Chapter 17
17
There was something about donkeys.
Something peaceful.
Something magical, even? Like Ellie had promised La Maisonette could deliver?
This was the strangest Christmas Day Laura had ever experienced but, even more strangely, it didn’t feel sad. Or lonely.
She fed the last of the supply of carrots she had to Marguerite and Coquelicot. She rubbed the soft tufty hair on the front where those extraordinarily log ears were attached to their heads because Ellie had showed her that this was their very favourite way to be petted. Sure enough, they stretched their necks out and closed their eyes and gave every indication of being blissed out.
It was a brainwave to take a selfie with the donkeys and send it to Fi with a Happy Christmas message. Laura told her that the donkeys approved of her channelling Mary. She told her about the huge star on the mountain, too, and ended up by telling her middle sister that she missed her. That she wished Fi was here.
The swiftness of the reply was unexpected.
Merry Christmas. LOL – I think I want a donkey!
There was a Christmas tree emoji at the end of the message and a gift with a ribbon and one that looked more like a horse than a donkey.
Best of all, there was a second text.
Miss you too.
And this time the emoji was a heart.
Her mother kept up contact all day via text messages and a video call.
‘Next year,’ Jeannie said, firmly, ‘we’ll all be together. The whole family – with your wee bairn with us, too.’ Her sigh was wistful. ‘How wonderful would it be if Ellie was on the way to being a mammy again by then?’
It was the call from Ellie that finally brought tears to Laura’s eyes.
The happiness in Ellie’s voice and the chorus of Joyeux No?l from all the members of her newly extended family was so genuine. As was the concern for whether Laura was having a good day.
She was, Laura assured her, but Ellie was distracted by the call of Theo’s small voice.
‘ Tatie Laura,– Regarde… ’
The phone screen shifted and Laura could see small fingers, most of which had little knitted puppets on them.
‘Brilliant gift,’ Ellie said.
‘ Dis merci à Tante Laura .’ Was that Theo’s grandmother’s voice in the background?
‘ Merci… ’ Laura could see Theo’s face now. Lit up with the joy of the day. ‘ Merci pour mon cadeau, Tatie Laura .’
Laura felt one of those tears escape as she ended that call. It trickled down the side of her nose as she laid both her hands gently on her bump.
‘I have a present for you, too, little one,’ she whispered. She went to find the soft little brown bear. Her baby might not be able to see it but she knew that the sound of the rattle could be heard.
And the sound of a mother’s voice telling them how much she was already loved.
* * *
The roads were quiet on Christmas Day.
The sky was clear but the wind chill factor was enough to be uncomfortable despite the merino balaclava beneath his helmet, the under-glove liners and winter-weight socks.
Not that Noah was complaining. The discomfort, along with edge of danger at the speed he was travelling, was exactly what he needed to not only distract himself but to try and clear his head. He knew he was breaking the speed limit at times but that felt inevitable. This journey was, after all, being fuelled by more than what was in the bike’s tank. He could feel the weight of anger pushing him onwards. Into the wind that was so cold it felt as if it was burning his face with the same kind of heat as that anger.
Betrayal. That’s what it felt like.
He’d been so clear about how he felt about relationships. He’d told Laura that he never wanted marriage. Or a child. Especially a child. He’d believed she understood – like no one else could have understood – and yet she’d pushed him into this space. He was going to be a father and there was no escape.
Perhaps this impulsive decision to hit the road had been a bid for escape from his worst nightmare.
If it was, it was clearly futile. Fate seemed to be laughing at him because it wasn’t just anger he could feel behind him. He could feel what it had been like to have Laura Gilchrist on the back of this beloved motorbike, her arms tightly around his waist. Her body pressed against his.
Was that the reason he was, without thinking, following the same route he had that day?
Not that it would have mattered what direction he’d gone in. It was this speed he needed. This freedom. Feeling like part of this machine as he leaned into the curves. Feeling a part of nature as the wind unendingly swallowed him.
It wasn’t as if there were any purple clouds of lavender blooms to catch his eye as he headed into the landscape of Haute-Provence, taunting him with images of Laura standing in the middle of one, her arms out to embrace the dream that had come true that day. The neat rows of the bushes were still there, of course, but they had been pruned hard enough to look dead. Dark and gloomy.
