Falling for Provence (A Year in France #1)

Chapter 1

1

An ancient stone wall was almost touching the passenger side of the car Eleanor Gilchrist was sitting in.

‘I can’t get out.’

Not that it really mattered when she wasn’t sure she particularly wanted to get out.

‘You can get out my side.’ There was a note in Laura’s voice that warned Ellie her sister’s patience was wearing thin. ‘If I don’t park this close, we’ll block the road. But you can wait here while I have a wee look. Maybe the satnav’s got it wrong.’

She opened the driver’s door, got out and walked a few steps to stand in front of a gate. She stood so still, for so long, that Ellie wriggled out of the car, wondering what was wrong.

Laura words were almost a plea. ‘This can’t be right…’

Ellie pulled at a scramble of ivy that suggested it had been a very long time since the solid, iron gate in front of them had been opened. ‘I think it is… Look.’ She rubbed at the chipped surface of a glazed, ceramic tile attached to a crossbar to reveal lettering that was faded but still legible.

La Maisonette

‘Aye… that’s it. That’s the name on the legal documents.’ Laura peered over the garden wall. ‘No wonder they called it “The Small House”.’

Ellie followed the direction of her sister’s gaze. Through the rusty bars of the gate, above the knee-high grass and overgrown hedges of a long-neglected garden and past a shed where an enormous padlock was hanging from a stable door, was a dwelling that had been built of the same, rough-hewn, golden-brown stone as the walls of both the garden and the other side of the road.

La Maisonette had been built a long time ago. Probably several hundred years ago, Ellie reckoned. Having been born and bred in Scotland, she was no stranger to historic stone dwellings, but she’d never seen anything like this. Golden rock instead of grey, and soft rounded edges rather than careful squares. A roof that looked like layers of old split terracotta drainage pipes and nothing like the neat slate tiles of her mother’s cottage. The colours of Oban reflected the mist and rain and chill of a Scottish climate. This house had been gently simmering in the sunshine of countless French summers.

Ellie found a smile. ‘Ripe for restoration, perhaps?’ she suggested.

‘Is that supposed to be funny?’ The sharp look from Laura was suspiciously close to a glare.

Ellie’s smile faded as she closed her eyes. Until now the slightly awkward inability to feel comfortable in her oldest sister’s company had been disguised by the busyness of airports, car rental arrangements, navigating in a foreign country and the tension of driving on what was the wrong side of the road for them both. There was nowhere to hide now, as they stood alone together on this quiet road on the outskirts of a medieval French village, and the effect of adding a deeply disappointing reality to the day seemed to have put a spotlight on what neither of them wanted to talk about.

Why on earth had Ellie allowed herself to be persuaded – or had it actually been bullied? – into coming on this flying visit from Scotland to the south of France? Did her family really think a mini-break was going to change anything? That undiluted exposure to Laura’s attitude that you could get over anything with a bit of determination and self-discipline was the push that she needed to start embracing life again?

To be fair, Laura Gilchrist was probably not currently thinking about how disappointingly feeble Ellie was proving herself to be. It was more likely that she was racking her brains to find some aspect of this property that could make it possible to offload as soon as possible. She’d already had to cross off a quick commute from the nearest airport at Nice and direct access to one of the desirable French Riviera beaches.

‘Sorry.’

The apologetic murmur was enough for Ellie to open her eyes again.

‘It’s okay.’

And it was. She knew that Laura had shouldered the vast majority of the stress that was associated with this unexpected journey. But Ellie still found herself pressing her lips firmly together – partly so that she didn’t say anything else that might annoy Laura and make this time together even less pleasant but also to stop herself smiling again. Because it was kind of amusing that their destination clearly deserved the euphemistic ‘ripe for restoration’ tag line her sister’s estate agency often employed for properties that looked uninhabitable.

That La Maisonette was in such a neglected state was a relief, in some ways. Maybe they could just turn around and go home now and leave this problem for someone else to sort out.

