the issue of Anglo-French trade relations…’

Was that the moment? Oliver, on the plane, decades later, wondered again. Was it really then, just an hour or two after they had first set eyes on each other, that the ‘fate’, in which they had first set eyes on each other, that the ‘fate’, in which his late wife has always placed such child-like trust, had swooped down to intervene? Redirecting ther formerly independent lives on a collision course towards each other, eternally intertwining their futures? He couldn’t imagine how he’d answered Eve’s question bow, but he recalled being wildly grateful to the Bordeaux for helping to invest, he hoped, his response with a dash of flair: certainly she had looked suitably impressed, eyes glittering, mouth twitching into its perfect smile.

Eve Lacloche had stared across the table at him under those sooty lashes as everyone else continued to chatter around them; and Oliver Lanter, buoyed up with all the wine and the candlelight and the sumptuous surroundings and the whatever-the-hell-it-was that was happening inside him, had stared back at her for longer than was perhaps polite in such company.

When the meal had drawn to a close in the early hours and the guests were making their way down the grandiose staircase towards the exit, Oliver heard Eve, a few steps in front of him, graciously telling one of the other side of the town, and that she would be ‘completley fine’ to get a taxi on her own. Despite this, when he managed to bump into her at the cloakroom a few moments later and was helping her on with a little black jacket over a pretty party dress, he found himself asking, impetuously:

‘Mademoiselle Lacloche, might I get you a taxi?’

Eve had turned to him then, a strand of hair that had escaped from her chignon glancing across her forehead, and Oliver had felt his insides tumble at the knowledge that something momentous had cooured to him this evening; that he would, perhaps, never be the same again.

‘Ou allez-vous, Monsieur Olivier?’

‘Oh, no – I mean, I’ll put you in your own cab…’ He trailed off. ‘Where am I going?’

“Oui, Monsieur Olivier. Ou allez-vous?’

‘I’m, er, going back to my apartment. On Avenue de Friedland,’ he managed.

‘Cest parfait! She had laughed. ‘I live nearby. I will come with you.’