Chapter 31
31
DAY FIVE
Now
Minnie woke to the thrum of bees on the lavender under her open window. A hum so soporific it almost pulled her back to sleep, were it not for the fresh scents of the plant, the countryside and coffee wafting up from the ground floor. It was the most beautiful, calming alarm call Minnie had ever experienced, and it assuaged her momentary panic when she first remembered how far she was from home.
She rubbed her eyes, got out of bed in Caryn’s summer pyjamas and opened the rickety wooden door, looking down the hall to see Jesse’s door was closed.
Minnie walked down the corridor and paused, raising a fist to knock for Jesse, then deciding not to. She wanted to see him, to see his sleeping face and know more about him, but she carried on quietly, downstairs, hoping not to disturb anyone.
Coffee . She could smell coffee coming from the kitchen; perhaps Jesse was already up. Minnie didn’t make it as far as the bright kitchen. As she walked through the expansive open living room she saw Caryn on the terrace at the back of the house. She was leaning over a wall, facing the view of the Luberon valley: a patchwork of green and brown fields stretching out ahead of her.
‘Morning!’ Minnie said croakily.
Caryn turned around, clutching some weeds she was pulling from the cracks between the stones.
‘Morning, love. Sleep well? I didn’t wake you, did I?’
Minnie smiled hazily. ‘I slept blissfully, thank you.’
Caryn looked relieved.
‘It was so nice to wake to my natural body clock. And the bees and the lavender!’
Part of the terrace was shaded by a canopy with a grapevine whose roots were so thick it was hard to see the structure it had entwined. Minnie stood, her own feet rooted in the sunshine, inhaled and reached her arms out wide as her stretch morphed into a yawn. The air smelled fresher and sweeter than anywhere she’d been.
‘That’s what Jesse likes most about it here. Waking up naturally. No sirens or traffic noises. Although I doubt he’s woken naturally since Ida.’
Minnie smiled.
Caryn half smiled back, not knowing how well Minnie knew Ida, but landed on not very, given she hadn’t said anything about her.
‘There’s coffee in the pot; I’m about to head out to the market.’
Minnie looked unsurely at her phone.
‘Actually, can I come with you?’ she asked, making a shield for her eyes against the climbing sun. ‘Get a few supplies and check my messages.’
‘Of course!’ Caryn replied. ‘That’ll be fun.’
‘Great. I just need to get dressed, although this…’ She looked down at the stripy pyjama shorts and vest she was wearing.
‘You wear it well!’ Caryn admired.
‘Great, I’ll just grab my boots and wallet…’
‘If you want flipflops there are some in the flower room, on the other side of the stairs. We’re about the same size.’
‘That would be amazing, thank you.’ Minnie went inside.
‘Wonderful, I’ll write Jesse a note.’
Minnie found the room on the opposite end of the house, with the same proportions and dimensions as the kitchen. ‘Flower room’ sounded intriguing, and it looked like a very elegant utility room, with a washing machine, another butler sink, and gardening shoes by the back door. In the middle was a butcher’s table, distressed in blue and white wood, with low oval baskets filled with dried flowers on the top. Some baskets had just lavender in them, some were mixed wildflowers. This room, she mused, that was probably an afterthought, was the most stunning in the house. Minnie loved it and leaned her head into a basket to inhale the scents, before taking a pair of flipflops from a rack by the door.
When Minnie returned, Caryn was leaving a note for Jesse on the dining room table where they’d eaten late last night. Jesse’s backpack was open, its contents spilling out, his sketchbook and drawings on large sheets of paper pulled from the sketchbook as if he had been dwelling on them in the middle of the night.
Minnie stopped and gently moved paper around to reveal other sheets underneath. His drawings were magical. Soft. Painterly. Beautiful skies overlooking earnest animal friends.
‘Wow,’ Minnie said softly. ‘I didn’t imagine…’ She stopped talking and looked. Drinking them in. ‘They’re gorgeous!’
