‘Oh God, I forgot the bike must be yours! Is there a problem?’
‘Of course not,’ said Céline. ‘I bought it when I was going through my fitness craze. It lasted about three weeks. That was one of the reasons René and I weren’t good together. I get these enthusiasms and then they disappear. He found it very frustrating.’
‘The bike is very convenient,’ said Imogen. ‘Plus I think I’ve lost weight with all the cycling.’
‘In that case maybe I should take it back. You do not need to lose weight, Imogen.’
‘Neither do you,’ she said. ‘You’ve got a great figure.’
‘Only in the summer, when I’m busy,’ said Céline, although Imogen doubted that.
‘I used to go to a gym,’ Imogen said. ‘But I gave that up. It’s nice to exercise again.’
‘What did you do before you came to France?’ Céline put the question casually. ‘You weren’t always a cleaner, were you?’
‘Did René get you to ask me that?’
‘No. Why?’
‘He was surprised when I said I would clean houses,’ said Imogen. ‘But I was brought up … well, my mother was a housekeeper. I know a lot about cleaning.’
‘Ah. I’m sure you must have some great stories about looking after other people,’ said Céline. ‘Perhaps you can tell me sometime.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Eh bien. To our business – could you clean for me this Saturday?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
René had so far only given Imogen cleaning work during the week. She told Céline that she’d be able to give her a definite time as soon as she knew her schedule.
‘I open the café at nine on Saturdays,’ said Céline. ‘If you could come at eight thirty, that would be great.’
‘No problem.’ Imogen took out her purse to pay for her coffee.
‘No, no!’ protested Céline. ‘Everything on the house today.’
‘Oh, but—’
‘Absolutely.’ Céline’s tone was firm.
‘In that case, thank you very much.’
‘You’re welcome. And I look forward to seeing you tomorrow as usual.’
Imogen took her time cycling home, enjoying the slight breeze on her back as she made her way through the twisting streets of the town and feeling happy at her encounter with Céline. Like René, Céline would be an employer, not a friend. But there was a warmth about her that made Imogen feel like a valued person. Also, it was nice to know someone other than René, even if Céline was his ex-wife and Imogen was using her bicycle to get around!
When she got home, she took a plate from the cupboard and the ingredients for a mixed salad from the fridge. She also poured herself a glass of white wine and sat at the table beside the window. Something had happened to her today, she thought as she gazed out over the garden. Not only at the Villa Martine and with Céline. It was more than that. It was reliving memories and then putting them aside. It was talking to someone without a sense of guilt. It was feeling as though she were beginning to belong somewhere again. Feeling free.
And feeling confident. True, she’d been confident in her work at Chandon Leclerc, but whenever she pointed out to Vince that she had a good job and did it well, he’d tell her that looking after Conor Foley wasn’t exactly rocket science. That she wasn’t exactly in charge of anything. For all the fancy names they give people these days, he’d said, you’re nothing more than a secretary.
She felt a tightness in her chest and took a sip of the chilled wine. She’d eventually realised that Vince said the things he said to undermine her. She came to believe that he didn’t actually do it to make her feel bad, but to make him feel better in himself. Regardless of the title he held in the life assurance company, he was a salesman. A very good salesman, who frequently outsold his colleagues, but he wasn’t content with that. He wanted to be on the senior management team. He’d gone for promotion three times during his marriage to Imogen, but each time someone else had been appointed instead. He blamed the company executives for not appreciating his abilities. He was scathing about them whenever he spoke to Imogen about them, saying that they were idiots who didn’t recognise talent, that they were afraid to promote him because he’d rattle their cages.
‘There isn’t a policy I can’t dissect,’ he said one evening. ‘I should be sitting around the board table instead of the muppets who’re already there. They’re afraid I’ll show them up.’
She hadn’t replied. Nothing she could have said would have been the right thing.
