Epilogue
It’s now nearly a year since the events of last Christmas.
So much has happened that I don’t know where to begin.
Perhaps I’d best start with our getting married in March.
It was in a registry office, and afterwards we had a small lunch party in a country pub for my parents, Emma and Carl, and not forgetting Susan of course.
We had to invite Susan. Astonishingly, however, she was the life and soul of the party.
Whether this was on account of her deciding she liked me – I do after all cook the best cremated steak in the business – or whether because, a few days before the wedding, she had confided something in me.
She told me that she had nearly died when Luc was born.
Afterwards, she said, although she had survived, she had felt so desperately low that she had wanted then to die.
From the way she described this, it was clearly a case of severe post-natal depression if not postpartum psychosis.
She told me that she had feared for Luc’s safety.
Yet, she was in France at the time and either because it was forty-eight years ago or because she could not speak French and therefore make anyone understand her, nobody afforded her the right treatment.
Luc’s father, she said, seemed to think only that she’d brought it on herself.
So, in due course, she left him and the Villa Matisse, never to return.
She asked me not to tell Luc all this, but I think I should at some point.
I don’t want us ever to have secrets from each other.
Especially not now we are expecting our own child.
Our son will be born this coming February.
Luc didn’t after all ask Jules to be his best man.
Neither of us had wanted a big wedding, but more to the point, Jules had announced his own forthcoming marriage – to Caroline!
Luc was not surprised. He said they’d been sparring partners for years and suited each other down to the ground.
I didn’t know what to think, and still don’t, except I expect they’ll keep each other in order.
Caroline wrote me a breezy little note saying she was frightfully sorry she had been so frightfully rude to me but was sure I would understand.
She finished by saying she hoped we could ‘still be friends’.
Her use of the word ‘still’ continues to baffle me.
But we never see Jules and Caroline now anyway.
They’re always either in France or Belgium.
Their wedding is going to be a huge society do happening at some castle in Scotland – the distantly related duke’s gaff, I gather – and we have been invited.
But it’s in February, actually on my due date, so we won’t be going.
Probably just as well, as Luc loathes fandangos like that.
Next week, we’re flying to Nice with Emma and Carl to spend Christmas with Jess and Nicole.
Yes, Nicole stayed with Jess – and Alphonse.
After Luc sold the Villa Matisse and paid off all the debts, there was a little money left, which he insisted, with my whole-hearted agreement, should go to Jess.
Jess is using it to help Nicole finish her education.
Nicole is eighteen now, so Jess could not adopt her, although that is in effect what she has done.
They get on so well, it’s a joy to see them together.
Nicole’s father did prove to have some form of mental illness.
He’s in a nursing home and Nicole visits him from time to time.
She’s hoping to go to university next year.
As for Tom, after his cremation, Luc made strenuous efforts to find out whether he had any family or anyone at all who cared that he had died.
But the search came to nothing. Nobody seemed to know anything about him, or if they did, they didn’t want to say.
Eventually, when Luc went back in March to complete the sale of the Villa Matisse, he scattered Tom’s ashes from a boat out in the Baie des Anges.
Billy went with him, taking a bunch of violets to float on the water.
Luc told me Billy had grown the violets himself.
For Luc and me, it’s been quite a year, marrying, getting to know each other properly – which has only made everything more wonderful – and moving into Luc’s house with Carl, and Emma when she’s been home.
She hated modelling, by the way, complained that far too many people kept telling her what to do, and besides, it was boring.
She’s just finished her first term at university reading psychology, which she loves.
She and Carl are tremendously excited about the baby.
We’re calling him Henry, after Uncle Henri, who died quite suddenly but peacefully in his sleep one night back in June.
He left everything he had to Luc, and it didn’t include another dog.
On to Christmas. We’re booked into a little place in the Old Town in Nice.
Jess hasn’t the room to put us all up, although we’ll eat at her restaurant.
When we were making the arrangements, Luc asked me if I’d like to stay at the Villa Matisse.
It’s been converted into a zingy little boutique hotel; you can see it advertised online.
The high hedges and security gates have gone; the weird shack in the garden that once housed Johnny Mandeville’s car collection has been dismantled, and doubtless the funny little entry phone junked too.
The new owners have used quite a bit of artistic licence, claiming the artist Henri Matisse once actually lived in the house, although I don’t think anybody cares whether that’s true or not.
From what I can see in the photographs online, the bougainvillea continues to shed its papery petals over the front porch, and the shutters are still painted blue.
But to go back there? No, I don’t want to go back there, and given Luc looked relieved when I said that, I know he doesn’t either.
It played a huge part in Luc’s life, for Jess the same, for Emma, for Susan and not least for me.
None of us will ever forget it. But our story there is ended; we’ve all moved on, the way life moves on, even if you don’t want it to.
There’s a new beginning for all of us, as there is at the Villa Matisse.