Chapter 8
8
Saint-Tropez, France
December 2009
Mrs. Wilder arranged for a driver to meet me at Toulon-Hyères Airport. The car switchbacked up into the mountains and along cliff edges, the Mediterranean far below. Then another hour along the coast, choked with traffic. All roads lead to Saint-Tropez, but good luck actually getting there.
Finally, the car turned right up a steep hill, into quiet, residential roads. I could feel the driver urging the car upward, higher, the manual transmission protesting. With each turn, the houses and gates fell away, until one last gate stood ahead of us, sliding cleanly open.
For weeks, I’d been imagining something between Jay Gatsby’s mansion and the Palace of Versailles, so the villa, when it appeared, looked surprisingly normal: cream-colored stone and a terra-cotta roof, sprawled out over the rounded hilltop, built into the side of the hill. Huge, but it had a lived-in feeling. Cars in the driveway, a pile of sandals by the front door. Two aging spaniels emerged from the shade of a low bush and trotted toward the car as I got out.
The driver carried my bags to the door and rang the bell. And then Mrs. Wilder was welcoming us in her singsongy accent.
“Pippa’s just having a bite in the kitchen,” she said, pointing me across the entry room. “You go join her, and I’ll show this nice gentleman where to set down your bags.”
When they left, I remembered the pile of sandals outside and bent to slip off my flats. The stone tile was the color of custard, cool beneath my feet. It made me think of my flat in Kentish Town, where you’d never go barefoot because you might step on a mouse turd. Or, honestly, a whole mouse. And despite that, for a moment, I wished I were back there. Safe in my tiny bedroom, Andre in the other room. Nothing at risk.
Pippa was perched on a stool at a marble-topped island. Everything in the kitchen was too bright. The cabinets were like movie-star teeth, freshly whitened and a little oversized. There were no handles on anything, no knobs, no hooks. No towels, not even a sponge.
“You’re here,” Pippa said, looking up from a plate of waffles. “I forgot you were coming today.”
“I’m here,” I said with a laugh. I’d imagined a somewhat warmer welcome from the girl who had single-handedly maneuvered to bring me to France. But that was Pippa.
I pulled up a stool. “This is quite the place. I sort of get not living in North London, if this is the alternative.”
“Much more space. Mum’s got her studio. I’ve got almost the whole lower floor to myself, now that Faye’s in the guesthouse.”
“Is that your sister?”
“Yeah. She was at uni for fashion, but then she left. I guess maybe they didn’t fawn over her enough.” Pippa made a face.
“You don’t get along?”
She shrugged. “Faye can be a good time, sure, and we go into town and do stuff, go shopping or get food, but it’s all about her moods.” Pippa tipped her head to the side, thinking. “She’s very good at making people like her. At arranging things how she likes. But it doesn’t work on me.”
“Is she much older?” I could only imagine how formidable a grown-up Pippa would be. A Pippa who had come into her full powers of privilege, charm, and manipulation. The idea was equal parts terrifying and intriguing.
“Twenty-one. Are you hungry?” she said. “There are fresh croissants in the kitchen.”
“Aren’t we in the kitchen?”
“The prep kitchen’s in there,” Pippa said, through a bite of her waffle. “That’s where the food is.”
I crossed the room and tentatively pushed open the swinging doors she’d indicated. In front of me was a long, narrow L-shaped room that I immediately recognized as a real kitchen. Cabinets had handles; drawers had knobs. There were frying pans, cutting boards, and oven mitts. Around the hook of the L, an older woman had her back to me, a cooking magazine spread in front of her. She didn’t react to my entrance, so I took her cue and backed out again. With the plate of croissants, of course.
I returned to my stool and tore off a hunk from the largest croissant. “Is that your cook? Does she cook every meal?”
“Chef makes breakfast and dinner, and there’s a sort of cold lunch spread most days. She leaves it in the fridge for us and goes home in between.”
