Chapter 5
MAGGIE THOUGHT SHE MISHEARD the knock at first.
The next morning, she was spooning coffee into a mug with some urgency. She’d woken on her aunt’s bed at midnight, utterly baffled about where she was, her tongue as thick as a brick. She hadn’t called Mungo or eaten any dinner but there wasn’t much point in doing either of those things so late. Everything would have to wait until the morning, until now, although before she started dealing with the day, she desperately needed this coffee.
But as she reached for the kettle, there it was again – a muffled thumping on the front door.
She glanced at the old clock above the swing doors. Not even nine and she wasn’t dressed properly. She looked down at one of Phil’s old floral dressing gowns, knotted around her waist, then stirred the coffee, lifted the mug and instantly burned her mouth.
‘ Shit .’
Another knock.
Maggie opened the door, the polite smile on her face dimming when she saw an elderly couple.
‘Good morning,’ said the man, who was wearing a Panama hat and spoke with the sort of clipped British accent that existed in the 1920s. ‘Terribly sorry to disturb you so early, but I wondered if we might leave our bags here and return this afternoon?’
Maggie frowned.
‘Could we trouble you?’ he went on.
She squinted at him. ‘Trouble me?’
‘To check in. We’re early. But could we leave our bags?’
‘Your bags?’ She lifted her mug to her mouth. This was very confusing.
‘Yes. This is Le Figuier, is it not?’
‘Er, yes. Yes, it is.’
‘Terrific. I take it you’re still open, then? I have to say, we weren’t entirely sure, what with—’
‘The story in the Daily Mail ,’ interrupted the woman beside him, who was dressed entirely in pink: pink plimsolls, pink chinos, pink shirt and pink lipstick. The only thing that wasn’t pink was a string of pearls around her neck.
‘But we’re very pleased that you are,’ he added.
‘Are what?’ Maggie asked faintly.
‘Open,’ the man replied, goggling at her as if she was hard of hearing. ‘I know we’re hours early but if we could leave our suitcases, I thought we might stretch our legs around the village and have a spot of lunch, if there’s somewhere you could recommend? Your check-in is at three, I believe?’
‘Er …’
‘So could we leave them now? We’d be awfully obliged.’
‘Er … Yes … OK.’ Maggie thought she might be having an out-of-body experience; she could hear herself saying the words but couldn’t stop them. Guests? Guests? Georges said they’d been cancelled.
‘Thank you, that’s very kind. We left Nice early to try and beat the traffic but it was still awful. Wasn’t it, Belinda?’
‘Ghastly, simply ghastly.’
‘The name’s Bancroft. Lord and Lady Bancroft. Four nights.’
‘Right,’ she murmured, looking at their two suitcases.
‘We’ll be back after lunch.’
‘Uh … sure … OK.’
‘Thank you very much. Or merci beaucoup , I should say,’ replied Lord Bancroft with a little chuckle, before the pair made their way down the steps again and into their car.
She stood and watched them drive slowly away, leaning on the doorframe for support. Guests! This place wasn’t suitable for guests! The rooms were damp; the swimming pool looked like a bog, and there was nothing to eat. Where the hell was Audrey?
She needed to get dressed. Then she’d deal with this. Maggie dragged the suitcases into the hallway and was about to pick up her coffee when her phone started vibrating in her dressing gown.
Mungo.
‘Hi, sweetheart. I’m so sor—’
‘You’re alive! I’ll call off the search party.’
‘I know, I know, I’m sorry,’ she continued. ‘I didn’t get here until late, and then I had to see the notaire and then I fell asleep, and my phone died. I am sorry.’
‘Darling, are you exhausted? I don’t like you being so exhausted.’
‘No,’ said Maggie, leaning against the front door frame and looking out at the garden. It looked less depressing this morning: the leaves of the old tree were catching the sunlight and glittering in the breeze. Butterflies were flitting happily over the clumps of overgrown lavender, and the pool … no, the pool still looked like a derelict lido. She’d find a net and dredge it before the Bancrofts returned. But the view was mesmerizing: out across the lawn, to the pointing cypress trees in the distance and the shimmering hills beyond. Beneath her, chewing the long grass, were the donkeys. She made the clicking noise that Phil had taught her, squeezing her tongue against the roof of her mouth, and they raised their heads.
