Chapter 5
ENGLAND
Helena Mitchell was in her room at home, writing a short story to send to one of the UK’s popular women’s magazines when her email pinged with an incoming mail from AntibesRetreats.
Dear Helena Mitchell,
Your booking form says you are travelling with your friend, Amanda Burnett, and you intend to share a taxi from Nice airport. If you have changed your minds about this and need meeting, please let me know and I will arrange transport.
See you soon – just ask the taxi driver for Villa Celestia, Antibes. He will know where it is.
Best wishes,
Sandy Thoreau
Fleetingly, Helena almost wished the retreat had been cancelled. That would have solved her dilemma.
She sighed. For days now, she’d been wondering about cancelling the booking she’d made a couple of months ago. It was something she’d booked in a moment or two of uncharacteristic self-indulgence, urged on by Mandy, her best friend, and too many glasses of wine one evening.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go, she definitely did, but in the excitement of booking, she’d overlooked the fact that her thirty-first birthday was in the middle of the second week of the retreat.
Her mum, Joan, had assured her it didn’t matter, they’d celebrate when she got home.
Helena still felt guilty, though, especially as Leon, her brother, wouldn’t be home either for his thirty-fourth birthday the day after.
Working as a yacht engineer on the luxury yacht of an uber-rich American, he was busy travelling the world.
The last time he’d been home had been at Christmas and apparently in his most recent video call with their mum he’d said he wasn’t expecting to be back in England until late summer at the earliest.
With back-to-back birthdays and just three years separating them, it was inevitable growing up that they’d often celebrated with a joint birthday party and celebrating the two birthdays became an important family occasion whilst the two of them were young.
Helena had been a bit of a tomboy growing up and had enjoyed all the activity birthday celebrations – rock climbing, horse riding, ten-pin bowling all had been favourites.
It wasn’t until the year she said no to sky-diving that the joint activity parties fizzled out.
They continued to always have a celebratory meal together with a birthday cake when they were both at home, which was increasingly rare these days – a consequence of growing up and living separate lives – but they always spoke to each other on the day, which nowadays invariably meant a lengthy video catching-up session.
Since their dad, Harry, had died they’d both made the conscious decision that at least one of them would try to be at home for family celebrations with their mother.
Inevitably, it usually turned out to be Helena as she still lived with her mum and worked in the nearby town of Bath.
Helena sighed and decided she’d take her mum’s word that she truly didn’t mind and make it up to her during the summer.
There was another ten days’ holiday leave left for later in the year when she could make it up to her mum and they could go somewhere together.
Maybe even meet up with Leon in one of the far-flung places that he seemed to frequent.
She’d drop him a WhatsApp message later telling him her plans.
There was a slim chance that the yacht he worked on might be back in the Mediterranean after wintering in the Bahamas.
Helena knew that Teddy, too, was disappointed she would be away for her birthday, but, like her mum, had philosophically accepted it, knowing how much she was looking forward to the writers’ retreat.
Helena smiled to herself at the thought of Teddy, whom she could finally call her boyfriend after years of being just friends.
Teddy, real name Edward Dawson, had been in her life forever, living in the same village, going to the same schools.
He and her brother Leon were the same age and had been inseparable growing up and were still firm friends.
Helena had spent her childhood trailing along behind them, wanting to do what they did.
Sometimes they let her, sometimes they didn’t.
Helena had known for years that she loved Teddy in the real sense of the word, not just as a second brother.
There was no comparison between him and the men she reluctantly dated in her twenties.
The problem was Teddy didn’t seem to feel the same about her.
Even as she’d celebrated her thirtieth birthday, he had still been teasing and treating her like Leon’s kid sister.
To add insult to injury, Helena had often been forced to sit by and watch as Teddy dated other girls – and then been asked for her sisterly advice about why it had all gone wrong.
It was only a couple of months ago, after she’d decided enough was enough and put a plan in place to get his attention that things had changed.
She’d promised herself if the plan didn’t work and he still didn’t see her as the woman she was, well, at least she had tried.
But the plan had worked and she’d learnt something surprising – not to mention annoying.
Teddy, a trained surveyor, had moved away for work, before being headhunted by a local firm and returning to live in Bath.
He’d sold his London flat and bought a run-down town house near the centre of town but spent a lot of time with his mother Maureen in the village they’d all grown up in on the outskirts of the town.
Last New Year’s Eve, Teddy had invited Leon and Helena to begin the evening with him in his townhouse and then the three of them could wander into Bath and join the street celebrations.
