CHAPTER FIVE
The door creaked open to reveal a elderly woman. She struck Maeve as being at least ninety years old, her face creased with fine wrinkles, her springing hair snow-white and wonderfully wild, her back stooped as she leant on a silver-topped cane. She was wearing a knee-length, dark-green woollen dress – despite the warmth of the summer night – a heavy silver crucifix glinting about her neck as she shuffled forward, one hand outstretched.
‘Ah, ma petite…’ Her cloudy hazel eyes were nonetheless still keen and intelligent, reminiscent of Leo’s own penetrating gaze. ‘Don’t cry, my little one,’ she told Maeve in French, her voice husky and guttural, like an ex-smoker’s. ‘It’s not serious. You are safe now.’ Her smile showed a row of teeth far too white and too perfect to be real. ‘You are home.’
Home?
Maeve was baffled. Had the old lady mistaken her for somebody else? Or maybe her own powers of translation had reached the natural limit.
Politely, Maeve allowed the woman to take her hand in a surprisingly strong grasp. ‘Bonsoir, merci… Gosh that’s quite a grip you have there,’ she added in English, too exhausted to reach for the right words in a foreign language. It had been one hell of a day, and the universe was apparently not yet finished with her. ‘I’m Maeve.’
‘Maeve,’ the old lady repeated, smiling and nodding as though she already knew this.
To clarify matters, Maeve said slowly and loudly, ‘Leo said I could stay. I’m just here for the night.’
‘Leo, oui, ah oui.’ The old lady’s smile broadened. She really did have an extensive range of unblemished teeth, Maeve thought, smiling back at her. ‘You will help Leo,’ she added with a knowing wink. ‘You will be his Muse.’
‘His, what?’
Now Maeve was sure that her French had deserted her. Because that made no sense at all.
A ‘Muse’ was someone – usually female – who inspired an artist to create and often ‘sat’ for portraits as well. In the nude sometimes, if the Pre-Raphaelites were anything to go by…
As soon as she’d downed her obligatory coffee and croissant tomorrow morning, she’d be out of here and likely never see Chateau Rémy again. She’d have a job becoming anyone’s Muse under those restricted circumstances. As for stripping off…
The only removal of clothing likely to happen under this roof was when she jumped into a hot bath, a plan which seemed doomed to failure at this rate.
But the old lady was adamant.
‘Yes, his Muse. That Liselle… Ah!’ The explosive sound encapsulated both disbelief and laughing derision. ‘That girl is finished… Done! She was never his Muse. Bah… She thought she was, but we all knew different. Now it is revealed…’ The small dark eyes bored into Maeve. ‘But you, little English…’
‘Me?’
‘Yes… You will bring out his paints again.’
‘His… paints? Yes, if you like.’ Had Leo lost his paints? What on earth was this conversation about?
Her brain was too befuddled to make head nor tail of it. But she smiled back anyway because she didn’t want to be rude.
‘Bienvenue, p’tite!’ The old lady drew her close, warm and perfumed, and kissed her on both cheeks before exclaiming, ‘Maeve! Maeve!’ with a prophetic cry that echoed around the room.
‘Yes, that’s my name. Maeve.’ The old lady wasn’t letting her go, she realised, as she gently attempted to extricate herself. ‘I’m terribly sorry, but if I could just…’
‘Maman, what are you doing here?’ a voice demanded.
Maeve was relieved to see Madame Rémy again, now in a pink cotton dressing gown and slippers, a glass of water in her hand, standing in the doorway.
Rescue had arrived, it seemed.
At first sight of Madame Rémy, the old lady relinquished her grasp on Maeve and hurried away, leaning heavily on her cane. Muttering something in French, she was ushered from the room by Madame Rémy, who apologised profusely to Maeve in English. ‘I’m so sorry. My mother… You must forgive her. She is very elderly and isn’t always aware what she’s doing.’
‘His Muse!’ The old lady threw over her shoulder before disappearing.
‘Go to bed, Maman!’ Tutting, Madame Rémy handed Maeve the glass of water. ‘Here, I forgot to ask Bernadette to make sure you had water. Such a warm evening.’
