2. Cat
CAT
The flat looks worse empty than it did full, which is saying something considering the state it was in when Janeen and I lived here together.
I stand in the doorway of what used to be our bedroom—my bedroom, briefly, and now nobody's bedroom—and catalogue the damage.
Water stain on the ceiling shaped like a particularly judgmental cloud.
The ghost of a poster I hung three years ago, its outline preserved in the slightly less grimy paint around it.
This is what thirty-six looks like, apparently. Unemployed. Single. Standing in an empty flat in Hackney with a suitcase full of chef's whites I may never wear again and a one-way ticket to a place I haven't seen in twenty-four years.
"Cheers to that," I mutter to no one, because talking to myself is a habit I've never managed to break, and honestly, it's not like there's anyone else to talk to these days.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. Michel, probably, checking in for the fourth time today to make sure I haven't done anything stupid. Or my landlord, reminding me that the keys need to be in the lockbox by six. Or—
It's neither. It's a French number, one I've programmed into my contacts with the name Henri Duval (LAWYER) because I am nothing if not aggressively practical about my emotional devastation.
"Monsieur Duval." I answer in French, the language clicking into place like muscle memory. "Is there a problem?"
"No, no, mademoiselle. I only wanted to confirm that you will be arriving today as planned?"
"On my way to the Eurostar in an hour."
"Excellent. I should tell you—the other beneficiary has been contacted. She will be arriving within the week."
The other beneficiary. The woman with the blood claim. The real grandchild.
"Right," I say, and I don't manage to keep the edge out of my voice. "Looking forward to meeting her."
I hang up before he can say anything else and shove the phone back into my pocket. The empty flat stares back at me, judgmental and sad, and I suddenly can't stand to be here for another second.
I grab my suitcase. Lock the door. Drop the keys in the lockbox like a good little tenant.
And then I walk away from the last four years of my life without looking back, because looking back has never done me any good, and because somewhere in Provence, there's a farmhouse waiting for me.
A farmhouse that smells like lavender and rosemary, where the shutters are painted that particular shade of French blue, where the ghost of my grandmother lives in every room.
Where I belong, even if I have to share it with a stranger who probably belongs there more.
The Eurostar is packed with tourists and businesspeople and a hen party from Leeds that's already three bottles of prosecco deep by the time we hit the tunnel. I wedge myself into a window seat with my headphones on and my eyes closed, trying not to think about the last time I made this journey.
I was twelve. Mum had just told me we weren't going back to Grand-mère's—not that summer, not ever. She wouldn't say why, just got that hard look on her face and said some people couldn't be trusted, and when I cried, she told me I'd understand when I was older.
I'm older now. I still don't understand.
The train hurtles through the darkness under the Channel, and I let myself remember.
The smell of lavender drying in the barn.
The sound of cicadas at dusk. Grand-mère's hands, weathered and strong, showing me how to prune the plants without damaging the stems. Her laugh, rich and warm, when I inevitably did it wrong anyway.
And the kitchen—Grand-mère teaching me to make proper ratatouille, not the tourist stuff, each vegetable cooked separately and layered with intention. That kitchen is where I became a chef, even if I didn't know it yet.
And I haven't been back in twenty-four years because my mother—
I press my forehead against the cold glass of the window and breathe through the familiar wave of guilt and anger and grief.
Mum's been dead for four years now. Whatever happened between her and Grand-mère, whatever betrayal she claimed, she took it to her grave.
And I let her. I never pushed, never demanded answers, never tried to find Grand-mère on my own.
I told myself I was being a good daughter. Respecting Mum's wishes. Honouring her pain.
The truth is simpler and uglier: I was scared. Scared of what I'd find. Scared of being rejected. Scared that whatever made Mum run would make Grand-mère push me away too.
And now she's gone, and I'll never know what really happened, and the only thing I have left is half a lavender farm and a lifetime of regret.
The rental car is a tiny Peugeot that smells like air freshener and broken dreams. I navigate out of Aix-en-Provence with the aggressive confidence of someone who learned to drive in London traffic, which is to say I nearly clip two cyclists and have a brief but passionate screaming match with a van driver who seems to think right-of-way is a suggestion.
But once I'm out of the city, once the roads start to wind through the hills of the Luberon, something in my chest begins to unknot.
I remember this. The way the light goes soft and golden in late afternoon.
The patchwork of fields—some already showing the first purple hints of lavender season, others bright with sunflowers or the silvery green of olive groves.
The stone villages perched on hilltops like something out of a fairy tale, ancient and stubborn and impossibly beautiful.
The Domaine des Lavandes is ten kilometers past Saint-Céline-sur-Sorgue, down a rutted dirt road that's probably hell in winter but right now is just bumpy enough to feel like an adventure.
I remember this road too. Mum used to let me roll down the window and stick my hand out to brush the lavender as we passed.
I roll down the window now. The lavender isn't fully in bloom yet—that won't happen until July—but I can smell it anyway, faint and promising. The scent of my childhood. The scent of home.
And then the road opens up, and there it is.
