Chapter 23
I’m a bundle of nerves when I arrive at étienne’s on Sunday morning. I assume he’s still expecting me. I didn’t text him because I didn’t want to have to anticipate his reply.
He’s sitting outside on a deck chair, a cup of coffee in his hand, staring at the mountains.
He looks pensive.
“Hi,” I call as I approach.
He glances my way and jumps to his feet. “Hi!” he says in a tone that makes me think I’ve caught him by surprise, but not unpleasantly. “Is that the contract?” He holds out his hand for the white envelope I’m carrying.
I nod and pass it over.
He goes to the door and, through the window, I watch him perfunctorily place it with his empty cup on the coffee table. He pulls a set of keys from his pocket as he walks back outside and locks the door behind him.
I have no idea which version of étienne this is. Does he even remember what he said to me at the bar? I’ve lost so much sleep thanks to his mind-fuckery.
“You’re not usually this punctual,” I say as I follow him to his car.
He hasn’t smiled at me yet. He’s barely even glanced in my direction.
“No étienne factor today,” I add teasingly, trying to warm him up.
“What?” He looks confused.
“Lise said you’re usually ten minutes late.”
He snorts. “I’m starting to regret introducing you.”
I relax a little as we get in the car. He’s clearly forgotten about Thursday night, and even if he hasn’t, it’s obvious now that he was just messing with me.
I tense up as his little rocket ship launches onto the main road, but as it zips left to go over the bridge and turns left again to head out of town, I settle into the ride.
My eyes travel along the length of his lean, tanned arm, noticing the flexing of his muscles as his hand goes through the gear changes. The journey is over before I know it.
“So what’s the plan for today?” I ask as he comes to a slow stop outside Les Saules.
“I brought a picnic. You could go for a swim or read or whatever, but I’m going to clean some windows.”
“Perfect—I brought window cleaner.”
He shoots me a look. “You did?”
“Yeah, isn’t that what we’re here for? To clean?”
“I didn’t want to presume.”
“Presume away. Glad we’re on the same page. Let there be light!” I declare, opening the door and getting out.
I’ve brought a portable speaker and I ask him to hook up his music. Every time I walk into La Terrasse when he’s behind the bar, I like what’s playing.
I keep making a note of the songs as the first hour melts away: “All My Love” by Noah Kahan, “Southern Star” by Gregory Alan Isakov, “True Blue” by boygenius, “God Needs the Devil” by Jonah Kagen, “August” by Flipturn, “Funeral” by Phoebe Bridgers…
When étienne realizes what I’m doing, he offers to share the whole playlist with me later.
We’ve done the ground floor and now I’m in his mum’s bedroom and he’s gone next door.
I finish first and go to have a look at his room. He already knows that I’m nosy.
It’s a nice space with a view of the mountains, but it’s still fitted out like a teenage boy’s bedroom with car posters on the walls, a whole series of Astérix comic books on the bookshelves, and a narrow single bed covered with a stripy blue-and-white bedspread.
It’s a stark reminder that he was only a teenage boy when he left it.
“Didn’t you and Eve ever stay here overnight?” I ask, perplexed.
There’s no way he would have slept in his mum’s bed.
He glances at me, his eyebrows pulling together. “She never came here.”
“What, ever?”
“It’s not exactly wheelchair accessible,” he points out, returning to scrubbing at a stubborn mark.
I feel bad for not knowing she’d used a wheelchair.
“Most of our time was spent in kayaks and at Lise’s,” he continues.
“Lise told me that you trained her.”
“What else has she been saying about me?” he asks dryly.
“You don’t want to know.”
He turns around and narrows his eyes.
I grin at him. I’m sure as hell not repeating that conversation. I veer off topic.
“Now that I know you trained an Olympic bronze medalist, I’m a bit scared about going kayaking with you.”
He laughs. “Like you weren’t scared before.”
I lean against the door frame. “Raphael said that you’d asked him for a lift.”
He considers me for a moment. “I wasn’t sure if you could get time off work.”
“Jackson’s pretty flexible. When were you thinking?”
“I could go Thursday if you like.”
“That would be great.”
“Lunch?” he asks, throwing down his rag.
“Good plan.”
We pick up our cleaning supplies and go downstairs to a much brighter kitchen.
Countertops next, I determine. Or maybe cobwebs. There are a bunch drifting down from the ceiling in silvery-white strands.
“How did you end up training Eve?” I ask as I follow him outside and onto a track that was probably carved out of the long grass by wild animals. “Sorry, I don’t mean to pry,” I add when he doesn’t immediately answer.
