Carol didn’t know much about Agnes and Berthe’s relationship. Openly gay couples were a relative rarity at the time, and she didn’t know any others. Ray himself had been unconcerned, saying that his older sister’s choices were hers to make. Mr and Mrs Weir, however, were hostile and refused to accept that Berthe was anything other than their daughter’s platonic friend. In fact the only time Carol recalled hearing them even speak about the pair was to say that they moved in legal circles. There was a grudging respect in Betty’s voice when she said this – afterwards Ray told her that his mother would have preferred to be able to say that her daughter was married with kids.
Agnes was a solicitor, while Berthe worked in the legal department of the European Commission, and she was currently on a short-term secondment to Brussels.
‘Which means I’m here on my own at the moment,’ Agnes told Carol as she walked into the untidy living room. ‘And I thought it would be a good idea to drop by and see how you were doing.’
Carol shrugged and said she was fine, and Agnes continued to talk to her and offer whatever support she could. Carol listened without really taking anything in, because she was still consumed by the fact that she was pregnant with Ray’s child. Despite the test, she didn’t entirely believe it was true.
She blurted it out when the older woman came into the living room with the tea she’d made for both of them. Agnes nearly dropped the tray.
‘You’re kidding me.’ She stared at Carol in utter disbelief. ‘It’s not possible.’
‘We were trying for a baby,’ Carol said. ‘We were disappointed when I didn’t get pregnant before. And now he’ll never see the baby.’
She burst into tears and Agnes put her arms around her to comfort her.
Agnes told her that her parents would be pleased at the news, and that they might even want her to stay with them in Donegal for a while, but Betty and George Weir weren’t in the slightest bit interested in their daughter-in-law’s pregnancy.
‘They didn’t want to know,’ Carol told her a few days later when Agnes called around after work again. ‘Betty said it was too late now and put the phone down.’
‘I’m sure she’ll come round eventually,’ said Agnes.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Carol wondered if Betty’s lack of interest was because neither she nor her husband really liked her. On the few occasions she and Ray had visited them, they’d been rather stand-offish, although she’d done her best to be outgoing and friendly herself. Now she didn’t have the strength to care. She was torn between joy about being pregnant and grief over the loss of her husband and parents. She couldn’t take on the burden of worrying about her parents-in-law. Throughout her pregnancy she felt guilty any time she was happy, and equally guilty any time she succumbed to tears. Which, she reckoned, was more than enough emotion to be going on with.
Slowly, however, her periods of grief were outweighed by her periods of happiness. Agnes was hugely supportive, as was Berthe when she returned from her secondment. The three women got on well together, and when Imogen was born, a smiling, beautiful and healthy baby, they were all joyful. Carol didn’t care that Betty and George didn’t call or send a card. The love and affection she received from Agnes and Berthe was more than enough for her.
The suggestion came when Imogen was six months old. Lilian Fournier, Berthe’s mother, had been running the family guest house on her own for years, but had recently fallen and broken her arm. Berthe had gone to Provence to help her, and on her return to Ireland had put the proposal to Agnes and Carol. Lilian, at sixty-eight, was a fit woman, but the fall had shaken her and she’d talked about getting help at the guest house. Berthe had enjoyed her month in Provence and wondered if it wouldn’t be good for all of them to go there for a while to help her mother out. Carol had been both excited and terrified by the prospect. Her experience of travelling abroad was limited to a couple of holidays with Ray on the Costa del Sol, while three years of studying French at school hadn’t progressed her knowledge from a very basic level. Moving to another country would be a challenge.
‘I can get leave of absence of up to five years,’ Berthe told them. ‘I doubt we’d stay that long, but wouldn’t it be nice to take a bit of time out to live at a slower pace for a while? We’ve talked about it before …’ she turned to Agnes, ‘but we’ve always said the time wasn’t right. And I do realise that we might not be the sort of people who seriously want to slow down or enjoy a quieter life, but isn’t this an opportunity to find out?’
