Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Hugo Chadwick
Hugo wore his black Ray-Bans to shield his eyes from the morning sun.
He clicked the button on his key and heard the Range Rover locking behind him.
Walking along the Rue de Paris, he felt that same sense of familiarity he always felt; an inexplicable déjà vu.
He didn’t need much of an excuse to visit the bakery, but he told himself it was a convenient spot to pick up some coffees, even though it was nowhere near to where he was going.
As the bell rang overhead, he paused in the doorway. Edith was bending down to a little girl who was formally introducing her to her stuffed animal.
‘Il s’appelle Mou-Mou,’ the little girl said, before inviting Edith to kiss the greying mess that might once have been a toy elephant.
Edith handled the situation gracefully by opting to shake hands with his trunk instead.
Just then, she looked up directly into Hugo’s eyes and the smile that lit up her face on seeing him made his heartbeat quicken.
‘Oh, hello,’ she said, standing up. ‘Have you met Mou-Mou?’
‘Enchanté,’ Hugo said politely, before the little girl’s mother took her hand and led her back out onto the street. ‘You’re a hit with the patrons,’ he told Edith, lightly kissing her on the cheek. Every cell in his body wanted to take her into his arms and feel her warmth against him.
‘Irish charm,’ she said with a wink.
Madame Moreau walked between them deliberately and Edith gave him a strained look.
‘Doesn’t work on everyone,’ she mouthed. ‘So what can I get you?’ she asked in a loud, theatrical voice.
‘Actually, I just came by to pick up some pastries. I’m on my way to visit my mother.’
‘Oh, does she live nearby?’
‘In a sense,’ he said. ‘I’ll take a small fraisier cake, s’il te plait.’
Once she placed the strawberry cake into a white cardboard box, fastened with string, she refused to take any money.
‘My treat,’ Edith said, which made Hugo realise something about her he hadn’t noticed before. She was kind. He tried to object, but she insisted.
‘It’s my pleasure,’ she added. ‘Actually, hang on a sec.’ She retreated into the kitchen and emerged a few minutes later with two takeaway cups. ‘You have to try this hot chocolate, it’s … special.’ Her eyes were twinkling with mischief.
‘OK,’ he said, ‘although I’m not much of a hot-chocolate man.’
‘Trust me, you’ll like this one. It’s very Proustian.’
* * *
He couldn’t stop smiling for the rest of the journey.
He’d taken a sip of the hot chocolate and to his surprise, it was really very good.
In fact, it was probably the best hot chocolate he’d ever tasted.
It reminded him of his childhood, sitting in front of the TV and watching cartoons with his brother.
He had a clear image of them both, bowls of hot chocolate in hand, him feeling like the luckiest boy in the world to have an older brother like Stéphane.
And yet the tightness he always had in his chest whenever he thought of his brother now was strangely absent.
In its stead was an uncomplicated feeling of warmth and, dare he say it, happiness.
He rarely felt this way, especially when visiting his mother.
Yet when he drove through the iron gates of the facility, the guilt and shame returned.
It had been three years since she had become a resident of ‘Le Retrait’.
Early onset dementia, according to the doctors in Paris.
At first, it was just the occasional visit as a day patient, but as things had deteriorated, Seraphine Chadwick insisted on returning home for good to her native Compiègne.
Hugo spotted her from the main house, sitting at an easel on the lawn.
He smiled to himself; he could almost pretend that she was simply staying at an artist’s retreat and nothing at all was amiss.
That his father had not moved his mistress into their home in Paris.
He shook off these thoughts and walked purposefully down the garden path.
‘Bonjour, Maman,’ he said, kissing her cheek.
He was still startled by her shock of grey hair.
She’d stopped dying it the platinum blonde he had always associated her with.
Growing up, he’d believed she was the most glamorous woman in the world, with her flowing kaftans, brightly coloured bangles and the large wooden beads that she always wore around her neck.
‘My beautiful boy,’ she replied, smiling up at him and touching his face.
‘I’ve brought your favourite,’ he said, opening the cardboard box and revealing the creamy strawberry cake inside.
‘Wonderful! But first, you must look at this painting and tell me what it’s missing,’ she said, turning back to her painting of the lake in the distance.
It was a game they used to play when he was a boy.
Seraphine had wanted to sharpen his observational skills, to view the world as an artist might.
It was the main reason he’d taken up photography.
For Hugo had never had the patience for sitting in front of an easel, dabbing paint onto the canvas.
No, he preferred a more immediate form of storytelling – capturing the world in the way he saw it, or how he wished it could be, through his lens.
‘A cherry tree in the foreground, no?’
There was something so comforting in the familiarity of his mother’s artwork. At least that had not altered. Unlike everything else in their lives.
‘I’ll just get some plates,’ he said, ‘but why don’t you try this hot chocolate while you’re waiting?’ He took the cover off the cup for her before disappearing back up the pathway to the house.
As the afternoon sunshine pierced through the clouds, Seraphine raised the cup to her lips and took a sip.
In that moment her features transformed, and as the rich dark liquid entered her bloodstream something strange began to happen.
Memories appeared to flash through her mind’s eye – like old movies but crisp and clear, as though they were happening in this moment before her.
An old family story that had been hidden and not spoken of for many years replayed in her mind.
Her uncle, who owned the newsagent’s on the Rue de Paris, had been a bitter old man.
He was always envious of what other people had and wanted to spoil it for them.
Perhaps in a way he couldn’t help it. He felt his life had been lacking in what other people took for granted, like love and happiness, but what he didn’t realise was that no one is entitled to these things.
They must be earned, nurtured and cherished
‘I remember something’, she announced as soon as Hugo returned with utensils and some plates.
‘What is it?’ Hugo asked, the air growing taut with expectation.
‘This drink, I have tasted it before, in my childhood.’
For an unguarded moment, Hugo had allowed himself to believe that she might have remembered something about him. There were days when she didn’t even know who he was, or that she’d ever had two sons. The worst of all was when she forgot that one of them had died.
‘Have I ever told you about my childhood?’ She looked at him then in a way that strangely made him feel as though he had never really met her before.
People always said that as children, we never see our parents as real people, but here now he could see Seraphine not just as his mother but as a woman in her own right; someone with a past, with stories and secrets.
‘Did I ever tell you about the Rue de Paris?’
Hugo swallowed hard. Was she confusing his father’s business dealings with her own story? He couldn’t be sure but there was a lightness in her eyes that he hadn’t seen for a very long time. As he watched her take another sip of her hot chocolate, he began to wonder… No, it was an absurd idea.
‘During the war,’ she said, with a clarity that gave strength to his suspicion. Was the hot chocolate from Madame Moreau’s stoking up old memories?
‘My uncle, Arnaud, had a shop there. And he did a very bad thing.’