I nodded, but I was thinking of the kitchen staff at Smith again. I wasn’t sure if Pippa would leave her empty plate there on the island, or take it into the prep kitchen and drop it in the dishwasher herself. Should I bring the remaining croissants back and say thank you, or leave them here and say nothing? Should I move through this house like Pippa, like Chef, or someone in between?
I took another bite of croissant and held it in my mouth a moment before chewing, letting the flaky pastry melt, letting the butter coat my tongue. If Mrs. Wilder came in now and said there was a mix-up, and I would be paid not in cash but in fresh croissants every day, I’d happily agree.
“What does your mum do?” I asked Pippa. “In her studio?”
“She paints, mostly. Some sculpture stuff. When I was a kid, I’d collect shells from the beach and she’d make sculptures with them, sometimes as tall as me. One time she made one that sort of was me, but I was all shells.”
“I’d love to see that.”
“Honestly, it’s just creepy.” Pippa performed a comedic shiver. “No one should have shell eyes.”
“Will your father be home at all for the holiday?” I asked. I still hadn’t met him. I wanted to see what they were like together, what a regular father-daughter relationship looked like. Not something pressurized and potentially explosive.
Pippa took up an enormous last bite of waffle, nodding as she worked to conquer it. “He’ll be here for Christmas and New Year’s. The fireworks are great from up here. We always have a big party.”
“That sounds amazing,” I said. A big party—how very Gatsby of them. Nothing in my suitcase was nice enough for an event like that. But then, I wasn’t here as a party guest. I might not be invited. Probably I’d help Chef plate the hors d’oeuvres. I took a second croissant.
Mrs. Wilder showed me around the property, calling out things as we passed— pool’s closed for winter, of course, but there’s the hot tub, and our little boules court. All arranged behind the house, on a stone terrace that ran the length of it. The hill, covered with olive trees, fell away from there, like the patio was the edge of everything, nothing but the sea below. And, of course, the thin strip of Saint-Tropez busy along the shore, its waterfront bristling with boats.
Outside was the only way to get from the main part of the house to my accommodations, an addition built onto the end of the villa. We passed Mrs. Wilder’s studio, and then a blue-and-white-tiled party space with all glass walls that could be folded away accordion-style.
My “guest suite” was on the far side of this space: a small living room, two bedrooms, one lavender-scented bathroom. It felt Grecian, the white stone walls simultaneously earthy and modern. My bags were already next to the better bed, and an envelope with my full fee for the month—a staggering amount—was on the dresser. We’d agreed on three hours of tutoring a day, and I’d decided to charge ￡80 an hour, two-thirds of what Kramer would’ve charged. Just seeing the fat envelope seemed to open up my ribs a little. More space for my lungs, less of the bank-balance tightness that lived there with every breath.
On her way out, Mrs. Wilder gave me a bus schedule and a second envelope of euros—pocket money for my stay. I protested, but she insisted it was part of hosting, her dearest hope that I’d enjoy it here and explore and feel at home.
And then I was alone in my new suite. I should’ve unpacked, made use of the day. I had two essays to write to wrap up the semester, both due next Friday, and I still didn’t have a topic for my dissertation. But all I wanted was to be back outside; after November in London, I felt like the sun had hardly touched me in weeks. I gathered my books and notes and went out to the terrace. The loungers were arranged to look over the hill and the port below. Hard to keep my eyes on my work, with that view: the sailboats like little origami birds, the sea throwing back its own light, reflective and fluid like a sequin dress. And the bright continental sun above, welcoming me, pressing on me like a hot hand.
It felt like the very air here was different, and that I was different in it. A world away from my old life and my old family, but it was more than that. A shift from fiction to reality: all the evidence around me that the things I’d read about in a lifetime of library books were real—Gatsby parties, villas, chefs, green olive trees, and blue sea. Evidence that you could get lucky. Like the pages I’d lived already had no bearing on the pages that might lie before me, if I could just find a way to fit myself into them.
When I woke up, the sun was directly above me. My clothes were heavy with the heat of it.
I heard Pippa, and there was mischief in her voice. “Anna’s asleep.”
