Chapter 8
NOW
‘Bon Dieu!’ The cry was loud and echoed around the en suite.
With a gasp, Bella stood back against the wall, feeling for some sort of weapon and seizing the only viable instrument in sight – a toilet brush that had seen better days.
She’d found her room easily. It was quite sparse – just a chest of drawers and a bed with a bedside table, but it would do.
Then she’d noticed a door in the corner.
Perhaps a closet. She’d pushed open the door and gasped; it was an en suite!
They hadn’t thought of mentioning this in the property details.
Things were looking up! She’d found herself grinning, but her face had fallen when she’d realised she was not alone.
Because there appeared to be a naked man, half-covered in soapsuds, standing in the shower, clutching at the plastic curtain and trying in vain to cover his modesty.
‘What are you doing in my bathroom?’ she managed.
‘Madame,’ he said, drawing himself up – although it was hard for him to demonstrate the authority or gravitas he was clearly trying to show when half-wrapped in a plastic shower curtain which left very little to the imagination. ‘My question is: what are you doing in mine?’
‘Yours?’
‘Yes, of course! Do you think I would break into somebody’s bathroom and have a shower?’
It did, on reflection, seem rather odd. Bella lowered the toilet brush to her side. ‘But I’ve—This is my room! I’ve—I literally signed the contract two days ago!’
‘I have lived here for several years.’
‘But this is—’
‘Is it possible,’ the man said in a voice that sounded as if he were only just holding onto his temper, ‘that perhaps you are mistaken?’
‘But—’
The bedroom she’d passed through had been uninhabited. Immaculate. She’d lain on the bed for a moment, revelling in the fresh cotton sheets someone had clearly put on for her benefit. It hadn’t looked like a room that someone was actually living in. It was too tidy, too empty.
But she had wondered about the dressing gown on the back of the door.
And the shoes just tucked under the bed.
She’d just assumed they’d been left behind by the previous occupant. Not the present one.
Oh, God. She had just walked into someone else’s room, into their en suite, and then accused them of trespassing. First impressions just didn’t get any worse than this. ‘I’m so—I’m—Oh, God.’ She turned on her heel and made for the door.
‘Madame!’ he cried after her. ‘The brush!’
‘Oh, sorry,’ she said, noticing the toilet brush still clutched in her hand.
She turned swiftly to return it and in doing so, flicked some dirty droplets into the air.
They sailed almost gracefully in slow motion across the room before delicately sprinkling themselves across the wall and onto the man’s bare chest.
‘Bon Dieu!’ he cried again. ‘Merde!’
‘I’m—’ But she couldn’t bear to look at the mess she’d created of him, his bathroom and her life. Instead, dropping the brush, she ran back into the corridor where she noticed the door to a smaller room, slightly ajar. It was almost comically obvious, yet somehow, she’d missed it before.
She flung herself onto the smaller, harder, sheetless mattress of her actual room and let out a scream of exasperation into its muffling surface. What the hell was wrong with her? And why exactly was this now her life?
It was at moments like these – although thankfully this exact situation hadn’t occurred before – that she missed Pete most of all.
He’d been her husband, sure. But in the years they’d lived together in France, he’d also become her best friend; her family.
She could have rung him, told him about this and he would have found a way to make her laugh at it, helped her to move on.
She couldn’t talk to Kitty, who would probably just share her horror. And she didn’t feel able to speak to Juliette about it – this sort of thing would never happen to someone like her.
Mum had been gone for years, Dad was now also a dad to two little boys and lived in Clapham; he’d melted away after Mum died and had been swallowed up by a new life.
She didn’t have anyone. Or anything.
All she had was squirming shame, and an almost overwhelming desire to run out of the house, get back on the train and disappear into the haven of Peyrat and the house she’d loved for almost a decade.
* * *
The tentative knock on the door made her jump. ‘Come in,’ she said after a pause, hoping to heavens that, if it was the half-naked French guy, he’d at least pulled more than an off-white shower curtain over his manhood.
When she saw that in fact it was Odette, she gave a sigh of relief. ‘Bonjour,’ she said. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi.’ Odette stepped in, looking around at the rather shabby room with its faded wallpaper, heavy vintage wardrobe and overlarge carved bedframe. ‘You found the right room now?’
‘Yes.’ Bella probably would have blushed if she hadn’t already been fully coloured from her earlier embarrassment. ‘Did you hear what I—what happened?’
Odette gave a little smile and sat next to her on the bed, slipping an arm around her back. ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘Do not be embarrassed. Henri told me.’
The arm around her back was a surprise; Odette seemed a different person to the one who’d answered the door less than an hour ago. The unexpected touch caused a prick of tears which Bella quickly swallowed away.
‘Henri?’ she said, nodding in the vague direction of the other room.
‘Oui. That was Henri, our other housemate. He told me what happened, but don’t worry. He thinks it’s funny, now he knows you are not a burglar. Or an assassin.’
‘He thought I might be an assassin?’
Odette rolled her eyes. ‘You will have to excuse Henri. He is training to be a professor of literature. He has too much of an imagination. Too many stories.’
Bella laughed. ‘Oh – well, I hope you put him right.’
‘Yes. He is reassured you are quite harmless!’ Odette’s tone was teasing and Bella felt something tight within her uncoil, relax.
‘Well, good. I’m so embarrassed just walking in like that.’
They smiled at each other for a moment, then Odette stood, stretching her arms above her head and yawning. ‘I wanted to ask you to join us for some wine, if you drink? We often have apéros together at seven.’
‘Oh. Yes, please.’ In actual fact, the thought of seeing Henri again so soon made Bella feel a little light-headed, but better to get it over and done with. Be a grown-up about it.
And while she’d rather not have been confronted by Henri’s – albeit rather attractive – naked body, if it turned out that this was what it took to thaw the ice, well, she’d learn to cope.
All was not lost after all.