‘Oh, thank you, yes. But please don’t worry about your mother. It’s very good to see you again. I hope your ankle is better.’
‘Much, thank you.’
‘I’m so glad. And thank you so much for letting me stay tonight.’ The old lady was already tap-tap-tapping along the attic landing with her cane. Maeve peered round the door after her. ‘Your mother’s lovely. And I’m not really sure what I’m doing either, most of the time,’ she added in an undertone. ‘So… I guess that means she must be Leo’s great-grandmother?’
‘Yes, she’s ninety-two. Can you believe it? Wait for me, Maman! Don’t try to manage the stairs alone…’ Madame Rémy gave a dry laugh, and touched her arm. ‘But you must be desperate for sleep. We’ll see you at breakfast, I hope?’
‘Yes, thank you again.’ Maeve closed the door and leant against it on the other side, listening as the two women made their slow way back through the honeycomb of passageways to who knows where.
Almost too tired to move, she bent again to remove her shoes and wiggle her poor aching toes about, and was just considering a much-needed expedition to locate the bathroom when someone else knocked at the door.
‘Oh my goodness, what now?’
Her nerves fraught, Maeve threw open the door and glared at her new visitor, half-expecting some other ancient member of the family come to impart wisdom in the middle of the night. But it was only Leo’s glowering sister, a stack of clothes huddled untidily in her arms, holding out a brand-new toothbrush still in its packet.
‘My brother asked me to bring you these. There’s toothpaste in the bathroom,’ Bernadette said sullenly, ‘and shampoo, of course.’
‘Merci,’ Maeve sighed, drumming up a weary smile. She really was very grateful. These people had been so kind to her and yet she could barely keep her eyes open.
Bernadette shrugged, handing her the bundle of clothes, and stomped back along the landing in the same direction her grandmother and great-grandmother had taken just minutes before.
Maeve peered up and down the passageway. ‘Anyone else want to come and speak to me?’
There was no reply.
Grabbing a clean towel, she staggered along the landing to the bathroom, which turned out to be huge, despite its low, sloping ceiling, with a freestanding antique bath with gold taps set on a raised platform, and an old-fashioned screen between the bath and the toilet.
There were no curtains at the window but the glass was frosted. She pushed it open, remembering what Leo had told her about the steam.
‘Ah, at last…’ Running herself a bath, she was delighted to find the water tolerably hot and climbed in for a quick dunk of her hair and an overall wash. Closing her eyes in the warm scented water after scrubbing all her bits, she allowed herself to soak for five minutes of pure unadulterated relaxation, and then jumped out, towelled herself off briskly and brushed her teeth with the new toothbrush.
Two and a half minutes of assiduous brushing, as was her twice-daily habit.
Being robbed in broad daylight and left stranded in a foreign country without a passport was no excuse for poor dental hygiene.
Bernadette’s night clothes were a little on the large side, but they were better than sleeping in the top she’d worn all day or, worse, in the all-together. There were limits, after all, and she was British.
Stumbling wearily back to her bedroom, she heard a strange cry from somewhere below her in the house and stopped dead, startled.
Was that a cat? Or perhaps a woman, crying?
Maybe she had been too brusque with the great-grandmother and upset the poor old lady. But her intuition told her it was somebody completely different. Nobody she had met so far in the Rémy family, she suspected, listening to the soft distant sound of sobbing.
As she got ready for bed, the crying continued, muffled but unmistakable. Sometime later, she heard footsteps, a rumble of voices, and the slamming of a door. Then silence.
At last she slept.
Maeve woke just after dawn and padded barefoot across to the tiny window in her fairy tale turret bedroom to stare out across Paris.
Last night, she had been too dazed to make much of the tiny lights dancing all over the city’s velvety glow. By daylight, the view was miraculous. Parisian roofs, balconies, office buildings and elegant apartments filled the skyline. The sky was a deep, gorgeous, shining blue. No clouds, very little wind, judging by the still treetops she could just see in the yard below.
A perfect summer”s day, in fact.
