Chapter 4
The little sachet of dried lavender that hung from a ribbon below the rear-view mirror was failing to mask a scent that Tilly couldn’t quite place.
Or maybe it was the warmth of having the solid, big body of a complete stranger – a male stranger – settling only inches away from her in the passenger seat that was warping her senses. Yes… even the sound of the car’s persistent warning beep sounded louder than usual.
‘You need to put your safety belt on,’ she told Angus.
He nodded, pulling the buckle down to make it long enough to snap into place, dislodging something from the centre console as he did so, which unrolled itself with remarkable speed to puddle around Tilly’s feet and the brake pedal. She reached down and started pulling it free.
‘What on earth is that?’ Angus asked.
Tilly was distracted by not yet having found the end of the roll.
‘Ce sont des sacs à crottes.’ She looked up from the handfuls of soft plastic decorated with paw prints. ‘The bags for picking up the dog poop?’
‘You have a dog?’ Angus turned his head sharply, as if he was expecting a wolfhound to be lying on the back seat.
‘No. My mother has a dog. This is her car.’
A practical, reliable, honest sort of car, which was rather like how Tilly might describe her mother.
And her father, for that matter. They might have approved of Angus McLeod because neither of them had had any time for the frivolity or waste of money that romantic gestures represented.
There’d never been surprise gifts or declarations of love or impetuous dancing in the kitchen when she’d been growing up.
By the time Tilly had watched her parents’ marriage simply crumble around the edges and fade into something too meaningless to be worth keeping, she was firmly convinced that the lack of romance was the reason her family had disintegrated.
It was the glue that any relationship with a partner for life needed to succeed.
She was never going to let that happen to herself.
Tilly stuffed the crumpled bags into the door pocket, started the engine and drove towards the exit of the car park.
The bar lifted as the technology recognised the number plate.
Suddenly it didn’t seem quite so uncomfortable to have Angus McLeod sitting beside her.
At least they had a conversation starter that wasn’t going to tread on any overly personal ground.
‘It was much more suitable for an airport pickup,’ she added. ‘And, seeing as she lives in Aix-en-Provence, it was a… a non-brainer.’
‘No-brainer,’ Angus murmured, but there was no malice in his correction. Maybe he was also happy to have something safe to talk about. ‘What do you normally drive?’
‘I don’t, normally.’ Tilly was negotiating a roundabout to start taking them north. ‘I ride.’
‘A horse?’ Angus sounded astonished. ‘A motorbike?’
‘Not exactly.’ Tilly was glad of needing to concentrate on the traffic so she had an excuse not to meet his gaze. ‘I have a Vespa.’
‘Ah…’
He sounded as if he might be trying to suppress amusement, which made Tilly instantly defensive.
She loved her sage green Vespa Primavera with its basket on the back.
It was perfect for zipping around the hills of her hometown, Vence, coping with cobblestones, traffic snarls on market days and the narrow lanes and parking where she lived, in one of the squares inside the walls of the old city.
‘I also have a car,’ she added, ‘because it’s not safe to take a Vespa onto the autoroute. It’s a 2CV van that’s painted purple and has flowers all over it, so I don’t imagine you would want to ride in it.’
It had been simple to change the lovely curly, cursive signwriting on the vintage van Sophie had gifted her along with the business.
All that had been needed was to change ‘Marry Me’ to ‘A Promise’.
Both her vehicles were, at times, impractical and not entirely reliable and they were both adorned with romantic flourishes.
Rather like how Tilly might describe her life, come to think of it.
‘There are only two seats in it, anyway, so…’ She finished her sentence with an apologetic grimace to go with her shrug. She hadn’t intended to remind him of his solo status.
Angus clearly didn’t intend to be reminded. He didn’t turn from watching the countryside and industrial buildings as they skirted the city of Marseilles. ‘Did you manage to find the rental car I requested?’
‘Of course.’
Except it hadn’t been that simple, had it? Tilly had only finalised the hire and delivery of the car this afternoon and hadn’t had a chance to send a message to Angus.
‘A 1966 Alfa Romeo Spider. Like the one you saw on the website.’
‘Red?’
‘Yes.’ Tilly cast him a curious glance. ‘It’s special for you, this car?’
