Chapter 7
Chapter 7
Beaufoy Wines’ vinery was scrupulously maintained. The vines held an excellent variety of grapes and Johnny was itching to get tasting. After a fascinating tour from the owner, Jean-Michel, the only person missing from the ensemble was Noel.
Johnny did his best to keep the conversation flowing, relaying what was being said in truncated English for the benefit of Ed and Ricky. Jean-Michel was tentative about working with them, the idea of selling them more than a couple of cases had him frowning with mistrust. Johnny did his best to reassure the winemaker that theirs was a legitimate company, that this was a genuine opportunity, but the older man was having none of it. Noel would have had the man eating out of his hand in no time.
Even the discovery of some common ground hadn’t helped. It turned out that Jean-Michel’s wife was the manager at their hotel, that she’d taken the role to supplement their income from the vineyard. And with more than a touch of vitriol, Jean-Michel was keen to state that her salary wasn’t anything like the amount she should be earning for all the work she was expected to undertake, not to mention the constant staffing issues and tight budgeting.
Johnny told Jean-Michel it would be a crime for his fantastic Chardonnay not to find a larger audience and was doing his best to express how excited he was to try the other wines. Whether or not Noel would be impressed by his brother’s open enthusiasm was yet to be discovered.
But Noel wasn’t there.
Jean-Michel suggested they move into the tasting room, and Johnny ran out of reasons to stall. He apologised a final time for his brother’s tardiness and allowed himself to be led into a single-storey building attached to what he assumed was the Beaufoy family home. The roof sloped down almost as far as the lintel, the wide, green planks of the door giving way to a blissfully cool space within. Whitewashed walls and a rough cobbled floor gave off charming rural vibes, and the upended oak casks – on which glasses stood ready on an elegant silver tray – completed the ambiance. Johnny smiled. This was going to be fun. More than that, if Jean-Michel’s other wines were as impressive as the Chardonnay, he was going to thoroughly enjoy tasting them, and doing his best to place them with the right buyers. People who would appreciate something unexpectedly impressive.
‘Starting without me?’
It was a competition to work out which one hit Johnny first, his brother’s voice, or the inescapable scent from Noel’s liberally applied body spray.
‘We had a great tour of the vineyards while we were waiting for you,’ Johnny said, his tone neutral as he introduced his brother to Jean-Michel. As the winemaker poured the first samples, Johnny turned to Noel. ‘Did you sort out whatever was so pressing? Was your videocall about something I need to be aware of?’
Noel’s expression shifted, his gaze hooded for a second, then he smiled broadly.
‘No. It’s nothing important.’ Through the smile the words were sharp, barbed.
It clearly was important, to Noel at least. Johnny had spent enough time with Noel to be aware of his tells. Even the subtle ones. And although it was a micro-expression, Johnny saw it. Not frustration, not anger – it was something else. If Johnny had to name the emotion he’d seen, he’d go for confusion. Which was very unlike his brother. Noel was usually black and white about everything, there was never room for any grey. No messy misunderstandings in Noel’s life, either professionally or personally. He’d always been a straight shooter, a take it or leave it kind of a guy.
‘You’re sure?’ Johnny said, the thought occurring that it should be him feeling annoyed at Noel for holding up the whole proceedings, not the other way around.
‘For Christ’s sake, let’s get on with the tasting, stop wasting everybody’s time.’
Bullish Noel was back, and by the time the tasting was over, Johnny was reeling from his jibes. Recently it seemed there was no pleasing Noel, and today was one of those times. At least Noel kept his composure with Jean-Michel. There was something almost magical in the way Noel dealt with potential clients. There was no doubt he worked them hard, and as Johnny translated anything Jean-Michel didn’t understand, the winemaker had gone from cynicism and suspicion, through muted disappointment and on into the sun-soaked uplands of excited enthusiasm. Before Jean-Michel knew it, Beaufoy Wines had reached a tentative business agreement with Taylor Made Wine, Noel was talking paperwork, and everyone was smiling and shaking hands.
‘Where would you be without me?’ Noel said, just loud enough for Johnny to hear.