She finished the wine and poured herself another glass. Then, feeling fortified, she opened her internet browser and checked her emails again. There was one from Shona asking her to call her. She grimaced and exited the program. She tapped her fingers on the side of the phone for a couple of moments, then, for the first time since she’d bought it, she used it as an actual phone and dialled a number.
‘Hello.’
The accent was American, but a trace of French remained.
‘Hello, Berthe,’ she said. ‘It’s me, Imogen.’
‘Imogen! It’s been such a long time. How are you?’ Berthe’s voice was full of joy.
‘I’m very well, thank you. I have things to talk to you about, but first of all, how’s Agnes?’
There was a moment’s silence, and then a sigh.
‘Some days she remembers me. Some days she doesn’t. It’s hard, Imogen. Very hard.’
‘It must be. I’m sorry.’
‘I always thought I’d have to look after her one day,’ admitted Berthe. ‘She’s older than me after all. But the older you get, the harder it is to see any age as being old or needing help.’
‘She’s seventy-four this year, isn’t she?’
‘Yes,’ said Berthe. ‘Not that old at all. Especially not to someone who’s sixty-seven.’
‘Sixty-seven is young,’ said Imogen.
Berthe laughed. ‘It is to me, for sure.’
‘I miss hearing from Agnes,’ said Imogen. ‘She was always so funny.’
‘Alzheimer’s is cruel,’ Berthe said. ‘When I see Agnes now, I think of your mother.’
‘My mother? Why?’
‘Her decision,’ said Berthe. ‘To turn off your father’s life support. She sat there every day and she knew he wasn’t there any more, but he was still breathing, and when someone’s breathing, there’s always hope. But Carol knew it was a false hope and she made a very brave choice even though it alienated her from your father’s parents. With me, every time I see Agnes, I think that maybe this time she’ll remember me and remember you and remember everything. But her memories are like scraps of paper on the wind, and my hoping she’ll recover is like hoping they’ll land on the ground and become a novel.’
Imogen was silent.
‘I’m sorry,’ Berthe said. ‘You rang and you wanted to talk and all I’ve done is say depressing things. What’s new with you? Is everything OK?’
‘Actually, my life is a little complicated right now,’ Imogen told her.
‘In what way?’
Imogen hesitated. She hadn’t confided in Berthe about the deterioration of her relationship with Vince because she didn’t want to worry her and because she was embarrassed about having to admit that she’d made a terrible mistake. Especially as Berthe and Agnes had both fallen for him at the wedding, telling her that he was a real gentleman. She didn’t want to go into the gory details now either. She took a deep breath.
‘I’ve left Vince,’ she said.
‘Oh, Imogen. Why? What happened?’
‘He wasn’t the man I thought,’ replied Imogen.
‘This is a mutual thing?’
‘No.’ Imogen started to explain, giving Berthe a heavily edited version of events. When she’d finished speaking, there was silence at the end of the line.
‘But … but chérie, why would you simply walk out? Why did you not get yourself a good divorce lawyer and make sure—’
‘It wasn’t that simple,
’ Imogen interrupted her. ‘He … he might not have let me go.’
‘He could hardly have stopped you.’
‘I know it sounds crazy, Berthe, but I was kind of afraid he would.’
There was a long silence before Berthe spoke again.
‘You mean he would have hurt you?’ Her voice was like steel.
‘No, no. Vince has never hurt me,’ Imogen assured her. ‘He’s not like that. Absolutely not. No, it’s … well, he has ways of making me do things without me wanting to.’
‘How?’
‘I can’t explain. I think I’m going to do one thing, and suddenly after talking to him I’m doing something else, and I absolutely one hundred per cent needed to leave him so I came up with a plan.’
This time Berthe’s silence was so long that Imogen thought they might have been cut off.
‘Are you there?’ she asked.
‘Yes, yes. I’m thinking. You should have called me before now, sweetheart. If there were problems, I might have been able to help.’
‘I don’t think so. Not with this. It was better that I walked out without saying anything.’
