by Jane Holland
‘You have a funny way of showing it.’
‘I know, I’m sorry. I’ve totally blown it.’ He closes his eyes briefly, then reopens them, his gaze fixed on my face. ‘Can you forgive me?’
I take a deep breath, trying to stay calm despite the turmoil inside. Part of me is singing because he’s started to open up emotionally, because he says he may be in love with me. But another part is terrified of this man, because I’m no longer sure who he’s become since we were kids. I don’t know exactly what happened to make him like this, but I don’t think it’s safe to trust him anymore.
He’s too broken.
He’s like the dark side of the Robin I knew.
And I’m weeping inside.
‘Of course I forgive you.’ I hold up a hand when he smiles, adding gently, ‘But I still have to go home.’
‘No.’
‘My father’s dead, Robin. You of all people should understand what that means, how I’m feeling right now. I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt you or leave you alone, but there’s no other way.’
‘There’s always a way.’
I shake my head, my mind made up. ‘I’m going to take a taxi to the nearest train station. You don’t need to come back with me if you’d rather stay in Les Baux.’
Robin swears under his breath, and I walk quickly away, hurdling several stone walls in my path. He follows, and I get the uneasy feeling he means to grab me again, to physically force me to stay with him. But luck is on my side. As I head rapidly back towards the village, he’s held up by a group of Japanese sightseers also scrambling over the old ruins, led by an elderly tour guide with a pink parasol.
I hear Robin shout something, and the surprised exclamations of the tourists.
When I glance back, he’s lying face-down on the dusty ground, surrounded by a crowd of concerned Japanese tourists. I realise with a shock that he must have tripped and fallen over one of the rocky outcrops in his hurry to catch up with me.
The tour guide is bending over him with her pink parasol solicitously raised, as though to protect him from the sun.
I start running and don’t stop.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
You wade beautiful and naked into the lagoon-like calm of the Mediterranean, the moon pale above the bay. ‘Like a half slice of lemon,’ Emily remarked, gazing up at it while you were both stripping off.
Once past your waist, the black water is cool and smooth against your body, like silk sheets. You swim after the others, the too-hurried, windscreen-wiper arc of your breaststroke betraying your anxiety, your need to fit in at all costs, even when you’re terrified.
‘Robin … Emily …’ You splutter, the water lapping at your mouth. ‘Please, come back.’
Robin laughs and does not look back. His gleaming head bobs like a seal’s in the water ahead of you, always just out of reach.
‘Come on, scaredy-cat.’
The others join in, splashing water at you. ‘Scaredy-Caitlin.’
Louise makes a braying sound.
‘Robin, please. It’s too dark to swim. And it’s getting really deep, I can’t feel anything under my feet.’
A hint of panic in your voice now. Your provincial-sounding voice that amused Robin so much when he first met you, the boy whose father is a big-shot film producer, who has grown up in Hollywood and knows most of the stars by their first names.
‘Scaredy-Caitlin,’ Emily repeats after the others, smiling at you. ‘You do make me laugh.’
There’s defiance in your face. ‘It’s not funny, Ems. I don’t like it.’
‘You swim all the time at home. In the Atlantic, for God’s sake.’
‘That’s different.’
‘Yeah, it’s a fucking ocean. This is just a sea. And an inland sea at that. Didn’t you learn anything at school? The Med doesn’t even have proper tides.’
‘It has currents though. And I never swim at night in Cornwall. It’s too dangerous.’
‘What a baby you are.’
‘Look, someone might steal our stuff. We’ve cooled down now. Can’t we start heading back?’
Emily ignores you.
Conrad swims past you violently, his athletic backstroke causing a wake. Floundering to your left, Charlotte swears at him in a limp, rather pointless manner, her blonde hair plastered to her forehead. Robin turns to watch him approach but does not speed up, letting Conrad pass without making any effort at a challenge.
But then, he doesn’t need to challenge anyone for leadership, and he knows it. He’s head boy this summer because of who his dad is, and also because he’s considered clever, good-looking, and pretty fucking cool by the rest of the group. Not because of any physical prowess. So Conrad is welcome to the laurels.
