Chapter 13
The humidity is insufferable on Sunday morning when I walk down to étienne’s garage. I texted him after my chat with Mellie to see if he still planned to visit Les Saules this weekend—he suggested meeting here at eleven.
The garage doors are closed so I venture down the steep cobbled driveway, only to find him coming toward me in the opposite direction.
“Salut,” he says.
“My God, it’s hot,” I reply.
“There’s a storm coming.”
“I hope it arrives soon. We need some rain to freshen everything up.”
He nods at a car tucked up against the retaining wall. It’s navy and, just like the Peugeot 205 GTis in his garage, it has a red line inset between the black bumper trim running around the exterior.
“Is this your old GTi?” I ask with astonishment—we must have walked right past it on the night of his party.
“Yep.” He climbs in.
“I can’t believe you still have it!” I exclaim as I get in beside him. “But of course, in France, you don’t just throw things away.” I affect a French accent as I say this, mimicking his words from his party back at him. “You’re just like Madame Joubert.”
He slowly turns to look at me, his expression deadpan. “I am also very sentimental,” he states evenly, his gray eyes challenging me to mock him.
I don’t dare—this was his mother’s car. Instead I grin widely, as though butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth.
His lips twitch as he turns the key in the ignition, revving the engine.
“It still has a tape deck!” I say with delight, looking around as he slowly drives up the hill to the road. “You’ve done such a good job.”
“Put your seat belt on,” he instructs.
I reach for it and click it into place, and a moment later we launch like a rocket ship onto the main road.
I clutch hold of my armrest and he throws the car around the corner and onto the first of the town’s three bridges.
The last is at the far end by the factory and there’s also the pedestrian bridge near La Terrasse.
“Are you sure you’re not a rally driver in your spare time?” I ask through gritted teeth as he whizzes left, running parallel to the river.
“You’re getting me confused with Dion,” he replies.
That’s one of his many friends—I met him the other night.
“What’s Dion’s surname?”
“Auclair.” He glances at me. “Why?”
“Mellie’s into WRC.” That’s the World Rally Championship. She and Albert watch all the races together. “I’ll ask if she knows of him.”
“She will.”
He has to slow down to drive through a residential area.
Old cream-stone houses line the roads, many with wooden shutters in varying shades of blue—sky, cornflower, indigo, azure.
Between gaps in the buildings we can see the river, and occasionally a flash of baby pink, hot pink, or white flies past—the oleander bushes are teeming with flowers at this time of the year.
Then he hits open road again and floors it.
It takes me a while to relax into the ride, but once I get used to his driving style and the general nippiness of the car, it’s actually quite fun.
I can see why he loves this car—and why he decided to hang on to it.
I’d be sentimental about it too, especially as it belonged to his mother.
I don’t own anything that belonged to my dad.
Not a single thing. All I have is one small picture of him, age nineteen, in a student union bar with my mum and about half a dozen other people.
He has milk-chocolate-brown hair, a straight nose, and green eyes.
I inherited the last two features from him.
Mum hardly ever talks about him, but she did also once say that I have his spirit and determination, and apparently, when I frown, I wear his exact same expression. But when I laugh, I’m all Mellie.
This makes no sense as Mellie and I aren’t biologically related, but I loved hearing it because my grandmother’s laugh is joyful and contagious.
When I relayed this conversation to Mellie, she said that I’m like Mum in that I never give up. She said that this is both a blessing and a curse and that sometimes I need to know when to walk away.
I reminded her of these words three years ago when Jackson married Chloe and I said that I would never return to Sainte-églantine-les-Bains in the summer again.
“I’m walking away now, Mellie.”
“You’re not walking, you’re running,” she replied.
étienne swerves off the road onto a lane and slows down—the surface is uneven and full of potholes, but soon Les Saules comes into view.
I draw in a sharp breath. This is not the river house of my dreams. This house looks practically derelict.
I remember it in sunshine when the walls were a golden peach and its terracotta tiles vibrant against the blue sky. It didn’t matter that the plasterwork had come off in places to reveal the plain building blocks underneath or that some of the tiles were missing—the house looked warm and inviting.