Caryn glanced up over half-moon spectacles, a sparkle of pride in her eyes. It was the first time she had seen them too.
‘Exquisite, aren’t they? I was just looking.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t know where he gets it from; his father and I both deal in words not images. As you can tell from the farmhouse, we don’t have a very good eye for… style.’
Minnie loved the ramshackle décor. She would happily make that flower room her bedroom and sleep a lifetime of blissful nights in it.
‘But ever since Jesse was tiny, he’s drawn and designed. His eye is stunning. Always has been.’
Minnie leafed through a few more of his drawings. Preparatory pencil sketches. Early watercolours. Remy the red panda tentatively dipping a toe in the penguin enclosure water. Remy sliding down an elephant’s trunk with a joyful look on his face. Remy riding on the back of an ostrich. They were enchanting.
‘His teacher at nursery in England called Lars and I in once, astonished. He’d made a net of a box. He was only three. She thought, No it can’t be , but at the end of the nursery day she folded his lines and bent the paper, and – hey presto – a perfect cubed paper box.’
‘So clever.’
Caryn put the lid on her pen and left the piece of paper with her note on it in plain view next to his sketchbook.
‘Come on, we have to get to the market before the best bread has all gone.’
Caryn handed Minnie a spare helmet and packed string bags in her panniers. Minnie hadn’t realised they were going by moped.
‘Hop on!’ Caryn said gamely, grateful for some company.
Minnie swung her leg over and sat on the back, the sun already warming the seat against her thighs. She gripped the little steel side handles at the back of the seat. It felt too intimate to hug someone else’s mother when her own might be worried sick, but she thought sitting as she was would suit Caryn’s warm yet perfunctory style.
On the drive they wound past olive groves and lavender fields, past pink and ochre farmhouses and an ancient windmill. Minnie wanted to stop at every turn but was mindful about getting the best bread. She could already taste it, smeared in creamy salty butter.
In Gordes, Caryn parked a few metres away from the castle wall and propped the moped on its stand.
‘Just leave your helmet on the handle, no one will take them.’
At the foot of the castle, in the village’s centre, artisans sold fabrics and linens, billowing in lively prints; soaps, shampoos and tonics made of lavender and lemon. Food sellers sold their homegrown olive oil, honey, cheeses and bread. Caryn bought her favourite five-seed sourdough while Minnie paced around in awe, as if she was in heaven, mindful of how small the panniers on Caryn’s bike were, or her bag strewn across her body.
At a fruit and vegetable stall bursting with cherries, tomatoes and apricots, Caryn picked up a lemon so big and bright that Minnie thought it must be a prop.
‘Give it a smell,’ she commanded, wafting it under Minnie’s nose.
‘Unreal!’
She closed her eyes and inhaled, a moment of pure calm, curtailed when she remembered why she was here in the village; what she needed to do. She looked at her phone. She had a signal and messages were beeping in. Mostly from her parents, sisters, brother and Hilde. One from JP.
Proud of you Kiddo x
‘Sorry, I just need to check in…’ Minnie said, waving her phone.
‘Of course! I’ll do some errands and then…’ Caryn narrowed her eyes and pointed to a cafe tucked in a shady corner of the square with Chez Lucille written on an awning. ‘See you over there in a short while? It does the best hot chocolate and pastries.’
Minnie walked around the village aimlessly as she called Hilde first, then her mother. Telling them both what a Grade-A creep Wim Fischer had been, how she was safe, and how she had ended up in Provence, wandering around a village wearing a kindly stranger’s pyjamas and no bra. They had responded differently. Hilde was more worried than Geraldine, who thought it sounded magical and wanted to transport herself there immediately.
Both asked when she would be home and she told them she had to get back for a waitressing job at the races on Sunday. It was Friday morning and she realised she didn’t care too much about getting back, it was so beautiful where she was.
‘I’m gonna troll him on Instagram so everyone knows what a motherfucker he is,’ Hilde declared.
