Life's a Beach and Then... (The Liberty Sands Trilogy Book 1)

by Roberts, Julia

  ‘I would like that very much,’ replied Philippe. ‘What time shall we meet?’

  Holly had inadvertently backed herself into a corner. As it didn’t look as though Rosemary was going to come to her rescue this time she simply said, ‘I’m being picked up at nine thirty from the hotel reception.’

  ‘Well, that’s a date then.’

  Was it a date? thought Holly. What on earth am I doing? I’m supposed to be working.

  ‘It’ll be good company for you, Holly,’ Rosemary chipped in. ‘Much better than going on your own.’

  Holly knew she couldn’t really retract her offer and anyway she might be able to pick up some useful information from the handsome Frenchman. Besides, she quite liked the idea of spending a day in his company.

  Chapter 16

  It had been a thoroughly enjoyable evening, Holly thought, as she unlocked the door to her room having said goodbye to her dinner companions. The food had been delicious and then the four of them had moved through to the bar area to watch local dancers in colourful costumes performing their national dances, accompanied by musicians beating out the rhythm on a ravanne, a tambor-style drum.

  When the show finished they went to sit on the comfy sofas next to the beach, in close proximity to the bonfire that was lit every night at dusk. Holly had seen them building the fires in a pyramid shape in specially dug out pits each afternoon but this was the first opportunity she had to enjoy one, and how nice to be sharing it with friends.

  Friends, she mused. I’ve only known Robert and Rosemary for two days and yet I feel like I’ve known them a lifetime.

  And now she had met Philippe. Holly was no fool, she realised that she had been set up. The invitation to dinner was deliberate so that they could be introduced to each other but she didn’t care. He was handsome and funny and she was flattered by the attention he paid her and his obvious attraction towards her.

  Philippe didn’t seem to want the evening to end and had persuaded the others to join him for a nightcap by the beach. Robert and Rosemary had sat on one sofa and she had sat next to Philippe on the other. By this time he had removed his linen jacket and rolled his shirt sleeves up as the night air was so warm. At one point they had both reached for their drinks at the same time and their arms had touched, skin against skin. It was like an electric shock running through her body as she had quickly withdrawn her arm but not before realising that the attraction he felt for her was not one-sided. She had coloured up again and she felt breathless and light-headed but not as a result of alcohol. She had kept to her promise of just one glass of wine, and her nightcap was fruit juice.

  It had been a long time since Holly had allowed herself to be attracted to a man, not that there had been much opportunity until she had started her job writing secret travel blogs for the Soleil Hotel Group. Prior to that she had worked mostly from home, apart from the two mornings a week that she volunteered at the local charity shop while Harry was at school.

  There hadn’t been much chance of meeting Mr Right there, she thought wryly.

  All the other volunteers had been at least twice her age and predominantly female, apart from Bert, whose surname was ironically ‘Wright’, but who was definitely not her type!

  Do I have a type, she pondered?

  There had only ever been Gareth. He was the only man she had ever truly loved. Maybe that was all the attraction to Philippe was? A passing similarity to the love of her life.

  No, she thought, it’s more than that. There was definitely chemistry. She had felt comfortable in his company, chatting about his writing and his time in Mauritius. What a shame I’m only here for a week, she thought, he is someone I would like to spend time with and get to know better.

  She smiled at the pleasurable thought of having a whole day with him on Friday on the sightseeing trip.

  Holly had been expecting Philippe to ask what she was doing in Mauritius on her own but he didn’t, so she presumed Robert and Rosemary had filled him in on her tragic cover story, however he had asked whether she worked. She had been expecting that question too so the lie came easily. She didn’t mention her freelance copy-editing job, nor her incognito travel blogging. Instead she said she worked for a charity, which was only a little white lie.