‘What’s that?’
‘The donkeys. D’you remember them? Paul and Ringo? I worked out they must be over thirty by now. Did you know donkeys can live to be forty?’ She’d googled it from bed that morning, having opened the shutters and spotted them standing under the apricot tree, necks craned, trying to pluck unripe fruit from the branches with their rubbery lips.
He laughed. ‘Paul and Ringo. She was batty, your old aunt. And I didn’t know that, no. Almost as old as us.’
‘We’re not that old. How are you feeling?’
‘Oh, fine, fine. Doing some calls, got a meeting with Jeff after lunch, going to see some new place of his off Berkeley Square.’
Maggie hadn’t been asking about his work. She’d meant how was Mungo emotionally, five days on from the negative pregnancy test. But Mungo didn’t much like talking about feelings. Not emotional ones. Physical feelings such as tiredness or a headache were fine, but deeper feelings, like sadness or grief, made him uncomfortable. Boarding school, Maggie often told herself. Being sent off to school aged seven by a diplomat father meant he’d had to bury difficult feelings to survive.
‘Talking of meetings,’ she went on, changing the subject, ‘can I talk you through what the notaire said?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘So,’ she began tentatively, ‘the top line is that she’s left a million euros of debt.’
‘ What? How on earth did she rack up that kind of debt? I thought that hotel was wildly popular?’
‘It was. But it seems to have faded a bit. It looks …’ Maggie glanced over her shoulder into the hallway, ‘well, it’s tired. And she took out a bigger mortgage and a couple of other loans. Anyway, I’m meeting him again tomorrow to discuss.’
‘How much is he charging for all this? He’s taking it all out of the estate, mark my words. That’s what lawyers do. Rack up a huge bill, which we’ll end up paying for. And don’t forget the inheritance tax, which is gargantuan in France. And then our Froggie friend will add his fee for sorting this mess out on top.’
‘You think we have to sell?’
‘Darling, of course we have to sell. What on earth are we going to do with a hotel in France that’s a million euros in debt?’
Maggie glanced towards the donkeys. Ringo was now scratching his bottom against the oak tree. ‘I haven’t properly thought it through, but I was wondering …’
‘Mmmm?’
‘What if we could keep it somehow and find someone out here to run it? I know it sounds like a pipe dream; I’ve only just got here and it needs a ton of work, but I can’t help thinking, could we do it? Could we keep it on? Because if we could, and if, say, we ever have children that we could bring here …’
‘We are going to have children,’ Mungo said forcefully.
‘I know. I know, and if we could come out here for holidays, like I did, that feels right , somehow. Like it was meant to be. Maybe that’s why Phil left it to me, with that in mind? I found this photo of us, of me and her, on her bedside table last night. It was old, taken when I was out here one summer and it just feels like …’
‘Like what?’
‘Like a sort of message.’
‘A message ?’
‘I get it, it sounds crazy. But she can’t have left me this place simply for me to sell it. I know her. Knew her.’ Maggie had imagined so many conversations with her aunt over the years; conversations where Phil forgave her, conversations where Maggie admitted she’d been wrong, conversations where they talked about what Maggie had gone through. She’d wanted to talk to her aunt almost every day but never had. Something – pride? Shame? – had stopped her. But the fact that Phil had left her the chateau felt like a reprieve. It felt like forgiveness, of a sort. She thought of the photo on her bedside table again. It did feel like a message, a reminder of the closeness they’d once shared.
Mungo sighed. ‘Darling, I understand this is all very hard. You’ve lost a beloved aunt, and you’re tired, and been through the mill recently what with, well, the doctors. But I’m not sure we’d be able to make the finances add up. Realistically, how often could we get there? Two or three times a year? We could always rent somewhere down the line if you feel that strongly about the place. How about that, hmmm?’