‘What about all your things? Your friends?’
‘I had very few things. And fewer friends.’
‘Because of him?’
‘Oh, Berthe.’ Imogen sighed. ‘I lost myself and all my friends with him, and I had to get away because if I’d stayed I would have folded. And if I’d told him I wanted a divorce … well, somehow it would never have happened.’
‘I can’t believe you didn’t say anything to me.’ Berthe’s hurt sounded in her voice. ‘I know we haven’t talked very much over the last while, Imogen, but I thought it was because you were too busy to bother.’
‘Not at all!’ she exclaimed. ‘But Vince … he didn’t like me talking to people from my past.’
‘I’m not a person from your past,’ protested Berthe. ‘I’m your family.’
‘He didn’t think you were,’ said Imogen. ‘He didn’t think anyone was. Except him, of course.’
‘You should have found a way to talk to me. I might have been able to help.’
‘I didn’t know what to say. Besides, what could you do, Berthe? You’re on the other side of the Atlantic and you have enough to worry about.’
‘You definitely should have called me before you left.’
‘I didn’t know if I had the nerve to go through with it.’
‘Do you want to come here, to Palm Springs? To stay with me?’
‘Thank you, but no,’ Imogen said. ‘I’m not cut out for the States.’
‘Of course you are. Anyone could be.’
‘I wanted to come to France,’ said Imogen. ‘It seemed right, that’s all.’
‘Where are you?’ Berthe’s voice was suddenly sharp. ‘Provence?’
‘Hendaye.’
‘There’s no magic potion in Hendaye,’ she said. ‘And if you think … if you’re planning on finding people you used to know—’
‘Don’t worry,’ Imogen interrupted her. ‘The only plan I had was to get here. It was a place I knew, that’s all. I thought I’d feel safe here. And I do.’
She didn’t say anything about cleaning the Villa Martine. She didn’t want Berthe thinking that she’d somehow made that happen when it had been nothing more than a weird coincidence. And when it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.
‘I understand.’ Berthe’s voice softened. ‘All the same, what if he comes looking for you?’
‘I expect him to try, but he won’t find me,’ said Imogen. ‘The reason I’m ringing you is in case he gets in touch to ask if you know where I am. He hasn’t, has he?’
‘Not yet.’
‘I tried to get rid of any possible phone numbers or emails for everyone who knows me,’ said Imogen.
‘Are you sure there’s nothing more to this?’ asked Berthe. ‘Because you’re frightening me a little with this talk. He’s not dangerous, is he?’
‘Honestly, no,’ replied Imogen. ‘But he’s dogged. If he wants to talk to you and there’s a way, he’ll find it. I wanted to keep you out of it so that you’d be able to say you didn’t know anything. But I started thinking that if he did call and got you talking, you might mention Hendaye. Which would give him a place to start looking.’
‘I’m getting more and more worried about you,’ said Berthe. ‘Please come to me. Please be safe.’
‘I’m safe where I am,’ Imogen said. ‘Besides, Berthe, he’s never laid a finger on me. I promise you. There’s no need to worry.’
‘He doesn’t have to touch you to hurt you.’
‘That’s why I left.’
Berthe sighed. ‘You think you will be able to support yourself in France?’
‘I landed a job five days after arriving here.’
‘That’s impressive, considering that everything I read about France these days says the country is in terminal decline.’ Berthe’s tone was admiring. ‘What sort of job?’
‘Cleaning houses,’ said Imogen. ‘It’s not much, but it’s a start.’
‘I suppose you have a lifetime’s experience,’ said Berthe.
‘Who’d have thought?’ For the first time there was humour in Imogen’s voice. Nevertheless, she still stayed silent about the Villa Martine.
‘Who indeed?’ said Berthe. ‘Have you made any longer-term plans?’
‘Not yet. To be honest, I don’t know if I’ll stay here or go back to Ireland. But at the moment, I need to be in France.’
‘I wish I could be with you.’
