Chapter 30
30
Connie
After the new year celebrations, we hit the ground running.
Dad and I headed back to England, Dad to put the house in Chiswick on the market while I grasped the nettle and packed everything up in Cheltenham. I sent everything Edie and I wanted to keep down to the chateau and drove the rest of Harry’s belongings up to his flat. I felt bad that the kids no longer had a base, but they were less bothered about it than I was.
‘Home is wherever you are, Mum,’ Edie told me, and I felt gratified that I represented home to them.
We’d decided not to reopen until June, when I had a rota of travel writers, journalists, bloggers and influencers coming to stay over the course of the first two weeks. A soft launch while we ironed out any faults, experimented with menus and got feedback, and hopefully publicity. In the meantime, we were plunged into months of paperwork, debate and redecoration. Twelve-hour days, sleepless nights, aching backs, broken fingernails. Meetings with Monsieur le maire, bank managers, advocates, builders, web-designers. Spreadsheets and Pinterest boards, fabric samples and paint pots. Snatched meals on the run, light fittings which needed re-wiring, tubs of bulbs waiting to be planted. Work began on the prune barn, for Lismay and Piers, and their old quarters were to become mine.
Lismay threw all her energy into the garden.
‘It’s where my passion lay, but I never had the time to do everything I wanted.’ She lavished her love on her roses, and they seemed to purr under her attention.
Dad seemed to find a new lease of life. He’d always been a good handyman, always able to take things off to his shed for repair, but here, he became positively ambitious. He and Hervé dredged the lake, and built a new pontoon. Next to it, they built an outdoor kitchen and bar. I had visions of sunset barbecues, lobsters roasting over hot coals while our guests took their last swim of the day.
Gallons of paint, reams of fabric and car boots full of accessories transformed the chateau from tired to vibrant. I guarded the chateau’s history and Piers’s and Lismay’s ethos of luxurious comfort while adding my own signature style, aided and abetted by Fiona.
One afternoon in February, I answered the door to a woman I didn’t recognise. Dressed in double denim, with her arms crossed, she was about my age, with piercing eyes, her bleached hair scraped back into a severe chignon, her fingers covered in gold.
Marie. Lilou’s mother.
She was nervous and edgy, speaking so quietly I could barely hear her.
‘I want to say thank you. For taking on Lilou. She is so happy, working for you. And I’m so grateful.’ She held out her hand for me to shake. ‘ Merci. ’
I squeezed it tightly, wanting to reassure her. I could see she was overwhelmed. Whether by the chateau or life on the outside, I couldn’t be sure.
‘She’s wonderful, Marie. We love her.’
I saw the shimmer of tears in her eyes. ‘I will be living with my mother now. So Lilou will be free. To live her life. Maybe go to college.’
I couldn’t bear the thought of Lilou leaving us. But it would be the right thing for her to do, if that was what she wanted. We would have been a stepping stone.
‘Do you want to come in? See where she works?’
She started in surprise, but her face lit up. ‘Yes.’
‘It’s chaos here at the moment so ignore the mess.’
I led her through the hall, which was in the middle of being painted, dust sheets all over the floor and ladders everywhere, and through into the kitchen. She looked around in awe.
‘She’s learned so much, Lilou. I’m very proud of her.’
Marie nodded. ‘She cooks for me and Maman . I can’t believe it. She is a different person …’ She trailed off, running her gaze along the row of recipe books on the wall, pulling one out to look through it.
‘What plans do you have?’ I was curious.
She shrugged. ‘ On verra. ’ She put the book back. I could see she felt despondent, that she was anticipating a struggle to adapt to a new life.
‘We’re looking for someone to help Lilou in the kitchen.’ The words were out of my mouth before I could think twice.
She looked astonished. ‘You would let me work for you?’
‘Of course.’ Was I being reckless? I had no idea why she’d been in prison, for a start. But she had done her time, and everyone deserved a second chance. It must have taken a lot for her to come and thank me, and I respected her for that.
She smiled for the first time, and her face looked completely different. ‘If Lilou is OK with it. She might not want her mother working with her.’
I laughed. ‘Let’s see what she says.’
That night, I told Rémy what I had done. That from our reopening, Marie would be helping her daughter in the kitchen, because Lilou had agreed to the plan. I was worried he would think I was unwise. But he looked at me in admiration.
‘That’s a wonderful thing to do. Not many people would.’
‘Not everyone is as lucky as me.’
‘But everyone makes their own luck.’
‘No, Rémy, that’s not always true.’
‘Yes. You are here because you’ve worked hard and you’ve taken a risk.’
‘But I’m lucky too,’ I insisted. ‘I had wonderful parents, and wonderful godparents. And I have you.’
He nodded solemnly. ‘Now that,’ he said. ‘Is true luck.’
It was fun, getting to know this man, each of us learning our differing views on life. We didn’t always agree, but we usually ended up laughing, like we did now. I slid my arms around his waist.
‘You don’t think,’ I murmured. ‘That perhaps it’s you who is the lucky one?’
It was three o’clock on Midsummer’s Day. The day we were due to open. It was like curtain-up on a first night at the theatre, people rushing about with a sense of anticipation mixed with a frisson of panic.