The farmhouse.
I pull over and just... look. I can't help it.
The bastide sits at the top of a gentle rise, its honey-colored stone glowing in the evening light.
Blue shutters, just as I remembered. The terrace with its climbing roses—more overgrown than they used to be, but still there.
The barn off to the left, the distillery where Grand-mère made her lavender oil.
The rows and rows and rows of lavender stretching out behind the house, purple-grey and waiting.
It's exactly the same. It's completely different. It's the place I've been dreaming about for twenty-four years, and it's real, and it's here, and Grand-mère isn't.
"Okay," I say to myself, because apparently I'm still doing that. "Okay. You can do this."
I drive the rest of the way with my heart in my throat.
The spare key is still under the third flowerpot to the left of the door. Of course it is. Grand-mère was a creature of habit, and some habits outlive their keepers.
I let myself in and stand in the entryway, breathing it in. Dust motes dancing in the fading light. The faint smell of lavender and old wood and something else, something that might be grief or might just be the particular scent of a house that's been empty too long.
"Hello," I say softly, to no one. To Grand-mère's ghost. To the twelve-year-old version of myself who used to come running through this door, shouting for biscuits and kisses. "I'm home."
The house doesn't answer, but I didn't expect it to.
I wander through the rooms, relearning the geography of my childhood. In the sitting room I run my fingers along the bookshelves and pull out a paperback I remember reading during a thunderstorm one August.
And the kitchen. God. The kitchen.
I stand in the doorway and let it wash over me.
The ancient range cooker, cold now but still dominating the room.
The copper pots hanging from the rack above the island.
The big farmhouse table where Grand-mère taught me to roll pasta dough and chop herbs and taste as I cooked, always taste, because how else would I know if it was right?
There are paintings on the walls I don't remember. Beautiful things—landscapes, mostly, the Provencal countryside rendered in bold strokes and vivid colors. They're all signed with the same initials in the corner: H.V.
I file that away for later and open the refrigerator, which is predictably empty except for a jar of Dijon mustard that's probably been there since the Chirac administration.
The pantry is better: olive oil, dried pasta, tinned tomatoes, a braid of garlic hanging from a hook.
Someone—the lawyer, maybe, or a kind neighbor—has left the basics.
I need to cook. I always need to cook when I'm feeling like this—scraped raw, too many emotions fighting for space in my chest. Cooking is the only language I've ever been fluent in, the only way I know to make sense of the world.
I find an apron—Grand-mère's apron, faded and soft from a thousand washings—and tie it around my waist. I chop garlic and slice tomatoes and cook pasta in the biggest pot I can find, talking to myself the whole time because the silence is too loud otherwise.
"Okay, so the olive oil goes in first, obviously, heat it up but not too hot, you want it shimmering not smoking—"
I'm making aglio e olio, the simplest thing in the world, pasta and garlic and olive oil and maybe some chili flakes if I can find them. It's what Grand-mère used to make me when I was sad, or sick, or just needed something warm and good.
"And the garlic goes in now, low and slow, don't let it burn, Mum always burned the garlic and then wondered why everything tasted bitter—"
I stop. Breathe. Keep stirring.
"Right. Okay. You're fine. This is fine. You're in Grand-mère's kitchen making Grand-mère's pasta in Grand-mère's apron, and she's dead, and she's been dead for six months, and you didn't even know, you didn't even—"
My voice cracks. I keep stirring anyway.
The pasta is perfect. I eat it standing at the kitchen island, because sitting at that big table alone feels like too much, and I drink two glasses of wine from a bottle I found in the pantry, and I don't cry because crying has never been my strong suit.
By the time I finish washing up, it's fully dark outside. The farmhouse settles around me, creaking and sighing the way old houses do. I should go and pick a bedroom, figure out where I'm sleeping for the next—what, three months? However long this takes?
Instead, I pour another glass of wine and wander out onto the terrace. The night is warm and soft and full of stars, more stars than I've seen in years of London living. The lavender fields are shadows in the darkness, but I can smell them. I'll always be able to smell them.
"I'm sorry," I say to the night. To Grand-mère. To myself. "I'm sorry I didn't come back. I'm sorry I didn't try harder. I'm sorry I let Mum win."
The night doesn't answer. The cicadas sing. The stars wheel overhead, indifferent and eternal.
I'm about to go inside when I see it.
Headlights. Coming up the drive.
Someone else is here.
I set down my wine glass and watch the lights grow closer, my heart suddenly pounding. It's probably nothing—a neighbor, maybe, checking on the property. Or the lawyer with some emergency paperwork. Or—
The car pulls up to the house and stops. The engine cuts off. A door opens, and a figure steps out into the darkness.
The figure is tall. The figure is moving toward the house with the particular stride of someone who expects to be obeyed. The figure is, unless I'm very much mistaken, the other beneficiary.
The real granddaughter.
The woman who's going to make me share.
I stay on the terrace and wait for her to see me, my chin lifted, Grand-mère's apron still tied around my waist.
Whatever happens next, I was here first.
And I'm not going anywhere.