Old Girls Behaving Badly

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Chapter One

‘First time in Marseille?’

The man seated next to me had been tapping away on his laptop for the majority of the flight from Heathrow, but now, with me craning across him to look out of the window to the city stretching out below, he closed the lid, momentarily catching the cuff of my blouse in its grip. I gently pulled it free.

It had been raining when we’d left London. Rivulets of water streamed across the glass as we’d taxied down the runway, but here, in the south of France, the sunlight glinted off the wing of the aeroplane and the sea sparkled enticingly below.

‘First time in the air?’

The man tried again and I realised I hadn’t answered, I was transfixed by the view getting closer as we came in to land. I wasn’t expecting it to be so mountainous, the landscape pinched into folds like pleated fabric. We were over houses now with white painted walls, red roofs and azure-blue pools in their gardens. It was the furthest I’d been from home in years.

‘First time to Marseille,’ I said, ‘but not first time in the air.’

The last time I was on an aeroplane had been when my husband Douglas and I flew to Scotland for a few days. It was just after he’d retired, when I still had hope that we would have a future together, but that seemed like a joke now. Douglas was happily in a flat many miles from me with Little Miss Maidenhead and I was living in a boathouse in Hampton at the end of an elderly friend’s garden. It really was quite amazing how, at the age of seventy-one, my life had changed immeasurably.

‘Is Marseille home?’ I asked him, making an assumption based on his lovely French accent. The deep tone of his voice made the words sound quite sexy. God!

What was happening to me? He was a good ten years younger than me and besides, Douglas may have moved on but we were technically still married. I moved back a little to give the poor man some space.

It is. I’ve been visiting my daughter and grandson in London and now I’m home. Do you need recommendations for places to visit in the city?’

‘That’s kind, but I’m actually moving on to Aix-en-Provence.’

‘Ah, the home of Paul Cézanne. You’re an artist also?’

‘No,’ I said, laughing, but my mind did conjure up an image of the portraits I used to paint, now stored along with my mother’s old car and a lot of other distant memories in my rented garage in Oxfordshire. ‘I’m here for a job, so I doubt I’ll have much chance to be a tourist. I’m a companion,’ I added as he took a closer look at my face. ‘I’m here to look after an elderly couple.’

It appeared as if he was going to say something else and then seemed to change his mind.

Yes, I didn’t expect to be rejoining the workforce at my age, either.

The wheels of the aeroplane touched down on the runway and I let go of the tense feeling I’d been holding onto during the two-hour flight. Of course I knew, statistically, you were safer in the air than you were on the road, but loading myself into a metal tube and hurtling through the sky without any control was not a naturally comfortable place for me.

‘Welcome to Marseille Provence airport.’

The voice of a member of the cabin crew interrupted us and everyone began to gather their possessions, turn on their phones and stretch in their seats. The man offered me a smile and a bon chance as we left the plane and he disappeared into the bowels of the airport.

Once I’d navigated my way to the baggage reclaim and wheeled my suitcase through passport control, I was out into the arrivals hall and looking for signs pointing me in the direction of the railway station or, actually, la gare. I had my phone open on a Google translate app and was trying not to feel completely out of my depth.

I passed a line of taxi drivers holding up placards and as my eyes travelled the group I saw my own name scrawled on a piece of paper.

GINA KNIGHT

My heart relaxed a little when I realised someone had been sent to collect me and I let out my held breath. I wasn’t at all sure what to expect as I’d had little to no information and everything had been arranged at considerable speed. I hadn’t had a chance to talk to either of the elderly couple that I was here to look after nor even their daughter, who usually took up their care. I looked up to the face of the person holding my name and found a young man, his dark hair flopping into his eyes, sunglasses tucked into the opening of his white, linen shirt. When he pushed his hair back with his hand, our eyes met and he offered me a tentative smile.

‘Gina Knight?’ he asked, stepping forward.

‘Oui,’ I answered, immediately feeling foolish. ‘Yes, that’s me.’

I thrust out my hand and he took it and shook it, his smile broadening.

‘Lucien,’ he said. ‘You had a good flight?’

‘It was quick, uneventful and we stayed in the air for all the time we needed to,’ I said and he laughed.

