Escape to the French Chateau

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Fran and Penny dumped the boxes of truffle chocolates at the top of the cellar steps, tucking them behind the door which stood wide.

‘I bet the little sod is down here,’ Penny said, flicking a light switch. ‘Need to get it out before Beaufoy realises.’

The coolness of the cellar was palpable as they descended the steps. A welcome relief. Fran ran a hand across the roughness of the stone wall, the blocks were so cool they almost felt damp. They reached the base of the steps and flagstones spread out before them. Penny hit another light switch and the energy-saving bulbs flickered into life in their own time, gradually revealing rack upon rack of bottles.

Penny wrapped her hand around Fran’s forearm, pointing with the other. ‘Over there,’ she whispered.

Fran’s focus moved in the direction of Penny’s gesticulation, catching a glimpse of a familiar tail. Red was down here. They moved forward, but by the time they’d rounded the end of the rack of wines, he’d disappeared further into the maze of the cellar’s wine racks. Putting a finger to her lips to signify they should stay quiet, Penny gestured for Fran to head one way, her the other. Fran nodded and tiptoed along the flagstones.

The quicker they could find Red and get him safely out, the better. Fran didn’t want him suffering more misfortune if the wrong member of staff found him. She’d only known the cat for a matter of minutes, but she already felt responsible for his welfare. Inching forwards, she moved around the end of the rack, breath held in anticipation. Then she stopped. Grinned. Her shoulders relaxed by an inch or two and she crouched in front of the cat which sat, completely unperturbed, staring at her.

‘Here you are,’ Fran whispered. ‘Naughty boy. You mustn’t come down here, you’ll get into trouble.’

‘Mrrooouw.’ The sound was accusatory. If cats could raise their eyebrows, Red would be doing exactly that.

‘I’ll be in trouble too? For leaving the door open? Well, I suppose you might be right. Although I think you’ll be the one in the most trouble. After all, I didn’t realise you’d sneak in like this, did I?’

This time, Red allowed Fran to tickle his chin. Maybe it was the wonderfully soporific coolness of the space, or maybe the cat enjoyed a conversation. Either way, Fran edged onto her knees and was able to stroke the back of Red’s head, then work her fingers along his back. His coat was luxurious, soft to the touch like a plush fabric toy. But the cat was thin. Really thin. She could feel every knobble on his spine as her hand moved down its length.

She edged forwards, aiming to slip her hands around the cat and attempt to lift him, but before she could do so, Penny appeared around the end of the rack, and everyone startled.

Red leapt to his feet and shot off. Penny chased after him, hissing and clapping. She turned. ‘Come on – it’s heading in the right direction.’

‘I almost had hold of him …’

‘This is quicker,’ Penny said, clapping again. The cat headed for the steps like his tail was on fire and Fran felt a twinge of anger.

‘Stop it. Don’t frighten him.’ It was clearly too late for that. They took the stairs up from the cellar at a run, catching sight of the cat as he pelted for an open doorway and disappeared out into the bright sunlight.

‘Mischief managed,’ Penny said, closing the door with a decisive click. She checked her watch. ‘Right, let’s get the turndowns done.’

Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the fact that Fran, to be blunt, had become unused to this level of physical work. Or maybe it was the fact that Red was out there, somewhere, hungry and with his opinion of humans at rock bottom again. Whatever the reason, by the time dinner was being served in the chateau restaurant Fran’s mood had nosedived.

It had been on the tip of her tongue since they’d left the cellar to explain to Penny exactly who she was and why she should be being seated at one of the beautifully decked-out dining-room tables, not taking the flaming orders.

Twice she’d headed for Madame Beaufoy’s office, to explain the mix-up and ask to be shown to the room which would have been booked for her. It must be temptingly empty right now.

Something had stopped her from heading for the office, though. And the fact that she couldn’t nail what was stopping her had added to her dark mood.

Maybe it was simply that this whole scenario had been her own idea, and what did it say about her if she couldn’t even follow through with her own plan for more than a few hours?

Fran wondered how long they would hold that room for a guest who never showed up. If she was determined to see this plan through, she would need to email the hotel and cancel the booking.

Now dressed in a tight black blouse with matching short skirt, and – for the love of God in this heat – tights, she was in the dining room. Ironically, she had just delivered two bowls of celery soup to table three before she headed across to a group of men on table six who looked as though they might be ready to order. At last. They had been quick enough to order wine from the sommelier, she noticed, but having already been over to their table twice with a basket of bread with a selection of oils for dipping, and then with bottles of sparkling water, she had the feeling they were messing her about. If they knew what wines they wanted, it stood to reason they’d chosen them to match with their meal choices, didn’t it?

Maybe she should have waited for them to call her over, but with seven tables to watch, and table four almost ready for dessert, she wanted to get their orders into the kitchen.