Agnes agreed. And so she handed in her notice at the law firm where she worked, Berthe applied for her leave of absence, and Carol got a passport for baby Imogen. Three weeks after Berthe had first suggested it, they’d moved to Provence.
Carol was enchanted by the Maison Lavande. It was a two-storey house set in pretty gardens close to the sea. It had twelve guest rooms and a separate wing for the family. Lilian Fournier was delighted to have other people in the family wing – she’d been living on her own there since her much older husband had died ten years earlier. She immediately fell in love with Imogen and took it upon herself to speak to her only in French.
‘So that she doesn’t have a terrible accent like her mother,’ she told Berthe, who laughed and pointed out that other French people would recognise Imogen’s Provençal accent anyway. To which Lilian had snorted and said that she should be proud to be from the south of France, and that there was no better place in the whole world to live.
After the horror of the crash that had wiped out her family, Provence helped Carol’s soul to heal. Even though she still carried an ache in her heart, being at the Maison Lavande meant that she no longer sat at home in a pair of tracksuit bottoms and an old top, staring out of the window for hours at a time. Instead, while Agnes looked after the accounts and Berthe concentrated on marketing the guest house, she transformed herself into a chic, efficient housekeeper for whom Madame Fournier had immense affection and respect.
Carol would have been happy to stay at the Maison Lavande for ever, but when Lilian decided to get married, she knew that it would be impossible. She listened to everyone’s plans with trepidation. She didn’t want to go to the States with Agnes and Berthe, but nor did she wish to return to Ireland. Yet although her French was now fluent (despite some remaining Irish inflections), she lacked the confidence to go looking for another job. When Lilian told her about the possibility of becoming the Delissandes’ housekeeper, she’d been uncertain, but after talking to Lucie on the phone, she decided that it was the right thing to do. After all, she thought, I don’t have any ties keeping me here. And Lucie had sounded lovely on the phone, saying that she would be delighted to see her and Imogen, who could have the job of talking English to her sons.
And so they left Provence and moved to Aquitaine, where Carol’s nervousness disappeared almost at once thanks to the warm welcome she and Imogen received from Lucie Delissandes. She loved working for the family and she cared for the Villa Martine as though it were her own home. She adapted quickly to the routine of that first summer, when Denis Delissandes lived and worked in Paris during the week and spent the weekends with his family in Hendaye. She did the housework in the mornings, while Lucie played with the children in the garden or took them to the beach. In the afternoons, she looked after the children while Lucie worked. Lucie was an editor at a small French publishing house specialising in literary novels, and when she shut herself away with an author’s manuscript and her red pen, nobody was allowed to disturb her. She gave Carol some proof copies of books she’d worked on, but Carol – who enjoyed Jilly Cooper and Judith Krantz – found them hard going and usually abandoned them after a dozen pages.
Over time, as her relationship with Lucie blurred slightly from being employee and employer to a kind of friendship, Carol learned that Denis’s family had aristocratic links going back for hundreds of years. They’d always been involved in both politics and business, and although Denis stuck to business himself – he was a director of a privat
e bank – he and Lucie were often invited to exclusive dinners and events in Paris. Lucie confessed that the dinners bored her to tears, but she put up with them for Denis’s sake.
‘We’re a partnership,’ she told Carol. ‘I have the cultural career that gives him certain credentials. He has the financial career that brings in the money.’
‘But you love each other too, don’t you?’ asked Carol.
‘It’s hard not to love Denis.’ Lucie smiled. ‘He looks at you with those enormous eyes of his and you are gone in an instant. Love at first sight!’
Carol told Lucie that her relationship with Ray had been love at first sight too. Then Lucie, who knew her story from Madame Fournier, gave her a hug and told her that she and Imogen were to consider themselves part of the Delissandes family now. For as long as Carol looked after them, they would look after her and her daughter. She gave Carol the glass angels and the dreamcatchers for her room and told her she never needed to worry again.