‘Formidable.’ He reached for my suitcase. ‘I’ll take you to the car.’

‘I was quite happy to get a train, but thank you.’

‘I was at home in Marseille anyway and on my way to the hotel for my shift, so pas de problème.

I followed Lucien and my wheelie case outside into the busy and sunny afternoon and I breathed in the unmistakable warmth of a Mediterranean climate. The sky was a blue so intense it didn’t seem real after the grey mass of the London sky I’d left behind. The sun was dazzling and I could feel the immediate prickle of heat on my face. Despite the sheer fabric of my blouse, I knew it wouldn’t be long before there would be a trickle of perspiration running down my skin.

Lucien was charging ahead in some desperate hurry to get back to his car and I wondered if the parking charges were as steep in France as they were in UK airports. He glanced back over his shoulder as he crossed the road and began following a line of cars parked opposite the airport building.

‘D’acord, okay?’ he asked me and I stuck up a feeble thumb in response before I could embarrass myself with another oui.

His car was a small, blue Citroen and he bundled my case into the back and opened the passenger door for me. I slid onto the hot seat and was immensely glad that he got the engine going and the air con on before he swung out of the car park at some speed. He drove like he walked – rapidly!

‘So, you work at the hotel?’ I asked him and was mortified to hear my voice was doing that silly half accent thing. I remember Douglas doing this whenever he had to talk to anyone that wasn’t a native English speaker. Instead of attempting the other person’s language he would adopt a strange accent of his own while still only speaking English, or worse, start shouting. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said quickly. ‘I don’t speak much French.’

‘No problem,’ he said. ‘My petite s?ur – my sister, Amélie, and I have worked for the Guérin family for three years. Rose and Hugo are good employers. Hugo is our cousin.’

‘Oh, I see and Rose is Meredith and Gerald Harper’s daughter isn’t she?’

It was Meredith and Gerald I was here for. Gerald had dementia and Meredith, after a recent fall, had broken her arm. They were to be my second companion job. My first had been Dorothy Reed, an eighty-nine-year-old woman who, it turned out, had an ulterior motive for employing me for the week-long wedding party of her grandson. I thought I’d be helping her get dressed and make sure she’d cleaned her teeth, but she’d had me on an altogether different mission. We’d become good friends, though, and it was her boat house I was now resident of while I waited for the sale of my own house to go through.

‘Yes, she is their daughter,’ Lucien said. ”And it is bad timing, because now she and Hugo are on their way to New Zealand. But, of course, that is why you are here – to look after her parents. Their son is in a bad way after his car accident and it is right they are with him as he leaves the hospital, but things are a bit accablant – overwhelming here at the hotel. We have a lot to do without them.’

I didn’t want to be arriving into chaos, I wasn’t really sure I even wanted to be here, but Dorothy had arranged it. I had been bulldozed; again. She could be a very persuasive woman when she put her mind to it.

We left the airport heading north and were soon on an uninspiring stretch of dual carriageway. I looked out of the side window back towards Marseille and the sea, and felt a bit disappointed that we weren’t going into the city. Lucien must have sensed my thoughts.

‘You must go on a trip when you have time. I could show you around, if you like.’

I imagined what a tour of the city with Lucien would be like and saw myself racing to keep up with him. He’d probably be an enthusiastic tour guide and I’d be left out of breath and sweaty in his wake. Not so much the beautiful heroine with a carefully tied silk, head scarf, but more the huffing and puffing old woman with clicking knee joints. I didn’t want to offend him, though and it seemed as if he’d probably be too busy with work anyway.

‘That would be very kind,’ I said simply.

‘We have the oldest city in France,’ he said, proudly. ‘We are old, but we are also new here, we are glamorous and gritty. We are not just French, but Moroccan, Italian, Spanish and Arminian, Algerian. We are known for a good Bouillabaisse, but really we do the best pizza, of anywhere. But, you know, check out the North African food, is délicieux.’

He suggested a trip to Vieux Port – the old port – to eat seafood and take a boat trip. He told me that the view from the Basilique Notre Dame de la Garde was mangifique. When he asked me what I used to do in my younger working days, I told him of my time as an art historian, a museum curator, although that had been a very long time ago, another life ago. He then began an excited spiel about the oldest part of Marseille, the Panier Quarter and its colourful street art, funky sculptures and open-air art gallery.