But Leon’s Christmas New Year break had been cut short when the yacht agency he worked for needed him to go to Gibraltar urgently to help sort out a stranded yacht and Helena had gone by herself to spend the evening with Teddy.
Secretly she’d been glad of Leon’s absence because it made it easier for her to finally put the plan she’d decided upon into action.
The New Year’s Eve streets had been crowded, noisy and fun, with excitement mounting the nearer the clock got to midnight.
When the bells had started to strike midnight, Helena and Teddy were standing together amongst a crowd of people lustily singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’.
As the fireworks burst across the sky, Helena had turned to Teddy and put her plan into action.
‘Happy New Year, Teddy darling’ and she flung her arms around his neck and kissed him firmly on the lips.
A split second later, he was holding her tight and kissing her back.
When they finally drew apart, they had looked at each other in shock.
‘Wow,’ Teddy had said. ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’
Helena had given him a dazed smile. Her plan had seemingly worked. She was reeling from that kiss and it seemed Teddy did actually like her too. But his next words wiped the smile off her face.
Teddy’s arms had dropped to his side as he spoke. ‘Leon is going to want to kill me,’ he’d said, shaking his head. ‘But I shall die a happy man.’
‘Hang on,’ Helena had said. ‘Why is my brother going to want to kill you?’
‘Um,’ Teddy had hesitated. ‘Shall we go back to my place first to talk? Somewhere private away from the crowds. No?’ Helena shook her head.
‘Okay. Leon is very protective of you, yes? Just after your dad died, he asked me to take his place in that protective role when he wasn’t around because he trusted me to look after you like a brother and not want to have a relationship with you. He asked me to promise.’
Helena had stared at him in shock. ‘Leon said that?’
Teddy had nodded. ‘I had no hesitation about promising him I would look after you. I love being with you. But I didn’t realise how hard it was going to be to keep our friendship platonic.
My brotherly feelings towards you had started to disappear around the same time Leon asked me to be his stand-in,’ he added quietly, catching hold of her hand.
‘There is absolutely no chance of Leon killing you because I’m probably going to kill him for interfering the next time I see him,’ Helena had said. ‘He is in so much trouble with me.’
Hand in hand, they’d made their way back to Teddy’s house, talking about how they would publicly deal with their changed relationship.
It was Helena who suggested they should simply carry on to all outward appearances as usual, not tell anyone of their newly acknowledged feelings for each other.
Keep their relationship as secret as possible at least until Leon was home and they could present a united front and show everyone how happy they truly were.
Helena’s mobile rang at that moment, breaking into her thoughts, and she smiled as she picked it up. ‘I guess you’ve had an email from Sandy, the retreat organiser?’
‘Yes. At least they’ve not cancelled on us and they’ve booked a great alternative,’ Mandy said.
‘You know the Villa Celestia?’
‘No, not personally,’ Mandy laughed. ‘Don’t you ever read glossy magazines? It’s one of the best places to stay and eat in Antibes – on the Riviera actually. The chef owner is brilliant, Guy somebody. At least the food should be great.’
Helena and Mandy had met when they both joined an online writers’ group.
Discovering that they lived in villages on the outskirts of Bath, although on opposite sides of it, they’d met for coffee in town one Saturday and had been real-life friends ever since.
Complete opposites in many ways, Mandy outgoing and bubbly, Helena quieter and reserved, their friendship complemented the pair of them.
Both of them had the same two goals – to become published writers and to give up their day jobs.
Mandy was a tourist guide around the Roman baths and the town in general, whilst Helena worked in the office of Waterstones in the centre of town.
They spent as much of their spare time writing as they could and a couple of months ago both had celebrated selling short stories to two different women’s magazines.
‘We’re on our way,’ Mandy had said as they celebrated with a bottle of Prosecco.
‘We just have to write and send out more stories.’ That was the night, too, she’d convinced Helena that they should book a place on AntibesRetreats.
Since then, they had both been trying to write even more short stories and had also made a start on writing the novels they both kept saying they were going to write.
As the call ended, Helena smothered a guilty sigh.
She and Mandy talked about everything, with one exception – Teddy.
Mandy knew how Helena had always felt about Teddy, but Helena had not told her how things had changed between them.
She was determined to keep their relationship a secret until Leon had returned and then she and Teddy together would tell him how wrong he’d been to interfere.
Unfortunately, Leon wouldn’t be home for months. He was sure to video call her on her birthday, though, wherever she was. Helena determined she’d call him out on his action then.