The sunlight was red through my still-closed lids. “Must be the jet lag,” I said, teasing. We were only an hour off London time.
“Not like she’s missing anything.” This voice was sardonic: irony and boredom jockeying for peak position. I opened my eyes to see who it belonged to.
Two loungers down, a girl was sitting cross-legged with a plate across her lap. If this was Gatsby’s mansion, here was Daisy Buchanan, ready to steal all the hearts.
Even folded up on the lounger, in leggings and an oversized shirt, she looked elegant, slim and birdlike in that way I’d always longed to be. Her dark hair was pulled back, and her skin was radiantly tan, no evidence of makeup. Full lips, dark eyes with heavy hooded eyelids, like the long lashes dragged them down. She surveyed me through them. “You must be the tutor,” she said.
I pushed myself upright on the lounger, suddenly embarrassed to be caught sleeping. “Yep, I’m the tutor.”
Pippa was already losing interest in this introduction. “My sister, Faye,” she said. I’d seen the guesthouse, where Faye was staying, from the window of my suite: a small outbuilding across the lawn, surrounded with gracefully drooping willow trees. Effortlessly pretty, like its occupant. She had already turned back to the plate in her lap, which held only thin curls of cured meat and a handful of cornichons.
“You don’t really look like a tutor,” she said.
I laughed awkwardly. “Too young?”
Faye surveyed me while she chewed. “I guess I thought you’d be a bit of a boffin. You know, mousy. You’re much prettier.”
“Thanks,” I said. It hadn’t quite sounded like a compliment when she’d said it. I felt like I was being evaluated, but why?
“You tutor teenage boys? Looking like that? Bet they love you.” Faye scrunched a strip of prosciutto with her fingers and dropped it into her mouth.
“No one loves the person who makes them do geometry. Is that lunch?” I ventured, hoping to change the subject. “I haven’t missed it, have I?”
Pippa shrugged. “Mum told me to come and make sure you got some. It’s always fresh baguettes, meat and cheese, stuff for sandwiches. There’s more than that,” she said, nodding critically at her sister’s plate. “She just doesn’t eat bread.”
Faye laughed. “You eat all the bread, Pip, but then don’t come whinging to me when your skin’s all spotty. It’s pure junk.”
“Bread doesn’t give you spots.” Pippa scowled. “It’s hormones.”
“Anna,” Faye said, turning her catlike eyes to me, “you’re earning your keep as the smartest person here. So tell me, which of us would you trust on matters of skincare?” With the cornichon in her fingers, she made a circle in the air around her perfect oval face.
There were only wrong answers here, pitted between them. “Skincare’s not on the SAT,” I joked, gathering my notebooks.
“I wish it were,” Faye said. “Maybe then I’d be the star pupil in the family, for once.”
Pippa scoffed. “If you cared about that, you’d have stayed at uni.”
Faye shrugged her indifference. I had a flash of my first impression of Pippa in the suite at the Savoy—cool, unflappable. “It didn’t hold my interest,” she said, with a playful smile. “We’re not all made for academia, like Anna here.”
“Oh, that remains to be seen,” I laughed, thinking of the unwritten essays and undecided thesis. “I’m just figuring it out as I go, half the time.”
I wanted to stay and ask Faye more about herself, but I also wanted to get away before I said something inane. I pointed at the long house and its many different doors. The only entrance I’d used was on the other, uphill side of the house. “Which way to the kitchen?” I asked.
“It’s that one,” Pippa said. “I’ll come in, too. Mum’s making me a sandwich.” She looked back at her sister. “ Double bread. ”
I stood and tucked my books under my arm, and said to Faye, “I guess maybe I’ll see you at dinner.”
She shook her head, already looking back at her plate. “No, I’ll be down in town tonight.”
“Oh, okay.” I gave her a stupid little wave and turned toward the house before I could blush and die from it. As I crossed the patio, the wide flat stones felt warm against the soles of my feet. I had been right to fear this grown-up version of Pippa. Magnetic, just as canny, just as in control.