‘Have you ever seen The Graduate? With Dustin Hoffman?’
‘No.’
‘You wouldn’t understand, then.’
Tilly kept her tone level despite what felt like a put-down. ‘Try me.’
‘Dustin’s character, Benjamin, is driving a red Alfa Romeo Spider. Exactly like that one. He goes searching to find a direction to take in his life. He wants to escape. He wants to find love.’
‘Ah…’ What was so incomprehensible about that? ‘Don’t we all?’
‘I watched it when I was a teenager. At a time when escape seemed like an enviable choice. I—’ Angus cleared his throat as if he’d said too much already. ‘I’ve always liked the car.’
It was no big deal, his curt tone suggested, and he didn’t want to discuss it any further.
As someone who’d loved movies to the point of feeling them absorb her as if she was one of the characters, Tilly knew perfectly well that it wasn’t simply the car he’d liked so much about that movie, and it made her curious.
What had Angus McLeod been like as a teenager, she wondered. And what had he wanted to escape from?
‘So the car is not something you want me to cancel?’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘It’s not a car you’d want to travel in?’
Tilly lips curved a little. ‘It’s a sports car. It’s a cabriolet. It’s red.’ She raised both her eyebrows. ‘What’s not to love?’
For the first time since he’d arrived, Tilly could see a tilt to his lips that was – almost – a smile.
She felt like she’d won a prize. This was even better than when she’d made him laugh about preferring steak to fish because he hadn’t been heartbroken then. Now she’d almost made him smile when he was probably in the depths of despair.
And that gave her a warm glow that started in her chest but then sank deep into her abdomen, where it curled for just long enough to fire off a few tingles that felt… well… rather pleasant.
Another faint alarm bell rang but Tilly dismissed it.
No. She was over having fantasies about Angus McLeod. He’d proved himself to be like every other man she’d ever sighed over.
Imperfect.
Unromantic.
Definitely not the man she’d thought he was.
* * *
The luxury, vintage Italian car was waiting for Angus in the car park behind the hotel.
He had checked in and he was about to walk to the restaurant to meet Tilly for dinner but he couldn’t walk past the Alfa Romeo without getting up close and personal.
Without touching that glossy fire-engine red paintwork with a reverent fingertip.
This wasn’t on a movie screen. This was real.
The sleek lines of this iconic car. The sense of power and performance quietly retrained within those elegant curves.
That gently rounded nose. The boat tail. The sheer gracefulness of it.
For some reason, it made him instantly think of his first impression of Tilly being a ballerina. Because there was both performance and ultimate grace in the act of dancing? That utter control was how that skill became an art form?
Aye…
That fitted with the lasting memory he’d carried of this particular movie, even though it was so blurred by time it was more a feeling than a coherent thought.
The message he’d taken from the storyline and symbolic imagery was that you needed complete control if you were going to win the life you truly wanted.
That being seduced by sex or falling in love were the biggest mistakes you could make and you’d end up losing any chance to escape.
If only Ben had just stayed behind the steering wheel.
If he hadn’t been blinded by lust and then love he might not have lost his bid for freedom and ended up on a bus.
Being driven. Losing control so that he had no way of choosing the direction his life was going to take.
For a thirteen-year-old boy just beginning to recognise the strength of yearning for sex and love and a life that meant something, caught up in yet another train-wreck of his father’s search for probably all of those things, the movie had more than resonated with Angus.
It had possibly shaped his life far more than he’d realised, with the warning that taking risks brought consequences that could be disastrous.
Not that he hadn’t known that already, of course – the career he’d chosen was proof of that – but the slightly weird story not only explained how things could go wrong, it had given him a blueprint for how to stay safe by staying in control.
And the symbol of keeping that control was always going the be the little red car.
When Tilly had sent him the website link for a luxury car hire company in Nice, her suggestion for his self-transport around the South of France was a glamorous Jaguar E-type in a deep British racing green, but it had felt like a sign that a car that had once been so symbolic for him – the very same model and year of manufacture as the one in the movie – was also available for hire, and the opportunity had been impossible to pass up.
Thanks to the recent unexpected developments, the choice of that particular car had been elevated into an – albeit unintentional – absolutely inspired decision.
A very private symbol of his own determination to stay behind the wheel and in control of the direction his life was going in.