  Holly turned on her computer and logged into Wordpress. She was relieved she had written her blog about the day prior to going for dinner. Her head was full of thoughts about Philippe and she doubted she would have been able to create the standard of work her readers were used to and that she demanded of herself. She went on to her dashboard and clicked the publish button.

  Chapter 17

  The silvery moon was casting a broad sparkling path onto the dark ocean. Philippe wondered why the path always seemed to lead to the person looking at it. There was probably a very simple explanation but he didn’t have a scientific brain. He was a wordsmith, although that was debatable at the moment.

  He loved the view from this window both day and night. It was no wonder that his friends wanted to buy this house. He had been surprised to learn, when they had dined together on Monday night, that they still hadn’t reached a decision about buying it. At his question they had exchanged glances and made the same vague excuse about things to sort out at home before quickly changing the subject. He didn’t think they had money worries and he couldn’t imagine what else might be holding them back from buying the home of their dreams.

  The lights of torches twinkling in the shallow waters near the shore caught his attention. When he had first come to stay at the house he had thought that maybe it was some kind of smuggling operation, letting his writer’s imagination run riot. When he mentioned his suspicions to Delphine, the woman who came to clean for him once a week, she had started to laugh.

  ‘No no, Mr Philippe,’ she had said. ‘It is the local fishermen looking for prawns’.

  The next time she arrived to clean she brought him a child’s plastic beach bucket filled to overflowing with prawn and other local delicacies. Philippe was not a great cook, despite his French heritage, another failure on the part of his mother, but he had made a very passable bouillabaisse from a recipe he had found on the Internet.

  This was the first of many deliveries of fresh fish and although Delphine insisted she didn’t want any payment, Philippe always added a few hundred rupees to her cleaning money envelope. She never made reference to it and the additional rupees were worth their weight in gold for the local information he was able to glean from Delphine. The best restaurants and bars for a bit of local colour, help in buying his battered old car and even, on occasion, a bit of adult company. Philippe didn’t like the idea of paying for sex but he certainly didn’t want the complication of an affair, or worse still falling in love, while he was trying to work on his book.

  And now I fear it has happened, he thought, as he remembered the electricity that had shot through him like a lightening bolt when he had accidentally touched arms with Holly earlier that evening.

  He had initially been annoyed with Rosemary for inviting someone else to join them for dinner, but when he had turned and seen the vision in yellow walking across the restaurant towards them he couldn’t believe his luck. His heart had skipped a beat as she had held her hand out to shake his and he instead had brushed the back of it with his lips. How he had wished he was kissing her full pink lips instead but he was hopeful that would come. He knew he had been very forward inviting himself on her sightseeing trip but he hadn’t been able to stop himself. And she didn’t say no, he thought triumphantly.

  When he had arrived at the restaurant, ten minutes after the designated time of 7.45 p.m., Rosemary had quickly filled him in on Holly’s tragic recent history.

  ‘I want to make her happy again,’ Rosemary had said. ‘I want to see her smile reach her beautiful eyes.’

  Philippe pictured those dark olive eyes and he knew exactly what Rosemary meant. There was an underlying sadness buried very deep and he was determined to release her from it.

&nb
sp; Chapter 18

  Holly woke early the next morning feeling strangely refreshed even though she had only been asleep for six hours. After posting her blog the previous night she had climbed into bed, without even cleaning her teeth, and fallen asleep almost immediately, a smile on her face and her head full of images of Philippe.

  She dressed quickly in a vest top and shorts, cleaned her teeth and splashed her face with water before heading to the beach for a pre-breakfast walk, hoping for a chance encounter with Philippe. At dinner she hadn’t mentioned seeing him riding his horse on the beach and he didn’t mention it either, so presumably he hadn’t recognised her behind her sunglasses and baseball cap.

  He wasn’t on the beach, even though she walked past Flic en Flac reasoning that the longer she stayed on the beach the more chance she would have of seeing him. She felt an irrational pang of disappointment when she got back to her room, having seen no one but the various hotel gardeners and a few local fisherman.