‘Robin?’ you call after him. ‘We’re such a long way from shore now. I’m really worried about my bag.’
Your ploy doesn’t work. You catch the ghost of his laughter once more, drifting back across the lugubrious water.
‘Calm down, Caitlin.’ Robin dives, his feet briefly visible in the air, and swims a short way underwater. When he resurfaces a little further ahead, flicking back his wet hair, he adds, ‘Pete and Daljit stayed behind, remember? They’ll be watching our gear.’
Peter and Daljit are quietly fucking behind some rocks in the darkness. Probably on Pete’s Scooby-Doo beach towel, with only the occasional soft grunt audible from out here in the water. For the next ten to fifteen minutes, those amorous two won’t give a shit what any of you are doing, or what might happen to your possessions while you’re safely out of sight of the moonlit beach.
They think nobody knows what they’re doing.
And they’re right.
Nobody does.
Emily laughs at you too, rolling on her back in the sea. She spreads her arms wide, stares up at the moon. Her rounded breasts float white, untanned, in the moonlight. She did not hesitate to strip earlier when Conrad suggested cooling off with a midnight swim, and showed no qualms about abandoning her petite gold bikini on the rocks of the private beach below the chateau.
It’s a hot evening on the Cap though. Unpleasantly sultry. The kind of prickling summer heat that makes you long to be in the water.
‘You’re such a baby sometimes.’ She means to be cruel, she really does. ‘Come on, little Caitlin. Don’t swim with the tadpoles. Join the grown-ups.’
Little Caitlin.
That’s what your aunt calls you, a fond, indulgent note in her voice. Emily resents you for that, of course. Her mother never speaks to her with such affection or defers to her opinion in the same way. But then, Tante Tamsin knows what a malevolent bitch Emily can be. Whereas you, Caitlin, are practically a saint. Or a virgin, at least.
Though not for much longer if you can help it.
You glance at those around you, the ‘tadpoles’ as Emily calls them, and then strike out after the older ones, a determination not to be mocked driving your pace. To be seen as one of the inner circle, not merely a hanger-on. For Robin to look at you the way he looks at Emily.
How much does Emily know about you and Robin? Perhaps nothing.
Perhaps everything.
Later, returning to the beach with the others, you try to hide your nudity behind a pink towel that’s too small for you. It just skims your crotch and barely covers your breasts.
Robin spots your discomfort, and strolls across, rubbing his wet hair. He’s bare-chested but back in his shorts, the top button left undone to reveal dark curling hairs.
‘Here,’ he says, finishing with his towel. He hands it to you, unsmiling. ‘Use this.’
The white towel may be damp from his body, but it’s larger than your own. A real Hollywood towel, huge and fluffy and with his initials embroidered in gold along one edge. You thank him awkwardly, and wrap the vast white towel around yourself with ease, only your bare shoulders and gleaming legs still on show afterwards.
He does not walk away but keeps watching as you start to dry yourself, apparently fascinate
d. Then he moves closer, casually flicks your cheek with a finger. ‘Hey, sorry if we scared you out there.’
‘No, it’s fine.’
‘It’s really not. I forgot how much younger you are than the rest of us.’
Your cheeks flush, your eyes suddenly narrowed on his face. ‘I’m n … not that much younger,’ you say, rather too loudly. ‘In fact, I’ll be sixteen soon. I’m the same age as Jean-Luc.’
Emily, standing nude in the rush of the shallows, deliberately showing off her well-toned, bronzed body to anyone who cares to look, half-turns to stare at you. Her buttocks look startlingly white in the moonlight.
But Robin is not looking at Emily. He’s smiling down at you instead. ‘Sorry,’ he repeats softly.
‘Five weeks. Then I’ll be only a year younger than you.’
‘Is that so?’ His hand drops to your damp shoulder, caressing you. ‘My birthday’s in September though. The nineteenth. Then you’ll be two years behind me again.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Poor little Caitlin. Always playing catch-up.’