It was all Johnny could do to remain in the same room as Noel.
Out in the bright sunshine, an instant prickle of heat had Johnny reaching for the car keys. He needed some space. A bit of time away from the others. As he thanked Jean-Michel Beaufoy for the opportunity to work with him, Johnny decided he’d take one of the hire cars, drive around for a bit, then head back to the hotel when he was good and ready.
‘You three are OK to go back together, aren’t you?’ he said, not waiting for a reply as he unlocked the car and climbed in. ‘Catch you later,’ he called as he started the engine and threw the car into reverse.
Johnny wanted to leave Noel in a cloud of dust, to drive away without so much as a backwards glance. Wanted to feel able to step out from Noel’s shadow. A perceived shadow, he supposed it wasn’t anything more than that, but real or not it was something Johnny was finding increasingly difficult to deal with.
He willed himself not to glance into the rear-view mirror as he headed down the track, but he couldn’t stop himself, caught sight of Noel laughing with Ed and Ricky as though nothing had happened.
Johnny supposed nothing had happened, not really. Noel was better at the business side of Taylor Made Wine; he always had been. There wasn’t any point resenting that fact. So why did he find himself feeling increasingly resentful?
A few minutes down the road and Johnny recognised the stretch of gardens and woodland off to his right. Came up on the driveway to the dilapidated chateau with its à vendre sign out front. Found himself turning the wheel and inching towards the building down a drive which was more potholes than surface.
Maybe a wander around the place would help to clear his head.
Fran used her lunch break to explore the outbuildings Harry had mentioned. Set to the very back of the property, the buildings were clearly the most original part left of the chateau. While the main building had been utterly renovated and modernised, every brick repointed to perfection, every piece of plasterwork replaced and freshly painted, this cluster of buildings seemed to belong to another era, an era when cobwebs and imperfection were a part of the chateau’s life.
While she might have an issue with rodents, she’d never been squeamish where spiders or their webs were concerned, which was just as well as she found herself brushing them out of her hair as she pulled open a shed door and ventured inside. A glance at the rapidly gathering dust on her uniform reminded her it might have been a good idea to have changed, but she didn’t have time on her side and hadn’t wanted to delay her search.
Fran expected to find the buildings out here to be full of trash. Full of the things which might not have initially been thrown out when the chateau was renovated, but which had, over time, become redundant. Maybe abandoned gardening equipment, odds and ends from the renovation process. As expected, there were offcuts of wood, half-empty pots of paint, ladders.
But no cat.
There was no obvious sign of Red living here, either. She moved further inside, skirting her way around piles of dusty wooden crates, enormous, galvanised drinking troughs, stacks of terracotta floor tiles. Further back, she could see strange shapes shrouded in dust sheets, and as there was still no sign of Red, Fran pressed further in and folded back an edge of one of the huge, dust-laden calico sheets.
‘Oh my God.’
Unsure as to what she had been expecting to find beneath the sheets, in her opinion what was there was almost as dramatic as the discovery of a dead body, or a pile of gold bullion. It was furniture.
Antique armchairs with fraying upholstery, sets of dining chairs minus their seats, unloved hardwood cabinets with beautiful – if damaged – veneers and beading. Fran ignored the cloud of dust as she threw the cover completely out of the way and looked more closely. Beneath a pile of pale-green wicker garden chairs she could also make out an enormous chesterfield sofa, its leather still in half-decent condition.
When she had a workshop of her own, these were exactly the kind of projects she’d give her right arm to work on. Figuratively speaking, obviously, because without her arm, reupholstering anything would prove extremely challenging. But strangely enough the prospect of having a workshop of her own one day was, in essence, why she was here at Chateau les Champs d’Or in the first place.
After she’d broken free of Victor and had scurried home to heal with the unwavering support of her mum, she’d believed that she would remain in Lyme indefinitely. Her job in the tea shop kept her busy, and the small pieces of vintage furniture she’d found in flea markets and abandoned at the very back of antique warehouses took up most of her spare time as she patiently brought them back to life and then sold them. It was a hobby, but it was also something Fran cared passionately about – seeing mildewed wood brought back to its gleaming best, upholstery repaired or sympathetically replaced to restore the item to a useful piece of furniture gave her a real buzz. Plus, it all helped to pay her share of the bills.
