Chapter 18
Chapter 18
Ignoring the logical, self-preservational side of her brain, which suggested she should walk away, Fran slid into the chair across from Johnny. It was a very modern spin on a classic tub chair design. Comfortable and stylish, if a bit soulless. She watched as Johnny scrubbed at his face with his hands, then rubbed at his eyelids with his fingers. He looked exhausted. His actions those of someone trying to get rid of something unpleasant, a thought or a feeling he couldn’t cope with.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ she suggested, fully aware she had no real idea what ‘it’ might be.
‘I was going to just leave first thing this morning. Get the hell away from everything.’ He exploded to his feet, pacing for a while. ‘Then I realised that it won’t solve anything because it’s only going to follow me. Wherever I go, it’s never going to go away.’
‘Johnny, what happened?’
Johnny’s face creased; he looked dangerously close to tears as the pacing picked up in intensity. Abruptly, he stopped, turning to face Fran.
‘With my brother, of all people. She could have chosen anyone else. It would still have ripped us apart, but anyone else, anyone in the world would have been easier to deal with than this.’ He laced his fingers together behind his head, arms folding around to cradle his skull.
A prickle ran its way up the back of Fran’s neck. He was talking about his ex. Had to be. And reading between the lines, she surmised Johnny’s wife must have slept with his brother – Fran assumed there wouldn’t be any other explanation capable of creating such distress. It would certainly explain why the brothers had been fighting in the chateau gardens.
‘How the hell do I ever deal with this? How are we going to explain it to Estelle?’
Fran stayed quiet, partly because she had no idea what to say, partly because the knot in her throat and the pricking in the corners of her own eyes were threatening to overwhelm her, and the last thing Johnny needed was more tears. He needed support. But the way he was expressing his emotions with such rawness had taken Fran aback and she wasn’t sure what to do with how it made her feel.
‘I’m not sure I’m the right person …’ Fran made to stand, sinking back into the chair when Johnny slid into the other, shaking his head.
‘I’m sorry, I’m not sure I’m making much sense. I didn’t mean to upset you. It just seems like … you’re … put it this way, you’re the closest I’ve got to someone I can confide in right now. Someone who will give me an honest opinion. The closest thing I have to a friend.’
Johnny lulled into silence; his gaze fixed through the window again.
‘If I can help, I will,’ Fran said.
Eventually, his exhausted gaze settled on hers. ‘Thanks.’
‘Did you sleep at all, last night?’ she asked.
A slight shake of his head was answer enough. ‘I suppose it makes sense; it explains why she wouldn’t tell me who it was. She knew it would destroy absolutely everything.’
Fran frowned. ‘But they must have known you’d find out eventually.’
A frustrated huff had to suffice as an answer, Johnny seemed lost to his thoughts again. A beat of time passed; dust motes floated in the bright sunshine flooding through the window. Then he spoke, aggression fighting for control.
‘I’m a total idiot, that much is clear.’
‘No, you’re not.’
‘I am. All I’ve ever tried to do is make the best life I could for the people I love. The people who I believed had my best interests at heart, too. And all the time they’ve been playing me off behind my back.’ He swung around to stare at her, anger flashing in his eyes. ‘I didn’t listen, not properly. Natalie all but told me the other day, she asked me to look after Noel. Why else would she say that? I was just too stupid to hear what she really meant.’
‘I think you’re being very hard on yourself.’ Fran sighed, weighing up what to say next. ‘It took me so long to trust my instincts where my ex was concerned. To begin to question his behaviour. So very long.’
Fran wasn’t sure whether a comparison between two very different relationships was helpful, but it was all she had to offer.
‘And it wasn’t as though I had invested anything like as much into our relationship as you have. We weren’t married. Hadn’t even spoken about having children.’
Johnny frowned. ‘Do you think maybe the more you have riding on something, the less you want to believe anything is wrong?’
‘Maybe.’ Fran felt the corners of her lips twitch into a smile. ‘It didn’t feel that way at the time, though. If you want competition in the “total idiot” stakes, I’ll go head-to-head with you.’
‘Challenge accepted.’