‘You can go for the art, I go for the food,’ he said. ‘And you know, we have Brutalist structures too; you know, concrete?’

‘I know,’ I said ‘Le Corbusier pioneered it.’

‘Exactement! You know The Cité Radieuse?’

‘I’ve seen pictures.’

‘You must go see it in the flesh. In the concrete.’

He laughed then and swerved violently to overtake a lorry.

‘I really don’t expect I’ll have a lot of time to be honest.’

Clinging onto the side of my seat, a thought of not making it to the hotel alive crossed my mind. But Lucien was passionate about his city and extremely likeable. I felt I had an immediate friend if I should need one.

We were driving up into the mountains now and the rocky terrain had gone from a rich terracotta colour to a chalky white. The vegetation was like a thick gorse and the trees were mostly pine.

‘But, of course we are going to Aix-en-Provence the home of Cézanne and name place of our hotel. People come from all over to see his studio and to see where he painted, walk in his footsteps. You will be among friends.’

My research about the area had been limited by the fact I’d had so little time to prepare. I’d mostly been looking up how to care for someone with dementia. But of course I knew Paul Cézanne and his work. His paintings of Mont Saint-Victoire, in particular seen from Bellevue in its panoramic and delicate beauty came straight to my mind, although my favourite by far was the brooding and intense L’Estaque, Melting Snow. To know I was heading into these locations and into the home of Cézanne himself gave me a frisson of excitement.

I began to see signs for Aix, but Lucien told me we were going straight to the hotel and he took the road that skirted south of the city itself. Before long we were onto small woodland lanes and then we were at the entrance to the hotel. There was a long driveway made to look even longer by the line of cypress trees that lined either side of it and then the main hotel itself. It was a large, cream-coloured stone building with warm-grey painted shutters on all of the many windows. Two olive trees flanked the main entrance and the borders were filled with flowering shrubs and woody herbs. There was a large square of lawn with tables and chairs set underneath a sprawling tree which cast a dark shadow of its silhouette. There, in the shade, a lone woman sat with a coffee and her newspaper, looking a little like a model with her props for a hotel photo shoot. It was all very perfect and because of that I suddenly felt a bit disconcerted and ever so slightly intimidated.

‘H?tel and Spa du Cézanne,’ Lucien said, rather grandly as he swung the car past the main hotel and into a small carpark on the side, spraying gravel towards some hedging as he skidded to a stop.

‘What can you tell me about the Harpers before I meet them?’ I asked him as he switched off the engine.

‘Well, Gerald is very quiet and I don’t see him much. And Meredith, I don’t think she likes it here, she is homesick, her daughter told me. Perhaps you can get her out of her shell. She is’ – he paused for a moment while he tried to find the word. ‘Well, it’s best if I leave you to meet her,’ he said and then offered me an apologetic smile as if Meredith’s temperament were his own fault. But, a homesick old woman I could empathise with.

‘And the hotel? It looks big and expensive.’

‘It is both of those things,’ he said with a smile. ‘We are fifty chambre in the main hotel and eight villas in the grounds, but most of those are still to be rénové – fixed up. Meredith and Gerald live in one of the good ones. It’s very nice. Follow me and I will find someone to show you to your room.’

Lucien pulled my case from the back seat and I followed him inside. The entrance was charming and light with huge doors leading out behind the reception area to the sculpted gardens beyond. Everything, from the seating to the artwork on the walls to the curtains and the furniture was luxurious. Rich tones of blues and golds and greens were followed through all the soft furnishings and carpets and someone had taken great pains to put together the most beautiful floral display on a large mahogany table in the middle of the space. I could never afford to stay in a place like this and yet, here I was, for three weeks. I felt exactly as I had when I’d arrived at Walstone Hall – the country estate in Norfolk where I first met Dorothy back in August – overwhelmed. I hadn’t been there as a guest, either. I was staff and I had to be mindful of that.

And then I remembered what Dorothy had asked me to do while I was here. She’d sent me on a mission that was far more than should be asked of any companion.