Maggie echoed his sigh. She didn’t have the energy for a more intense discussion. Mungo was in full transmit mode, and once he’d decided something, he was very hard to persuade otherwise. ‘Maybe. I’ll go and see Georges tomorrow once I’ve read over it all.’
‘We have to be realistic about these things, darling, and a million euros of debt isn’t something we can just magic away.’
‘I know, I keep thinking about the debt and feeling sick.’
‘And we have doctors’ fees to think about. More doctors’ fees.’
‘I know.’
‘Because I think we should perhaps start talking about the next steps.’
She slumped further against the door frame. ‘Mungo, I’m not sure I can fa—’
‘If we want to go back to Dr Goodall, even think about another round, we need to make an appointment. I’m sorry, darling, but you know how booked up he gets.’
Maggie screwed her eyes shut at the idea of returning to the clinic where couples sat in the stark waiting room, clenching one another’s hands in silence, waiting to be summoned, desperately avoiding eye contact with other infertile couples in case they saw pity in their eyes or, worse, hope that maybe this was the promised miracle doctor who could help them all, the unchosen ones who’d tried and tried and tried again to have a baby but who were, somehow, broken.
‘Darling?’
‘Maybe. But I don’t know if …’
She trailed off. Nothing had been more important than having a baby for most of their seven-year marriage. Together, she and Mungo had tried naturally for two years before five years of doctors’ appointments, three miscarriages and now three failed IVF attempts. She’d visited almost every specialist in London who’d recommended different diets and different cocktails of vitamins and drugs while watching her friends have one, then two and in some cases their third child. Their stomachs had swelled with babies while hers was swollen with hormones. Maggie’s friends often complained about their husbands snoring or their bathroom habits, but she wasn’t sure anything took the gloss off a marriage like bending over every night so her husband could inject alternate bottom cheeks to avoid one becoming more painful than the other.
In the past few months, after the last miscarriage, Maggie had even stopped spending time with most of her friends because she found seeing their perfect babies so difficult, which meant her social life had dwindled.
The previous month, her friend Rachel had thrown a third birthday party for her son, Rex, and Maggie had fibbed that she thought she might have Covid as an excuse not to go. Maggie was surprised at how easy the lie had come, and at the relief she’d felt when Rachel had replied telling her to ‘rest up’. What kind of woman couldn’t take a present to a three-year-old’s party and be happy for the chubby little human in a highchair, smiling in awe at his birthday cake? But she couldn’t. She’d felt sad, and then she’d felt guilty for thinking so jealously of others, which made the sadness even worse. On her worst days, she allowed herself to imagine how old each of her three miscarried babies would be now. She never told Mungo this, but she wanted to remember them in her own private way. They had been part of her, even if only for a few weeks.
‘OK,’ she told him, knowing it was the only answer for them, that they had to carry on. ‘Sure, if you want to call his office, or get Gemma to, OK.’
Gemma was Mungo’s assistant; she was 29 and wore very short skirts because she was in love with him. To Gemma, Mungo was like a character from a posh film: he talked nice, and had a nice car and an office in Mayfair, and he wasn’t bad-looking if you ignored the fact that he didn’t have much of a chin, so his face simply slid into his neck. For the life of her, she couldn’t understand why he’d married Maggie, such a pale, mousy woman. Gemma was consequently very short with her on the phone whenever they spoke.
‘We have to forge on, darling. Keep going. Remember what we were told about Dr Goodall: he can fix anyone.’
Maggie had come to hate fertility terminology – geriatric mothers, irregular cycles, blighted ovum, inhospitable wombs. And she especially hated the implication that couples, and more specifically women in such situations, needed fixing. But again, she found herself too weary to correct her husband; he was only trying to help, she reminded herself.
‘I know, tell Gemma to let me know about the appointment.’
‘I will. But are you really all right, darling? You sound weary.’
‘Mmhmm. It’s just weird, being back after so long. Listen, I’ll ring later but I need to sort things out here.’
‘OK, darling, OK. Speak later. Love you.’
‘Love you too,’ she replied dutifully.