Chapter Six #2
I shrugged.
‘So you’re Alix. Jules has told me all about you.’ Retrieving a couple of empty cardboard boxes from the porch, she closed the front door behind her. ‘I’ve just come round to pick up some books. I texted Luc to say I was coming this morning. Is he not around?’ She looked about her.
‘Um, no. According to Nicole, he didn’t come home last night.’
‘Ah. Not surprised. He’s doubtless with Caroline.’ Heading for upstairs with the boxes, she said, ‘He’ll have forgotten anyway. The poor chap’s got a lot on his plate at the moment.’
I followed her as she mounted the stairs and then settled herself on a low footstool in front of the bookshelves in the mezzanine gallery. Flicking open the flaps of one of the cardboard boxes, she looked up at me and smiled.
‘You haven’t clue who I am, have you?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ I said but smiled back.
I couldn’t help it; she was so friendly and so…
well, normal. A woman of average height, in her early sixties I would have said, she was on the generous side in terms of figure but not fat, although I could only too easily imagine women who would call her that.
Rather, she was what I knew my father would describe as Rubenesque; well-covered and busty with shapely legs in black tights and brown loafers beneath a full-skirted, dark-blue denim dress.
Around her shoulders she had slung a red cashmere cardigan, its sleeves tied in a knot at the front.
With thick, ash-grey hair streaked with blonde and twisted loosely up in a tortoiseshell clip, in her suntanned, slightly weathered face, two bright brown eyes shone with intelligence and good humour.
In short, Jess, whoever she was, was a welcome sight.
‘Okay.’ She began rapidly plucking hardback books from the lower shelves and squinting at their titles.
‘I’m Jess and I am – well, I was – Luc’s late father’s…
what do you call it now?’ With a slight frown puckering her well-shaped eyebrows, she pondered a second.
‘When I was a girl you would have said I was his mistress. You probably still would say that here in France, where they’re much more conventional about such things.
But I suppose your generation would call me his “partner”, except that always sounds to people of my age like something out of a John Wayne western.
You know – howdy, pardner!’ she drawled in a mock American accent.
John Wayne? Goodness, that was a blast from the past. Perhaps her well-preserved appearance disguised her age, and Jess was older than she looked. Nevertheless, I laughed, perching myself down on the arm of the battered sofa next to her. She looked up at me.
‘Yeah, that would have made Johnny laugh too.’ For a moment she looked upset.
‘His name was really Jean-Luc, but everybody always called him Johnny. His son Luc’s incredibly like him, an identikit almost. So much so it hurts sometimes to be with Luc.
He looks like Johnny when he was younger; they’ve got the same mannerisms. He laughs in the way Johnny laughed, they even walk in the same way…
’ She broke off, biting her lip. ‘God, I miss him,’ she murmured as if to herself.
There was a little pause. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said inadequately.
She looked directly at me. ‘He had Alzheimer’s, you know – Johnny.’
I stared at her. ‘No, I didn’t know,’ I said after a moment. ‘But again, I’m very sorry.’
‘Thank you,’ she said quietly. Then, giving herself a little shake, she became brisk again, seizing more books, glancing at their spines and popping them into the second box. ‘Oh, can’t be helped. Now, tell me about yourself. I hear you’re a brilliant chef.’
‘Well, I can’t think who you would have heard that from,’ I exclaimed, rather clumsily I admit, but I was dumbfounded. ‘Given since my arrival at the Villa Matisse hardly anyone has eaten anything I’ve cooked.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ Jess looked sympathetic. ‘Jules has told me about yesterday evening’s dinner. I gather Susan had one of her tantrums.’
‘One of them? Are Susan Mandeville’s tantrums a regular occurrence, then?’
‘You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, buster,’ she replied, again assuming an American accent. But seeing my doleful face, she went on quickly, ‘However, Jules also said you cooked the best soupe au pistou he’s ever tasted.’
‘That was nice of him.’
‘Yeah, he’s a nice man.’ Another little pause followed while Jess seemed to mull over what had been said.
Then she glanced at her watch. ‘Oh bother. I wish I had more time, but I’m in a hurry, lovely as it is to talk to you.
I’ve got a little bistro in the Old Town and Sundays are my busiest day for lunch, especially with what we call the “Ancient Brits” – the English pensioners down here. ’
‘There were a couple of those at dinner last night. They certainly ate the food I cooked, although I suspect they might have consumed anything edible.’
