Fifteen
‘W hat an idea your father’s parents had to give him that name!’ Elise shook her head. ‘No wonder he changed it.’ ‘He almost changed his last name too,’ said Marc-Antoine, ‘until he realised that while being called Victor Hugo made you the butt of jokes, just having the surname Hugo made you sound distinguished. So Roland Hugo he became.’
The conversation at the table had ranged widely over the last hour and a half; they’d talked at first about the last time Charlotte had been in this house, thirty-six years ago, imagine! That led on to a discussion about Corinne, but innocuous stuff—school memories from Charlotte, then Emma’s memories about growing up with her mother and Paddy in small-town Australia. Then Mattie had switched the topic to London, how Charlotte had first gone to live there. From there, it had meandered on to several other things, ending up now, after a question put by Elise, with a discussion of Marc-Antoine’s estranged father, who headed a prestigious Belgian finance company.
‘And the name swept all before him?’ Charlotte asked, mopping up the last of the delicious chicken juices with a piece of bread.
Marc-Antoine shrugged. ‘The way he would tell it, yes.’
‘How would you tell it?’ Elise asked.
If it had been anyone else, Charlotte would have thought Elise was flirting. And Marc-Antoine was definitely flirt-worthy material. But Elise didn’t flirt. She was too direct for that. If she found a man sexually attractive, she made it very clear. There was no coyness about her. Her daughter had ambition. And ideals. A holiday internship with Aurora International would advance both those things. But she knew instinctively to avoid a hard sell. She was simply herself, interested in people, focused, and people responded naturally to that. Including Marc-Antoine.
‘Well, I would tell it like this,’ he was saying now. ‘Roland Hugo is not one to let anything stand in his way. Whatever the cost.’
‘Some might say that is the mark of a good businessman,’ Elise said.
‘Not me.’ A pause. ‘Roland and I don’t see eye to eye. He has never been a part of my life. I only kept his surname because my mother used it too.’ His tone was quiet, but firm, indicating that further discussion on the subject was closed. Elise took the hint, moving on to talk about something else.
Just then, Charlotte caught Emma looking at Marc-Antoine with what seemed like frank dislike. She was pretty sure it wasn’t due to what he’d said, though. Before he’d come in, Mattie had quietly explained who he was, and Charlotte thought it couldn’t have been easy for Emma, learning yet another thing her mother had kept from her. But it was hardly Marc-Antoine’s fault, was it?
Presently, Emma got up to clear the table, and Charlotte helped her, seeing that Marc-Antoine, Elise and Mattie were still deep in conversation.
In the kitchen, she said quietly, in English, ‘Do you want to talk about it, Emma?’
Emma had started stacking the dirty plates and dishes in the sink, but now seemed to think again. She pulled the dishes out, put in the plug, ran in water and squeezed in some detergent. ‘Mattie really should have a dishwasher,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll buy her one.’
‘Come on, Emma,’ said Charlotte, picking up a tea towel. ‘I can see something’s up. It can help to talk.’
Emma slid the plates into the soapy water, not looking at Charlotte. She cleared her throat. ‘It’s just—I didn’t sleep at all well last night. It still hits me so hard that Maman … She was such a big presence, she had such an amazing life force, and it seems impossible that she is no longer there and …’ She stopped abruptly and began vigorously scrubbing the plates so that they clattered against each other.
‘I’m so sorry, Emma,’ Charlotte said, touching her arm. ‘I didn’t mean to be insensitive.’
‘It’s okay,’ Emma said, still not looking at her. ‘It’s not only that. I—’ she hesitated, then went on, ‘I stayed up too late on the internet, trying to find Pascal. I didn’t find anything remotely useful. Which was pretty disappointing.’
‘Pascal knew your mother when she was seventeen, Emma, but there’s no evidence he did later and I don’t think he could tell you much about her. So why do you want so much to track him down?’
Emma stopped washing. She turned to face Charlotte and said in a low voice, ‘When my mother arrived in Australia, she was two months pregnant. With me.’
Charlotte stared at her. She remembered Emma had said she had a stepfather but she had assumed that her biological father was Australian, too. ‘Are you sure?’