When the Delissandes packed up and returned to Paris at the end of the summer, they left Carol and Imogen behind at the Villa Martine to take care of it until they returned at mid-term. Carol couldn’t believe her luck. She and Imogen would be living on their own for weeks in a five-bedroomed home in one of the best locations in town. As far as she was concerned, this wasn’t a job, it was a gift.
Imogen was happy too, if a little lonely when everyone had gone. Carol enrolled her in the local school, which helped, but most nights the two of them were alone in the house together. Imogen would sometimes ask if she couldn’t have some brothers and sisters to make it a bit more interesting, and Carol replied that they needed a daddy for that but unfortunately there wasn’t anyone available. When Imogen suggested Denis Delissandes, Carol shook her head and told her that Monsieur belonged to Madame.
‘What about you?’ Imogen asked her. ‘Does anyone belong to you?’
‘Only my little girl.’ Carol put her arms around her and hugged her. ‘You’ll be mine for ever. And I’m yours too.’
The family returned for the October mid-term, when the weather was glorious – not as hot as the summer, but still warm and pleasant. Lucie was pleased at how well Carol was keeping the house, and Imogen was glad to see the boys again, even if they quarrelled the whole time.
She rowed particularly with Oliver, who’d become very bossy and told her that he wasn’t going to let her correct his English any more because she was a silly little girl who didn’t know anything. She got her revenge on him by emptying a box of ants into his bed, which led to him screaming when he hopped into it and then running out of the room shouting for his mother to kill them. Lucie had blamed Charles, who protested his innocence, and it wasn’t until she told him that he would have no supper for a week that Imogen admitted to being the culprit. Charles had roared with laughter. Oliver had been furious. But it put an end to him teasing her. Afterwards, he treated her with a good deal more respect and listened whenever she tried to explain why he was using an English word incorrectly.
Christmas was special. Lucie had told Carol where to find everything, and so, when she arrived with the boys in the middle of December, the house was already decorated with glass baubles, garlands and wreaths, the floors polished and the gas fire burning.
‘C’est magnifique,’ declared Oliver as he looked at the tree in the corner of the room.
And it was. Everything about those years in Hendaye was magnificent. And Carol wanted to make sure it stayed that way.
She kept in regular contact with Berthe and Agnes. Both of them were doing well in the States and had no immediate plans to return. However, they came back to France every year for holidays, and after seeing Madame Fournier, they would meet up with Carol and Imogen again.
‘I’m so glad it’s all worked out for you, Carol,’ said Agnes on their second visit. ‘Although obviously you can’t live at the Villa Martine for ever.’
‘I don’t see why not,’ said Carol. ‘It’s perfect.’
‘But you’ll want to find someone,’ said Berthe. ‘Have a home of your own.’
‘I’m happy,’ repeated Carol. ‘This is my home. Imogen’s too.’
The two women exchanged glances.
‘It’s the Delissandes’ home and you’re an employee,’ Agnes reminded her. ‘They could let you go at any time.’
‘Lucie treats us as part of the family,’ said Carol. ‘Besides, I’m the best housekeeper in the world. They’d never be able to replace me. She said so.’
‘And Imogen?’ asked Berthe.
‘She loves it here,’ Carol told her. ‘She gets on great with the boys and is doing well at school. Her teachers say that she’s smart and outgoing.’
‘A legacy from the Maison Lavande,’ remarked Agnes. ‘There isn’t anyone Imogen doesn’t get on with.’
‘I know.’ Carol nodded. ‘I wish Ray could have seen her. But …’ she took a deep breath, ‘hopefully he’s looking down and keeping an eye on us. He must be. I’ve been luckier than I ever expected.’
‘I still think you need someone of your own,’ said Berthe.
‘No I don’t.’ Carol shook her head. ‘Everything’s perfect the way it is. I don’t need anyone at all.’
Because Lucie could work from home, she had more flexibility in her schedule than Denis, and would sometimes come to the house with the children for long weekends without her husband. But occasionally Denis himself would arrive with some of his sailing buddies or, in the winter, with friends who wanted to ski. There was no skiing near the town, but Denis and his friends would stay overnight at the Villa Martine before driving to one of the resorts a couple of hours away. Carol always found those visits overwhelming – she was unaccustomed to being around groups of men, and Denis’s friends were alpha males: confident, self-important and competitive.