Blood-red poppies and bright white daisies were scattered though the long grass on the other side of the gate, and spears of lavender drooped over what might be a cobbled pathway leading to the dark arch of a wooden door. Ellie drew in a deep breath, searching for the scent of the lavender, but something else was much stronger.

‘I can smell lemons,’ she said. Again, she had to stifle the way her lips wanted to tilt into the beginnings of a smile. Could there be a more appropriate situation to invoke the proverb that when life gave you lemons you should make lemonade?

‘Oh?’ Laura blinked, as though being dragged back from a daydream. Or more likely a daytime nightmare about how difficult it was going to be to make something good out of this twist of fate. ‘I guess there might be a lemon tree somewhere.’

She unlatched the iron gate. ‘Let’s go and find out.’ She uttered those words with the same tone she might have used for ‘Let’s get this over with, shall we?’

The gate, still caught by tendrils of ivy, didn’t want to budge, but Laura’s push was, admittedly, a bit half-hearted.

‘I’ll do it.’ Ellie grasped the bars and shoved hard to break the ivy strands and shift the gate over a tangle of weeds. ‘You don’t want to get rust all over your nice new dress.’ She wiped her hands on her jeans, oblivious to any streaks, and slid sideways through the narrow opening. Another tug from the inside made the gap big enough for Laura to step through without getting a mark on the pale olive-green linen of her figure-hugging dress.

In a silence redolent of the increasing distance between them, the two sisters picked their way towards the heavy wooden door. The elaborate carving of the door hadn’t been visible due to the shade from the tangle of an overgrown climbing rose clinging to the stone arch, and Ellie’s fingers automatically traced the outlines of one of the four-petalled flowers carved into the centre of each wooden rectangle.

She snatched her hand back as if she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t, and her fingers began curling into a fist, not unlike the shape of the solid door-knocker fixed to the central panel. ‘You’ve got the key?’

‘Of course.’ Laura opened her handbag. ‘It would be hard to lose something this big.’

The huge iron key didn’t want to turn.

‘I wonder how long it’s been since Uncle Jeremy came here.’

Ellie made a huff of sound. ‘I didn’t even know we had an Uncle Jeremy until last week.’

‘Aye… well…’ Laura shrugged. ‘It was Dad’s side of the family. We never saw any of them again after he vanished.’ Her tone hardened. ‘We never wanted to.’

The flash of almost forgotten childhood bewilderment, laced with fear, grief and that shameful edge of relief that could never be admitted, got released in the wrench Ellie gave the key. The lock turned with a definitive clunk that seemed to give weight to Laura’s statement. Nobody wanted a reminder of Gordon Gilchrist. Nobody wanted anything to do with this holiday house they had unexpectedly inherited from his brother simply because there were no other living relatives to be found.

Dust motes danced in the streak of sunshine the open door was providing, but the room was still dark with the windows shuttered. There were massive rough-hewn beams on the ceiling, and the interior of the walls had been smoothed with whitewashed plaster, some of which had crumbled enough to reveal the stones that formed the outside of the house. Matching stones created an open fireplace with a blackened interior, but there was no hearth in front of it, perhaps because the entire floor was covered in hexagonal terracotta tiles. To one side of the fireplace was a family of three differently sized pottery jars that had small handles and, oddly, were only glazed on the top half. The biggest pot was knee high, and the dark, golden glow of its limited glazing was part of the spectrum of ochre that included the terracotta of the floor.

‘It has a certain charm, I suppose,’ Laura conceded. ‘We’ll have to sell it fully furnished, though. Imagine trying to move that …’ She waved a hand at a cupboard that looked like an enormous wardrobe, with carved doors and brass inlays. ‘Although… it’s obviously an antique.’ Her breath came out in a snort. ‘The furniture might turn out to be worth more than the house.’

Ellie stepped towards the cupboard, resisted tracing the intricate pattern of flowers, leaves and bunches of grapes with a fingertip, and pulled the door open. Heavy shelves were stacked with bowls and plates in the same warm, earthy tones that were clearly intrinsic to this house. The uppermost dishes and the shelf space between the stacks had a film of dust peppered with mouse dirt.