  On the bright side, at least her early start meant she was on the beach before ten o’clock and her spirits lifted further when she saw the Italian couple and their gorgeous little girl already splashing around in the sea. She arranged her towel on the sun lounger, hung her sarong over the strut of the beach umbrella and crossed the few short paces on the already hot sand to the sea.

  ‘Ciao’, she ventured in her novice Italian.

  The mother smiled.

  ‘You speak Italian?’

  ‘Not much I’m afraid,’ Holly replied. ‘Just a few phrases I’ve picked up on my travels and from restaurant menus.’

  ‘Well I like that you try,’ the woman said, moving towards Holly. ‘I am Mathilda and this is Giulietta,’ she said, stroking the side of her daughter’s face. The little girl smiled coyly and then turned her face into her mother’s shoulder.

  ‘Ciao Giulietta,’ Holly said, causing the little girl to turn back towards her. ‘I’m Holly.’

  At that moment a mobile phone started to ring.

  ‘That is my husband Umberto,’ Mathilda said, casting her eyes in his direction as he rushed up the beach to retrieve his phone from a brightly coloured beach bag. ‘We are supposed to be on holiday but he is always working,’ she continued with a hint of annoyance in her voice.

  ‘How long are you here for?’ Holly asked.

  ‘We only came for a week,’ she answered, ‘and sadly we go home tomorrow. It has been our first holiday since Giulietta was born and she has really enjoyed playing on the beach.’

  On hearing her name the little girl started to wriggle, so her mother dangled her from under the arms allowing her feet to kick in the sea.

  ‘Is it your first time here?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mathilda said. ‘How about you?’

  ‘I came here on my honeymoon,’ Holly said, another effortless lie escaping her lips, to keep her cover story consistent.

  ‘Your husband is not with you this time?’ queried Mathilda.

  ‘No,’ Holly said. ‘He died.’

  The Italian woman looked shocked and saddened.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’

  ‘You weren’t to know,’ Holly reassured her, noticing as she spoke that Mathilda was glancing almost protectively in the direction of her own husband.

  The two women continued to chat amicably while Giulietta paddled in the warm sea. Holly had been wondering about Mathilda’s command of the English language and it turned out that she was bi-lingual due to an English mother and an Italian father. Apparently they had met when her mother had visited Rimini on holiday with a group of friends. Her father had been a waiter in a restaurant and it was love at first sight. They were still together thirty years and five children later.

  A holiday romance with a happy ending, Holly thought, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth and a million butterflies fluttering in her stomach.

  Mathilda was asking her something but she had no idea what it was because she had been daydreaming about Philippe.

  ‘I’m sorry Mathilda I didn’t quite catch that,’ admitted Holly.

  ‘It must be my accent,’ said Mathilda apologetically. ‘I was just asking if you would like to join us for lunch?’

  ‘I’d love to,’ replied Holly, putting her working hat back on. It would give her a perfect opportunity to see how helpful the staff were at catering for families with small children.

  In the end it was just Holly, Mathilda and Giulietta who had lunch in Waves restaurant. Whatever work problem the phone call had brought up, Umberto was clearly finding it difficult to solve. He had gone to their room which, it turned out, was in the same block as Holly’s but on the ground floor, and he was sitting on their terrace frantically bashing the keys of his laptop with an exasperated expression on his face. When Mathilda went across to tell him that she was going to lunch he raised his eyes from the computer screen momentarily and waved to his daughter. With her free hand Giulietta waved back, her other hand was holding on to Holly’s very tightly just as she had been told to do by her mother.

  It’s a good job the Internet is working today, Holly thought, or that would be one very unhappy hotel guest.