‘It’s fine. I’m fine,’ Imogen assured her. ‘Don’t worry about me. I didn’t ring so that you’d worry. But in case he calls – or in case a girl called Shona Egan does – please don’t say anything.’
‘Shona? A friend of his?’
‘A friend of mine,’ said Imogen. ‘But he’d make her talk. I know he would.’
‘I won’t say a word,’ said Berthe. ‘I promise.’
‘Thank you. I have to go, Berthe. I’m running out of credit. Tell Agnes I love her.’
‘I tell her that every day.’
Imogen felt the tears prickle her eyes.
‘I love you too,’ she said.
‘I know,’ said Berthe, and ended the call.
Afterwards, Imogen sat in the chair and stared unseeingly out of the window. It had been good to talk to someone close to her again, even if it had been difficult to make the call in the first place. Partly because she felt so guilty about not having spoken to Berthe in months. But Berthe was never judgemental. Agnes hadn’t been either. They’d always been the most supportive people in Imogen’s life. It was a pity they’d decided to stay in the States. If they’d returned to France after that first year, Carol might have moved back in with them. They might even have bought the Maison Lavande. And then perhaps all their lives would have turned out very differently.
Chapter 14
Carol Weir had never planned on living in France. On the day of the horror crash that wiped out her family, she’d been expecting to buy a house near her parents’ home with her husband Ray. Her picture of the life she was going to lead was one where she and Ray started a family and where she popped in to see her mum on a daily basis to share recipes and tips on cooking and homemaking. There was nothing more she wanted or needed.
The accident happened on a cold, frosty morning on their way to the new housing development about twenty minutes from her family home. Carol and Ray were chatting happily with her parents about the house they were about to see when David O’Connell’s car hit a patch of black ice, skidded off the road and plunged into a field.
Afterwards, the doctors said that David, Maria and Ray had been very unlucky. Carol’s parents had been killed outright when the car had slammed into a large boulder. Ray had been hit by a rusted metal bar that came through the rear passenger window, and suffered traumatic brain injuries. The hardest thing for Carol was to accept that her husband would never recover from those injurie
s. For more than a month she sat beside him in the hospital, willing him to open his eyes. When she finally told the doctors to switch off his life support, she felt as though she were the one condemning him to death. His parents, Betty and George, had never been able to forgive her, even though they knew that she was doing the right thing.
She hadn’t known she was pregnant at the time. She didn’t realise it for another month, until the day Ray’s only sibling, his sister Agnes, came to see her. Carol had spent the time since Ray’s funeral in a fog of grief and misery, unable to believe that everything she’d ever wanted had been snatched away from her in the blink of an eye. That particular week she’d felt even more lethargic than usual and had thrown up after her late morning breakfast of cornflakes and toast. That wasn’t unusual, because since the accident she’d felt like throwing up every time she ate. Later in the day, a sudden sharp pain in her back made her think of the time of the month and she began to calculate dates. She didn’t give the possibility of being pregnant serious consideration, but it niggled at the back of her mind, and so eventually she went to the bathroom and took out the pregnancy testing kit she’d bought a few months earlier. Back then she’d hoped that she might be carrying Ray’s baby, but even as she’d been reading the instructions she’d felt a tugging pain in her stomach and had doubled over with the cramps that told her she very definitely wasn’t. She’d returned the test to the bathroom shelf, where it had remained unused and unneeded.
Afterwards, she hadn’t been able to believe the result. She was sitting on the sofa, trying unsuccessfully to come to terms with both the news and the mixed emotions that it generated in her, when she saw Agnes walking up the garden path and heard the ring of the doorbell. She didn’t answer it at first. But then Agnes pressed the bell again and Carol thought it would be easier to open the door and tell her to go away than to have her come back another time. She didn’t know why Agnes was here. The first time she’d met her had been at the funeral. Agnes hadn’t come to their wedding because she and her girlfriend, Berthe, had been in the States at the time.
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