Hot Basque: A French Summer Novel 2 (34 page)

The honeysuckle had finished its first summer bloom. The freshness of June had passed, giving way to the mellow days of July.

Margaret, hearing a step on the terrace, turned.

‘Are you sure you’ll be alright on your own Annabel? I do wish you’d let us come with you. It’s Friday, it will be busy in town.’

‘Auntie Mags, I know London like the back of my hand. I can manage, honestly. And...I feel like trying on my own this time. I need to. Don’t worry.’

‘Alright my dear. You have your phone with you? Switched on?’

The taxi drew up at the bottom of the steps. Annabel got inside and gave a wave through the window. Margaret and Birdie watched until it disappeared down the drive.

‘I do hope it was the right decision Birdie. But I did check with Doctor N.’

Birdie nodded.

‘We can’t keep her in a cage forever. And she has made remarkable progress. She seems like a different person.’

‘Mmm. I only hope she’s not fooling us all. I wonder what’s really going on in her head.’

‘Margaret!’

‘Pay no attention Birdie. I’m turning into a dyed-in-the-wool cynic in my old age. It’s just...I’m getting the same anxious feeling we used to have when she was fourteen, remember, and off to spend the day with her friend Gloria.’

Birdie nodded.

‘But she’s not fourteen any more Margaret. We just have to trust her.’

***

The taxi dropped Annabel at Ravensfield station.

She looked at the electronic timetable. The train for London was due in ten minutes.

There were not many people on the platform. She found a bench and sat down. Her first outing, alone. She opened her bag, checked her phone was inside, closed it. A couple of minutes later she opened it again, checked her ticket.

An announcement came over the loudspeaker. The 13h 05 train for London was arriving at Platform 1.

Annabel pushed the button to open the doors. The first class carriages were practically empty. She sat down in a window seat. A couple of minutes later the doors closed, a whistle blew. The train began to move, slowly, then picking up speed. She was on her way.

She leaned back against the padded seat, closed her eyes and let herself think of him.

One blue eye, one brown. Dr Novak. Her friend.

For a fleeting second another face intruded, a dark face, with full lips, a satyr’s face.

But that was from a different life. She would not think about that.

Jill was in Marks and Spencer’s food hall doing her Friday evening shopping after a trying day at work. Two late appointments and a particularly nervous patient. In fact every single day since her return from Biarritz had been trying. Endless, monotonous, tasteless days.

Even the weather had seemed to conspire with her feeling of gloom, rain squalls moving in hourly from the east, a biting wind that had everyone hunting out their winter sweaters and grumbling at the bus stop.

The only good thing that had happened was that she had lost two kilos in weight. Two whole kilos! She felt quite ethereal.

She stared at a lemon drizzle cake. Buttery yellow sponge, tangy icing, she could almost taste the lemon.

No. A moment on the lips...

Yes. It is the weekend. I need it, like really, really need it. I am sad. And all my fingernails are gone.

She wondered how much longer she could go on hoping, without giving up entirely and putting a big cross through the name ‘Antoine Arantxa’. RIP.

It was like being one of those Victorian heroines before the advent of the steam train, when the unsuspecting object of your affections was called off on a mission by the Royal Geographical Society to go and find the lost city of Namapuwa in darkest Africa, a mission from which no man had ever returned.

But today there were trains and planes and mobile phones and all sorts of other ways for separated lovers to connect. So why hadn’t he got in touch?

Maybe he had never received her text. Maybe it had self-combusted. Or maybe he’d decided to stay indefinitely under the coconut palms, watching the waves beat against the rocky shore. Probably with the Girl from Ipanema. The two of them half-naked in the pounding surf. She wearing nothing but a garland of exotic orchids, he–

She lunged for the cake at the same time as her mobile rang.

Was there anyone on earth who could explain it? Maybe Dr Brian Cox, he seemed to know the answer to most of the mysteries of the Universe. Why was it that mobile phones, when placed in handbags, inevitably gravitated to the very bottom and instantly morphed into wee slickit tim’rous cowerin’ beasties hiding beneath wads of soggy Kleenex, tubes of lipstick minus their tops, apple-cores...she managed to locate it just as the ringing stopped.

OK, enough was enough, she was going straight to the handbag department to get a sensible smaller item where she would be forced to restrict what she put inside it, and with a dedicated outside pocket for mobiles. No more standing on one leg with her other knee in the air while she rooted in the black hole of Calcutta balanced on her thigh.

It rang again as she was staring balefully at the screen. She lowered her leg, slung her bag over one shoulder and pressed ‘answer’.

‘Hello?’

‘Irish? Is it you?’

The world stopped turning. Her heart stopped beating. Her vision blurred. The lemon drizzle cake became two lemon drizzle cakes.

‘
Allo Jill? Tu m’entends?’

Her numb lips managed to form the word.

‘Antoine?’

‘Yes. It is I Antoine calling.’

He was shouting now.

‘Can you hear me?’

There was a strange rumbling in the background. The surf.

‘I can hear, yes, Antoine, I can hear. Where are you? Are you still in South America?’

‘You are free, Jill? I get your message. I am here. I come to find you.’

She removed the phone from her ear, stared stupidly at the screen, put it back to her ear.

‘Here? What do you mean, here?’