But her mother’s rented flat was too small for Fran to renovate anything larger than a nursing chair or a small armchair, and money remained tight. There was no way she could see a way to afford a flat of her own, let alone rent a space to make her love for renovating antique furniture into anything other than a hobby. And while she recovered from Victor’s wounds, that was fine.
So, it felt like divine intervention when an unexpected phone call led her to some utterly different possibilities. Maybe one day Fran would be able to consider renting a studio of her own, like the ones she’d seen in a cannery warehouse renovation a few miles up the coast from Lyme Regis.
As she stared at the unloved pieces of furniture in the shed, it seemed as though she’d come full circle, as though the universe was telling her she was moving in the right direction.
Maybe she could even offer to buy some of these pieces, have them shipped over the Channel to await her return.
With ideas buzzing, Fran spread the calico sheet over the furniture, then took a final glance around the space. Whatever Harry had said about this being where the cat lived, she couldn’t see any sign that Red had been here, and with a final time check, she gave up on searching further, heading instead for what she hoped was the quickest way back into the chateau.
As Johnny pulled the hire car back into a hotel parking space, he was calmer. He’d lost track of the amount of time he’d spent at the for-sale chateau, taking a leisurely wander through the well-established, if not well-maintained gardens, and having a good peer through the dusty, cracked panes of glass into as many of the downstairs rooms as he could.
There was no denying the place needed a total overhaul, that whoever took it on would either need a large wedge of disposable income for the renovations or be prepared to roll up their sleeves and do it themselves. Having said that, from what little he could see, there hadn’t seemed to be any sign of falling ceilings, terrible structural issues, or vandalism.
What Johnny had also seen – in his mind’s eye at least – was Estelle skipping through the rooms, jumping up and down the broad steps leading up to the main doors, running free through the tall grasses of the gardens. The image, although nothing more than a fantasy, had him smiling, and Johnny smiled again at the thought as he threw open the car door and climbed out.
With the car locked, Johnny noticed the other grey Mercedes parked further along and drew a breath. His mood dipped and his smile faded. Back to reality. Scrunching his way across the gravel, another figure approached from the rear of the property. Johnny glanced across and had nodded his acknowledgement before he realised he recognised her.
‘Hi, excuse me?’ he said, catching her full attention and unable to stop himself wondering why she was covered in what appeared to be cobwebs and dust. ‘Could I have a word?’
Brushing at her sleeve, she nodded. ‘Absolutely. How can I help?’
With her staring at him, the simple apology he’d hoped to voice dried in his throat. Somehow, it seemed pathetic and pointless. There was no reason she should she give a flying monkey about him, or his apology.
She brushed at her sleeve again. It was covered in a fine grey dust, there was more of it on the hem of her skirt, and cobwebs clung to the collar of her shirt and were dulling the gloss of her chestnut hair. Perhaps she noticed his gaze, because she ran a hand through her hair, her cheeks reddening as her fingers came away coated in the stuff which she then did her best to hide.
‘How can I help?’ She repeated the question, the arch in an eyebrow suggesting she had far better things to be doing.
‘No, it’s not that. I don’t want anything from you …’ He frowned at his own awkwardness. For all his abilities with foreign languages, sometimes Johnny struggled with the most straightforward of English sentences. ‘I just wanted to apologise.’
‘Apologise?’ She’d clearly forgotten all about his grumpiness from the previous day; she appeared mystified by his offer. ‘For what?’
‘My rudeness when you brought towels, principally. There’s no excuse, but I was tired and grouchy. I was way too hot after all the travelling.’
The corners of her mouth softened. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘And then, there’s my brother.’ Johnny pushed at his shirtsleeves, already rolled above his elbows but giving him something to do as he felt increasing scrutiny from her gaze. ‘I’m sorry. He can get a bit … loud when he’s had a few.’