Like the way Noah was feeling.
He wasn’t intending to stop in Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, but he was losing the feeling in his fingers and toes and he was in need of some strong, hot coffee and the lift that he could rely on nicotine to provide.
He certainly didn’t intend to climb the steps to the chapel again, either, but he needed something more than speed on the road could give him, and pushing himself to the physical limit of climbing hundreds of steps as fast as possible was suddenly a challenge he couldn’t resist.
There was no need to go inside even though he knew the chapel would be open on Christmas Day.
There was a need to catch his breath, however, when he reached the last of the steps. Two hundred and sixty-two of them. He’d counted every one of them as he’d forced his body through the threshold of burning physical pain that too little oxygen and too much lactic acid had created.
The wind was colder up here. A different kind of cold that threatened to reach his bones. An icy cold that felt as if it was trying to cool his anger, but what would be left if the anger vanished?
Something worse… like fear?
Maybe he needed to escape the cold now, to try and keep the anger alive because being angry was more acceptable than being afraid.
Or was it because of what day it was that he suddenly turned and entered the chapel?
This was a day for family.
For children.
He couldn’t be here and not light a candle for Elise.
Noah’s hand was shaking a little as he lit the candle. And then he stood and watched it flicker. There were other candles alight but, in this moment, he was alone in this sacred space. But he didn’t feel alone.
In the same way he’d been able to feel Laura’s arms around him on the bike, he could feel the memory of her standing beside him in front of these candles. Holding his hand. He hadn’t imagined that connection. It had been real.
As real as the other memories that were flooding into his head. And his heart.
Happy memories, like the day Elise was brought home from the hospital and he was allowed to sit in a chair and hold her in his arms. The way he could make her smile simply by being there, right from when she was only a few weeks old. Later, he could make her giggle and it had been the best sound in the world. And, when she was old enough, it was his hand that Elise would insist on holding, and he could still feel the absolute trust of that small hand clinging to his – the pure, totally unconditional love that it could both gift and create.
It was impossible to prevent other memories stored in the same place from emerging. The ones that came as part of the terrible diagnosis that Elise had received when she was only five years old. He couldn’t blame his parents for being so focussed on their precious daughter, of course, but it shrouded the less than happy memories with impenetrable shadows.
Having Elise taken away, again and again, for surgeries. Months of chemotherapy that made her so sick and radiotherapy that blistered her skin. Watching, without understanding, as she slowly stopped eating and then talking, moving and then, finally, breathing…
Without realising that he’d been moving, Noah found himself outside again.
It was the icy wind that was making his eyes water. Noah Dufour didn’t cry. He hadn’t cried even when Elise was taken away for the very last time. He’d bottled up tears along with the memories and retreated into the shadowland of a child that wasn’t important enough, watching his parents pull on suffocating cloaks of grief to face the world for the rest of their lives.
Walking down the side of the mountain was so much easier but, strangely, it made Noah feel more tired. He reached his bike and piled on all the protective gear he needed for the ride home and then revved the engine and took off without a backward glance. He was going to leave all those memories here. They were still too painful.
How much worse would it be if he had a living child in his life again? Not simply a sibling but a child of his own that he had to take responsibility for. To try and protect even though he knew, better than anyone, that you can’t always protect the people you love.
The fear was real.
Too close.
But then he could hear a whisper of Laura’s voice right inside his helmet.
‘I don’t expect anything from you, Noah…’
That rang true.
He’d known exactly how competent and in control Laura was from the first moment he’d seen her. It might have been the image she was living rather than the real Laura, but she was disciplined enough to create whatever image she deemed necessary for a successful life and not break it. She would be the perfect single mother, taking sleepless nights and the worry of an unwell child in her stride even if she was still working fulltime. Their child would have the best of everything and a life full of encouragement and fun, and educational activities like swimming and music and dance.
He – or she – would be clever and confident and adorable.
And they would be loved.
With a deep, unwaveringly unconditional love.
‘…love that was so huge it felt like… the only thing in the world that mattered…’
The way he’d loved his baby sister. The way Laura still loved hers.