Laura’s high heels tapped on the tiles as she moved to the kitchen. She twisted one of the old taps, which coughed and spluttered and then released a stream of rusty water. With a grimace, she turned it off.

‘Looks like a French version of an Aga, here,’ she said, turning away from the sink. ‘A wood burning version. I wonder if there’s actually any electricity.’

‘Doubt it.’

Laura reached for a wall switch and a bulb sprang to life above her head. ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’

‘Maybe someone didn’t get the memo and forgot to disconnect it.’

‘Let’s hope there isn’t a huge power bill waiting for us somewhere, then.’

‘Nobody’s been here, so why worry about it?’

‘Somebody’s got to. We can’t all float through life and hope that problems just magically melt away.’

Laura’s earlier apology for snapping wasn’t repeated, but Ellie ignored the barb despite the unfair suggestion that any approach to dealing with a personal struggle as soul-destroying as hers had been could ever be dismissed as something as carefree, or pleasant, as ‘floating’. But saying anything would mean she had to talk about it, and that was the last thing Ellie wanted to do.

She tried the light switch beside the crockery cupboard but nothing happened. Walking past a table to one of two pairs of tall doors, she opened them and then pushed at the shutters behind the doors. One creaked ominously and then sagged to catch on the ground as the top hinge gave up any attempt to continue supporting it.

‘ Oh… ’

‘What is it?’ Laura abandoned the kitchen but didn’t forget to switch the light off. She shaded her eyes against the much brighter sunlight, stood silent for a long minute and then let her breath out with an approving hum.

‘Well, that’s something positive. Nice view.’

‘Mmm…’ But Ellie was no longer looking at the craggy outline of mountains or the green wash of acres of forest or even the bright streak of blue just a little deeper than the sky that was the glimpse of the Mediterranean in the distance. Her gaze was on what was directly in front of them – a stone-flagged terrace and ornate metal candle holders, like tall miniature houses, that sat on the stones amongst even higher weeds and hung drunkenly from the branches of an overhanging tree. This space looked abandoned and totally forgotten. A secret garden that had been alone so long there was nothing left but a sense of… what… loneliness?

Despair, even?

Ellie tried to shake off the claws of an unpleasant sensation she was only too familiar with. She knew that the best thing to do was to move, so she walked across the terrace. ‘That’s why I could smell lemons,’ she said. ‘It looks like there’s an orchard.’

The steep slope of the garden had been terraced with stone walls, and flat spaces were filled with the dark green foliage of the trees. Bright yellow lemons glowed amongst the leaves and lay on sparse grass beneath. The heel of Laura’s shoe speared one of them as she went further into the garden.

‘Oh, yuck .’ She used a stick to scrape the overripe fruit from her shoe. ‘I’m not going any further. That must be the boundary, anyway.’

She was pointing at a sagging wire fence at the end of this terrace. The slope beyond was gentler and there were olive trees instead of lemons. Shorter grass gave the impression that the land was less neglected, so they assumed it was part of the neighbouring property. A flicker of movement under the shade of one of the olive trees made Ellie blink.

‘Oh,’ she said again. ‘Look! Donkeys.’

The shapes blended into the shade of the tree, but two huge shaggy heads were pointed in their direction, four long ears pricked forwards with mild curiosity. One of the ears twitched again.

But Laura was already turning away. ‘I need to get some photos,’ she said. ‘We haven’t even seen the bedrooms yet. Or the bathroom.’ Her voice faded as she went back into the house. ‘If there is one…’

Laura began scrolling through the photos she’d taken as soon as she’d had enough of her lunch. Ellie was sitting opposite her at a table in an outdoor restaurant tucked away in a small square behind the cathedral in Vence, a short drive from the house. It was surprisingly warm for early summer, but they were shaded by the generous leafy fans of an enormous chestnut tree. The shade was also making it easier to see the photos.