Now it’s cast in shadow and it just looks…broken.
étienne pulls to a stop and cuts the engine.
The windows are dark and dirty and weeds have run rampant, suffocating the grass and wildflowers and leaving brambles and stinging nettles in their wake.
This side of the house was once covered in grapevines, but someone has pulled them off along with chunks of plaster. The ghostly tracks of vines are still visible on the remaining render—they remind me of staples suturing skin after a cut.
I glance at étienne and only when I see him staring back at me so bleakly do I realize that he’s witnessed my shocked reaction.
“I tried to pull off the vines but it made everything worse.” His voice sounds rough.
“You can fix up the walls and plant more vines,” I reply with a surge of determination. The thought of him suffering any more than he already has is unbearable. “You can get it back to how it was. No, you can make it even better.”
“Why would I bother?” he asks miserably. “She’s not here.”
There’s a world of emotion in his gray-blue eyes and his grief feels fresh and unhinged.
“étienne,” I say desperately, reaching out to…I don’t even know what I was going to do because before I can make contact, he unclicks his seat belt and gets out of the car.
I hesitantly do the same, following him to the back door as he retrieves his keys from his pocket. Gone is his vulnerability; now his features are hard-edged.
The house smells just as I remember, of wood fires and smoke that has been ingrained in the walls over decades.
I come to a stop at the living room door.
The room looks the same, only dustier. It still has the same two threadbare sofas, the same tattered rug, the same coffee table, the same old TV set.
It even appears to have the same books on the shelves.
The only thing that’s missing is his mother’s blanket.
And his mother.
I remember Estelle sitting right there on that sofa ten years ago. étienne and I had come in to play cards as it was so hot outside. When Estelle called out from upstairs, I was racked with guilt—we’d obviously woken her up.
étienne brought her into the room—he carried her, his own mother, in his arms, like a baby. I was shocked. She was so small; there barely seemed to be any flesh on her bones. When he laid her on the sofa, he did it incredibly carefully.
She was wearing a cornflower-blue nightdress and there was some sort of brace on one of her arms. She was gaunt, but beautiful, with very long dark hair tied into a loose plait that draped over her left shoulder.
Curls had escaped it to frame her face, revealing high cheekbones and delicately curved eyebrows.
She had rose-pink lips and the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen—even bluer than Mellie’s.
They were dark in shade, like sapphires.
“I have been wanting my son to introduce us for days,” she said to me when étienne disappeared back upstairs. “This is the first time he’s brought a girl home,” she whispered.
“He didn’t really bring me here,” I replied with an awkward smile. “I just keep coming back.”
She laughed as étienne returned. He glanced between us, disconcerted, and then laid a chunky woolen blanket over his mother’s frame, which helped to disguise how thin she was.
“Would you mind if I joined your game?” she asked. Her breathing was shallow. “I get bored upstairs.”
We had such a fun afternoon. But that night, when I finally got around to googling maladie de Charcot, my blood ran cold. I was devastated to learn that étienne would lose his mother before long, that soon he’d be an orphan. After that, it was hard to look at him the same way.
“Do you remember how we used to play poker with matchsticks?” I ask now as I retrieve a pack of cards and a box of matches from the bookshelf. “Your mum was even more competitive than you are.”
“She was,” he agrees with a sad smile, leaning against the door frame.
“Blind Man’s Bluff!” I exclaim as the memory comes back to me. “She wiped the floor with us!”
He folds his arms. “I haven’t played it since.”
“I have. I taught it to my friends at uni.”
He looks pleasantly surprised. “Did you?”
I nod. “I loved that game.”
I didn’t know it before that summer—Estelle taught us. Everyone is dealt one card that they press to their forehead facing outward. You can see every other player’s card—except for your own. And you have to bet on whether you think your card is higher or lower than the rest of the table.
“I still can’t believe she won with a five when I had an ace. She was so convincing.”
I tip the cards out onto my palm and drop the matches on the coffee table.
