Chapter 5
5
Laura Gilchrist was a perfectionist. Given enough time, she had the ability to find something that was less than perfect in anything, including the things she put the most effort into herself. Maybe especially those things.
She’d learned long ago that it was all about control. The more you could notice details and keep things perfect, the less likely it was that your world could be tipped upside down and shaken to pieces.
But it seemed like her first breath of French air in months, as Laura walked outside the terminal building at Nice airport, was nothing less than perfect. Maybe that had something to do with the warmth of the sunshine or the feeling of suddenly being on holiday from real life. More likely, it had everything to do with the tall man in the leather jacket, standing beside his huge motorbike, watching her with an intensity that made her feel… good grief… as if he could see straight through her clothes and that he thoroughly approved of what he could see.
It wasn’t shocking, though.
It was more like… deliciously exciting…
He was exactly the same laid-back, rather shockingly disreputable-looking managing director of a successful French estate agency that she’d met when she’d come over with Ellie to inspect their inheritance. But this wasn’t a first meeting, and there was a sense of familiarity that made it far less shocking that Noah leaned in to give her a kiss on each cheek after greeting her. The touch of his lips on her skin started a strange melting sensation for Laura – one that seemed to start low down in her belly and reach as far as her knees, which actually felt wobbly for a heartbeat, just like one of the heroines in those old romance novels.
This wasn’t entirely unexpected, mind you.
Because she was stepping into a fantasy she’d been creating for weeks now.
It felt like months.
Her whole adult life, perhaps?
What Laura hadn’t bargained on, however, was how it felt to be on the back of Noah’s motorbike a short time later. Her imagination hadn’t been completely off point, it had just been lacking an extra few notches on whatever scale she’d been using to measure the projected level of physical response to a person or situation. Or was there a whole dimension of sensation she’d never known existed?
The power and noise of the engine beneath her. The solidity of Noah’s body wrapped in her arms. The wind rushing at them. Or maybe it was simply the danger, not just of feeling so unprotected amongst cars and buses that could squish her with no more than a nudge, but of how reckless she was being – albeit very temporarily – by abdicating the kind of control she would normally keep over every situation she found herself in.
It took a little more than twenty minutes to get up into the hills and arrive outside La Maisonette. Long enough for Laura to have regained at least a sense of being in control. There were good reasons for her to be here, after all, and it had been entirely her choice to make the trip. If she wanted to, she could also choose to keep her time with Noah Dufour purely professional, and while they were here at the property to start their joint marketing campaign, that was exactly what was needed.
Ellie’s fierce hug, as soon as Laura had pulled her helmet off and handed it to Noah, was filled with notes of both joy and homesickness.
‘It’s so good to see you, Laura. I can’t wait to show you everything …’
It was suddenly easy to focus – and to bury her fantasy deep enough to forget about it herself for now, let alone let her sister guess. She could sense Noah coming closer. Too close…
He handed her the large, suede shoulder bag he had stored in the motorbike’s pannier for travel. He had a smaller, square bag hanging over his own shoulder.
‘My camera,’ he said, noticing her glance. ‘I’m going to give you your first photography lesson, yes?’
Laura made a vague sound of agreement but turned away as a flash of her imagined photography lesson surfaced. Maybe she needed to bury that a little bit deeper? She walked towards the wrought-iron gate.
‘Do you remember when we got here?’ she asked Ellie. ‘When I couldn’t believe this was the right address?’
‘You were hoping it wasn’t.’ Ellie smiled. ‘I think you were horrified when I found the old ceramic tile under the ivy.’ Her smile widened. ‘Look at it now.’
‘You’ve repainted it.’ Laura touched the tile with the fresh lettering of La Maisonette . ‘And is that a bunch of lemons in the corner? Clever.’
She looked at Noah who had opened his bag on top of the stone wall and was taking out a very professional looking camera. ‘Maybe this is the theme we’ve been looking for to weave through all our advertising? The USP?’
‘ Oo-es-pay ?’
‘Unique selling point. The lemon orchard here. Everything about lemons suggests something fresh and colourful and… and delicious.’
‘Ah, d’accord .’ Noah was smiling, his eyes crinkling at the corners. ‘Do you want to take a picture?’
‘Yes, please.’
He didn’t come and stand behind her or guide her hands to adjust anything. He simply pointed out the button she needed to push and handed her his probably hugely expensive camera.
‘That lens is fine for now,’ he told her. ‘I’ll use the wide-angle one for the rooms inside.’ He gave her the ghost of a wink. ‘Not a fisheye.’
