Chapter 7
NOW
As the train jolted, Bella’s forehead banged lightly against the window.
She sat up with a start, realising she’d fallen asleep.
The man opposite was looking at her with undisguised amusement.
She glared back, feeling her head throb, and he looked back down at his phone screen as if nothing had happened.
Checking her watch, she saw that there was now only an hour to go until she reached Versailles. She felt the familiar spike of anxiety that she’d kept experiencing ever since she’d made the arrangements.
The call about the job had come unexpectedly. The woman’s voice on the phone had been clipped; efficient. ‘Is that Madame Baker? It’s Claudine from H?tel Benjamin.’
‘Yes. Speaking.’
‘I’m calling about your job application.’
‘Oh. Yes. Great.’
‘I appreciate this is short notice, but the person we’d offered the job to has had to pull out. And you mentioned on your application form that you don’t have to give notice on your current position, is this correct?’
‘Yes. I mean, there isn’t really… no, there’s no notice period.’ It wasn’t technically a lie after all.
The woman had asked her a few further questions; and Bella had expected to perhaps be offered an interview. Which meant she’d been stunned at what had happened next.
‘So, this is a temporary position, with the possibility of permanence after six months.’
‘OK.’
‘And if you are still interested, we’d like to offer it to you.’
‘Yes! Of course. Yes, please. I mean, I’d be delighted.’
‘Wonderful.’ The woman had given her a start date and details and simply hung up.
In all honesty, it had sounded like it might be a scam. But Bella had looked up the hotel website again and found Claudine on it. The CEO.
Then an email had come, confirming her appointment, and she’d begun to feel more than a little excited.
‘So what exactly is the job?’ Juliette had asked, as they’d walked the length of the small village a few days ago. Jolie was bouncing on her lead, anticipating a longer walk and not realising they were only going as far as the café.
‘I’m not completely sure,’ she’d admitted. ‘I applied for so many. Something in the admin department, I think.’
‘You don’t know?’ Juliette’s eyes had widened.
‘Not exactly.’
‘And you didn’t think to ask?’
She’d looked at her friend. ‘How could I? I wanted to sound interested in it!’
Juliette had thrown back her head and laughed. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she’d said afterwards, grinning at Bella. ‘But I love it! You have accepted a job, but you could be cleaning the toilet, or perhaps running the whole enterprise! You don’t know! It is funny, non?’
Bella had smiled, although her own good humour was skating on a deep sea of anxiety. ‘Ha. Yeah.’
‘You will be fine, you know,’ Juliette had said, perhaps sensing Bella’s mood. She’d linked her arm through her friend’s. ‘You are more than capable.’
‘Of the toilet job?’
‘Of any job. Although I still don’t fully understand why you would take a job in Paris over spending time with your sister. No rent, no job. It sounds wonderful!’
Bella had sighed. ‘It’s complicated.’
‘Oui, I can see this.’
‘I mean, she’s only four years older than me. But after Mum… well, she became almost like a surrogate mother. Even now she has this kind of pull over me. And I’m afraid that I’ll give in. Things have been so, so hard. I hate being alone and she’s offering me an out…’
‘But surely this is kind of her?’
‘It’s just… if I go back, I feel that—I’m not sure I’ll ever have the courage to return.’
‘Ah bon?’
Bella had nodded vehemently. ‘Yes. And it terrifies me. Because coming to France – living here – was something I always dreamed of. And I’m afraid that if I leave…
France is the place I’m happiest. It’s where my life is now.
’ It would be complicated too, she’d realised; right now she had the carte de séjour afforded to expats who’d come over pre-Brexit.
Things would be more difficult if she had to forfeit that.
‘I know the job situation isn’t ideal, but like you said, I just need a way to…
survive, I suppose. To keep going while the house sells.
Give me some breathing… thinking space.’
Over coffee, she’d told her friend about the house share she’d secured in Versailles, the cheapest she could find.
