Chapter 12
I make the mistake of arriving on time. I should have learned by now that ‘French time’ dictates that you should arrive at least fifteen minutes later than when you are told and I had overestimated the walk.
The car park where Florian had instructed us to meet is entirely empty and I will not make the second mistake of being the first one there.
Instead, I perch on a wooden bench that looks over the valley and take the diary out of my bag.
The last entry was from after the exhibition.
I had scribbled down everything I could have said to Madame Grenaud – all the things that came into my head when sleep wouldn’t – and then Florian had inserted himself onto the page; but unlike the last time his name made an appearance, there was less anger, more relief.
I try a few more lines, try to pull my focus away from my brother-in-law and onto something safer, the fact I am about to garden for pleasure, how good fresh air really feels, the promise of human contact.
I notice that the car park has started to fill, small groups forming. I wait until I see an old red Citroen CV pull in before I make my way down to join them.
‘Hey,’ I say to Florian’s back as he tries to wrestle a wheelbarrow out of the boot.
He jolts, clearly not expecting the greeting, but when he turns around I enjoy watching the grin appear on his face.
‘You came.’ He brushes the dirt from his top and leans forward to greet me. The well-groomed artist has been replaced with the Florian I had expected, his suit swapped for some well-worn jeans, a long-sleeved grey top and a fleece.
‘You sound surprised.’
‘I thought you might have come up with some very plausible excuse.’
‘Well turns out there really isn’t much to do here,’ I shrug. ‘Besides, maybe it’s the fact I’m bored or that I’m thirty but it kind of sounded fun.’
‘You’ve changed.’ He smirks.
‘You really don’t know me well enough to make a full assessment of my capacity for change. Now can I help?’ I point to the wheelbarrow and Florian nods, the grin softening into a contented smile.
‘Sure.’
About twenty people begin to cluster around a pile of gardening equipment before a buxom middle-aged woman blows a whistle and everyone forms a circle around her.
She speaks enthusiastically, and loudly, in French. I catch more words now, the dusty connections resurrecting.
She points to people, gesturing to different directions, reaches into the pile of equipment and thrusts trowels and rakes and spades into people’s hands.
And then she looks at me.
‘Bonjour?’ She raises her eyebrows; clearly she hasn’t noticed me before now.
Florian steps forward. ‘Ava,’ he says. And then I translate the words, Etienne’s wife.
I watch as the realisation passes over everyone’s faces.
I recognise a couple. Customers of the café, acquaintances of Etienne, I had probably said hello to them in passing whilst cleaning down the tables and heading back up to the apartment to wait for Ettie to finish.
‘Bienvenue, Ava,’ the leader of the gardeners greets me, and then she shouts ‘Allez!’ deafeningly loudly and the crowd begins to disperse.
I go to follow Florian who is starting towards a scrub patch of dirt at the bottom of the car park with some other men.
He notices me and shakes his head. ‘You’re up there on planting.’ He points to some raised beds by the Mairie.
‘Oh!’ I stop in my tracks, looking around to see three others heading towards the same spot. ‘Cool,’ I add, hoping the abject fear of having to speak to some complete strangers isn’t immediately obvious.
When I get to the planters, one of the volunteers stands up and turns to me.
‘Ava, welcome.’ I feel the recognition slip in – the warmth in his face although he has a beard now and carries a little more weight around his middle. Something inside me drops.
‘Luc?’ I ask although I know the answer. The man in front of me is the closest thing that Ettie had to a best friend.
‘You remember.’ He smiles.
‘Of course I remember.’ I reach for him, press a soft kiss to his cheeks. He stands back and takes me in with a genuine curiosity that leaves me feeling a little naked.
‘You look well,’ he says after a beat.
I try to gauge whether it’s a compliment. Luc’s face though, the way his eyes deepen as he waits for my reaction, assures me that he is being kind.
‘Thank you.’ I nod a little over-enthusiastically. ‘Yeah I’m doing okay. And you? How are you, the boys?’
‘We’re well.’ He nods and gestures to a woman bending over the flowerpots.
I recognise the flash of white in her dark hair; it had made her instantly recognisable.
Ettie used to call her the zebra and she had pretended to hate it.
They lived in an apartment on the square.
When her boys were in bed in the summer we would sit outside the café, baby monitor on the table, working our way through bottles of wine and each other’s life stories.