“I don’t mind,” he replies as we walk along the rough path.
“When Eve got her diagnosis, Lise was very upset.” We reach the bank and I help him to lay out a rug on the hard, baked ground under a willow tree.
“Obviously, I have experience with ALS so she and I talked about it a lot. When Eve said she wanted to compete in the Paralympics, I offered to help because…” He shrugs and sits down. “Because I knew I could.”
He seems older today. He’s twenty-seven, but sometimes with the games he plays he appears much younger. It’s as though he hasn’t fully grown up. Maybe losing his mum when he was barely eighteen stopped a part of him in its tracks.
“How long were you together? Like, together together.”
“Just over a year. She broke it off two years ago when she went home.”
“To Scotland?”
He nods. “She wanted to be with her parents at the end.”
My heart squeezes at the thought of someone so young succumbing to such a horrific disease. His mother was far too young too.
It occurs to me that Eve might have ended it when she left France because she wanted to spare étienne after what he’d been through with his mother.
I wonder what he was like as a boyfriend. I’ve been trying not to dwell on Lise’s words, but it’s difficult to forget: I’ve never seen anyone fall that hard or that fast.
He unpacks the picnic: bread, butter, cheese, and honey, plus apple juice and crisps.
“All we’re missing is strawberries,” I say with amusement.
“There are probably some still growing around the side of the house.”
“I don’t have the energy to wade through all that grass.”
He looks over at the house and frowns. “I need to borrow a strimmer.”
“Next time?”
He glances at me. “I’m sure you have better things to do.”
I shake my head. “I like it here.”
“What do you like about it?” He seems genuinely curious.
“I’ve always loved it. I remember the first time I saw this place, how magical it was.
” My gaze sweeps along the sparkling green water rushing by us only a few feet away.
“The river and the stepping stones…” I look at the rocks that still form a straight line from one side of the river to the other.
“It’s so quiet and peaceful.” I turn to look at the house and the tree-covered foothills rising up behind it.
“I love the way the walls seem to glow apricot under the sunlight—it looks better on a sunny day like today,” I muse.
“I wish I lived here.” I meet his eyes again. “Sentimental enough for you?”
He smiles. “You’re becoming more French by the minute.”
“Still can’t speak the language very well though,” I say wryly. “By the way, I have something to show you,” I remember, getting out my phone. “Louis has sent over a mock-up.”
I did get Jackson to translate the email in the end—mostly it detailed how Louis had arrived at his design.
I was blown away when I saw his black-and-white pencil drawing—he’s copied Estelle’s pavilion art closely, except that he’s made Sainte églantine’s crown of flowers a little bigger and into more of an arch.
And hugging this arch, right above it, is a prominent uppercase SAINTE.
Higher still, in much smaller cursive style and weaving in between vines and birds, bees and flowers, are the words Eau de.
And then églantine hugs the curve of the dress’s hem at the bottom, turning the general shape of the label into an oval. And as the word églantine is significantly smaller in size and moved farther away from SAINTE, it looks subservient.
“Sainte,” étienne says, glancing at me with interest.
He’s leaning in very close. I fight against my instinct to move away.
“I don’t know why no one has thought of it before,” I reply, trying to maintain my composure.
One word: similar to the likes of Evian, Perrier, Badoit, Vittel, and Vals.
“At first, I was worried that Sainte might be too close to holy water, but holy water translates to eau bénite. The official name of our water will still be Eau de Sainte églantine, but if we make more of the word Sainte in our marketing, that’s how people will remember it.
It’s much easier to spell—Eau de Sainte églantine is kind of a mouthful. ”
“It’s beautiful,” he murmurs.
“I’m so glad you think so. I wanted to show you before I gave him the nod to go ahead tomorrow.”
Our arms brush together as he hands back my phone and the edginess in my stomach ramps up. He’s right: he does make me nervous. If he were to press two fingers to my pulse right now, he’d feel it racing.
He told me he wanted to know what I taste like…
He meets my eyes and suddenly I’m short of oxygen. We stare at each other for a moment and then he looks away and scratches his temple.
“Dusting next?” I ask weakly.
“What?” he replies in a daze. His voice sounds rough as he returns my gaze.
“Cobwebs or kitchen worktops? Maybe you should do cobwebs,” I decide as I get to my feet. “You’re taller. I’ll get on with the work surfaces.”
“Okay.” His voice breaks on the word so he clears his throat and adds at a more normal volume as he stands up, “I think there’s a feather duster in the cupboard.”
It’s comforting to think that I might make him a little nervous too.