‘At the airport. Our plane arrive in Paris today. With Dominique we look at the board for the departure to Biarritz, Dominique he says to me we have time for a beer and I am just going with him when I see this flight and then I know, it is Destiny. I am sick with love, and there is my plane. I say to Dominique, OK we take a beer then I leave you. You go back to Biarritz alone. Me, I wait this other flight. And so I get a ticket and I come straight to you,
ma chérie
. Tell me it was not a mistake?’

‘No, no, oh, Antoine, I can’t believe it, it wasn’t a mistake, I’m just so–’

He was sick with love. He was sick with love! Eat your heart out Ipanema bimbo!

But...’ she made herself speak slowly and clearly ‘when you say ‘here’ do you mean at the airport here?’

That roar again. It wasn’t the surf. It was a plane taking off.

‘Yes. I see the flight, I get the ticket, I am here.’

Her knees were jelly, her heart had taken off like a Grand National winner and, as his meaning finally sank in, her face split into a huge idiotic smile.

‘It’s him!’ she wanted to shout to the food hall. ‘Him! Back from Namapuwa after seven long years!’

Instead she shouted into the phone:

‘Stay right there my seahorse! I love you, I’m coming to get you! Edinburgh airport, arrivals! Don’t move!’

There was a silence at the other end, another rumbling.

‘Sorry
ma chérie
I miss you, what you say, you love me? Is it true? You come to pick me?’

‘Yes yes you’re here in Edinburgh, right, at the airport?
A l’aéroport d’Edimbourg? Moi, Jill, je viens à l’aéroport d’Edimbourg. Ne pars pas!
Do not move!’

There was a longer silence. Then:

‘Merde alors!’

‘Antoine? Is everything OK?’

She heard a stream of rapid French, several exclamations, then his laugh, his great deep belly laugh.

‘
Antoine qu’est ce qui se passe
? What’s happening, are you alright?’

‘Ah ma chérie,
my Irish, how stupid am I...’

He was laughing so hard he could scarcely get the words out.

‘Yes I am here. At the airport. In Dublin.’

***

Jill pulled a face at herself in the bathroom mirror, dabbed on more blush, smoothed her hair.

Saturday morning. She’d hardly slept a wink. In their usual lost-in-translation fashion, she and Antoine had finally got it sorted.

He would check into a hotel at the airport–Dublin airport–and be on a flight to Edinburgh the next morning. They had texted till after midnight.

-Je t’aime ma chérie.

-Me too my gorgeous man.

-I miss you every day.

-Me too, really missed you.

-I am sorry for all.

-No need no need just tell me you didn’t meet the girl from Ipanema.

-Why a girl from Ipanema? I have a girl from Dublin. In Edinburgh.

-Did you get some good waves at least?

-Yes those waves were great also the girls oops.

And finally...

-You’re sure it says Edinburgh, on your ticket? Not Glasgow?

-Merde!

-No Antoine no.

-I joke. Edinburgh.

-My nerves can’t stand jokes.

-OK you sleep now Irish I promise tomorrow, Edinburgh. I calm your nerves. All of them. All over your body. You sleep now,
dors bien ma chérie.

-You too my man,
dors bien
.

Dors bien
, as if she could sleep a single wink, never mind sleep well. She had been so wound up she’d tossed and turned for hours.

She’d phoned Caroline first thing.

‘No! That’s brilliant, Jill!’

Caroline, half-asleep, had started to laugh.

‘Oh wait till I tell Edward. He’s not going to believe it. Well, yes, he probably is going to believe it. Why on earth did he think you lived in Dublin?’

‘I know, it’s crazy. Well, he didn’t really, I mean on some level he knew I lived in Edinburgh, but you know what it’s like with us two we’re always getting hold of the wrong end of the stick, and interrupting each other and, it was just, in all the excitement, he saw ‘Dublin’ on the departure board and had a sort of brainstorm. He said he thought it was Destiny. I suppose I could have sent my Mum to the airport to get him last night. But when he saw her he might have gone straight back to France.’

‘Or run off with her. He’s got a soft spot for redheads. Oh, it’s so romantic Jill, he travels half way across the world, sees a plane and jumps straight on it! I suppose he’ll have his surfboard with him when he arrives.’

‘Yeah, probably in flip flops and a pair of shorts covered in dolphins.’

‘Or seahorses.’

She’d promised to call back later that day, bring Caroline up to date.

‘If I get a minute...’

The two of them had giggled like teenagers.

She gave a last swipe with the lipstick looked at her watch, said ‘
merde alors’
and raced out of the flat.

This is the big moment, Jillian Benedicta, she told herself one hour later, standing with the crowd at the Arrivals gate, scanning the sea of passengers pulling their cases, waving as they spotted a familiar face. What if he’d missed it? What if he’d changed his mind? What if–

Suddenly, head and shoulders above the rest, she saw him.

Unshaven, his hair longer than she remembered, curling down his neck, skin almost black.

The perfect Budweiser ad, tight jeans, pristine white T shirt. Wait...

His eyes met hers. He stopped, people flowing round him. He spread his arms wide, showing his T-shirt, pristine white, apart from one green shamrock, right over his heart.

Their gazes locked, they moved towards each other, she was in his arms, crying all over the shamrock, smelling his smell, pressed against his hard solid body, a rock in a sea of bodies, together at last, with her man,
oh oui,
her very own hot Basque.

I hope you enjoyed this book. You can catch up on how it all started in French Summer Novel 1, Biarritz Passion and you’ll be able to read what happens next in Book 3, Villa Julia, due out in 2016.

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