‘Why are you apologising for him?’ There were flecks of a lighter brown at the edges of her dark eyes which seemed to gain intensity as she held his gaze. ‘Isn’t that for him to do?’
Why was he apologising for Noel? It was a decent enough question. As Johnny reflected on an answer, he noticed she made a move to walk away.
‘I should get back to work,’ she said, her lips compressing together before she added, ‘I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay.’
‘What’s your name?’
The question caught him off-guard almost as much as it seemed to do her. Had it been an inappropriate thing to ask? Too late to retract it now. And the more time she spent staring at him, the more he wanted to know the answer.
‘It’s Fran.’
‘I’m Johnny.’
She continued to stare at him, giving him ample opportunity to take in her gentle smile, her dark-as-molasses eyes, the way she absently wiped at the dust on her clothing with her elegant fingers.
Johnny was about to say something to break the silence when he realised, to his embarrassment, that she wasn’t looking at him, instead she was focusing on something behind him. As he turned to see what it was, she brought a finger up to her lips and shushed him. Fran moved towards him almost without making a single piece of gravel scrunch underfoot, and he did his best to turn quietly.
‘He’s over there,’ she said, pointing to a group of manicured bushes beyond the parking area.
‘Who is?’ Johnny craned and visually swept the area for clues as he tried to work out what she had seen.
‘To the far right of the bushes. I can see his tail.’
It was an animal, then. Johnny followed the point of her finger and caught sight of a slash of orange.
‘What is it?’
It wasn’t so much that Johnny was interested in what Fran was looking at, rather that standing this close to her meant he was catching the notes of her flowery perfume, would be able to brush against her if he inched across. The impulse to do so was surprisingly strong.
‘It’s a stray cat. I’ve named him Red.’ Fran was whispering now.
‘Red?’
She side-eyed him. ‘Yes. And shush. He’s very timid.’
‘Sorry.’
He hadn’t kept the amusement out of his tone, he could tell as much by the way she glanced at him again, the smile falling from her lips as her brows edged closer together.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said, her voice gaining a layer of annoyance as she scanned the bushes again. Then her shoulders dropped, and she sighed. ‘Damn, he’s gone. I’ve been trying to gain his confidence, but I suppose I need to remember he’s just a cat.’
‘I think I saw him here earlier,’ Johnny said, remembering the flash of ginger before they’d headed to Beaufoy Wines that morning. ‘Perhaps he likes the cars?’
‘He’s a cat, not a Top Gear presenter.’
Johnny smiled. ‘Fair point. Although I think I read somewhere about cats liking the warmth from the engine, about them sitting on the front tyres, up underneath the wheel arches.’
Fran glanced at the cloudless blue sky, with its huge ball of heat hovering overhead. Johnny watched, couldn’t help himself from noticing the way her lips pursed together, the stretch of her fingers as her flattened hand framed her face to protect her eyes from the glare of the sun.
‘Surely he doesn’t need to find warmth on a day like today, though?’ she said.
‘True. Perhaps he hides out in those bushes, then?’
Johnny was becoming increasingly aware that the cat was very much a secondary character in this conversation – for him, at least. He was far more interested in having a reason to eke out the time he was spending outside, chatting to Fran.
Fran checked her watch and sucked in a breath. ‘Trouble is, I haven’t got time now to check it out. I’m already running late.’
‘Tell you what,’ Johnny said. ‘I’ll volunteer to search those bushes for traces of ginger cat, if you agree to accept my apology.’
Fran’s smile came with a caveat, a touch of confusion in her eyes which gained intensity as she took a final look at the bushes, then turned back to him. ‘That offer seems stacked unfairly in my favour. There’s really no need to apologise for something you didn’t even do.’
‘I suppose not. But either way, I’m the one with time on my hands, so I’m happy to cherchez le chat and let you know what I find.’
‘OK. Thanks.’ Confusion gained the upper hand in her expression. ‘That means you’re going to look for the cat, right?’
‘Yes. I’m going to look for the cat.’
‘OK. Just checking. Thanks.’ Fran smiled as she backed away, then turned and headed for the chateau, the swing of her hair catching and holding Johnny’s attention until she disappeared inside.