It was being competitive within a couple of hours of arriving at the ski resort that caused Denis to fall on one of the trips, breaking a bone in his foot, which meant that another member of the group, an Englishman named Simon Thorpe, drove him back to the house after the doctors at the hospital had put his foot into a walking boot.
‘I wouldn’t mind, but it was on one of the easier runs,’ said Denis as he eased himself into an armchair and took the glass of whisky that Carol offered him. ‘I’m such an idiot.’
‘I’m sure it could happen to anyone,’ Carol said.
‘I messed up the trip.’ Denis took an appreciative sip of the whisky and then looked at Simon. ‘Sorry, mon ami.’
‘No problem,’ said Simon. ‘I’ll stay here and keep you company.’
‘No, no.’ Denis shook his head. ‘I insist. You must go back and enjoy yourself.’
‘If you’re sure …’
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ asked Denis. ‘I have Carol to look after me.’
He smiled at her, and at Imogen, who’d been examining the boot with interest.
‘I wouldn’t mind her looking after me,’ said Simon, and Carol blushed, murmured something about seeing to the ironing and left the room, telling Imogen to leave Monsieur Delissandes in peace and help her.
‘She’s pretty in an unsophisticated sort of way,’ Denis remarked when she’d closed the door behind her. ‘And an excellent gouvernante.’
‘And have you …’
Denis grinned. ‘No.’
‘You’re losing your touch,’ said Simon.
‘Perhaps.’ Denis grinned again, then told Simon about Carol’s history. Simon grimaced.
‘That must have been rough.’
‘I’m sure. However, she’s moved on with her life and I’m glad she came here. She can cook as well as clean.’
‘And you’re sure you never even …’
‘No,’ repeated Denis.
‘Would you mind if I had a crack at her?’
Denis looked at him in surprise. ‘You? With my housekeeper?’
‘It’s been a while since Rachel,’ said Simon. ‘I need a bit of practice.’
‘
Well, I suppose you deserve something for having to bring me back here,’ said Denis. ‘Be my guest.’
Carol was utterly astonished when Simon came into the kitchen and asked her if she’d like to go out to dinner with him.
‘But I thought you were keeping Monsieur company,’ she said.
‘He wants to rest,’ Simon told her. ‘He’s going to bed.’
‘I’d better help him …’
‘It’s OK,’ said Simon. ‘I already did.’
Carol had heard the sounds of people moving about but she’d assumed it was Denis using the bathroom.
‘But his supper …’
‘I poured him another whisky,’ said Simon. ‘I think that’s taking care of his dietary needs.’
‘He should have something more than that!’
‘He’s fine,’ said Simon. ‘He asked me to take you out for a bite to eat.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Carol stared at him.
‘Dinner,’ repeated Simon. ‘He asked me to take you out.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Carol. ‘I can’t do that.’
‘It’s your boss’s order.’
‘I hardly think so,’ she said. ‘Thank you for the invitation – if that’s what it is – but I’ve got things to do and they don’t include going out with you.’
‘Oh come on.’ Simon couldn’t believe she’d turned him down. ‘You must get fed up here on your own with a kid. This is your chance to live a little.’
‘I’m living perfectly well, thank you,’ she said. ‘Now if you don’t mind, I’m busy.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Actually,’ she said as she opened the door of the range cooker that had been in the house for years, ‘I’m preparing dinner.’
‘But Denis has gone to bed.’
‘It’s a casserole. It’ll keep.’
‘Smells great.’ Simon’s tone changed from bantering to sincere.
‘Thank you.’
‘Do you do everything here?’ he asked. ‘Cook, clean, look after all of them?’
‘There’s not much looking after as far as they’re concerned,’ said Carol. ‘They’re away more often than they’re here.’
The Missing Wife Page 13