She giggled. ‘I know exactly who you’re referring to.
’ Then she sobered. ‘I shouldn’t laugh because they’re a bit sad really.
I’ll tell you about it sometime if you like.
In fact, listen,’ she continued, standing up and hefting one of the boxes onto her hip.
‘I’ve got to dash now, but would you like to meet up sometime for a drink or lunch or something?
When you’re not working, that is. I think it’d be nice to get to know each other. ’
‘So do I. I’m up for anything.’ I picked up the other box of books. ‘Shall I carry this down for you? Then let’s exchange numbers.’
‘That reminds me.’ She levered her phone out of a pocket of her dress once we’d loaded the books into her car outside on the street. She threw me a naughty little grin. ‘Somebody else has your number and they might just phone you as well.’
Puzzled, I rubbed my nose, unable to think who she meant, as, with a cheery little wave, she jumped into her car and drove off down the avenue.
I liked her; I felt we had clicked, notwithstanding the disparity in our ages.
And of course we were in the same line of business.
In fact, despite the sorrow in what she had said about losing Johnny Mandeville, it was as though a refreshing plume of air off the Mediterranean had breezed suddenly through the Villa Matisse.
And now, as unexpectedly as it had arrived, it had evaporated.
There was no lock on the door, but if nobody ever used this bathroom, it didn’t matter.
The bath looked inviting, the enamel surface threatening to be a bit scratchy on the bottom – its own as well as mine – but it was wonderfully deep and, filled to the brim with boiling-hot water, would be hugely relaxing.
Climbing in, I decided to wash my hair first while the water was clear and then add some bubbles for a good long soak.
But just as I opened the cap on the shampoo, my phone buzzed. It was a text from Carl.
Buongiorno, mamma mia! it read. We’re on our way to the mountains. Papa doesn’t like people talking on the phone when he’s driving so I’m texting instead. VERY good news. Nonna is staying in Milan. FEW!
Smiling to myself, I texted back. He sounded so happy and excited I forbore to correct him in his misspelling of ‘phew’.
After all, I couldn’t spell ‘Buongiorno’ for the life of me.
Agreeing we’d talk later that evening, I got on with washing my hair.
Then I reached towards the wicker stand for my bottle of Neal’s Yard relaxing foam and…
froze, if you can freeze in a boiling hot bath that is.
I’d suddenly noticed a chair in the far corner of the room adjacent to the window.
It was one of those old, ornate jobs you see in French antique street markets, with muddy-coloured threadbare brocade padding the arms and seat and the wooden parts painted in balding gilt in the typical nineteenth-century fake style of one Louis Quatorze.
But it wasn’t the chair that had attracted my attention. It was what was lying on it.
For there, tossed across one arm, was unmistakeably the pink – or was it faded red?
– sweatshirt Luc Mandeville had been wearing under his leather biker’s jacket when I had first set eyes on him yesterday.
To make matters worse, on the other arm was thrown what looked suspiciously like a pair of men’s underpants, the trunks type, black.
No, it wasn’t suspiciously. It was definitely. I was looking at a pair of men’s pants.
I reared up so abruptly in the bath that great waves of water slopped over the sides. There was only one conclusion to be drawn, and I drew it instantly: Luc Mandeville used this bathroom and had used it yesterday.
Two minutes later found me hurtling down the marble staircase, sopping wet hair leaving a mini tsunami in my wake and my jeans sticking to my legs where I hadn’t dried them.
Panting harder than as if I’d just run a hundred-metre sprint, I gained the comparative safety of my room.
I was almost shaking with the appalling thought that Luc Mandeville might have suddenly returned to the Villa Matisse only to find me languishing in his bath.
Nicole had got it wrong, not deliberately or spitefully; Nicole wasn’t like that. She simply did not know.
I peeled off my T-shirt, it also sopping wet and so clinging to my bra-less tits I could have been auditioning for a page in a girlie calendar.
You can just imagine it: Alix, December.
You lucky guys will find her lying in your bath!
God, what a narrow escape. Then all at once I saw the funny side of the whole shebang and started giggling so hysterically that I gave myself the hiccups.
Except my mirth didn’t last any longer than my bath.
Because once again my phone rang. I looked at the name.
So that was who Jess had been referring to when she said someone might be calling me…