The Last Summer of Being Single

by Nina Harrington

  Some of the faces were so familiar to him they were like friends he vaguely remembered but could not name. His grandmother and his parents were in many of them, but in others strangers smiled back from locations and events from a very different world he knew nothing about—a world called the past.

  Then he found it. A small colour print with his mother smiling out. Her beauty and life force captured in two dimensions for all time. Only as he picked it up he saw that there was writing on the back.

  His heart skipped a beat as he read the faded words in French. ‘Engagement Party. 26 May. André’s house.’

  That was all. No indication of who had been celebrating their engagement. Or who André was. A friend? A relative?

  Perhaps André was one of the young people in the bundle of photographs he had just glanced at? Someone who had known his mother as a young woman and who could tell him who his birth parents had been and what had happened to them.

  He had so many questions. And way, way, too few answers.

  Seb dropped the folder of photographs onto the sofa and started pacing up and down the room between the fireplace and the garden.

  He had known the old house would have mixed memories for him, but this was something new. Something he could not have expected.

  Hot resentment flashed through him and his fingers clenched into his palms. His dad had left these precious photographs of his mother and his heritage behind in his rush to abandon everything and leave for a tiny apartment in Sydney.

  Seb stopped pacing and picked up the colour print. How could he do it? How could he have left these pictures behind for strangers like Ella Martinez to sort through? Maybe even throw out or burn in the fire? He could easily have made room for these few precious pieces of paper.

  Back in Sydney he had three photographs of his mother. Three worn, faded and torn prints, the surface coating worn away by the rubbing of his fingers over the years. His dad had one single wedding photo in a silver frame in his bedroom, which Seb used to sneak in and look at. He never got tired of grinning back at the pretty dark-haired girl in a long white dress and carrying a huge bouquet of flowers that trailed almost to the ground, standing next to his dad in his best banker’s smart suit, as they both smiled for the camera.

  Four photographs. And yet here in this house he had already seen more photographs than he ever knew existed.

  It was almost as if his dad had deliberately kept these photos from him. Was he trying to hide something? Trying to protect him?

  Not any more.

  Change of plan.

  He was here now. He had the means and the opportunity and he could spare a few hours of personal time. In a few days he would be back to Australia. This could be the only chance he might have.

  The more he thought about it, the more decisive he became.

  He had used his tenacity and determination to take his business to the top. Now it was time to apply that same energy and drive to do some digging into his own past. Decision made.

  He had a new mission. He was going to find any and every scrap of evidence of his family’s past. Even if it meant turning this house upside down to find them.

  Starting with the attic.

  Because whatever he found from now on, he had every intention of claiming for himself. This was personal and had nothing whatsoever to do with Nicole or her housekeeper. Nothing at all.

  Ella tried to wind her way through the jumble of unwanted furniture and assorted objects that had accumulated in the attic. And fought a sudden urge to kick them out of the way. Hard.

  Stamping her foot, she squeezed her eyes tight shut, dropped her head back and counted to ten. Backwards. The furniture was bashed enough without her adding to the knocks and scrapes.

  They said that bad things came in threes. Well, her Friday was certainly turning out to be a lot more challenging than she had expected. First was the news about the mistral. A summer storm was the last thing this garden needed a few days before a garden party. And it could last for days!

  As for the second? It was obvious to her now that Sebastien Castellano never had any intention of staying around long enough to attend Nicole’s birthday party. And that was just cruel.

  How could he do that? How could he promise to be here then change his mind?

  She simply did not understand that at all. He had travelled halfway around the world for a business trip, only to take off again without seeing Nicole!

  How could he be so selfish? Surely he could put Nicole’s needs in front of his own for once? And what was so urgent back in Sydney that he could not stay for a few more days?

  And then there was the killer. The thick letter stuffed into her trouser pocket that had been waiting for her when she got back from the school run.

  The very sight of the Spanish stamps made her heart sink into her deck shoes.

  To a six-year-old, Barcelona might just as well have been next to India and not just a few hours’ drive away. Not that Christobal’s parents came to see them very often. They hated staying at Sandrine’s clean but simple hotel and made repeated comparisons with their luxury villa complete with indoor heated swimming pool and every possible item of the latest technology.

  They truly could not tolerate the fact that their grandson was being brought up in a tiny French village while their daughter-in-law worked as a housekeeper for a wealthy woman.

  She did not even drive any more.

  Christmas had been a nightmare. As soon as Dan had gone to bed they had bombarded her with their elaborate plans for his education—all the time making her feel like a completely selfish mother by not providing personal tutors and modern computer games and the like so that Dan would not feel left out at the expensive private schools he would soon be attending.

  Yeah. Boarding schools. Right. Like she was going to let that happen! Except of course by selfishly keeping Dan here with her she was ruining his chance of a good education and a career. Guilt. Guilt. Guilt.

  Ella groaned, then shrugged and sat down on the curved cover of an old trunk and opened the letter under the light beaming in through the dirty glass-covered skylight in the attic roof.

  Then hot tears burned the corners of her eyes, blurring her vision.