‘I’ll be living with students, commuting to Paris,’ she’d said.
‘But it might be fun?’ She hadn’t told Juliette that, in order to secure her room, she’d allowed the agent to assume she was a student herself.
Juliette would only worry, would offer her money she didn’t want to take.
This way she could afford to live close to the capital without falling into more debt.
‘Well, this is wonderful news,’ Juliette had said firmly. ‘A whole new adventure.’
Bella had tried to smile. ‘I just… I’ve never even been to Versailles. I’ve never met these people. Haven’t even seen the hotel. It’s… I’m dreading it, if I’m honest.’
‘Pah! You will have a blast. It’s exciting.’ Juliette had fingered the four-leaf-clover pendant she wore.
‘Maybe I should take your pendant, for luck.’
‘Ha! Then what would I do?’ Juliette was superstitious about the necklace, given to her by an aunt when she’d taken her baccalaureate exams at seventeen. ‘No, you do not need luck. You have everything you need.’
‘I guess you’re right.’
Still, it felt strange to have accepted a job without being sure exactly what she’d be expected to do. She’d scoured the hotel’s website, but they were advertising vacancies in several departments, so there was no clue there.
She’d considered writing an email asking exactly what the job might entail, but she’d been too afraid to do anything that might jeopardise this opportunity: it was her only chance to stay in France, stand on her own two feet, and she had to see it through, no matter what came of it.
The email had addressed her as Isabella – her full, given name and the one she’d used on the application as it sounded so much more serious.
She’d always hated it, but if Mum were still alive, she’d probably be delighted.
She’d always insisted on calling Bella by her full name, especially when she was in trouble.
Bella remembered the way Mum would call her down for tea as a child: ‘Isabella! It’s getting cold!
’ Then, as was often the case when she thought about her mother, she felt the welling of threatening tears.
As the train continued its way towards Versailles, she forced her mind to focus on something else.
* * *
The street where the house was situated looked better than it had on Google Earth.
A couple of shops that had been derelict and covered in scaffolding in the online images were now shiny, new, and open for business.
There was a restaurant, and something that looked like a laundrette.
As she walked on, the buildings became residential, with rows of bells outside, bikes leaning against railings, curtains in the windows. And then she was there: No.12.
She paused, looking up at the building that would soon become her home.
It was a pretty terraced house, probably nineteenth century – three storeys with two windows apiece – each with an ornate, black balconet.
The powder-blue shutters on the first and second floors were thrown open, revealing wooden windows in cross-hatched white.
The front door – her front door – was curved and split in two, and painted a deep blue.
Hesitantly, she climbed the two front steps, lifted her hand and knocked.
‘Oui?’
The woman – or girl, really – who opened the door was dressed in a loose-fitted shirt, covered in flecks of paint.
Her fingers were stained red at the tips and even her hair – auburn and pulled back into a messy ponytail – sported little dots of accidental colour.
The afternoon sunlight rested on her face revealing smooth, porcelain skin, naturally arched eyebrows, a rosebud mouth.
She was young – no more than twenty. Bella thought of her own skin, already starting to form fine lines around her eyes, and wished she’d never lied about being a student.
‘I’m sorry, I’m interrupting,’ she said.
She should have just used the key; the agent had said she’d be free to come and go as she pleased.
But it would have felt odd just letting herself into someone else’s home for the first time without any sort of introduction. They’d probably have called the police.
True, at five foot four, with her neat, shoulder-length hair, fitted jeans and wheeled suitcase, she probably didn’t look like a hardened criminal.
And the young woman didn’t look the type to rugby-tackle an intruder to the ground.
But you can never be too careful – and the last thing Bella wanted was to get off to a bad start.
She’d had enough bad starts – and come to think of it, bad middles and endings – to last her a lifetime.
The young woman looked at her, tilting her head quizzically. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked in heavily accented English.
She was clearly trying to be helpful with her language choice, but it made Bella aware that despite her continually improving French, her accent must have given her away.
