Chapter 5
Five
Two years older than herself, Félix had been the one she’d turned to for so many things, including affection and understanding, especially when they were kids.
Their parents were people who lived life in shades of beige and grey—not the elegant beige that looked good contrasted with a navy stripe or a touch of red, or the grey that makes you think of silvery pearls in limpid Tahitian waters, but rather the flat dead shades that can hardly be called colours at all.
Always carping and finding fault in everyone, including their children, always suspicious of emotion, they had a kind of reverse Midas touch, transforming the gold of joy into the lead of disappointment, and if it hadn’t been for her brother’s warmth, humour and refusal to be ground down by their deflation of everything, Isabelle would have wilted like a flower in a drought.
When they were children, he always included her in his games, and his charisma meant his friends never questioned it; when they were teens, he made sure she could get home safely from parties, without playing the heavy older brother.
As soon as she left school, she also left home and went to live with him in the house he shared in Montpellier with a couple of university mates.
It was always lively at his place, friends coming and going, impromptu cooking sessions, loud but friendly discussions about the state of the world, and she revelled in it.
She was in her element, free at last, her childhood behind her forever.
Thank God. Because if it hadn’t been for the strong, loving bond between the two siblings, who knew what a mess they might have become as adults?
She smiled, suddenly, thinking of what Félix had said when she’d voiced the thought aloud.
‘What do you mean, we’re not a mess?’ he’d quipped.
‘I glory in being a mess! And I pity our parents—they never knew what they missed. They never lived life properly.’ He had certainly lived life properly, wholeheartedly, Isabelle thought with a smile, and had just got dressed when her phone buzzed with an incoming audio call.
Adeline, the name flashed up, the youngest of her two children.
Her heart gave a little skip as she swiped up to answer.
‘Adeline, darling—are you okay?’
‘Of course, Maman. Why shouldn’t I be?’ Her daughter’s voice was brisk and assured as always.
‘You know what mothers can be like,’ Isabelle said. ‘Worrying about their children, no matter how old they are.’
‘That’s rather sexist, Maman.’ Adeline’s tone was sharp. ‘Fathers can be like that too. The ones who aren’t narcissistic arseholes, that is.’
Isabelle winced. ‘Yes, I know, sweetheart.’ It was true that Adeline’s job as a paediatrician exposed her to a wide range of parental types, but it was more personal than that.
Adeline had hero-worshipped her father, Yves, and as a teenager had taken his side against her mother.
It was only when the extent of his infidelities became clear, and he’d taken off to New Caledonia with his latest girlfriend, that Adeline had finally seen through him.
Adeline cleared her throat. ‘Maman, well, you see—Carlos called me.’
‘Carlos?’ Isabelle’s tone sharpened. ‘Why?’
‘Just to ask if I’d heard from you. He’s worried, said you’d been a bit stressed lately and then you took off without a word.’
Irritation surged through Isabelle. ‘No need to worry,’ she said, tightly. ‘And I didn’t take off without a word. I left him a note to say I had to go to Paris on business.’
‘But you haven’t called or texted Carlos since then,’ Adeline said matter-of-factly.
It was true. In all the excitement of the previous day, she’d completely forgotten.
Damn. ‘I just got caught up in stuff,’ she said.
‘I’ll send him a text. Besides,’ she added, ‘we’re not in each other’s pockets and I don’t have to explain all my movements to him.
’ She was glad she hadn’t told him about the letter.
It was partly out of professional caution—he was also involved in the vintage scene and though the 1920s and ’30s weren’t his period, he would certainly recognise the importance of the letter.
But it was also because she wasn’t sure if he might want to take the whole thing over, control the narrative, like other men in her life had done…
She must have sounded sharper than she intended, because Adeline said huffily, ‘Okay, Maman. I was only passing on the message.’
Isabelle was instantly sorry for her tone and cursed Carlos for having made her lose her cool. ‘I know, darling. Thanks for telling me.’
After her bruising divorce from Yves eight years previously, she had fallen into a couple of rebound live-in relationships which hadn’t worked out, and since then she’d vowed to herself that never again would she live with a man, whether as a married or unmarried couple.
That didn’t mean she was giving up on men.
But her heart would stay her own. Never again would she risk it like she had before.
That had been twelve months ago, just before her sixtieth birthday.
A friend had signed her up on a dating app and she’d gone out with a couple of men as a result; none had lasted.
Until she met Carlos Souza. And, in fact, she hadn’t met him through the app, but the old-fashioned way, in person at an antiques auction in Toulouse.
He was a stocky, smiley Brazilian, eight years younger than herself, who worked as a freelance consultant for various antique and fine arts auction houses around the country.
They’d got talking. They’d liked each other.
They’d had fun. They’d gone out on dates, then a couple of weeks later, to bed, where they’d clicked just as well as they had in conversation.
Sometimes he stayed over at her house, sometimes she stayed over at his.
To her relief, he hadn’t suggested they move in together.
It seemed he liked his independence too.
He was nice, very nice, but always at the back of her mind lurked the suspicion that sooner or later he’d show another side, like all the others.
And now here it was. The call to Adeline showed he was interfering, getting possessive, controlling, and she wouldn’t have a bar of that.
She didn’t want to tell him it was over, because she really did like him.
But she also didn’t want her life taken over by a man again.
Yes, she would have to end it soon. But not over the phone.
That was callous and she’d had enough of that inflicted on her in the past to want to inflict it on others.
Wanting to get off the subject of Carlos, Isabelle asked after five-year-old Matthieu, the apple of Adeline’s eye, who held a special place in his grandmother’s heart too.
Meanwhile, Adeline’s older brother, Simon, the child of Isabelle’s brief first marriage, was an affectionate uncle to Matthieu, but it was music that filled his heart and soul and always had, even when he was a tiny child listening enraptured to tapes of his late father Jean-Luc’s concert recordings.
Although he’d never known his father, because he’d died just weeks before he was born, Simon had inherited his gift for music, the only thing—apart from his jet-black hair—that he’d got from him.
Thank God, thought Isabelle, remembering her first husband’s volatile moods.
‘Maman? Are you still there? Did you hear what I said?’
Isabelle was going to lie and say she had, when she thought better of it. ‘I’m sorry, Adeline darling. I’m just tired. Had a bad night. Noisy street near the hotel and sore shoulder from someone’s giant case landing on it in the train.’
‘Hmm, what do you expect but noise in Paris?’ Adeline snorted. She loved her small-town life in the Dordogne region. And then her tone sharpened. ‘Sore shoulder? How bad is it?’
‘Big bruise and it’s difficult to lift my arm,’ Isabelle said. ‘I didn’t have any painkillers, and I couldn’t go to the pharmacy in the middle of the night. I’ll get some this morning.’
‘Good, but you should also get it looked at. It might just be a contusion, muscle damage which usually goes away in a few days, but it could be something more serious—deep tissue injury, for example.’
‘Sure,’ Isabelle said, but her doctor daughter knew that tone. ‘Honestly, Maman,’ she said, sternly, ‘just do it today. I’ll send you the name and address of someone who’ll see you—she’s a good friend of mine. Promise me you’ll do it.’
‘I promise.’ Isabelle was smiling as she ended the call.
Yes, she thought, occasionally her daughter might imply that she was the wayward child, but Adeline didn’t judge her, she just wanted her to be happy.
She knew both her children loved her dearly, and showed it not only in words but also actions, keeping in frequent touch and enjoying being with her when she visited or they visited her.
I might not have been the best judge of men, Isabelle thought, but I certainly won the lottery when it comes to my beautiful children.