  Two return train tickets to Barcelona. First class. For Monday next week! Two days. She only had two days before she had to hand her baby boy over to his grandparents.

  Oh, no. Of course she had known that they wanted to see Dan during his summer school holidays, but the first week! The Martinez family took their holiday in August, not July! And Dan had been so looking forward to Nicole’s party. If she used these tickets, she would be forced to leave him there on his own while she scurried back here to work every hour she could to create this very special birthday party for Nicole.

  So what if she had been putting on a brave face in front of Sebastien Castellano? He didn’t have to know that she was secretly panicking. Swan on the water did not come close.

  No. She would simply reschedule the dates and… Ella scan-read the letter that came with the tickets. His grandparents had already booked more tickets for a whole programme of special trips and wonderful treats for Dan, which she knew that he would adore.

  The energy and the fight drained out of her.

  She couldn’t reschedule the trip without throwing all of those plans away.

  They were Christobal’s parents! Of course they wanted to see Dan and give him a wonderful time. Dan was all they had left of their son. Chris would have wanted this. Of course, Chris would also have liked them to welcome her as well. But that was a lot more difficult.

  Her fingers clenched around the paper. What choice did she have? They knew that she did not have the money to give Dan the things they could. Playing the piano at Sandrine’s at the weekends was not going to be enough to even buy a new computer. She was lucky to have Sandrine’s old machine so that she could keep in touch with her own parents and they were in no position to help her financially.

  In their eyes she
had made a total mess of her life. A wandering musician without a stable home. She had no investments or resources to provide her son with the type of education that his father had enjoyed. She had never even been to university!

  The beam of sunshine focused through the skylight on her hand and she watched tiny motes of dust float in and out of the narrow cone of intense light. Dust particles going where the breeze took them. Without direction.

  Then the sound of a dog barking echoed up from the garden and the old house creaked around her. Solid and reassuring.

  ‘Stupid girl,’ she said out loud, wiped her eyes with a notso-clean finger and sniffed loudly. She was not without direction or friends. ‘Let’s get this show on the road. Things to do and people to see.’

  ‘Do you have a saying for everything, Mrs Martinez?’ a man’s voice asked, and Ella practically jumped off the trunk in shock.

  Seb watched Ella stuff a letter into her trouser pocket. He had seen enough for him to know that something had upset her very badly.

  ‘I’m sorry if I startled you,’ he added, then glanced around the attic room and blinked several times as his eyes became more accustomed to the dim light in that part of the attic. ‘Although I am surprised that you can see anything at all.’

  He turned sideways and stumbled over a box of tools as he reached for the light switch but Ella was already on her feet and faster, and as their hands connected his mind and senses were filled with the image of the girl with her hair down he had seen in the garden that morning. The girl whose touch made the hairs on the back of his arm prickle to attention.

  A hard fluorescent strip light crackled into life above his head creating hard shadows and dark corners. Ella instantly snatched her hand away as though she had been stung, but her pale blue eyes were still locked onto his. In this light the planes of her face were in hard contrast to her plump, softlooking skin.

  He was the first one to break eye contact and glance around the long narrow room where he had spent many happy hours exploring as a child.

  ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Well, this is going to be rather more of a challenge than I expected. It never used to be this messy.’

  Ella found her voice. ‘The roof was repaired last autumn. And then the designer needed somewhere to store all the bits and pieces he moved from downstairs. There are several families of mice living in the barn, and…’

  She left the end of that sentence unsaid with a simple tilt of her head and Seb picked up on it. ‘Everything ended up in here instead. Got it.’

  Ella pointed to a large wooden crate with the name of a well-known champagne house on the side. ‘That was the box where I found your mum’s photo. There are a couple of photo albums in there mixed in with the other paperwork. It’s too heavy for me to lug down those narrow stairs. I know there are more, but they’ve been pushed right to the back by the furniture.’

  ‘Here. Let me pull them forward.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Ella choked, flapping away the dust she was stirring up, which only seemed to make it worse. ‘It’s going to make a horrible mess on your clothes.’

  Seb glanced down at his outfit and frowned. A designer-suit-and-bespoke-shoes combo was not perhaps the best choice for scrambling around in dirty attics, but seeing as he had not packed any casual clothes he didn’t have a lot of options.

  And he was on a mission.

  A few items of damaged clothing were a small price to pay to find some clues to his personal history.

  ‘I’ll live,’ he replied, trying to squeeze his way between unrecognisable lumps of old chairs and bookcases to reach the stack of boxes in the dark corner of the attic.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Ella exclaimed, reaching into the first box she had pulled forward. ‘The frame is cracked. What a shame. I’ve often wondered why you didn’t take these photos with you. I mean, if you didn’t want them any more, you could have given them away to the rest of your family instead of leaving them here for the mice.’

  Seb took the photograph from her and pressed his fingers onto the glass for a moment.

  ‘When we left for Australia,’ he replied in a low voice, ‘I was allowed one suitcase and whatever I could carry in my rucksack. That was it.’

  He tried to keep the hard reality of his dad’s decision out of his tone but failed.