Fran couldn’t help but notice a glimmer of a smile skirting around the edge of Johnny’s features, too.
‘The irony of mine was that all the things which originally attracted me to him were what he ended up using against me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He’s a professional magician. Goes around to posh dinner parties and events, doing magic at the dinner table – that kind of thing. Anyway, it was his sleight of hand and the way he was so clever with deception which attracted me in the first place. He seemed exciting. A bit dangerous. Unpredictable.’ Fran bit back a sigh. ‘And he lived up to it all, one way or another. He slept around but had me convinced it was all in my own head. That I was the one at fault, I was the one who didn’t measure up.’
She shook her head. Saying it out loud made her hear how manipulative Victor had been. How lucky she was, in fact, to have got away. How long it had taken her to be able to be this objective.
‘That’s so wrong, Fran. What a dick,’ Johnny said.
‘Well, yes. He was.’
‘Are you OK now?’
‘Getting there.’ For the first time in a very long time, Fran actually believed herself. Johnny studied her for a while. Eventually he nodded.
‘I still care about her. Is that wrong?’ Looking through the window again, Johnny added, ‘I want to hate her, but I don’t.’
‘She’s the mother of your child. That’s never going to change.’
‘She’s still a fucking liar.’
‘You’ll find a way through,’ Fran said, reaching across to touch the arm of his chair.
‘You think?’
‘I know.’ It was the first time Fran had sounded so definite about there being life after a failed relationship, the possibility of a meaningful new start after thinking your life was wrecked.
‘If they do end up together, at least I know he loves Estelle,’ he said, the tremble in his voice unmistakeable.
Fran looked away as tears began to build in Johnny’s eyes, and he made no move to hide his emotion. She stayed quiet and still as he wept, pretended not to notice his giant breath and the way he scrubbed the tears away, then tried to fix a smile onto uncooperative lips.
‘Fuck, I’m such a mess. I’m sorry, Fran, I didn’t mean to drag you into this.’
‘You haven’t dragged me into anything. It’s fine.’
‘Do you remember yesterday, when we were talking at that dilapidated chateau, and you asked why we were there?’
‘Yes. You said you had some pie in the sky idea, but nothing would come of it.’
‘Thing is, when Noel and I started our business, I was sure it was going to work out. Don’t get me wrong, Noel’s always been a character, he has a temper and needs to be kept busy. But it’s always been the two of us. Us against the world, that kind of thing. When our dad buggered off and it was all Mum could do to get up in the mornings, we made a pact, Noel and me. To protect one another. I suppose that carried us through the setting up of the business, and the formative years. It seemed like the right thing, but it seems that protection had a shelf life I wasn’t aware of.’
Fran waited; she didn’t want to interrupt Johnny’s flow. This was a far deeper truth than he’d given her in the car the day before.
‘I should have known there was more to it. Maybe I chose not to notice the shift, but Noel, well, he’s changed. We’ve all changed and I’m so tired of trying to put a brave face on for the benefit of the business. I’ve been going through the motions for a while, now. Pretending that this is what I want. Lying to myself that Taylor Made Wine was the only way to provide for my family. But when Natalie told me she’d been unfaithful, I suppose the cracks began to widen. It forced me to re-evaluate. And now …?’
‘Perhaps this is the chance you need to totally change direction?’ Fran said.
‘Yeah, but where am I supposed to head next? The only thing I know for sure is I’ll be liquidating my business alongside my marriage when I return to the UK.’
‘And the chateau we visited? Chateau des Rêves? Where does that fit in?’
An idea had occurred to Fran, but she wondered if Johnny might get there without further prompting.
‘I genuinely don’t know. All I know is that the very first time I caught sight of it, when I drove past with Ricky and Ed, something happened to me. It was like I had to go there. I had to see it.’ He shifted his gaze onto her, a crease deepening between his eyes. ‘Does that sound totally poncy?’
Fran smiled. ‘Well, not totally …’
‘A bit poncy, then?’ The uptick in his expression cancelled out the frown. ‘I suppose I had this mad idea of throwing everything to the wind and moving to France.’