‘Sorry,’ she said automatically. She wondered whether she’d ever behaved quite so Britishly in her life.
She’d said five words so far and two of them had been ‘sorry’s.
‘I’m Bella. I’m—I’ve rented the spare room. ’
‘Odette,’ the girl said in response.
On autopilot, Bella held out her hand for a shake. Both of them looked down at her clean hands, her neat, manicured nails. The girl shook her head. ‘Do not be offended, Madame,’ she said, ‘but I do not want to get paint on you.’
‘Sorry.’ Bella cringed at her own word now and noticed a flicker of amusement in Odette’s expression. Odette was speaking in her second language and she’d still managed to use a wider vocabulary than Bella in this small exchange.
In all honesty, she was a little put out by the ‘madame’ part.
Surely, at thirty-four, she was still ‘mademoiselle’?
She knew that some younger French women found the term archaic and sexist, but ‘madame’ sounded to her like a woman of at least twice her age – someone who ran a café and wore her grey hair in a bun, chain-smoked and sported scarlet lipstick.
She was not there yet. Quite.
‘Entrez.’ Odette turned away, leaving the door open behind her.
Tentatively, Bella stepped into the hallway which was laid in parquet, something showcased in the photos she’d viewed before committing. What the photos hadn’t revealed was that the wooden floor was worn and uneven; it squeaked under her weight. But then this was student accommodation.
In the past she’d have spent ages researching before choosing somewhere to live. Or to work, for that matter. But a combination of misery and late nights meant she’d put down a deposit on this place sight unseen.
In fact, her whole life right now was sight unseen.
The hallway also sported an old-fashioned coat stand in one corner, with several mismatched garments hanging from it: a powder-blue jacket, a heavy wool coat, two hoodies and what looked like a pair of running shorts.
A pile of post sat on a small table next to it, together with a couple of sets of keys and – for no apparent reason – one shoe.
There was also a painting on the wall; a large, wooden-framed seascape in oils – beautiful, confident strokes of blue and green to make up whirling waves, the abstract form of a ship being tossed on a playful ocean.
The contrast between the fine art and its lacklustre surroundings made it seem almost comically incongruous – a neglected animal with a diamond collar or a battered car sporting expensive alloys.
‘Thanks,’ she said, although she knew Odette, like her, would just be renting a room. It wasn’t as if she’d offered Bella her hospitality. Still, after three ‘sorry’s in a row, at least it was a new, slightly less apologetic word.
‘Didn’t they give you a key?’
‘Oh. Yes, they did. I just—it felt too weird to just walk in.’ Bella smiled but it felt forced; unnatural. Recently, she’d felt more conscious of herself, her actions, her appearance than she had in a decade – as if she’d travelled back in time to her late teens.
She’d been with Pete for over a decade, married for eight. They’d come to France together to run the B & B and pretty much spent every day in each other’s company. For better or for worse. Latterly, obviously, for worse.
Now that she was an individual again she felt strangely vulnerable, exposed, with no Pete buffer to fall back on.
Inside, Odette gestured at the stairs. ‘The spare room is on the right at the top.’ She smiled, but almost instantly turned back towards another door, propped open with a pile of books.
‘This is mine,’ she said, looking over her shoulder before stepping through and pulling the door to, so just her face was exposed in the gap.
‘Right.’ Bella continued to smile. What was actually wrong with her? Had she literally frozen to the spot?
Odette looked amused. ‘You will be OK to find your room?’
‘Yes! Yes, of course.’
‘Well, I will get back to my painting. But come ask if you need anything. Knock first, please.’ Then, still smiling, Odette turned and disappeared like a cat slinking out of sight. The door clicked firmly into place.
‘Well, that went well,’ Bella muttered to herself before pulling her wheeled suitcase to the edge of the stairs, then adjusting it so she could carry it upwards.
As she made her way to the second floor, she could feel any hope she’d had of finding a friendly welcome, of fitting in, drain away.