The kind of love he’d lost when Elise was gone. The kind he would never have again because he would never let it seep through the protective walls he had built around himself. Fathering a child was the last thing he’d intended to do but he had no choice other than to cope and do what was the morally right thing.
He wouldn’t need to feel guilty that he was not a part of that child’s life on a deeply meaningful level, however, because Laura was more than able to fill any gap that his absence would create.
She would probably go back to Scotland very soon so that she could get her new life as a mother-to-be arranged with admirable precision, and he would be more than happy to provide whatever financial resources it would take to make it as perfect as possible.
He would play his own part to perfection as well.
From a safe distance.
Noah could actually feel the anger finally beginning to shed tiny fragments that were sent spinning into his wake as he put his head down and headed for home.
* * *
Laura clicked on her choice of seat for the plane ride back to Glasgow. She’d chosen the second day of January, which would give her several days to get settled back home and organised before the Oban office of The Property Centre opened for the start of business in the new year.
With the ‘New Year, New Me’ philosophy popping up on social media, she’d planned to return before the last day of the current year and get a head start on the extensive list of changes she needed to make in her life, like finding a child-friendly house near an acceptably good school, but something stopped her rushing back.
Tickets were more expensive and getting snapped up fast with people trying to get to friends and family to celebrate New Year’s Eve, but that wasn’t the only reason Laura wanted to stay just a little longer. Neither was it because of the joy to be found in sending photos home that captured how happy Ellie was in her new life – there was something far more selfish in postponing her departure for a few more days.
Maybe she needed to catch a little more of the magic to be found within the stone walls of this little French cottage. To breathe in some of the peacefulness that seemed embedded in those ancient stones. It was time during which she could sleep in the gorgeous old brass bed with its soft pillows and crisp cotton sheets, the bliss of knowing no alarm was going sound to announce that it was time to get to the gym and push herself through a punishing fitness regime. She could sit in front of a crackling fire and soak in the comfort of its warmth and know that she could do whatever she felt like doing the next day. There were no back-to-back appointments crowding her diary. Nobody was expecting anything of her.
This was like stolen time. Away from everything that made up her normal life. Away from being the person she had to be in that life. This was a chance to take a deep breath and prepare herself for the huge corner in life that she was about to turn. A chance to tuck away a taste of the magic for when it might be exactly what she needed to get through a tough challenge. She could add it to the glow she would always have from that brief blink in her life when she’d stepped away from reality to come to France and… let herself live a little.
Oh, help… she was always going to hear Noah’s voice in that phrase, wasn’t she?
Would it always create that sensation that travelled like a jolt of electricity through her whole body?
Perhaps. But its effect would fade when she was far enough away from him.
There was no reason she couldn’t work right up until the last week or so of her pregnancy and, with everything else she needed to do to get all her ducks in a row, there wouldn’t be much time to even be thinking about Noah Dufour. And, after the baby was born, there would be whole new focus in her life.
A whole new love.
Brand new. Pure. Perfect…
* * *
‘It’s le réveillon du Nouvel An ,’ Ellie told Laura. ‘It’s as big as Christmas and just as important to spend it with family and friends. We have to go back to Roquebillière because Julien’s grandmother doesn’t want to come to us. She says it hurts her hip to spend that much time in the car. Please come with us this time?’
‘I’m happy here,’ Laura said. ‘It’s really kind of you but you told me how small their house is. Julien’s mother was sleeping on the couch so you two and Theo could share her bed, wasn’t she?’
‘We can find a hotel.’
‘There’s no need. I want to stay here. I’m might go into Vence or St Paul de Vence and find a place to watch the fireworks.’
‘But there’s a feast. We decorate the table and eat traditional things like oysters and foie gras and caviar. Julien’s got a special champagne out of the cellar for midnight. Oh…’ Ellie’s expression was rueful. ‘Shellfish and paté and champagne are all right up there on the forbidden foods list, aren’t they?’
Laura wrapped her sister in a hug. The reminder of her own pregnancy would never lose its poignancy.
‘At least I wasn’t in France.’ Ellie found a smile as she let go of Laura. ‘The home of the world’s most delicious soft cheese.’
‘Honestly, I’ll be fine. I’m making the most of my last few days here to get my head together. Time on my own is a gift right now.’