‘About me being conceived here, in France?’ Emma’s smile was forced. ‘One hundred per cent. I turned thirty-one in February. And my mother arrived in Australia seven months before I was born. She didn’t know she was pregnant,’ she added.
Charlotte remembered Corinne complaining about her irregular periods when they were at school. Charlotte had told her that she should count herself lucky because it meant she didn’t have as many periods as other girls. Corinne had just given her that look.
‘That must have been quite the shock.’
‘I imagine so,’ Emma said dryly. ‘Anyway, she decided to have me. She didn’t come home, though. She only told Mattie when I was three months old. And even then she never told them or anyone else, not even Paddy—my stepfather—who the father was.’
‘Oh my goodness.’ Charlotte exhaled.
Emma gave an unamused laugh. ‘I had the best father in Paddy, and that’s all I need in the dad stakes, but I still—’
‘Emma,’ Charlotte interrupted her. ‘Forgive me, but if your mother never told you who your biological father was, it was most likely because she didn’t want you to know.’
Emma’s eyes flashed. ‘Maybe before. But not at the end. I think that was what she wanted to tell me before she died. That’s why she had that photo ready to show me, because it’s connected to him, whoever he is. It kills me that I wasn’t in time to hear it from her own lips. But it’s also why I must find out.’ She looked at Charlotte, her gaze direct and unflinching, uncannily like Corinne’s, for a moment. ‘And, yes, I know she met Pascal three years before she left France, but he is my only real lead at the moment.’
Before Charlotte had a chance to respond, Marc-Antoine appeared in the doorway. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ he said, ‘but Mattie sent me out to ask if everything was okay. Is there anything I can do to help?’
‘We don’t need anything,’ Emma began, in a rather snitty tone, but catching Charlotte’s glance she added, grudgingly, ‘but maybe you could get the cakes out of the fridge?’
‘Sure,’ he said, giving Emma an unreadable look.
There were definitely sparks flying, Charlotte thought, and not the good sort. She said, ‘Emma, if you tell me where the dessert plates and cake forks are, I’ll take those out too.’
‘They’re in—’ Emma began, just as Marc-Antoine said, ‘I think you’ll find them in—’ They both stopped abruptly, then Marc-Antoine made a gesture of what might have been either apology or exasperation and, taking the cakes out of the fridge, he left the kitchen.
Charlotte glanced at Emma, who was busying herself pulling out some lovely gold-rimmed dessert plates from a cupboard. She almost said something about what she’d witnessed, then thought better of it. Instead, taking up their conversation from before, she said, ‘I completely understand. You must find out. Look, I’m heading off to Normandy tomorrow with Elise for a couple of days, but I’ll be back Monday night. If I can help in any way, please let me know.’
Emma’s expression lightened at once.
After the cakes had been demolished, they all went out into the garden. Mattie and Emma walked with Charlotte around what Emma had cleared—about a third of the garden now. The cleared part looked raw, with exposed earth and dead weeds, and there was still a lot to do in the other sections, but Charlotte could easily see how it might look once the heavy work was completed and planting began. The bones of this garden were strong, she told the two women, the soil friable and well drained, and you could even tell its fertility by the way the weeds had flourished. You can build on such good bones, she said, work with its potential; maybe not recreate Alain Lenoir’s vision but pay homage to it. She was hopeful about the hydrangea’s prospects, confirmed Arielle’s judgement on the health of the dahlia, heliotrope and peony plants Emma had uncovered, and approved of the seeds she had bought. And she was touched to see how much Emma lapped it all up.
Meanwhile, Marc-Antoine and Elise stood chatting by the back door and Charlotte was not surprised to hear later from her daughter that he’d advised her to apply for an internship at Aurora International’s London office. After a while, Mattie called him over, and Charlotte saw Emma stiffen momentarily, but she stayed civil, and when he offered to help with the work if she needed, Emma thanked him and said she would keep that in mind. Not exactly the most enthusiastic of responses, but Marc-Antoine didn’t seem to take offence. Clearly, he had understood it was Emma’s baby, and if he was smart, he’d keep well out of it. And there was no doubt that he was smart.