L'amour Actually (39 page)

  'Nothing lost,' I told myself, then got out my phone and composed a text to Tracey.

'Hey Trace, remember me? Just reading about you in
Hello!
So glad it's all worked out for you. Would love to hear from you. X'

As I walked back to the car, my phone binged to tell me that I had a text. I grabbed it from my pocket, surprised that Tracey had got back to me so quickly, especially with the time difference, but it was from Charlotte.

'Guess what? Ground staff held the bolshie woman and husband back at the gate saying there was a problem with their passports then didn't let them on till last. There is a God! Xxx'

'So this is the lounge. It's a lovely light room in the summer and it's great to be able to just step through the door and go into the pool when the weather's hot. Not that it's easy to imagine at the moment!' I laughed.

  It was the first viewing I'd had in weeks. The rush of prospective buyers in the autumn had dwindled to nothing, which was probably just as well, because St Amans remained resolutely shrouded in heavy mist, often for days on end. The landscape was a wintry symphony in brown. Brown fields were presided over by bare brown trees. The house felt damp, the clothes in my cupboard felt damp, even my bed felt damp. It was a kind of raw, unloved cold that got right into your bones.

  'Hmm,' said the morbidly obese American who was looking around the house. So far, she had said very little about anything, just walked around with a look on her face that barely concealed her lack of conviction. I had become quite adept at spotting which ones were genuine buyers and which ones were tyre-kickers. This particular one I had put firmly in the tyre-kicker category.

  'So, what do you think? Is it what you are looking for?' I asked.

  'Well,' answered the woman in a nasal East Coast drawl, 'it's real sweet but I need to speak to my husband and family about it. I don't know if they want to move to France yet.'

  I resisted the urge to kick the woman myself for wasting my time.

  She eventually left, promising to speak to her unsuspecting family and assuring me that she would be in touch with Madame Mollet soon. I advised Madame Mollet not to hold her breath.

  I decided to head up to the café for a coffee and a chat with Claire and Stéphane. They were still trying to sell it and we had had a good laugh swapping notes on prospective buyers.

  Getting into the car, which Julien had had the decency not to take back from me, I headed down the hill in the thick pea-souper. I had done this trip so many times that I thought I could probably do it with my eyes closed, which was just as well as I could barely see past the bonnet of the car. I wondered when the fog would lift. It had been hanging around for weeks now, with only the briefest of breaks. Having safely navigated my way up to the village and parked in the square, I made a point of not looking at the church. Julien's betrayal still hurt me.

  Seeing no lights shining through the gloom from the café, I quietly cursed my luck. Out of season, opening hours were a bit of a lottery but usually they were open at lunchtime. As I approached, I could see that the café was definitely closed. The shutters were tightly locked and there were no lights on either upstairs in Claire and Stéphane's apartment or downstairs in the bar.

  'They've gone,' called Claudine, who was shutting up her shop for lunch.

  'Gone where?'

  'To their family in the south.'

  'Oh, how long for?'

  'For good.'

  'What?' I was stunned. I walked over to Claudine, kissing her on both cheeks. 'When?'

  'They left yesterday. There were still no buyers for the café and they decided to cut their losses and go.'

  'But I didn't even get a chance to say goodbye.'

  'Well, they are quite private people and didn't want a lot of fuss. They have left all their furniture there until they find a buyer so I guess they will be back at some point to say goodbye.' 'I can't imagine the village without the café. It feels like it has lost its heart.'

  'You had better go and tell that lot,' said Claudine, pointing to a little clutch of people who were milling around the closed café. Chummy and Rodders were there with a few other people who seemed to spend most days there. 'Better had. God knows what that little lot will do now.'

  I walked across the square to the café, calling out a greeting to Chummy and Rodders.

  'What's happening, eh? Any ideas?' asked Chummy, looking rather like a polar bear in a very politically incorrect fur coat and matching hat.

  'Yes, the café has closed down. Stéphane and Claire have left to go and live with their family in the south.'

  'What?'

  'Yes, apparently it's closed until a new buyer can be found. Claudine just told me.'

  A murmur of disbelief spread through the little group.

  'But what about my lunch?' she demanded.

  'Well, I guess you'll have to make your own.'

  Rodders chortled. 'Chummy cook? My dear, she hasn't cooked anything herself since she made a bacon sandwich in 1978,' he wheezed.

  'Sorry, I'm just the messenger,' I replied. I wouldn't put it past Chummy to ask me to cook her lunch for her.

  With nothing else to do, I decided to head back to the cottage. If the
Météo
was to be believed, heavy snowfalls were on their way, and it was cold, really cold. The cottage was well insulated with foot-thick walls keeping the worst of the cold at bay, but it had no central heating. I had to keep the wood burner in the lounge going full blast which meant logs, and lots of them. I had an important date with my axe.

  Later, as I struggled through the door with a basket laden with chopped logs, the phone began to ring.

  I stamped the mud off my boots and went to answer it.

  'Good, you're there,' boomed the not so dulcet tones of Chummy.

  'Yes.' The woman had a real knack for stating the obvious. 'Hi Chummy, did you find somewhere to have lunch?'

  'Yes, went to that new Moroccan place in town. Best
Couscous Royale
I've had in years. Anyway, meant to ask you earlier but forgot with all the kerfuffle over the café. I'm organising a little skiing party to the Pyrénées. Shall I count you in?'

  'Well Chummy, I'm a bit strapped for cash…'

  The older woman interrupted me. 'Don't worry about that. We've borrowed a chalet belonging to an old school friend of Rodders. No charge. He owes us a few favours. You can drive down with us. CeeCee is coming too so you won't just be stuck with the old fogies. She's got some spare kit so don't worry about that either.'

