Chapter Nineteen
The family meal following Zizi’s funeral was a tense affair.
Although it was only the six of them – Nico’s father and his wife, plus his two sons and their partners – what should have been a low-key, relaxed evening after the stress of the previous day’s funeral turned out to be anything but.
Marc had chosen the restaurant: an upmarket, pretentious place that Kevin, Juliette’s ex-husband, would have loved.
‘This is my treat,’ he said at the start of the meal, and wouldn’t take no for an answer, no matter how much Xavier and Nico protested. ‘Choose whatever you like,’ he urged them, smiling benevolently. ‘Spoil yourselves – Zizi would approve.’
Nico and Juliette exchanged glances. They were both thinking the same thing: Zizi hated unnecessary extravagance.
It was because of her time in the war, she always said, when all they’d had to survive on was hope and fresh air.
She couldn’t bear to waste a mouthful of food or throw away the shortest piece of string.
Taking charge of the meal also allowed Marc to choose the wine: no doubt an eye-wateringly expensive bottle, though he was the only one with the price list so it was hard to tell. ‘I think you’ll enjoy this,’ he said. ‘Hard to go wrong with Chateau-Lafite.’
‘That’s very kind of you, Marc,’ Xavier’s wife, Geneviève, said firmly, ‘but why don’t you let your father and me at least take care of the wine? We can’t let you pay for everything.’ And she took the wine menu from his hands.
Bravo, Juliette applauded silently as Nico bristled beside her.
He’d been on edge all day. In the morning, he and his father and brother had been to the solicitor’s office, to hear Zizi’s will being read.
After allowing for the funeral expenses, whatever money remained was split equally between Xavier and his two sons.
Zizi had also left a collection of her husband’s old tools to Nico.
‘I didn’t even know they existed,’ he told Juliette. The tools had been stored in a safe deposit box for the past five years.
‘Ridiculous, paying to keep junk like that in a bank,’ Marc had said. Yet the tools clearly weighed on his mind, because he kept bringing up the subject in conversation over dinner: whether any were fit to be used, or if anyone would be fool enough to buy them.
‘Look, take them if you want,’ Nico said eventually, exasperated, but Marc laughed and told him not to be ridiculous – he had no use for saws and chisels.
‘You’re the handyman of the family,’ he said. ‘How’s business, anyway? Managing to stay afloat?’
‘Just about,’ Nico replied. ‘And yourself?’
‘Can’t complain.’ Marc rubbed his hands together. ‘We’re hoping to open another restaurant by the end of the year.’
‘Sounds good.’ Nico gave a tight smile.
The two of them hadn’t seen each other for four years, and this was the best they could do?
Juliette chatted to Marc’s partner, Cheryl, whom she was sitting beside, trying not to take any notice of the frostiness on the other side of the table.
Cheryl was in real estate, and told her that Miami was a premier destination for high-net-worth individuals seeking a return on their property investments.
‘Wow,’ Juliette replied. ‘Is it really?’
Cheryl nodded and said, ‘Yes, really.’
And then, thankfully, the waiter was bringing their appetisers and they could talk about food, which provided a richer source of conversation since Cheryl was gluten-intolerant.
Over the main course, Geneviève asked Juliette which books were selling well in her store and they chatted about trends in publishing and their favourite authors.
‘I’m amazed by the number of bookshops in Paris,’ Marc said, leaning across to join the conversation.
‘There seems to be one on every street. God knows how they stay afloat when people are only reading on their phone or tablet these days. Take it from me – there won’t be any printed books left in ten years’ time. ’
‘I disagree,’ Juliette said pleasantly. ‘Lots of people still want to hold a book in their hands, especially children.’
‘Children!’ Marc scoffed. ‘They’re addicted to screens by the age of three. Cheryl’s grandkids wouldn’t know what to do with a book. If it doesn’t beep or play cartoons, they’re not interested.’
‘I had my kids very young,’ Cheryl said quickly.
‘But we’re beginning to realise the damage that too much screentime does to young minds,’ Juliette replied.
‘There’s nothing like sitting with a child on your lap and reading a story together before bed.
’ She remembered winding down with a twin on each knee, yawning as she turned the pages of a well-thumbed book and tried not to fall asleep herself.
‘I can think of plenty of things I’d rather be doing before bed,’ Marc said, clicking his fingers to summon the waiter. ‘Having a double whisky is one. Mon Dieu, I’d sack half the staff if I was running this place.’
Nico pushed back his chair and left abruptly for the bathroom.