‘I will talk to your father – there has to be some repercussion for this, it is wholly unacceptable,’ Geraldine said more diplomatically.
When Minnie hung up she texted her sisters something friendly but opaque, then retraced her steps back to the square, mindful now to look up at the white stone buildings that had turned dusty pink, perched on top of each other in this sentinel village that felt so removed from her hideous experience in Paris; from her heartache in London. She felt her shoulders lower in relief. It too will pass.
Minnie rounded back through a cobblestone street onto the market square and saw Caryn in the far corner, sitting at a metal table for two, reading the paper.
‘Ahh, there you are! All fine at home?’
Minnie tucked her phone away.
‘All fine.’
‘I ordered you a chocolat . This village has the best hot chocolate in all the world, and this cafe has the best in the village.’
‘Then I am in luck, thank you.’
Minnie pulled the metal chair out and sat down, crossing her legs. The sunshine on her shoulders felt restorative.
‘How did you end up here? It’s incredible.’
‘Lars came on a writing retreat; he must have been on deadline.’ Caryn looked like she was thinking. Tracing through timelines and dates and books and heartache. ‘Must have been around 2002 because we bought the house in 2003. And… well, there was no looking back really, we loved it here so much.’
‘It’s beautiful.’
Minnie licked the hot chocolate foam from her top lip.
‘When did you move permanently?’
‘Well Jesse was ten when we bought the property. We did think about moving then and him going to international school here, but he was about to go to secondary school, and he had a nice life in Claygate. A good bunch of friends. So we’d come for the holidays. Long summers. That kind of thing. Jesse soon made lots of friends here too. And because we have a pool, all the kids would come to us.’
‘You have a pool?’
‘Yes, at the side of the house.’
Suddenly the image of the lonely only-child boy with a terribly old dad that Minnie had conjured didn’t seem to fit.
‘And Jesse being a summer born meant he always had his birthday parties here.’
Minnie felt bad that she didn’t know when his birthday was. But why would she? He didn’t know hers.
‘Wow.’
‘Yes, yes, it must have been 2002 because Nick of Time was out in 2003, and – well, lots changed with that book.’
Minnie nodded. She had read it and seen the film.
‘We moved permanently in 2011. I remember being a bit homesick around 2012 – London Olympics and all that – but it was one very short blip. We never looked back. Well, until…’
Sadness set its veil over her soft eyes.
How heartbreaking to be in this dream place, a place she had discovered with the love of her life, and not be able to share it with him any more. Minnie looked at Caryn and felt terrible for her.
‘How did you two meet?’
Caryn was startled by the question, as a waiter set down two glasses of water and a plate of pastries.
‘ Merci ,’ she said. Minnie emulated her.
Caryn didn’t think Hannah had ever asked her the question, but Minnie had an endearing curiosity about her. An inquisitive face that Caryn couldn’t help furnishing with details. Plus, talking about Lars kept him close. She was so terrified he would drift away.
‘Well, as I said last night, I was a journalist, I still am, although I haven’t written much lately.’
‘What sort of journalism do you do?’
‘Magazines and newspapers. I did a lot of cover interviews and profile pieces. Big celebrities and the like. Whenever such and such was promoting a book or a film or a beauty brand, I managed to talk my way into interviewing them.’
‘Sounds really interesting.’
‘Oh it was, and it fitted around Lars’ novel writing after we got together.’
‘And his novel writing must have fit around your work too…’ Minnie said cannily.
Caryn gave her a look as if to say clever girl .
‘I was young when I met him.’ She looked almost bashful, as if it could have been a lifetime ago, a youth misspent; a gratitude in her gaze made it obvious it wasn’t.
‘He was a bit of a playboy back then. A “serial monogamist” they started calling it in the nineties. I was dispatched to interview him and… well, we fell in love.’
‘Oh wow. It sounds magical.’