‘Dorothy, let me be clear,’ I had said at the time. ‘I’ll be there as a companion and perhaps a carer for Meredith and Gerald while their daughter and son-in-law are away. I won’t be poking around in their business.’

‘But you do poking around so well,’ she had reminded me with a grin, which at the time I couldn’t help but return.

Now, though, here in the hotel and on the brink of meeting the couple themselves I didn’t want to grin, because I had a huge lump in my stomach that had nothing to do with the croissant I had stuffed into my mouth at the airport. I suddenly had a horrible feeling I would be seeing it again.

Chapter Two

I hung back, holding onto the handle of my case for a little support while I collected my thoughts. I needed to pull myself together and concentrate on the fact that I was here to look after a nice old couple. Whatever Dorothy had planned in her mind didn’t have to interfere with my simple companion job.

A gentle chatter filled the space from the guests that were coming and going and also those that were waiting. A couple relaxed on one of the sofas, leafing through the magazines that littered the coffee table, a woman with a dog was standing by the door organising her rucksack and reminding me that I’d read about all the walking trails in the area, a family were holding a map, deciding on their route and staff busied about, back and forth, clearly rushing, but with smiles arranged carefully on their faces.

Lucien chatted to a woman behind the main reception desk in rapid French, in fact, I’d say he was flirting, the way he leaned into her as she passed him what looked like my room key. She was wearing a blue skirt and a green silk blouse with a lovely gold brooch pinned to one side. Her hair was so blonde it was almost white and fell down her back like a waterfall. She was beautiful and I wasn’t at all surprised that handsome Lucien was taken with her. He walked back towards me with an envelope containing the key to my room. I was keen to dump my suitcase and freshen up before meeting Gerald and Meredith.

‘She is very attractive,’ I said, nodding in the woman’s direction and his smile lit up his entire face.

‘Béatrice,’ he said. ‘I don’t mind telling you, I’m half in love with her.’

His cheeks went pink then and I couldn’t help but smile.

‘She’s your girlfriend?’ I asked him.

‘Non! She is with Cristòu, he is the head chef here.’

‘You have a rival?’ I asked, and he laughed.

‘I have no chance with her. He is famous for his food. I would expect a Michelin star soon.’

As he said this his face fell and all the warmth was gone.

‘A good thing for the hotel, though.’

‘Oui, I agree, but he is an imbécil. She should have better.’

‘And where does your sister Amélie work here?’

‘She is a therapist in the spa. If you need a massage, she is superbe.”

He took my suitcase and offered me his other arm, then guided me out of reception and towards the garden.

‘Am I staying in the shed?’ I asked him with a chuckle as we navigated our way past a swimming pool surrounded by sun loungers, several of which were in use. It was an infinity pool that appeared to drop away into the landscape beyond. The gardens below were perfectly planted with a mix of yellow and white flowering shrubs and then cypress trees stood sentinel to bring order to the space. Lucien lead me away from the pool and on towards a wooded area.

‘There are no free rooms in the hotel, I’m afraid, so Rose asked me to apologise and to put you in one of the villas. You will have more space, but it is, how can I say it… basic.’

‘I don’t mind at all,’ I said. ‘I’m very happy with something simple.’

‘Hmmm,’ was his response. ‘Only two of the villas are finished so far. Meredith and Gerald have one and an English guest is staying in the other. It is all part of a bigger project to expand. It is why the accident of their son and the arrival of Rose’s parents is such bad timing.’

‘Meredith and Gerald haven’t been here long then?’

‘Non, only three weeks. It is still very new to them.’

There was a shingle path that weaved its way through the trees and as we got further away from the main hotel it was clear where the improvements had ceased. It became overgrown quite quickly and the beautifully stocked borders of the front were not mirrored here. Everything needed a good going over and for the first time in a while I wanted to pull on my gardening gloves and get stuck in. Perhaps I would, given the opportunity.

It was the garden I missed the most about losing my house. I’d spent years out there making it perfect, testing which plants worked and which didn’t, finding the sunniest spots for my blooms and the shadiest for my ferns. It would soon belong to someone else and I kept resisting the urge to tell the agent we’d only sell to a keen gardener. What did it honestly matter? I’d never see it again anyway.