‘Have you gentlemen decided yet?’ Fran laced her question with her largest, politest smile.

‘Have we?’ The loudest of the group glanced around, then turned to her. ‘I have. I’m having the scallops followed by the biggest steak you’ve got. Medium rare. And for the record … Gentlemen? I’ll take that as a compliment, but I’m not sure you should extend the label to the rest of this rabble.’ He grinned. A confident expression on a face Fran couldn’t deny was well structured.

Fran allowed herself a mental eye roll at his comment. ‘Sauté or dauphinoise potatoes?’

‘Chips. Not French fries. Big fat chips.’ He closed his menu and handed it to her. ‘Thanks.’

Fran took a breath, unsure how the request would be greeted in the kitchen. ‘Of course, sir.’

‘Johnny, what about you?’

As Fran turned her attention to the next man, she realised she recognised him. There was a flicker of a frown as he looked at her, whether because he also recognised her or because he was still in a bad mood, Fran had no idea. But it seemed to have become evident that he hadn’t been given the honeymoon suite on purpose. From their body language she could tell that the members of the group knew one another well, but it looked far more likely they were here on business. They definitely weren’t acting as though they were couples, or even here on holiday.

The guy – Johnny – recovered his expression and glanced again at the menu. ‘I’m going with an antipasti platter to start and then I might have the sole meunière. Would you recommend it?’

‘I think you’ll find everything from the Chateau des Champs d’Or kitchens will be exceptional, sir,’ she said, having to catch herself at the line she’d heard so many times, repeated across the globe in Wilding Holdings hotels.

‘OK, I’ll go for it. And unlike Noel, I’m more than happy to have sauté potatoes with that.’

‘Excellent choice.’ Fran smiled as she noted his request.

With the rest of their orders logged, Fran cleared dishes from table three promising to be back with dessert menus and headed for the kitchen. The pace was relentless. No sooner had she returned to the inferno of a kitchen, other dishes were ready for service. Ignoring the banging and clattering coming from the chefs, their voices raised in what seemed like a perpetual altercation of some kind, Fran scooped and turned, narrowly missing another of the wait staff coming the other way.

She took the starters for table six out in two batches, serving two delicate pots filled with rillette and melba toast to the other two men before bringing the antipasti for Johnny and the trio of scallops for Noel. As she lowered the scallops, one slid in the sauce, heading dangerously close to the rim and Fran jerked to keep it from falling into Noel’s lap as she set the bowl down.

‘That was a close call, I could have been wearing my dinner,’ Noel said, a touch too loudly. And as Fran walked away, he added, ‘Good job she’s cuter than hell, eh, boys?’ with enough volume for her to be able to hear. He started to laugh, and although she wanted to keep walking, to ignore him and not give him the satisfaction of having noticed, she glanced back. Noel was watching her, eyes dancing with amusement as he winked at her. And the others were laughing, too. Enjoying the moment. All except Johnny, who wore a different expression. Johnny seemed not to have registered the comment. Instead of finding amusement, he wore a look of distraction, as though his thoughts hovered far away from the dining room of the Chateau les Champs d’Or. As though none of them even existed.

Or maybe he hadn’t even heard the comment, and she was making too much out of the whole situation.

Either way, Fran took a breath and kept walking.

‘I take it you left your sense of humour on the plane,’ Noel said, waving his fork in Johnny’s direction to gain his attention. ‘Not that anyone need worry about it being big enough to be a trip hazard. Not known for the size of your sense of humour, are you, Johnny?’

While Noel waggled his eyebrows like he was having some kind of a seizure, Johnny carefully cut at one of the pieces of cured meat on his plate. There were plenty of things he found funny, however dull his brother liked to paint him as being. He’d been distracted, that was all, by recognising the waitress as being the same person who brought his towels to his room. At his prickly reaction to Noel’s comments about her; his sudden desire to tell Noel to back the hell off. His immediate, and unexpected, reaction to Noel’s well-practised flirtatious behaviour was to protect this woman, even though she looked more than capable of taking Noel’s ridiculous banter in her stride.

Johnny used the seconds he spent carving into a piece of salami to give him time to refocus, to remind himself that he had a perfectly serviceable sense of humour, which usually meant he didn’t find Noel’s nonsense amusing. He left that side of things to Ed and Ricky.

He could also read Noel like a book; he could tell they were about to descend into cock joke territory. The mention of size an obvious gateway. And that was the last thing anyone needed to have to listen to.

‘I booked a tour of that winery for eleven tomorrow – I presume that’s not too early for everyone?’ Johnny’s attempts to deflect the conversation seemed to work. ‘Leave here about quarter past ten?’

‘Now you want to talk shop?’ Noel shook his head. ‘Never a dull moment with you, is there …’

‘I’m planning to have a sauna early tomorrow morning,’ Ricky chipped in. ‘So that’ll work well. Not going to get too bladdered tonight.’ He grinned at Noel. ‘That’s what I told Belinda, anyway.’

