Chapter 8
Romain, pulling Sandy’s suitcase, and Sandy, with Twiggy on her lead, walked down to Villa Celestia after lunch on Saturday.
After putting her case in the small bedroom at the top of the villa next to the door marked private that hid the stairs that led to Guy’s apartment, the two of them went back downstairs to find Guy.
There had been no sign of him as they’d walked through the villa and up the stairs and Sandy was immediately on tenterhooks, hoping that he hadn’t done a runner at the last minute, regretting his offer of help.
Mentally, she shook her head. No, Guy wouldn’t do that. He might be reluctant now that the day of guests arriving was here, but she was ninety-nine per cent confident that he wouldn’t let her down at the last minute. She couldn’t stop herself from crossing her fingers, though, just in case.
To her relief, the Guy who greeted them with a smile when they found him out on the terrace about to switch on the fountain after the gardeners had cleaned it looked like the Guy she knew and remembered – smartly dressed, handsome and charismatic.
‘Hi. Ready for the fun to begin?’ Sandy said.
‘That’s your department – I’m just providing the food,’ Guy said. ‘And staying out of the way, remember?’ he added.
* * *
Guy accompanied Romain a little way along the ramparts before he left him and made his way into Antibes.
He’d decided to buy the cakes for the champagne afternoon welcome tea from the award-winning boulangerie/patisserie in the centre of Antibes from where he always bought the croissants and bread for the hotel.
Jean-Pierre, the owner, greeted him with a firm handshake, a delighted smile and a jaunty ‘Bonjour’ from behind the counter.
After choosing a selection of cakes, Guy ordered daily croissants for the next fortnight.
Boxing up the cakes, Jean-Pierre asked, ‘Le restaurant? It is open again for the season?’
‘Non. Just for the next couple of weeks, private retreat,’ Guy answered.
Opening fully to the public was definitely not on his radar this year – or any year for that matter.
Once the retreat was over and done with, he intended to start thinking seriously about selling up and doing some travelling. Move away from all the memories.
Walking back to the villa, Guy saw a taxi turn down the small drive that led to Villa Celestia and guessed that at least one of the guests was arriving.
He decided he’d use the side entrance before realising it was locked and he hadn’t brought the keys with him.
Slowing down his pace, he loitered long enough to give whoever it was time to disappear into the villa.
As the taxi reappeared and turned left back onto the bord de mer, Guy quickly crossed the road and made for the sanctuary of his kitchen without catching the attention of anyone.
Taking a cup of coffee and the slice of focaccia he’d treated himself to at the boulangerie, Guy sat out in the yard.
It was a strange feeling hearing noises in the building and voices out on the terrace, knowing that he had no need to rush out and check people were happy.
He was detached from an event that was beginning to happen in his own villa.
No longer truly in charge, simply providing the things that Sandy wanted available.
All he’d agreed to do was to supply the accommodation and the food.
Sandy was the one who would ensure the success of the event – he just had to provide good food for the next fourteen days.
He could manage that so long as he didn’t have to mingle with the guests.
Zoe arrived at three o’clock and he quickly set her to work laying the terrace table for afternoon tea.
A nineteen-year-old French catering and hospitality student at the catering college in Nice, she’d appeared one afternoon when Guy and Sandy were busy sorting out the hotel, looking for a summer job.
After reading the letter of recommendation her tutor had written, Guy had said yes, he did need someone – someone who didn’t mind what they did as the job would involve washing-up, prepping vegetables, generally helping in the kitchen, as well as waiting and being helpful with the guests.
‘A dogsbody really. But the truly bad news is that it would only be for a fortnight,’ he’d said.
‘Not the season.’ He had fully expected her to refuse, on the grounds she needed a job for the whole of summer.
She didn’t even baulk at the jobs she was expected to do or the hours she would be working.
Instead she’d given him a brilliant smile.
‘I don’t mind what I do. I wish it was for the whole of the season, but at the end of the fortnight I’ll have Villa Celestia on my CV, which will be really cool and should open a few doors for me. And I’ll be so good, you’ll give me a brilliant reference.’
Now, watching Zoe move around the kitchen efficiently doing the tasks he gave her, he knew that she was going to be a godsend.
A good employee in the catering business was always worth their weight in gold.
If he was going to open the villa this summer, he would definitely have been offering her a full-time job.
Hearing voices out on the terrace, Guy glanced at Zoe. ‘Time to get the food out on the table. While you do that, I’ll make the teas. The champagne will go out later with the cakes.’
Whilst Zoe carried the four platters laden with cucumber, ham and salmon sandwiches out to the terrace, Guy made tea in four white porcelain teapots and placed them on a tray with jugs of milk, slices of lemon and bowls of sugar.
Zoe had already placed china cups and saucers, along with champagne flutes, on the table.
Guy stood looking out of the window as Zoe picked up the tray and carried it out and watched as she chatted away with the women.
Guy did a double take at one of the women.
Surely that was Becky Taylor, an infrequent diner in the restaurant in the past and a resident of Beaulieu-sur-mer along the coast near Monaco.
Not a young woman he would have expected to see at a writers’ retreat.
English, with a bohemian sense of dress that sometimes bordered on the ridiculous, overly confident as well as a renowned lover of gossip, Becky Taylor was well known on the Riviera as an up-and-coming influencer.
Thank goodness he didn’t have to go out there and be polite to someone he instinctively shied away from.
He was still standing in front of the window when Zoe returned. ‘Sandy wants to know if you’ll be taking the champagne out and pouring?’ Zoe raised an eyebrow at him when he shook his head.
‘No. And Sandy is well aware of that already. I take it you’ve learnt how to serve champagne correctly at college?
Good,’ he said when she nodded. ‘Time to put that knowledge into practice. Cakes are on the stands. Champagne’s in the fridge.
I’ve got some paperwork to get on with in the cubbyhole,’ he added, pointing at the large cupboard he’d turned into his mini-office, where the computer and the boxes of paperwork the restaurant and the bedrooms generated all lived.
He had only opened the door in recent months to pile the unopened post on the shelf.
So it wasn’t an outright lie. He did have paperwork to sort, but whether he’d actually do it was open to question.
Zoe gave him the kind of look his mother had often given him as a teenager when he did, or didn’t, do something she thought he should.
Guy guessed that Zoe’s mum often treated her to the same looks.
He knew she’d sensed that he was making excuses for not meeting the guests, but there was no way he was going out there.
He’d warned Sandy he didn’t intend to meet her guests, so she should not have tried to pull a fast one.