‘The bedrooms aren’t a bad size. Shame there’s only two of them.’

‘The bedrooms are tiny, Laura. They barely fit anything more than a bed and a wardrobe.’

‘One of those beds was a double .’

‘An antique double. No more than a large single by today’s standards.’

No adult would have been able to use the child-sized single bed in the other upstairs room, and just a glimpse of a high-sided wooden cot had been enough to make Ellie turn away instantly.

‘Some people love that old furniture. We can sell it as fully furnished, right down to the linen and cutlery. Ready to walk into and bask in all the delights this area has to offer. Or as an investment, to rent out to all the other people who are desperate for a summer holiday on the French Riviera.’

Ellie had to laugh. ‘Are you kidding me? It’s been neglected for years and years. There were bats in the bairn’s bedroom. Pigeon poo all over the floorboards in the other.’

‘It can’t have been that long. The washing machine in the basement doesn’t look more than about ten years old.’ But Laura shuddered. ‘I hate bats.’

‘It’s not habitable. It’s filthy. The electricity’s dodgy, and there’s barely any water.’

‘It probably just needs some new fuses and some of that stuff that cleans out pipes. And a professional clean. I’ll put it all on the list to discuss with the agency rep we’re meeting later.’

‘It’s miles from anywhere.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Ellie, why are you being so negative?’ Laura’s temper was clearly still fragile. ‘Look where we are! It took us less than ten minutes to drive here and Vence is gorgeous. A market town that’s got everything, with the bonus of a medieval centre. I’ll bet there’s any number of famous artists that have lived here. We need to find the tourist office and pick up some brochures.’

‘And the food…’ she added, breaking a short silence just as Ellie was about to apologise because she was being negative, wasn’t she? ‘You can’t tell me that slow-cooked daube de boeuf wasn’t the most delicious thing you’ve eaten in a long time.’

Ellie’s eyes dropped towards the bowl in front of her which, unlike Laura’s, had been scraped clean. Or, rather, wiped clean with shreds of the fresh crusty bread that had filled the small basket.

‘And St Paul de Vence is just down the road. Even I’ve heard of that town. Apparently, it’s a living museum, and I’m looking forward to checking it out after we meet the agent there.’ She checked her watch and then signalled to the older man who seemed to be both the owner and waiter.

‘ L’addition, s’il vous pla?t .’

Laura’s French might be rusty, given the number of years since she’d spent her gap year in Paris, but it was a lot more than Ellie could remember from her high school classes. What she did remember, however, was that she’d loved listening to the language. Hearing snatches of conversation around them from the local diners, and as they’d wandered through the medieval heart of this small town looking for somewhere to eat, was reminding her of the sheer musicality of this language – how it felt like hearing the opening bars of a long-forgotten but once-favourite song. And maybe there was a genetic reason for that.

Inheriting a house hadn’t been the only shock for the Gilchrist sisters in the last few days. They’d discovered they had French blood themselves. It was a confession from their mother, Jeannie, on a subject none of them had ever had the courage to force her to talk about: her husband’s family, who’d all turned their backs as the police gave up searching for a man who clearly didn’t want to be found.

‘Your grandmother on your father’s side was French. She only shifted to Scotland after she got married and had her children. She came from somewhere in the south.’

The way back through the narrow streets of the old town to where they’d finally found somewhere to park the car took them past purple blooms of a wisteria foaming over the edges of a high stone wall. Past a fountain shaped like a giant urn pouring water into a pool with edges that reminded her of the flowers carved into the front door of the house they’d been to see.

Their house. Temporarily, anyway. A third share of the proceeds from its sale was likely to be life-changing for all three of the Gilchrist girls. Enough for a house deposit. Enough to float through life for a while, perhaps?

To get far enough away from the past to be able to forget?