‘Not so little.’ You grab his hand and guide it under the towel to your naked breast. His eyes widen but he does not pull away. For a long moment you stare at each other in silence. There’s a hot, flushed look to your face as you start to whisper, ‘Robin, I ...’
Suddenly Emily is there, naked and wrathful. ‘What the hell are you two doing?’
You drop Robin’s hand, staring at her in shock.
Robin shifts away as though nothing has happened, not even looking at either of you. Starts up a conversation with Daljit instead, who’s sitting on a rock further up the beach, smoking a cigarette.
‘Hey, Dal,’ he calls out, very casual, very American. ‘You got your watch there? What’s the time?’
‘Time we trotted off to bed, mate. Nearly two o’clock.’
‘Shit, is it that late already? I had no idea.’ Robin squats down to retrieve his trainers and starts forcing his damp feet into them with difficulty. ‘Pop’s going to kill me.’
‘Oh, I very much doubt it.’ Emily turns her attention from you to her petit ami. ‘Your mother’s gone off for the whole weekend, hasn’t she? Shopping in Paris, Lucille said.’ She stalks over to her abandoned bikini and bends for the shiny gold bra, her breasts jiggling. Her face is a cruel mask as she glances round at her faithless lover. Looking to inflict the maximum damage with the fewest words. ‘I guess,’ she adds clearly, ‘that means your dad will be too busy fucking my mum tonight to care what you’re doing, little boy.’
Robin stiffens but does not reply.
Your eyes are shiny with unshed tears. You stuff a fist into your mouth, watching them, but still you don’t make a sound.
You’re a big girl now. You never make a sound when people are watching.
Back at the chateau, you retrieve your diary from its hiding place under the floorboards and hunt silently for your pencil. You move on bare feet, making as little noise as possible. You saw the housekeeper wandering about downstairs near your aunt’s room and whispered, ‘Bonne nuit, Lucille,’ in passing. She made no reply but shot you such a disapproving glare as you crept towards the attic stairs, you don’t want her to know you’re still awake.
Not that Lucille paid you much attention.
She was only anxious for you to hurry up to bed so she could continue listening at her mistress’s door. Waiting for the man in there to finish what he’s doing and leave.
Sitting up in bed, red-eyed and weary, you record the day’s events as usual before you can forget them, stopping every now and then to suck the end of your pencil – and dream.
Only then do you let the tears spill down your cheeks.
Because you feel safe.
Because nobody’s watching.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Lucille picks me up from the bus station in the old Rolls Royce. My fellow travellers from the bus stare as the stately car purrs to a halt beside me and the window slides down to reveal Lucille’s face, powdered for once, a dash of pink lipstick making her look more feminine than usual. I can’t tell what she’s thinking when she studies my face, but her thin lips are pursed and I can feel animosity coming off her in waves.
‘How’s my aunt?’ I ask warily in French.
‘How do you think?’ Her tone is bristling. ‘You should have told her.’
‘Told her what?’
She flashes me an angry look. ‘About your father’s sickness. The cancer. She has been beside herself. I had to send for the doctor.’
‘Shit.’
I throw my bag in the back, then slide onto the generous front seat with its cream leather. The heavy door practically shuts itself.
‘I’m sorry. He asked me not to tell her.’ I make a face. ‘He was afraid how she might react.’
She drums her fingers on the wheel, watching the heavy traffic outside the bus station. It’s late evening, the sun has only recently set, and the streets are still busy. People on their way home from restaurants and bars, or heading out to parties or night clubs along the coast. After the dim interior of the bus, the stream of oncoming headlights is blinding, even through the tinted windscreen.
I pull down the sun visor. ‘Thank you for coming to collect me, anyway.’
She shrugs, sullen.
I assume it was not her decision to come out for me, but Tamsin’s.
Pulling into the flow of cars on the main road, Lucille glances at me, her expression unreadable. ‘Your aunt says you were at Les Baux.’
‘Yes.’
‘Not shopping.’
I hesitate. ‘I bought a few things. Souvenirs, gifts, you know.’