“What are you doing?” he asks as I shuffle the pack and walk toward him.
“Take it.” I offer him the top card.
He stares at me. I lift the pack toward him. He sighs and takes the card, following me to the sofa. I pick up the next one and press it to my forehead. His expression remains unchanged. And then he lifts his up too. He has a nine.
Still holding my card, I pour the matchsticks out onto the table and roughly divide them up.
“Non, non,” he mutters, sweeping them into a pile and counting them out properly.
“Ooh, you are competitive.”
“You know this already,” he replies, pushing one into the center of the table.
I copy him with a smile—we each need one to play, and then we have to see who wants to bet what.
“You first,” I prompt.
He stares at the card in the center of my forehead and pushes two matchsticks into the middle.
“I’ll see you and raise you one,” I say.
He smirks as he matches my bet and raises me another two.
“What was that smile for?” I ask. “Have I got a two?”
“I’m saying nothing.” His voice is low, his tone faintly amused, his French accent…I admit that I still like his accent. His gaze drifts to my cheeks. “You’re blushing.”
“I’m not,” I lie. “Fold.” I check my card and my jaw drops. “A king! You bastard!”
He looks at his own card and laughs, sinking back onto the sofa. A small dust cloud puffs up around him.
“You really don’t come here often, do you?” I ask, looking around.
He shakes his head, staring at the ceiling. “It makes me too sad,” he mumbles. “But I can’t bring myself to sell it,” he admits.
My chest contracts and a rumble of thunder reverberates through the walls. It’s dark in here—there are two windows but they’re dirty and the sky is black outside.
“Shall we look for the postcards?” he asks.
I give his shoulder a sympathetic squeeze as we stand up. He stiffens.
Does he not like to be touched? Or is he just not used to it? Does he have anyone to hold him, to hug him, to bring him comfort? I can’t picture his mates from the other night giving him much more than a sturdy back pat, but who consoled him after Eve died? Did Lise?
I’d wither away if I didn’t have anyone to hug me. I think that’s why I got attached to Jackson so fast—he’s been tactile with me since we were kids. My own mother hardly ever hugged me, but Jackson made me feel cared for. Mellie too.
Who hugged étienne when Estelle no longer could? Who hugged him when she died? When she was dying?
And then I remember that I did.
I’d arrived at the other side of the river and seen the nurse’s car on the drive—étienne had told me that she was coming, but I’d forgotten.
I wasn’t sure what to do. Leave? Wait? But then I saw him sitting on the grass by a willow tree, his head bowed, his arms looped around his knees.
I was distressed to realize that his shoulders were shaking.
I’d never navigated the rocks so fast. He glanced up and spotted me when I was almost across and he looked momentarily horrified, but I didn’t give him enough time to wallow in his embarrassment—as soon as I was on the bank, I ran.
He stumbled to his feet, holding out his hand to ward me off, but I shoved past it and engulfed him in the hardest hug. A moment later his arms came around me and then he sobbed against my shoulder. I remember clutching hold of him as his weight sagged.
Eventually his grip on me loosened and he let me go, but I took his wrist and pulled him down to the grass. I couldn’t tell him that it would all be okay because it wouldn’t be. So I rested my forehead against his temple and stroked his hair as his shoulders began to shake again.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. Tears were streaming down his face in a steady flow and it was agony to witness so much pain in someone I’d come to care about.
His cheeks were rough with barely there stubble as I brushed his tears away.
I wasn’t thinking as I swept my thumb across his lower lip, but when he inhaled sharply and met my eyes, I suddenly felt dizzy.
A shiver travels down my spine now as I recall the way we stared at each other. I was that close to leaning in and putting my lips on his when the door opened and the nurse came out.
étienne jumped to his feet and jogged toward her while I sat on the grass, freaking out over what had almost happened.
It all felt so big and scary, what étienne was going through. The end of summer was fast approaching and I knew I was going home soon. I couldn’t be there for him or be more than what I was: a friend. It would have been hopeless to try to be anything more.