I looked down my snag list, trying to suppress my own panic. Everything was nearly ticked off, but would my guests appreciate what I had done? Or would it be a disaster? I knew so clearly what I wanted it to be. A place where people came to relax, to breathe, to take stock, to celebrate, to rediscover themselves and each other. They would be pampered, cossetted, spoon-fed, indulged. The surroundings were lavish and opulent – silk and velvet and linen in jewel colours now hung from the curtain poles and smothered the beds. The polished wood underfoot was warm; the stone and marble soft. The gardens were lush, a riot of deep green and regal purple.
Around me, my team were adding the finishes touches. Lismay had been in and out with the first of the roses. She filled wide glass vases with the blooms, in lemon and lilac and pale pink, their delicate scent filling the air. She was in her element, graceful and uncoiled, the anxiety and tension in her when I first arrived long gone.
In the kitchen, Lilou was preparing that evening’s feast with utmost determination, trying not to show she was nervous. Mounds of pale purple artichokes. Ruby-red tomatoes drizzled in oil. Spears of white asparagus in pools of melting butter. Eclairs. Milles-feuilles . Macarons. Marie did her bidding without needing to be asked twice. They were the perfect mother-and-daughter team, and I thought how proud Delphine would be of her protégé.
Piers was fine-tuning the wine list. In a huge silver bucket lay bottles of sparkling rosé with bespoke labels: One Night at the Chateau in elegant black cursive on thick-ribbed cream paper, our signature colours.
‘It’s time for you to have your own exclusive vintage,’ Rémy had told me when he presented the first bottle as a surprise. My lovely man. My lovely, thoughtful, kind man who was so much more than I’d ever dreamed he could be. He was always there, but never too there, allowing me to be me. I realised he was like how my dad had been with my mum. Respectful, adoring, solid.
Dad hadn’t stopped since the break of day. Outside, he and Hervé lined the sun-loungers up by the lake – black and cream stripes, of course. In a momentary lapse of taste, I’d ordered gold helium balloons to spell out CH?TEAU VILLETTE alongside. Edie had done a time-lapse video the day before, from dawn until dusk, the balloons swaying in the summer breeze. She posted it on TikTok, where she and Lilou had accrued thousands of followers for One Night at the Chateau. It was cult viewing, and we had a whole new demographic booking in. The pressure would be on to please them, but we were ready.
In the salon , Fiona jumped down from a ladder, hammer in hand, and the two of us stepped back to look at the picture over the fireplace. She’d found a painter who specialised in copying old masters, and had got her to do a portrait of Pauline Bonaparte. There she hung, with a mysterious smile, eyes laughing, the bold, passionate creature who had become something of an inspiration to me. ‘What would Pauline do?’ I would ask myself whenever I had a dilemma.
‘Genius,’ I told Fiona. ‘You’re a genius.’
Fiona just laughed, and folded up the ladder to whisk it away. She’d pushed me to be brave with the chateau revamp, to be bolder than I would have been without her encouragement, and the overall effect was one of relaxed glamour, without overshadowing Lismay’s cosy elegance. I hadn’t wanted to eradicate what she and Piers had done, just to enhance it and bring it up to date.
I headed out into the hall. A young girl from the conservatoire in Aix was sitting at the piano, warming up, ready to play later on when we had apèro with the guests. The notes floated throughout the chateau, winding up the staircase, drifting out of the open front door.
On a round table, next to a vase of Lismay’s roses, half a dozen of our new brochures were laid out. I picked one up and opened it to the inside page, where there was a picture of me standing at the top of the steps, arms folded, smiling widely, wearing my green velvet jumpsuit. I looked exactly like the kind of person I wanted to be. When I thought back to Lismay’s phone call, and what a dark place I’d been in, I couldn’t believe how far I’d come. It was other people who’d lifted me up and brought me to this place, but I had to give myself some credit too. I’d listened to my heart and started to believe in myself again. I’d taken risks and I’d learned to trust. My only sadness was that Mum wasn’t here to see what I’d achieved. But she was there. I could feel her approval and encouragement in the ether.
Underneath my photo was written the words:
In the heart of the Luberon, surrounded by vineyards and olive groves, Connie Hammond invites you to spend One Night at the Chateau …
I closed the brochure and lined it back up with the others. From the kitchen, I could hear Lilou’s rap blaring out, mingling with the piano music. Sunlight trickled in through the windows, draped in yellow-and-white-striped silk. On one wall, a black-and-white photo of Lismay and Piers when they’d first bought the chateau had been blown up and framed, the two of them standing on the rim of the fountain, arms outstretched, smiles wide.
What a privilege it was, to carry on their dream.
Through the open front door, I could see a car turn in to the gates. Our very first guests. It shimmered in the sun as it made its way up the drive and parked by the fountain. The young lad from Barles I had hired as a pool-boy-cum-porter hurried out to open the boot and take out their luggage. My stomach gave a little flip. This was it.
I made my way outside and stood at the top of the steps with a welcoming smile.
‘Welcome to the Chateau Villette …’