‘With your friend Charlotte?’
‘No.’ I’m too tired to lie anymore, even though I know she’ll be furious with me. It will all come out soon anyway. I might as well get used to the bitter recriminations, the hand-wringing. ‘Look, I haven’t seen Charlotte for years. I was with someone else, okay?’
The way Lucille looks at me sideways jars something in my head.
‘What is it?’ I ask.
‘You were with him,’ she whispers, clutching the steering wheel in sudden rigidity. It’s a statement, not a question.
‘Him?’
She breathes in and out sharply. ‘Robin.’
I consider lying to avoid an argument, then decide not to. Part of me wants to know what her reaction will be.
‘Yes.’
To my astonishment, she swears in French. The kind of crude language I used to hear from Emily when she wanted to shock me. Or perhaps impress me with her command of even idiomatic French. Only Lucille doesn’t even seem aware of me. Not properly. She’s baring her teeth, staring ahead, her eyes wild.
Then she crosses herself. A swift gesture, almost automatic. Instinctive. Protective.
‘I knew it. I knew it the minute I saw you with him from my bedroom window,’ she hisses in French. ‘You must never see him again, you hear me? Never. You must promise.’
‘But why?’
Lucille merely shakes her head, saying nothing more. We finish the journey to the chateau in silence, her face set in grim lines, me staring out at the coastal glitter of lights.
What the hell has Robin done to Lucille?
As we approach Cap d’Antibes, I catch the regular sweep of a cool white beam across the sky like a message from the bat cave. The Phare, the lighthouse on the highest point of the Cap, sending out its warning into the night. We used to go up there some nights, to admire the view and smoke under the trees beside the tiny chapel.
I keep thinking of Robin, remembering the nights we’ve spent together. His dark eyes watching me. The way he held and kissed me, the powerful intimacy between us, just like the old days …
I think I’ve fallen in love with you.
I have to leave France. It’s better this way. Robin has changed too much from the boy I knew. I can’t afford for us to fall in love with each other; the man he’s become could do me
too much damage. I have to pack my things tonight, say goodbye to Aunt Tamsin and the chateau where I was so happy as a girl, and fly home tomorrow to the rainy Atlantic coast of Cornwall.
Back in Cornwall, I’ll be safe from the shadows of the past, and able to mourn my father properly.
But I’m going to be hurting inside for a long time.
When we reach the chateau, Lucille parks the Rolls Royce on the steep drive behind a black Mercedes coupé that I don’t recognise, and insists on carrying my bag to the house despite my protests. We walk together up the steps to the front entrance.
I frown, glancing back at the car. There’s plenty of space for cars to turn round in the vast gravelled space in front of the chateau. But something still nags at me.
‘Not putting the Rolls in the garage overnight?’ I ask Lucille.
‘The garage is locked. I can’t find the key.’
I’m surprised. ‘I thought Jacques took care of all that. Jacques-of-all-trades.’
‘Jacques no longer works here. As of yesterday.’
I’m shocked. ‘What did he do?’
She shrugs, not answering my question. ‘He had the garage key last, and forgot to tell me where it was before leaving. That’s all you need to know.’
The front door opens at that moment, light spilling out over the steps. I look up, already bracing myself for a scene, expecting to see Tamsin in hysterics.
But it’s Pierre.
He comes down the steps with his arms outstretched. ‘Caitlin …’ He embraces me, kissing me on both cheeks. ‘I’m so sorry about your father. Please accept my sincere condolences.’
I’m surprised to see him there, and he spots that, smiling faintly as he pulls back. ‘Tamsin called me, asked if I could drop by. She didn’t want to be alone at this sad time.’
‘That’s very kind of you, thank you.’
‘It was no hardship. Not with Tamsin.’ He takes his car keys from his pocket, his look wry. ‘But now you’re back, I’ll be on my way if that’s okay.’
‘Of course.’
Pierre stops to talk quietly to Lucille. I turn to Tamsin, who has followed him out of the house and is standing at the top of the chateau steps.