Round the corner from the fountain, they bypassed the large central town square with its finely gravelled surface, perfect for the group of men who were engrossed in a game of boules to one side. What appeared to be the main road through the town was a little wider but still cobbled. Someone came out of a boulangerie with three baguettes poking out of their paper bags, and they had to skirt around two women who’d stopped to talk, their small dogs blocking the rest of the footpath. Most of the shops were closed and shuttered.

‘I can’t understand why the French still hang on to these ridiculously long lunch breaks,’ Laura muttered. ‘Don’t they realise how much business they’re losing?’

‘Maybe they don’t care,’ Ellie suggested. ‘Money isn’t the driving force for everybody, you know.’

‘It is when you’ve got a bunch of kids to feed and clothe,’ Laura snapped back. ‘Ask Mam how that was for her , sometime.’

Ellie slowed her steps a little. Or maybe Laura sped up. The distance was increasing between them, anyway, both emotionally and physically. By the time Ellie got into the car, Laura was drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, impatiently.

Ellie sighed. ‘I don’t want to fight.’

‘Neither do I.’ Laura started the car and backed carefully out of the parking space. ‘Look, I know how awful it’s been for you. And we’ve all done our best to help you get through it, but everyone’s been tiptoeing around you for more than six months now and that hasn’t helped, has it?’

‘Oh… you mean I should just snap out of it?’ Ellie didn’t want to talk about it. She could feel it pressing in on all sides, and it still had the power to suffocate her. ‘I’m dealing with it, okay? In my own way and my own time.’

‘Mam thinks it’s time you saw somebody. She’s worried about you, Ellie. We’re all worried about you.’

‘Thanks for your concern.’ Ellie stared out of the window. They were leaving Vence behind them up the hill, and there was nothing but forest on both sides of the winding road. ‘But I’m fine. I’m looking after myself, aren’t I? I’m eating. I’m sleeping. I’m working.’

‘When was the last time you picked up a paintbrush?’

‘You should be pleased I’ve given it up. Haven’t you always said I was dreaming if I ever thought I was going to make a living as an artist?’

‘Part-time work in a retirement home is the other end of the spectrum.’ Laura glanced at the satnav and began to slow the car. A turn off the main road before they reached the entrance to the walled, medieval part of St Paul de Vence was indicated to find the address of the estate agency they were heading for. ‘And the lease on your apartment is due to run out when? Next week?’

‘Couple of weeks,’ Ellie muttered. ‘And yeah… I know I haven’t found a place I can afford yet, but Mam says I can move back home for a bit if I need to.’

‘That would be a backwards step and you know it. You’re twenty-nine years old, Ellie. You need to stand on your own two feet.’ The car jerked as Laura hit the brakes, having spotted the sign that told them they’d reached their destination.

‘Look,’ she said, her tone gentling after she’d stopped the car and turned to face her sister. ‘We all loved Jack. We all shared your grief when he died. I know I’ve never had a baby of my own and I doubt I’ll ever want to, so it’s fair to say that I know nothing about what you’ve really gone through, but… but you’ve still got your whole life ahead of you and you can’t just throw that away. And you’re well rid of Liam, who never came close to making the grade as a decent boyfriend let alone a life partner. You’ve got the chance to make a whole fresh start.’

‘Look out!’ Ellie had to warn Laura not to open her door as she saw a huge motorbike approaching from behind at speed. Then it slowed down too fast and came to a halt just ahead of them. The rider dismounted and pulled off a motorbike helmet to reveal shaggy, dark hair. It reminded Ellie of Liam’s hair.

Liam… the first man Ellie had ever fallen in love with.

The first man who’d broken her heart.

Or had that honour gone to the father who’d simply walked out of her life without any explanation?

How many times could trust be stolen, Ellie wondered, before you decided that maybe you didn’t even want to try and find it again?

‘Think about how passionate you were back in art school days.’ Laura said. ‘Being a single mother was never part of that dream, was it?’

Liam… the man who, as soon as he’d learned she was pregnant, had repeated history by simply walking out on her without saying a word.

‘Dreams change.’ Ellie released the catch on her safety belt and reached to open her door. ‘And sometimes they die.’