‘And why is that mad?’
‘Because Estelle lives in England.’
Fran pursed her lips. Having a parent either side of the Channel would complicate life for Johnny’s daughter, but it didn’t have to be a dealbreaker. After all, loads of people survived with one parent and turned out just fine. She tilted her head. Mostly fine, anyway. And it wasn’t as though Johnny planned on ditching his daughter, like some fathers did. That thought made Fran shift in her chair, but she pushed it away.
‘Although I suppose we’re going to have to split up the time we spend with her anyway, so perhaps the where isn’t as important as the when.’ Johnny answered his own question, standing and heading for one of the turret windows. Perching on the window seat, he looked fractionally more relaxed. But then the crease was back, marring the smooth skyline of his forehead.
‘It’s still madness, though. And even if we manage to divide the business, there’s no way I’ll have enough to put down much more than a deposit on that chateau. Never mind the renovation costs, and the repayments on the loan I’d have to persuade some clinically insane bank to agree to. And for why? So that Estelle can holiday in a castle?’
‘Were you thinking you’d just live in it, then?’ Fran inched him along his thought process.
‘What else am I going to do with it? It’ll probably take me the next fifteen years to renovate it, anyway. Plus, I’ll have to get a job to help pay for it all. Have to go and work at Monsieur Beaufoy’s vineyard or something.’
Johnny stared at the view and the moments passed. Fran was about to suggest her idea when Johnny sucked in a breath. He swung around to look at her, his expression animated.
‘What?’ she said.
‘Wine-tasting holidays,’ he said, an edge of triumph in his voice. ‘People could come and stay in a beautiful location, and I could teach them about wine. What do you think?’
‘Finally.’ Fran rolled her eyes, then grinned to let him know she was joking. ‘Thought you’d never get there.’
‘Seriously?’
Johnny’s look of confusion had her stifling a laugh.
‘Miles ahead of you,’ she said.
‘You don’t think I’m mad?’
‘No. I think it sounds perfect.’
His eyebrows squashed together again. ‘There would be so much to sort out, though. I don’t even know where I’d start.’
‘It’s a good idea, though, isn’t it?’ Fran didn’t want him to lose the momentum he’d built up.
His slow nod hinted at cogs turning inside his brain, new-found possibilities coming into view. ‘I’d need someone to take on the accommodation side of it, though. Furnishing the place, managing the rooms, that sort of thing.’
The thinking continued, and Fran had to admit she was imagining the transformation, too. Those chairs reupholstered, bun feet polished and resting on the parquet to one side of the foyer, a magazine table between them, a huge circular mahogany table with flowers on top in the centre of the space for no other reason than the dimensions allowed for it. Johnny in his element with bottles of carefully procured wines, ready and waiting to share his knowledge with excited guests.
Her own smile at the images in her mind faded as she realised Johnny was staring at her. The intensity in his expression the same as in that doorway to Chateau des Rêves. It made her stomach flutter.
‘Here’s a radical thought. Would you be interested in being the chateau’s interior designer? Maybe work on the pieces for the refit.’ He paused, his brow furrowing. ‘Have you ever thought of moving to France on a more permanent basis? With all your skills, you could take on the accommodation side of the business. How would you feel about going into business with a worldly worn but still plucky thirty-something-year-old?’
Yes please.
As much as she wanted to say the words, she bit them back. Because although Fran wanted it far more than she had imagined when the idea had occurred to her, wanted far more from Johnny than to be his business partner, there was another man Fran had recently invited into her life whom she hadn’t considered in all this. And she wasn’t thinking about the cat. A man who had given her opportunities unlike any she’d ever experienced before.
For now, she needed to keep her counsel, had to put her burgeoning feelings for Johnny, the feelings she was finding increasingly difficult to suppress, to one side.
Fran needed to think.
To defuse the tension she was feeling, she defaulted to flippancy.
‘Thirty-something?’ she said. ‘You told me you were twenty-one. Where did that decade go?’
He didn’t smile, though. Instead his reply carried more weight than Fran had expected.
‘Seems it went on learning the value of truth,’ Johnny said.