Juliette sympathised with his irritation; Marc was behaving like a jerk, but somehow he didn’t get under her skin – just as she could be infuriated by Andrew’s tactless questions, which anyone outside the family would have found easy to ignore.
Childhood resentment didn’t go away, it festered, and patterns of behaviour set up over the years were hard to break.
‘God knows how I kept my temper,’ Nico said when they got home that night. ‘The way he spoke to you, when he knows perfectly well you run a bookshop! That man could start an argument alone in a room with himself. I’m sorry to put you through that, chérie.’
Juliette laughed. ‘Honestly, I didn’t mind. I enjoyed the evening: Cheryl was OK, and I like Geneviève and your dad. But why do you think Marc behaves like that?’
‘I have no idea.’ Nico poured himself a glass of brandy and waved the bottle at her, which she declined.
‘Actually, I probably do. I was my mother’s favourite and I guess he always felt left out.
Still, that’s no excuse.’ He took a sip of brandy and grimaced.
‘Do you feel OK? My stomach’s churning like a cement mixer. ’
‘I’m fine,’ Juliette replied. ‘It’s probably just stress.’
‘Maybe, but that paté tasted odd to me. I’d have left it, except Marc would have taken that as a personal insult.’ He put down the glass. ‘The perfect end to another happy family dinner.’
Juliette smiled to herself. Nico took his health very seriously; you could even call him a hypochondriac. Yet she was dimly aware of him tossing and turning through the night, and woke in the early hours to find the bed empty. Hearing noises from the bathroom, she got up to see if he was all right.
‘Go back to sleep,’ he said through the closed door. ‘There’s nothing you can do and it’s not pretty in here. I’ll be OK.’
He eventually crawled back beside her sometime around dawn, and when she woke again, later that morning, he was sleeping peacefully. She was hoping he could have had a lie-in but he emerged from the bedroom as she was having breakfast with the duvet wrapped around him, looking wan.
‘I have to get up,’ he said, when she asked what he was doing. ‘I’m meant to be taking Delphine for her chemo at ten.’
‘Nico, you can’t!’ Juliette said. ‘What if this turns out to be something like norovirus, not food poisoning at all? Her immune system’s compromised – you can’t risk passing anything on to her.’
‘Well, how else is she going to get to the hospital?’ he asked. ‘She hates taxis.’
‘I’ll take her,’ Juliette told him. ‘It’s my day off so I can pick her up afterwards, too.’ She was insured to drive Nico’s car and almost used to the traffic in Paris by now.
‘She won’t like it,’ he said, reaching for his phone. ‘I’d better call her to explain.’
‘No, don’t do that. I’ll just turn up and it will be fine. You go back to bed and get some more sleep.’ She didn’t want to give Delphine time to make alternative arrangements; this would be the ideal chance to check her story.
An hour later, Juliette had parked close to Delphine’s apartment and texted her to explain, saying she was waiting outside. Five minutes after that, Delphine stalked down the sidewalk, putting on a pair of tortoiseshell sunglasses.
‘You didn’t need to do this,’ she said, as Juliette got out to greet her. ‘I could have taken a cab.’
‘My pleasure,’ Juliette replied. ‘I’ve been wondering how you were.’
She opened the car door and Delphine installed herself in the passenger seat. She was looking as immaculate as ever in cream linen trousers and a cropped jacket, with a huge straw bag over her arm. ‘Look, you don’t owe me anything,’ she said bluntly. ‘We needn’t pretend to be friends.’
‘But we don’t have to be enemies, either,’ Juliette said, pulling out into the traffic. ‘It would make life easier for everyone if we could get along.’
Delphine snorted. ‘By “everyone”, I suppose you mean Nico.’
‘Well, no. I mean us, too – especially now.’
‘Especially now I’m sick?’ Delphine laughed. ‘Another chance for you to show the world what a caring person you are?’
‘Do you really think that’s what I’m doing?’ Juliette snatched a quick look at Delphine, appalled. Yet maybe she’d hit on something: Juliette wasn’t helping today out of the kindness of her heart alone, was she?
‘This isn’t a big deal,’ she went on. ‘I’m giving you a lift, that’s all. My friend Lindsay was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago and we went through it together, so I thought I could be useful. If you want me to back off, I will.’
‘You went through it together,’ Delphine repeated. ‘But you didn’t have cancer too, did you? It’s not contagious.’
‘I sat with her and she told me how she was feeling,’ Juliette replied. ‘She’s fine now, by the way.’
‘Well, whoop de doo. Good for Lindsay,’ Delphine said, unreachable behind her sunglasses as she gazed out of the window.