  Holly spent most of the afternoon with Mathilda and Giulietta. After lunch they went to the children’s play area together. It was nothing like any of the council playgrounds Holly had taken Harry to when he was little. It was themed around children’s fairytales, with a life-sized gingerbread house complete with toadstool tables and log stools for the children to sit and draw. In one corner there was a low tower which was a helter skelter. There was a painting of Rapunzel’s face next to a window near the top and the slide was painted yellow as though it was her hair wrapping around the tower. Giulietta loved climbing to the top with her mummy and sliding down on a mat to be caught by Holly at the bottom.

  They walked back to the beach each holding one of Giulietta’s hands and occasionally swinging her high in the air. Holly couldn’t help thinking how sad it was that she had never been able to do that with her own child as there had only ever been her to look after him. At one point Giulietta stopped walking, let go of their hands and picked something up off the floor and carefully put it in the pocket of her yellow cotton dungarees.

  ‘She loves to collect things,’ Mathilda said, ‘like the coral on the beach. I must remember to check her pocket later and remove whatever it was otherwise it will end up going through the washing machine.’

  Holly smiled knowingly, remembering the time a two-year-old Harry had put a biscuit in the pocket of his shorts to eat later and then forgotten about it. The chocolate chips had melted in a forty-degree wash creating a gooey mess that she had to scrape out before re-washing them.

  After walking back from the playground Giulietta was ready for a cool drink. ‘It is time for your nap now. Say Ciao to Holly,’ her mother said. Instead of saying anything the little girl toddled over to Holly, reached into her pocket, retrieved what she had picked up earlier and handed it to Holly.

  ‘You’re very honoured,’ Mathilda said. ‘She doesn’t normally like to share what she has found until she has had chance to play with it.’

  Holly looked down at the tiny white curled feather the little girl had given her. ‘Grazie, Giulietta.’

  Holly watched mother and daughter walk across the grass towards her father who was still sitting on their terrace, working at his computer, and thought of her own father as she always did whenever she saw a white feather in an unusual place.

  It had started the day of his funeral when a devastated Holly, clutching eight-month-old Harry, stayed at her father’s graveside long after the other mourners had left. She had been about to leave when a solitary white feather spiralled slowly down and landed at her feet. Holly had felt that it was her dad trying to communicate with her. She had picked up the feather and later slipped it in to a compartment in her purse to always carry with her. There had been many white feathers appearing in random places over the years, usually when Holly
needed comfort, reassurance or guidance. White feathers and also rainbows, the two things that she felt were a connection from beyond the grave. Holly wondered what her dad was trying to tell her this time?

  Mathilda returned to the beach after putting Giulietta to bed leaving Umberto to listen out for his daughter. Holly was pleased as it gave them the opportunity to have a proper chat. They ordered a couple of colourful, non-alcoholic cocktails from the refreshment buggy that drove up and down the sandy path next to the beach, and settled on their sunbeds.

  ‘Your husband seems to spend a lot of his holiday working,’ Holly remarked.

  Mathilda sipped her drink. ‘He was promoted four months ago so he feels the need to always be on the end of a phone line until he has really established himself in his new role.’

  ‘What does he do in Rimini?’

  ‘Well in Rimini he was the import manager for a Swiss computer software company but his promotion meant that we had to move to Geneva where their head office is.’

  ‘That must have been a bit of a wrench, leaving your family when Giulietta is so young?’

  Mathilda turned to look at Holly. ‘I hate it. Umberto is working so hard that Giulietta and I hardly ever see him, and of course there is no family there to help watch my baby for a few hours if I want to go shopping. I feel so isolated.’

  Holly knew the feeling. She had spent the whole of Harry’s early years virtually alone until he had started at primary school and she had begun to mix with other young mothers. Even then it had been awkward if they were having people to dinner as it was mostly couples.

  ‘Have you told Umberto how you feel?’

  ‘No. I don’t want to seem ungrateful when he is working so hard for our future. It was so difficult to persuade him to come away for this holiday but despite him still working at least we have been able to spend some time together as a family. Have you ever been to Switzerland?’ she asked.