‘Yes, as a journalist you do always hope to ask the questions that will get to the core of someone, really find out what makes them tick. I suppose I hit the target with Lars.’
‘You made him tick.’
Caryn smiled warmly. Who was this girl? She had an inkling.
‘My parents weren’t so happy. He was twenty years older than me. But it was easy to fall for him and they soon did.’
Minnie tore a piece of almond croissant from its curled horn.
‘What was he like?’
Characters. Minnie wanted to know about this character. Caryn looked choked.
‘Gosh. It’s hard describing him to people who don’t know him. How do you sum up a man of his brilliance, his imagination – how do you describe love in just a few words?’
Caryn took a sip of coffee to compose herself. ‘He was the source. The source of everything. Laughter, warmth, compassion. He was a wonderful father. He and Jesse were just…’ She shook her head. ‘My parents worried about me getting together with an older man for all the wrong reasons: that he would cheat or stray or not settle down. What they should have been worried about is that we wouldn’t have enough time.’
Minnie thought of Jesse back at the farmhouse. Was he still asleep? What did his sleeping face look like?
I want my time with you.
‘But there you go,’ Caryn said blithely. ‘I’d do it all again.’
‘I’m sure you would. It’s inspirational really.’
‘Oh I don’t know about that…’ Caryn looked mournful. ‘It’s just incredibly sad.’
Her eyes looked vacant and Minnie felt terrible that Caryn was sitting at this table with her when she should have been sitting here with Lars.
‘I was seeing an older guy,’ Minnie said quietly, as she finished her croissant. Caryn’s brow raised with interest. ‘He was double my age. My parents only met him once, at a dinner at one of his restaurants, but they didn’t warm to him. They never said, but I could tell.’
Caryn looked apologetic, and wondered what Minnie’s situation was now. Was she just a friend to her son?
‘I think I might know who your parents are,’ Caryn said with a knowing smile.
‘You do?’
‘You are the spit of your mother. Your eyes. I interviewed her once, you know?’
As they ate they talked about Caryn’s love of dried flowers, how maintaining the farmhouse was a full-time job in itself. How she would get back to writing one day, if she could only take the jobs she would love. After breakfast, Minnie perused the market and bought cherries, two pairs of fifties looking knickers, a sundress and a pair of gold espadrilles – plus a toothbrush from the pharmacy, then they both felt a pull to get back to Jesse at the house. To see what he was up to.
On the journey back, Caryn pointed out Marc Chagall’s former home and studio, and told Minnie about his exile from the Nazis, forcing him to flee persecution in Paris and escape to the Luberon valley. ‘His daughter Ida then took the house over.’
‘Ida?’ Minnie shouted from the back of the moped.
‘Yes. Jesse and Hannah loved the name. I do too of course.’
When they got back Minnie walked into the farmhouse clutching her wares.
‘We have bread!’ she declared, to no one, as she entered the kitchen to the smell of sweet fried food.
Caryn put the string bags down on the kitchen counter and they looked at the empty frying pan on the stove.
‘He might be by the pool,’ she said, stopping to listen to a distant splash. ‘He does love a pancake by the pool. You go, I’ll unpack these. That end,’ she said, pointing to the other side of the house.
Minnie walked cautiously through the cool interior to the flower room and out of the side door with the shoe rack next to it, to the garden. Along the side of the house ran a wood and tiled awning and underneath it, a long outdoor dining table with orange and white metal chairs. As Minnie walked by it, she heard echoes of dinner parties past.
Jesse was doing lengths of a long rectangular swimming pool, turquoise against the verdant trees around it. She watched his tanned arms raise in triangle formations, his elbows in perfect rhythm powering him through the pool. Minnie stood dumbfounded.
As Jesse stopped to tap the far end of the pool and turn around, he saw her, face transfixed, skin pale.
‘Oh, you’re back.’
‘Morning!’
He stopped and wiped the water off his face with both palms, his arms glistening.
‘How was it?’ He smiled.