‘Good man. What happens on tour stays on tour.’ Noel lifted his glass and took a mouthful of the excellent Pouilly-Fumé they’d chosen to go with their starters.

‘Cheers to that.’ Ricky lifted his glass, too.

As the conversation moved away from the size of Johnny’s sense of humour, or anything else for that matter, he allowed himself to enjoy the rest of the course. When the main dishes arrived, it became clear the chef had taken Noel’s choice of potato as a personal insult, his plate stacked with some of the biggest, squarest chips Johnny had ever laid eyes on.

The waitress was doing her best to disguise the upturn in her lips as she placed the plate. Whether she was expecting fireworks, she stood her ground and Noel just laughed, fixed her with his trademark ‘get you back onside’ grin as he asked her to pass on his gratitude to the chef.

‘Tell him “touché, Monsieur” from me,’ Noel added, then glanced at his plate. ‘Although … now I come to think of it, any chance you could ask him for some ketchup?’

‘Oh, my God.’ Johnny shook his head at her. ‘I’m sorry. Ignore him.’

‘No, don’t do that,’ Noel said to her with a grin. ‘Being ignored by such an attractive woman? Not sure I could cope with the rejection.’

‘I’m sure you’ll cope,’ Johnny said, before smiling at the waitress. ‘He really doesn’t need any ketchup, thanks anyway.’

As Fran headed for the kitchen, a flick of her wrist to see her watch showed there was still a couple of hours until the end of dinner service. Penny crossed paths with her in the mouth of the service area, her grin still as large as when Fran met her in the laundry store when she’d been at the chateau for a matter of minutes.

‘You OK?’ Penny said, one of the plates balanced on the crook of her arm wobbling and taking her attention as she steadied it. ‘Anyone giving you trouble?’

Fran shook her head and returned the smile. ‘It’s all good.’

It was all good, overall. Fran’s mood might be questionable, and her skills were being tested to their limits in this unfamiliar role, but the couple on table one was delightful and the group of women on table two were enjoying a girls’ trip and hadn’t stopped chatting and laughing since they’d walked in. They hadn’t even noticed when she brought sparkling instead of still water to the table, had poured and sipped and carried on having the time of their lives while barely giving her a second look. Three and four had already finished their meals and left, and the rest of her tables were corporately bland. Bland and preoccupied by business, replying to texts or emails at the table and hardly noticing the food. Or her. It was strange to have become so invisible.

Invisible to everyone except the group on table six. And they hadn’t caused anything like the drama she had been expecting when she’d brought out that plate of steak and chips. The drama had been contained in the kitchen. The chef – Louis – had taken the request for chips with an explosive volley of words Fran assumed weren’t used much in polite conversation, his expression hooded as he issued a set of clipped instructions to Harry, his words laced with enough vitriol to flambé the entire room should he accidentally encounter a lit match. Or a gas ring.

The chips were a work of subterfuge, something Fran had the definite impression Louis had done before, at a similar request. Huge oblongs of potato, they were deep-fried to be golden on the outside, fluffy on the inside, but there was no way they were what the guest – Noel – had been expecting to eat.

Louis sent them out with a triumphant glare, and Fran’s heart was in her mouth when she delivered them. The thought of having to return them to the kitchen far more concerning than the guest’s reaction. Which hadn’t been too bad, all things considered.

The jokey request for ketchup had caught her off-guard for a second, Noel’s obvious flirting made her bristle momentarily, but with only dessert and coffee to get through, it was looking as though she would be able to handle the rest of this evening’s service without any further trouble.

About fifteen minutes later and Fran was retracting that statement. The women on table two were now embroiled in an argument about someone called Anna, about why she hadn’t been included on the trip, and two of them had sent their main courses back because they hadn’t liked the way the fish was cooked. Meanwhile, on table six, the bottles were metaphorically piling up at an alarming rate, and a conversation Fran had only caught a part of, in which Noel seemed to be explaining, in slurred speech, how women and wine needed to be treated in the same way, was getting heated. She didn’t catch the details of his philosophy, but she presumed it was contentious when his brother threw back his chair and dumped his napkin on the table.

‘Enough, Noel. That’s enough.’ Rounding the table, he’d all but pushed Fran to one side as he manhandled Noel to his feet. ‘Let’s go.’

‘That’s the trouble with you, big brother.’ With Noel on his feet, it was clear he was very drunk, and he lurched against Johnny as he continued, ‘You’re way too sensible. Boring. Dull. He’s so very dull. Like, the opposite of fun. We were just having fun, a bit of banter.’ Tapping at the side of his face, Noel grinned at her, then did a poor job of disguising a belch.

‘God Almighty.’ With a quietly spoken apology, Johnny led his brother away from the table.