  ‘I was twelve and leaving the only home I had ever known.’ He looked up from the photograph and shrugged like the Frenchman that he always would be in his heart. ‘I was far more worried about leaving my dogs and my pals behind to even think about the personal stuff, but…that was a long time ago.’

  He carefully lowered the broken picture onto the pile of paperwork and photos and old birthday cards and goodness knew what else inside the wooden wine box.

  ‘I’m actually surprised that this much has survived all of the tenants who lived here over the years. They mustn’t have been very curious. Or there was nothing worth selling.’

  When Ella didn’t answer immediately he turned back to find her looking at him with a confused expression on her face.

  ‘Actually there was only ever one tenant. A retired couple from Marseilles who only ever used the house during August. The house had been empty for over a year when Nicole and I moved in. Didn’t you know?’

  He stared at her hard, the words resonating inside his head before words burst out of his mouth from a place of anger and resentment. ‘That can’t be right. There was a family living here right until the day the divorce papers were signed.’

  The hard words echoed around the small space, and the temperature seemed to drop several degrees.

  Ella licked her lips, squeezed them hard together, crossed her arms and stretched up almost onto tiptoe so that she could stare Seb straight in the eye.

  ‘Mr Castellano,’ she said in a calm low voice, and her chin lifted another couple of inches. ‘I may only be the housekeeper here, but I do not appreciate being called a liar.’ She paused, took a breath then carried on, her shoulders lifting and falling as she spoke. ‘So. Make your mind up. Do you want me to help you? Or not? Because if you do, you’re going to have to change your tone. And fast. Have I made myself perfectly clear?’

  Her lips formed a single line, her arms wrapped tighter across her chest and she just stood there, covered in dust and grubby marks, holding her ground and waiting for him to say something.

  Seb responded by sitting down on the next box. Not caring about the damage to the fine fabric of his trousers or the indentations being poked into his skin.

  It had been a very long time since anyone had dared to confront him face to face and ask—no, demand—that he change his tone. His tone! His tone was just fine. It was his temper that was the problem.

  She did not know what he had gone through. How could she? How could anyone understand when the only person who knew the truth was his dad? Luc Castellano was the person he should be challenging.

  As for Ella Martinez? Ella Martinez was simply magnificent.

  He had misjudged her. She had clearly been upset about a letter he had seen when he came into the attic, and perhaps that had made her oversensitive. The laid-back serene woman he had seen singing that morning had her own issues to deal with and he had no right to make them any worse by shifting his hot temper onto her shoulders.

  Seb inhaled a deep breath, formed a thin-lipped and restrained smile and saw the tension in her jaw relax just a little.

  ‘Quite right. You have made yourself very clear and I can assure you that I won’t use that tone with you again.’ He gave her a closed-mouth smile. ‘I am pond scum. Please accept my sincere apology.’

  Her lips twitched slightly, but he had already guessed that she was not going to let him off the hook that easily. ‘What kind of pond scum?’

  ‘Green slime.’

  ‘Um. Okay.’ She released her arms and leant back on one of the chairs so that she was at about the same height as Seb. ‘But I’ll only accept your apology if you tell me why it was so hard for you to accept that this house
had been standing empty. Because it really was. I know because I had to clean it!’

  The power of her simple words combined with a steady and trusting gaze bored into his skull. She was telling the truth and he was the biggest idiot in the world. He had believed his dad. Suddenly he was tired of all the lies.

  She deserved an explanation. No. More than that. She deserved the truth.

  It had been years since he had felt the need to explain himself to anyone and Seb sniffed away the apprehension that came with finding himself in such an unusual position. Perhaps it was this house? The challenges just kept coming.

  He had two choices. Stand up, walk out and jump into his car. Or stay and see it through.

  Which was probably why he stretched out his long arms in front of him, hands palms together.

  ‘I will tell you what I do know. I know that a few years ago I offered my dad a very large sum of money in exchange for this house at a time when he needed the cash to pay for his divorce and early retirement. I know that he refused to sell it to me at any price. When I asked him why, he told me that he had a sitting tenant who he had no intention of throwing out onto the street.’

  Hot anger flushed at the back of his neck and his breathing raced. Pulling himself back, he added, ‘So you can see that I was rather confused when Nicole was given the Mas as part of the divorce settlement a few weeks later. So, yes, I am somewhat annoyed.’

  Then he twisted his mouth into a quirky grin. ‘But that is my personal problem and I have to live with it. You do not. Hence my apology, Mrs Martinez.’

  ‘Oh. Well, I find the direct approach works best.’ Then her face brightened. ‘Why don’t you just call him up and ask him?’

  Ask him? Ask him what? Ask him why he had lied about the fact that Seb’s parents were not his real parents? Or perhaps ask him why he had married the first Frenchwoman he met in Sydney and expected Seb to make Nicole his new mother? And now this.

  No, thanks. He had stopped asking and started making his own choices a long time ago.

  ‘Maybe another time. Right now I’m far more interested in collecting together as much of my family history as I can before I leave today.’