‘Angelina!’ I call towards her. She looks up briefly, manages a strained nod and then turns back to the soil. I feel like I have been slapped.
‘We should start on that one?’ Luc points to a bed further away, clearly trying to iron over the awkwardness.
‘Yeah sure.’
‘How have you been, Ava?’ Luc asks as we pick the weeds out of the bed and turn over the soil. It’s almost the same thing he had asked earlier but now it’s just the two of us I feel pressured to tell him more.
‘Getting there,’ is all I can manage. ‘It’s been hard but I’m okay.’
‘Did you go back to London?’ He looks up at me briefly while trowelling out a stubborn root.
‘Yes,’ I nod. ‘Back with my parents, still there actually.’
‘That’s nice.’
I look up at him, one eyebrow raised. ‘Is it?’
He smirks. ‘Well, I don’t know your parents but I’d like to think they’re nice people.’
‘Yes.’ I’ll let him have that one. ‘They are, and cheap to rent with too,’ I add, as if that justifies why I’m still there, three years later, rooted in some perpetual Peter Pan existence.
‘Are you… with anyone else?’
‘As in dating?’
Luc nods. I think of Archie, how I could probably say that I was seeing him, try to mentally calculate whether Luc wants to hear that I am and moving on, or that I’m not and therefore still in deep mourning for my dead husband.
I decide on the latter. ‘No, not really.’ I throw some weeds into a nearby bucket. I look up at the hunched figure of my old friend at the other planter. She catches my eye briefly and then quickly turns away when she realises I’ve caught her. ‘Is Angelina okay?’
Luc looks over at her and then turns his gaze back to me. He pulls his lips into a grimace and then he lets out a short sigh. ‘She is upset that you haven’t been in touch,’ he says bluntly. A stone that he has been fishing from the soil lands in the bucket with a loud metallic ding.
‘Oh.’ I feel the statement linger in the air, a heaviness materialising in my stomach.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t known my sudden departure would raise questions.
Part of me also knew that it would piss some people off, but if there was ever a time to be selfish it was in those weeks after Ettie died.
It wasn’t meant to be permanent; there was a while when I thought I would be back.
I told my parents I’d be a month, and then two, and then it was Christmas and we were buying a new mattress for my bed. ‘Are you upset with me too?’
‘No.’ Luc shakes his head. ‘I understand you disappearing. It was just a shock when we turned up one day to visit and you were gone.’
‘Everything sort of happened last minute.’ I start to try to defend myself but Luc waves his hands for me to stop.
‘She’ll come around.’ He looks towards Angelina who is now angrily shoving some seedlings into the soil. ‘Eventually.’
We finish the rest of the gardening in silence.
We break for lunch at one. The gardeners gather outside the Salle des Fêtes where someone mans a barbeque and plates of food sit on a picnic table for us to grab.
I take one and look for somewhere to sit.
I see Luc and consider joining him, but then I notice Angelina next to him and reconsider quickly.
I look for the only other face that feels familiar enough to endure a lunch with but he isn’t here.
I strain my eyes and eventually find him, bent over a bit of ground at the bottom of the field.
I take a second plate.
‘You don’t do lunch now?’ I call and he looks over. His face pulls into a smile when I get closer. ‘I thought it was sacred here.’
‘I got carried away.’ He wipes some sweat off his brow and gets to his feet, hands on his hips surveying his masterpiece of a freshly turned-over flower bed, complete with little rock edging and a spray of small purple flowers.
‘It looks done to me.’
‘Not quite but I’ll do it later,’ he shrugs and reaches over for the plate but I whisk it out of his reach.
‘What’s left?’
‘You really want to know?’
‘Yeah, what can I say? You’ve piqued my interest.’
‘Fine. Put that down and come here.’ He kneels back into the dirt and I copy him. ‘Hand me a few big ones, the smoother the better.’ He points to a wheelbarrow of stones and pebbles. I do as he says, running my hands through what’s left.
‘These do?’
He takes them from me and weighs them in his hands.
‘Perfect.’ He places the largest one firmly into the soil and then takes a second.
He sits back, considering something I don’t really understand before gently placing the second one on top of the first. He makes minute little adjustments, letting it rock a little and tapping it in one direction or another.
I watch how his lip curls up in concentration, how his hands start to move away from the stone but linger close by until he can step away entirely and the stones remain standing.
‘A cairn.’
‘Ever built one before?’
‘No.’