This was such a different vision to the harangued man Minnie had met in Bondiga’s Books six weeks ago, she couldn’t quite believe it. This Jesse was golden, relaxed. So sexy she wanted to dive-bomb in, there and then, and wrap her legs around his waist.
Jesse and Hannah.
Ringing in her ear, she could hear the way Caryn said those names. Hannah was Caryn’s family, not Minnie.
‘Success?’ he asked with a smile as he rose out of the pool and plonked his athletic frame onto the side. Minnie hadn’t imagined Jesse would be such a specimen.
She had to remember her words.
‘Success,’ she repeated succinctly. ‘I have clothes, cherries, espadrilles – oh and a toothbrush, so no more stinky-breath Jeff for me.’
Minnie was barefoot, still standing in Caryn’s striped shorts and vest. She so wanted to jump in and swim to him, but something stopped her. Perhaps it was the espadrilles in her hand.
‘I made pancakes. Wasn’t sure if you were going to eat at the market?’
Jesse nodded to a stack oozing with the purple juice of cooked blueberries, under a mesh cloche with bees stitched onto it, sitting on a little table under a parasol at the far end of the pool. The table was set for three, as Jesse was accustomed to.
Minnie had already had an almond croissant and sampled cheeses and charcuterie at the market, but her stomach grumbled.
‘That would be lovely,’ she said, as she walked to the table and sat herself down.
Jesse pulled a stripy towel from a metal chair and dried himself off.
‘This is unreal, Jesse.’
He smiled proudly as he sat down.
‘Totally not what I imagined for you.’
‘What did you imagine for me? Grumpy old mancave?’
She really wanted to tell him about her family. How she had grown up with a famous father – and mother – how she would understand certain things about Jesse that most people couldn’t. But she’d already crossed enough lines in this game, so she stopped herself.
‘No, I just pictured a quieter life for you.’
‘It doesn’t get quieter than this,’ Jesse said, puzzled. ‘Did you call your parents? Hilde?’
‘All good. I told them a grumpy stranger has kidnapped me and it’s quite the ordeal.’ They locked eyes and Jesse cleared his throat. ‘Did you tell them about…?’
Minnie cut him off with a raised hand.
‘Yes. I did, but I do not want to talk about that today.’
I want my time with you.
Jesse nodded. Noted.
He passed her the pancake stack and she took the one from the top with a fork.
‘Oh my God, Jesse, these look like the best pancakes I’ve ever seen.’
‘Bon appétit!’ he said, taking one for himself. ‘So what did you want to do today? Head back to Paris? Go home?’
Minnie looked around her. A dragonfly darted skittishly over the pool.
‘Can we stay for a bit?’ she asked, almost guiltily, tucking in. Jesse dug in.
‘Of course. I don’t need to be back in London for a few days.’
Jesse wasn’t due to have Ida this weekend.
‘Can we stay forever?’ Minnie blurted, holding Jesse’s gaze. His chest inflated with a half gasp, droplets of water trickling down the contours of his body.
Minnie had crossed a line, but she could make it back.
‘Just kidding, fair dos, we both have work…’
She tried to sound blasé.
‘Well I do need to show you around first.’
‘Your mum gave me a bit of a tour?—’
‘There’s somewhere I need to take you.’ He stood up, water dripping from his hair to his nose, the morning sunshine making his wet skin sparkle. The smell of light chlorine and roses.
Minnie was mesmerised, by how cool and composed he now was compared with the man she had met. He played this game well.
Jesse paused, almost waiting for Minnie to say something.
‘Do you want to swim first?’
Minnie looked down at herself.
‘I don’t have a…’ She gestured to her body. No bikini, no costume, and she didn’t want to borrow his mum’s. ‘I could use a shower though.’
‘Cool, you go first and I’ll go after you.’
Minnie looked at him, flushed – she wanted him to go in with her – and couldn’t speak.
‘Then I’ll take you on a road trip.’