‘What I really want is to capture the ambience,’ said Laura. The shutter of the camera clicked softly as she took pictures of the ceramic tile. ‘Like this. And that…’ She straightened and stepped away from the gate to look at the open door of the garage where the little red car could be seen, its headlights peeping out like surprised eyes.
‘What was that name you gave the car?’
‘Margot.’
‘Short for Marguerite,’ Noah said helpfully. ‘I believe it’s Margaret in English.’
‘It’s quintessential French flavour, that’s what it is,’ Laura said. The camera whirred as she took some rapid shots. ‘Such a bonus to have found it in the garage, Ellie. Well done. We need some photos with… erm…’ Laura cleared her throat. She’d never named a car in her life so this felt rather silly. ‘…Maggie parked on the road, here in front of the house, don’t you think, Noah?’
Ellie didn’t give him a chance to answer. ‘Her name’s Margot,’ she said firmly. ‘Margot the escargot. Because these cars used to be called tin snails in England.’
Noah’s laugh was a deep rumble that Laura realised she’d never heard before. A delicious sound that went into her ears but managed to travel all the way down to her toes. It would be so easy to sink into a sensation like that and let the rest of the world fade into irrelevance.
‘I’ve also heard them called “umbrellas with wheels”,’ Noah said, still amused. ‘Me, I prefer two wheels. Do you want me to shift the bike so you can take some photos, Laura?’
Oh… was that sexy growl at the end of her name when he pronounced the r always going to create a visceral effect like his laughter just had?
‘Not now.’ Laura’s tone was crisper than she had intended it to be. She wasn’t ready to dismiss the rest of the world just yet. She wasn’t completely sure she was ready to do that at all, to be honest. ‘I want to see the rest of what Ellie’s done to the house.’
Laura stooped to pat the scruffy little dog with the floppy ear who was staying very close to Ellie.
‘Hullo, Pascal,’ she said. ‘It’s very nice to be able to meet you properly instead of just seeing you on the phone.’
She walked ahead down the cobbled path between lavender plants that had been trimmed into a neat hedge.
‘We could barely get down this path that first day. Or see the front door thanks to that monster rose bush on the stone archway.’
‘It’s a Banksia rose,’ Ellie told her. ‘I sent a photo to ask Mam what it was when the first flowers came back after I’d pruned it.’
There were quite a few of the old-fashioned frilly-petalled, pale-yellow blooms adorning the thick, gnarled branches but Laura was looking at the solid wooden door to the little house, with its carved four-petalled flowers, which was open just enough to get a glimpse inside. She could see the living area with the stone walls now free of the crumbling plasterwork, and the rich ochre tones of the tomettes adding their solid depth and warmth. The doors from the kitchen to the terrace were also open so the invitation of that shaded courtyard, where a glimpse of the view could be seen even before you set foot in the house, was impossible to resist.
But Laura still paused to lift the camera again to take a picture of the brass door knocker on the centre panel, shaped like a delicate female hand holding an apple. It was shiny enough to look newly gilded.
‘This is so lovely,’ she murmured. ‘I never noticed it last time I was here. Is it new?’
‘It just needed a bit of love,’ Ellie said. ‘Like we all do,’ she added softly, stooping to pick Pascal up in her arms.
Laura could hear a note in Ellie’s voice that she’d never heard before. Her baby sister was older and wiser now, wasn’t she? And… happier?
Oh, she hoped so…
Going inside, Laura took snaps of the stonework on the walls and the pots by the fireplace.
‘These pots remind me of something… I just can’t think what it is.’
‘Imagine them without those little handles,’ Noah suggested. ‘And full of… tournesols . I forget the English name. The flowers of the sun?’
‘Sunflowers,’ Laura said. And then, ‘Oh, my goodness… Van Gogh… of course. I wonder if we can find some sunflowers to put in them.’
‘Perhaps they’re perfect the way they are.’ Noah’s tone was a gentle admonition. ‘They’re a bit of Provencal history just like that.’
‘So they’re old?’
‘ Ouais . Probably mid-nineteenth century. They’re confit pots and they were the first form of refrigeration.’
Something in Noah’s voice suggested that this was a subject he was passionate about.
‘They would cook the duck in its own fat and then put the meat in the pots and cover it with a layer of the fat. They put a cloth over the top and took it down to the cellar beneath the house where the ground stays cold, and the pots would be half-buried. That’s why they’re only glazed on the top because that’s the line to bury them up to. The cold ground helped to preserve the meat.’