She wiggled her toes and thought with brief longing of her absent suitcase. It would be back in England by now. Dear old Blighty. How they must have stared in astonishment when she failed to make the rendezvous and they had to leave France without her. Maeve, who did everything by the book, had missed the coach. And not even contacted Betsy or the tour company to explain why. In the end, they must have decided she was dead. Because absolutely no other explanation would fit…
What would happen to her luggage now? They would hold it for her at one of their offices, perhaps. She needed to look up the phone number of the coach tour company as soon as possible. Of course, she had the number in her rucksack. All the numbers she might need in the event of an emergency, along with names, websites, protocols. But she no longer had her rucksack. Or her smartphone, for that matter. It was all a bit of a disaster. But nothing that couldn’t be sorted out once she was given permission to travel back to the UK.
She hated the idea of everyone laughing at her, and almost wished she had died. Well, maybe that was a tiny bit extreme. Nobody wished they were dead just to avoid embarrassment. Especially when she would never be forced to hear their chuckles or witness their barely concealed smirks.
With any luck, she would never see any of her fellow travellers again. But it was still humiliating to imagine what they’d said behind her back…
Soon, she would be home again, checking through the book marking she still had to do before school started again in September, and perhaps eating a heart-healthy reduced sugar biscuit.
Except that her house keys had been in her rucksack too, she realised, her heart sinking even further. Her neighbour Mrs Fletcher always kept a spare set, of course. So she wouldn’t need to pay a locksmith to break in for her.
It would simply be an awkward conversation, that was all.
‘But where’s your key, Maeve?’
‘Well, I was robbed by a young man on a motorbike. He stole my rucksack, which contained my passport and money and phone and keys… I had to rely on the kindness of strangers. One of them was a very good-looking Frenchman. An artist, in fact. And yes, Mrs Fletcher, I know I shouldn’t have accepted his offer of a bed for the night, but what choice did I have? Besides, he lived in a simply vast chateau and it was a four-poster bed…’
‘Oh my goodness, Maeve. And did anything happen?’
She drew a deep breath and squared her shoulders. Maybe that was a very small cloud in the distance, a tiny patch of white scudding across the Parisian skyline. Where there was one cloud, others might follow, and before you knew it, the sun would have gone in and it would be pouring down.
At least, that’s how British weather worked.
But maybe French weather was contrary. Or hadn’t got the cloud memo.
She would need to make something up.
‘But where’s your key, Maeve?’
‘I dropped it into the Seine by accident, Mrs Fletcher. I was distracted while on a lunchtime pleasure cruise. One of the other passengers was a young child with a red balloon, you see, and her balloon popped very loudly right next to me just as I was examining my key fob while holding it out over the water…’
‘Oh my goodness. How unfortunate. Well, it’s lucky that I keep a spare set hanging in my kitchen then, isn’t it?’
‘My thoughts entirely, Mrs Fletcher.’
Yes, it would be awkward.
She disliked awkward things. Like having to tell a little white lie to avoid an over-complicated conversation. Awkward things made her nervous and even sometimes gave her digestive issues.
She hugged herself, turning away from the beautiful view of the blue Parisian sky. That tiny cloud had faded away before it could reach their part of the city, and she knew it must be about breakfast time by now. She wished she’d invested in a watch before coming to Paris but had assumed her smartphone would do the job perfectly well on its own.
She also had an app on her phone that reminded her when to meditate, and told her every time she logged in that she needed to relax and not worry so much. She was missing that app right about now.
It was hard not to worry, given her situation. Whoever designed that app had probably never lost their passport in a foreign country and been parted from their luggage and had to stay in a strange house of sobbing women…
Had she imagined hearing that lamentation in the night?
‘Focus on the positive,’ she told herself, channelling the relaxation app. ‘The Embassy will sort it all out for you, Maeve.’
Having washed and dressed in Bernadette’s rather over-generous clothes, she went downstairs to find out where breakfast was being eaten.
The chateau, she realised, was big, but not as huge as it had seemed last night, being led her through countless corridors and up-and-down staircases. Leo must surely have gone the long way round, she thought, exploring the ground floor and finally popping her head round an open door to what had to be the breakfast room, judging by the delicious wafting scent of food and lively chatter of voices.
She cleared her voice, feeling like an intruder, and the conversation died to silence as everyone turned to stare at her…