Lost in Paris by Elizabeth Thompson (ebook smartphone .txt) 📕

“Martin Gaynor? Sure I do. He’s an old British punk rocker.”

“I guess you could call him that.” She’s smiling like she has a secret she wants me to beg her to share.

“Okay, I’ll bite. Was Martin Gaynor one of the guys you followed on tour?”

“One of them,” Marla says. “Back in the day, he was the lead singer of The Squelching Wellies. I’ve been inside that house.” She taps the paper with a chipped red nail. “Well, once, anyway.”

“Maybe you should look up your old friend and say hello.”

I wasn’t being serious, but instantly I regret putting the idea out there. Since she’s been doing so well, I’m not sure it would be a good idea for her to go for a ride down groupie lane.

Would seeing Martin Gaynor, middle-aged bad-boy punk rocker, throw her off the straight-and-narrow path of rehabilitation?

“No, I don’t think so. He wouldn’t remember me. Back in those days, there were a lot of women.”

It’s not just the familiar words, a take on what she used to say to me when I’d ask about my father—There were a lot of men, Hannah—but also the wistful way she says them that makes me wonder.

“Is Martin Gaynor my father?” I ask as we step out of the building into the chilly afternoon.

“What?” Marla snaps. “No, Hannah. Don’t be ridiculous.”

She followed The Squelching Wellies for a summer and came home pregnant with me, and she admitted to having been inside the front man’s house. It’s as logical an assumption as one plus one equals two. But I’m not going to fight with her.

“You know what would be fun?” she asks.

I’m almost afraid to ask, but I do. “What would be fun?”

“Let’s go by his house.”

“Are you serious?”

She nods.

“Are you going to knock on the door and reintroduce yourself?”

“Of course not, smarty-pants. The last time I was there—well, the only time—it had more security than the White House. I want to go by and see it.”

“So, let me make sure I’m understanding this right. With all his money, Martin Gaynor still lives in the same house that he lived in when you two were teenagers?”

“It wasn’t that long ago, Hannah, and he’s a little bit older than I am. But even if he wasn’t, why would it be so odd for him to still live in the same home?”

“Because people who stay in the same houses—even if they’re magnificent mansions—are more the type to settle down than I imagine a young punk rocker who has suddenly come into a lot of money would be.”

“Obviously you haven’t seen the house, have you?”

“No, I haven’t. Someone else handles the celebrity home tours. I’ve never been on that one.”

Marla’s eyes sparkle. “It’s a great place. Maybe it’s time you got out of your comfort zone and tried something different. Let’s go by the house so you can see it.”

“Only if you’ll knock on the door.”

She purses her lips and tilts her head to the side. “Maybe I will. If we can figure out a way to sneak past the gates.”

As we take a cab to the Richmond Hill home in southwest London, I ask Marla what became of The Squelching Wellies.

She looks confused. “What do you mean?”

Help me out, Marla. I’m trying to make conversation.

“I mean, are they still a band? Do they still tour or release music or did they break up? I’ve heard of them in passing, but since punk rock was never really my scene, I don’t know much about them.”

Once she starts talking, she tells me more than I really wanted to know. Essentially the Wellies, who were originally from Wellington, were part of the early 1990s British music scene, and at the height of their popularity, they were on par with The Smiths.

“They were part of this new resurgence of punk music and it resonated with me and what I was going through at the time,” Marla says. “You know, it spoke to me. I wanted to rebel and basically their music became the soundtrack of my life. And then I got pregnant with you and things changed. The band broke up at some point, but that was after I stopped keeping track.” She shrugs and turns her head to stare out the window. In profile, she looks so wistful it makes me miss the glory days for her.

“Really?” I ask. “Even after following them around Europe, you just quit them? You didn’t even listen to their music?”

She turns back to me. “I had a kid. It wasn’t exactly lullaby music.”

I don’t challenge her on that—even though I’d bet she never played me any lullabies—and we ride in silence the rest of the way.

The house is as magnificent as Marla described, set closer to the main road than I expected and surrounded by a tall wrought-iron fence. Really, all you had to do was shimmy up the iron posts, avoid impaling yourself on the pointed finials, and drop down into the world of Martin Gaynor, punk rock sex god.

“You’ve really been inside this house?” I ask as we stand on the sidewalk peering through the bars of the gate at the yellow-stone, Italianate mansion. Its deep-set front door is flanked by twin white-trimmed bay windows that rise all the way to the second floor. To our backs is the summit of Richmond Hill. Between the summit and the house is a narrow one-way road, bordered by the sidewalk on which we’re standing.

From the front, the house doesn’t look very large, but I suspect what it lacks in width it makes up for in depth.

“It looks smaller than I remember.” There’s a dreamy quality to Marla’s words, as if she’s here in body, but her mind is somewhere in the past.

“What’s it like?”

She gives me a one-shoulder shrug. “It’s a big, fancy house. Probably exactly what you’re imagining.”

“I’m not really imagining anything. That’s why I’m asking you for details.”

“I’m sure it’s been remodeled after all this time.”

The air is damp. The