It was antique pottery Noah was telling her about, but it could have been the history of Provence or perhaps art or even Harley-Davidson motorbikes. It didn’t matter. It was the passion that was captivating.
It was very, very attractive.
Because if a man could show his passion about something in public, how much might he be capable of showing in private? By using communication that needed no words at all…
Laura was hearing Noah’s voice more than taking in the information. The deep timbre of it. That gorgeous accent. It occurred to her that it was a voice she would never tire of listening to, which was a shame because she’d probably never hear it again after this property sale went through. Ah, well… she just needed to make the most of it, then, didn’t she?
Noah stayed downstairs to take a phone call as Laura followed Ellie to the bedrooms. She was dreading seeing the state of the room that had housed the bats because she had promised Ellie she would do whatever needed to be done in this particular room to get it ready for viewing. She wished she’d done it before she’d left Ellie to live in this little house, in fact. She’d been aware of how fragile her sister’s mental health was but had not given enough thought to how hard it would be for her to have a baby’s cot in the bedroom next to her own.
Had she become so good at closing down her own emotions that she could ignore how the people she cared about were feeling?
There was something shameful about that.
Laura’s hand was on the door handle of the second bedroom when she hesitated. There was something in Ellie’s gaze that made her catch her breath.
‘Go on,’ she said, with a tiny wobble in her voice. ‘Have a look.’
So Laura opened the door. She gasped, pressing her fingers to her mouth and then she simply stood for the longest moment, taking it all in: a picture-perfect child’s room, complete with the fantasy garden painting on the wall. Dark green ivy scrambled along the walls, low enough for a child to reach up and touch, and dotted amongst the leaves were bright white daisies and scarlet poppies and droopy purple spears of lavender.
It was gorgeous, but that didn’t explain the sudden prickle of gathering tears that made Laura pinch the bridge of her nose to make sure they couldn’t finish forming.
‘You did this,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, Ellie… it’s just… perfect.’
And it was. For more than just its contribution to the renovation of this ancient cottage and the unique element it added to its marketing potential. This was tangible evidence of Ellie beginning to heal after the tragedy of losing her baby. It was confirmation that the time she had spent here in this beautiful part of France was already changing her life. Giving her back a future.
Laura was just so damn proud of her sister in this moment. The amount of love filling her heart was making it feel like it might burst. It was definitely making it hurt.
As Noah came upstairs, he probably assumed that the tight hug the sisters shared in that moment was in appreciation for all the work Ellie had done to La Maisonette to get the property ready to sell. When it went on a little too long, he looked at his watch.
‘I have to go, Laura. I have an appointment to show people an apartment for sale in Cannes. I will be back to collect you later, yes? Quatorze heures ?’
‘Ah… Two o’clock, yes? Do you need to take your camera?’
‘No. You may find more things to use for… how do you say it? For l’ambience ?’ That charming, lazy smile was growing as he held eye contact with her. ‘The oo-es-pay ?’
Laura was shaking her head again but this time she really was smiling. He knew perfectly well that she was enjoying his accent. This was no more than thinly disguised flirting.
‘Ambience is the same word in English,’ she told him. ‘We’ll work on your USP pronunciation later.’
* * *
There were many things that caught Laura’s eye as Ellie showed her around outside. She snapped a close-up of some lavender flowers and a bunch of lemons and then glimpses of the view, framed by the glossy foliage of the lemon trees. The donkeys were snoozing under the shade of olive trees and Laura made an approving sound as she took more photographs.
‘They look… different to how I remember them.’
‘You didn’t get that close, remember? When you got a lemon stuck on the heel of your shoe, you didn’t want to go any further into the orchard. But they are cleaner. We gave them a bath.’
‘ We ?’
‘Julien helped. He’s the neighbour. I’m sure I told you about him. He’s a single dad who lives there with his mother and he’s got a little boy called Theo who’s very fond of the donkeys. They’ve been looking after them ever since they moved in because they’ve never seen anyone else coming here to care for them. He’s been very helpful. It was Julien who gave me the driving lessons in Margot.’
She sounded offhand. So casual, in fact, that it made Laura give her a second glance, but she couldn’t ask whether ‘being helpful’ was a euphemism for something more going on. What if she inadvertently revealed the secret behind why she’d been so willing to come back to France for a quick visit? If Ellie wanted to tell her that she was having a bit of a fling with the single dad next door, that was fine. If she didn’t, it meant that it was none of Laura’s business. It might be a secret for Ellie and possibly an important part of why she seemed to be embracing life again finally. Who knew?