My heart tugged for my old life for a moment and then I thought about the lovely boathouse at Dorothy’s and Dorothy herself who had become such a close confidant. Then I allowed a small thought of Erik, her neighbour, with his piercing blue eyes, strong tanned arms and his hands that were usually holding a paperback book. He’d invited us to an impromptu book club the previous week on his narrowboat to talk about the thriller he’d lent us. We’d opened some wine, sat back, laughed for a good hour and then relaxed in his gentle company.

A villa stood to our left with a small patio behind a low clipped hedge. It was covered in wooden boards with freshly painted cream-coloured window frames. The blinds were pulled down on all of the windows. Its neighbouring villa looked exactly the same, although the hedge needed cutting. Then we walked a little further and there were a couple more. This time, though, the boards were missing and the paint on the rendering was flaking around damp patches. Instead of a neat hedge there was a forest of weeds and a broken chair. I smiled at Lucien to let him know that I wasn’t worried at all. I was sure the inside could only be better than the outside. Lucien walked forward then and opened the door so that I could see I was entirely wrong.

It was certainly a work in progress, that was for sure. We were straight into a living area which had an old lumpy looking sofa and a coffee table with the potential for a small kitchen in one corner. At the moment there was a worktop and some cupboards, one of which looked dangerously close to falling off the wall, but there was nothing that you could cook on or with. There were a couple of doors leading from the space which I assumed would be a bedroom and bathroom, but I was keen to explore them alone.

‘This is perfect for me,’ I said. ‘But I’m sure you have better things to do than show me around. Please point me in the direction of Meredith and Gerald and then I can get on with why I’m here.’

‘D’acord, and you’re alright with this,’ Lucien said, waving his hand around in the air and almost knocking the paper lampshade off its fitting.

‘Of course.’

‘I nearly forgot. Rose has arranged an online meeting with you later so she can talk to you. I will bring you a laptop.’

‘Oh, okay,’ I said, surprised. But really it made sense to talk to her. She could let me know what to expect from her parents.

‘You’ll find the Harpers in the first villa we walked past.’

The neat one with all the blinds closed. I didn’t like to think why, on such a beautiful day, the occupants wished to sit inside. But, then Gerald wasn’t well and perhaps they preferred peace and quiet. At that moment there was an almighty crash from the villa behind this one and Lucien winced.

‘Rénové,’ he said with a shrug.

‘The guests don’t mind the noise?’ I asked him.

‘There is only the Harpers and one English woman on a research trip in the villas. She accepted the reduced price and seems happy enough. We are away from the hotel here. The other guests won’t hear much.’

I will, I thought, at the sound of a low rumble and another crash. I took a breath, thanked Lucien for his time and then closed the door behind him as he left.

* * *

Villa number one was oddly quiet. The building team on the renovation job had downed tools for an afternoon break – a French Siesta I supposed – and we were too far from the main hotel to hear anything from the guests there. I did wonder if I could make out a splash from the pool, but I think that was wishful thinking because the afternoon was becoming blistering. It was October, but still rather too hot for me. A freak heat wave or climate change, it was hard to tell, but I would strongly guess at the latter.

I walked up to the front door and hesitated as something caught the corner of my eye. A ball of fur was curled up under a shrub by the edge of the villa. A black and white cat, by the looks of it. I stepped across the strip of grass and crouched down to pet it and it unfurled with my touch. I’d lost my dog the previous year and had often thought of another pet to love, but with Douglas leaving me and my life at a time of change it wouldn’t be fair.

‘You’re lovely,’ I told it as it rolled onto its back and stretched.

Just then, the blind on the window above my head snapped up and a face appeared behind the glass. A woman with a pinched nose and narrow eyes stared at me and I scrambled ungainly to my feet.

‘Hello,’ I said, lifting my hand to wave. ‘I’m Gina, Gina Knight.’

I wasn’t sure if she could hear me from behind the glass, but her mouth stretched into a thin tight line before she lent forward and opened the window.

‘Come to the door,’ she said, brusquely. ‘And don’t bring that bloody cat with you.’

I paused for a moment while she slammed the window shut and lowered the blind. It took me a second longer to reassess my assumptions because I thought I’d just met Meredith Harper and she wasn’t the kindly old woman of my imaginings.