Fortunately, Ellie hadn’t noticed her curious glance. She was reaching out to the donkey who had woken up and come to the fence. It dropped that huge head far enough to press its forehead against Ellie’s arm, and the way she began rubbing the bottom of one of those extraordinary ears looked like a well-practised routine. The donkey clearly loved it, leaning even further over the fence and making Ellie laugh as she had to push back to keep her balance.
It was, Laura realised, the first time she had heard Ellie laugh like that in a very long time.
‘Marguerite,’ Ellie protested. ‘Stop…’
‘Marguerite? You’ve given her the same name as the car?’
‘I didn’t name them. Julien and Theo did – after the flowers that grow wild amongst the grass here. A marguerite is a daisy. And that’s Coquelicot coming over to say hullo to you. That’s a poppy.’
Laura took a step backwards. She’d never been particularly drawn to people’s pets. Especially one this large. ‘What on earth will we do with these donkeys when the place is sold?’
‘Fi was going to look into a rescue organisation that might take them,’ Ellie said.
‘Maybe we could offer them to the new owners. Some people really love donkeys.’
‘Mmm.’ Belatedly, Ellie responded to Laura’s observation. She bent her head to plant a kiss on Marguerite’s nose and moved to give Coquelicot some love. ‘I was hoping Fi might come over for a weekend,’ she added, ‘but I haven’t heard from her for ages. Have you?’
‘I never hear from her. She called Mam to talk about the donkeys and I think she said something about coming over to look at their feet.’ Laura turned back towards the lemon orchard. She wanted to get some photos of the house framed by a branch of one of the lemon trees with fruit on it. ‘You should ask her again. Otherwise you might find yourself back in Scotland before she can organise any time off.’
She could feel the donkeys watching them as they walked away. Ellie was beside her, so quiet it made Laura wonder if she’d said something wrong. Or was she thinking about their missing sister?
‘What was it, do you think?’ Laura asked. ‘That made Fi change so much when she went to university?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you think she’s gay but doesn’t think we’d be okay with that? Or that she’s had a traumatic breakup that she can’t talk about because that would mean coming out? Has she ever talked to you about things like that?’
‘We haven’t talked about anything really personal in years,’ Ellie said. ‘It got worse after I met Liam.’
‘Hmm…’ Ellie’s choice of life partner had been a rather pretentious fellow student on her fine arts course. Laura didn’t want to open that can of worms. It would just be rubbing salt into a wound that was only now beginning to noticeably heal.
Laura found the perfect lemon tree branch and lifted Noah’s camera to take some shots of the house.
Ellie led them back to the house. ‘I’ll make us some lunch,’ she said, her voice sounding a little too bright, as if she was determined to change the subject. ‘Wait till you taste the baguettes from our local shop with ham and mustard and cheese. It was the first meal I had in this house and it never gets old.’
They chatted as they ate and Ellie asked where Noah was taking Laura that afternoon.
‘We’re going to the Fondation Maeght first. When he takes me to Vence to check into the hotel, he thinks I should see the cathedral and the Chagall mosaic there. If there’s time, we can go to the Matisse chapel and the cemetery where D. H. Lawrence is buried. Well, not buried there any longer, but that’s a whole other story he hasn’t told me yet. There’s still a plaque.’
Ellie’s eyes had widened. ‘You and Noah have been doing far more talking to each other than I would have expected. Why do I get the impression that you really like him?’
Laura kept her shrug offhand. ‘He’s all right,’ she said. ‘As you said yourself, I was probably a bit judgy when I first saw him.’
Ellie said nothing, but her silence was meaningful enough for Laura to narrow her eyes.
‘Just to be clear,’ Laura said, ‘I’m never getting married. I’m never going to allow even a relationship with a man to control any part of my life. Because I’m going to avoid the kind of catastrophe it can become – like what happened to our parents.’
Like what had happened to Ellie? Laura didn’t say it aloud but the implication was there.
‘Call me later,’ Ellie said as she watched Laura freshen up her lipstick. ‘I want to hear about that restaurant in St Paul de Vence, too. I’ve walked past it a few times now but you can’t really see anything from outside.’
‘It might be a bit late by the time I get back to the hotel, but I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow. I’m not sure about what time that will be, either. I’m going to ask Noah if it might be possible to go and see the lavender fields. They’re quite a long way away but we could get up at first light and go. I might never get another chance to see them, and it could be another lovely photo for the brochure. It’s a shame we’d be going on a motorbike or you could have come, too.’
The look her sister gave her suggested that Ellie had seen right through that excuse. She might not be going to say anything, but she knew perfectly well that Laura wanted Noah all to herself.