  'Err…' I had never quite caught the skiing bug, although I'd been once, years ago with an old school friend and twisted my knee on the second day which had been the end of my skiing. And I also knew that the chances of me fitting into one of CeeCee's ski suits were small, unlike my backside.

  'Marvellous. We're leaving on Friday at midday, back Sunday.'

  'Well…' The line went dead. 'Well, that's that then,' I said to Basil, picking him up and stroking his soft, downy head, 'better see if Martine can feed you and the chooks.' I looked through the window at my hens standing by the back door like giant powder puffs with all their feathers fluffed up against the cold. I almost felt like letting them in but their ability to poo often and without prior warning made them very unsuitable for indoor living. Plenty of corn and extra straw would have to do.

  Sitting pale-faced in the back of Rodders' car, my hands gripped the armrest on one side and the handle of the door on the other until my knuckles were white. Outside, a sheer drop fell away as far as I could see as we wound our way up the mountain road.

  We had arrived late the previous night at our ski chalet in a little town in the foothills of the mountains. Before we left, I had heard talk of snow chains and winter tyres so when we arrived, having driven there on major roads with little sign of snow, I had thought it was just bluster.

  Now, as we wound our way up the mountain, past all the signs saying that snow chains were compulsory and teams of
gendarmes
were checking that everyone complied, and with the chains making the car feel as if it was driving over cobbles, I was starting to feel slightly sick. The constant juddering as we drove on the chains was threatening to rattle my teeth out of my head. The others, all seasoned skiers, didn't seem bothered.

  'You'd think they would put crash barriers up at the side of the road, wouldn't you?' I said in a shaky voice.

  'Don't you worry, girl, we'll be fine,' Rodders replied. 'Feeling a little stressed are we?'

  'No, no I'm fine.'

  'She doesn't look it,' commented CeeCee, 'she's definitely a bit green.'

  'Honestly, I'm fine,' I told her, tightening my grip on the door handle as the back of the car slid slightly round a corner.

  'Come on girl, man up. Rodders has driven in far worse places than this. We're in the hands of an expert.'

  'In any case,' continued Rodders, 'if we go over the edge, there's precious little point in hanging on to the door. We'll all be goners.'

  Rodders grinned, gunning the engine to make the wheels spin. I smiled weakly. 'Thanks for that,' I said and went back to clinging on for dear life.

  As we climbed higher, the snow deepened, until I became aware of skiers on the slopes at the side of the road. The deep ravines appeared to have gone, to be replaced by huge open snowfields. Despite my reservations, I was starting to feel quite excited about skiing again. And here it was, almost on my doorstep.

  Rodders pulled into a car park near the bottom of the chair lift and we all bundled out of the car. The resort was tiny. Just a car park, a restaurant and a ski-hire shop, but the slopes looked perfect. Wide and treeless. Just how I wanted them. CeeCee had lent me one of her old ski suits and, while in my London days I might have fitted easily into it, with my new fuller figure, I had to be shoehorned in and sitting down made my lips go slightly blue. It didn't help that it was a retina-burning lime green either. There was no chance of losing me in a white-out.

  Rodders and Chummy had their own boots and skis so CeeCee and I stomped across the snow to the ski-hire shop to get ourselves kitted out.

  'How much do you weigh,
mademoiselle?'
asked the handsome, shaggy-haired ski-bum in the shop. I blushed slightly. 'It is so we get the bindings on your skis right,' he continued. 'If they are not set up right, your boot may get stuck in your ski or else it will keep falling out.'

  'Er, in kilos?'

  'Yes, kilos.'

  I did a quick calculation in my head then subtracted a few kilos. Quite a few. Was it my imagination or did he give me a disbelieving look?

  'How are you getting on?' asked CeeCee, all legs and pert behind in a stunning, baby-pink ski suit. I felt like her frumpy older sister and unconsciously pulled in my stomach. Sorted out with our boots and skis we set off for the slopes.

  'God, how are you supposed to carry these things?' I said struggling out of the hire shop with my skis. 'It's like juggling spaghetti.' They kept twisting out of my grip as I stumbled across the icy ground, my hard plastic boots threatening to slide out from under me at any moment.

  'You'll get used to them,' she said unhelpfully. 'Come on, let's go and book you in at the Ski School.'

  Despite its name, the Ski School turned out to be a little booth, built like a miniature Swiss chalet, and manned by a clone of the assistant in the ski shop. CeeCee flirted outrageously with him, leaving me feeling once again like the ugly sister. Determined not to be outdone this time, I tried fluttering my eyelashes at him but he just looked at me, slightly alarmed. He booked me onto a beginner's class and CeeCee into an intermediate one, then relieved me of twenty euros for an hour of skiing lessons and told me to be back in thirty minutes for the start of the lesson with Jean-Christophe, my ski instructor. CeeCee wanted to get in some practice before her lesson, so we arranged to meet for lunch. She waved goodbye and headed off to the ski lift, while I planted my skis in the snow outside the café and went to find an outside table where I could watch the slopes and have a
grand crème
until my lesson started.

  Tilting my head back to feel the warmth of the sun on my face, the sky was a perfect unbroken blue and the nip in the air contrasted with the feeling of the sun. It felt glorious. I was starting to understand how people could get so hooked on the mountains.

  I sipped on my coffee as I watched the skiers coming down the run and after a few minutes, saw what could only be Chummy coming ponderously down the slope in long sweeping arcs. She reminded me of a battle cruiser negotiating an iceberg field. Behind her Rodders seemed to think he was in a James Bond film and was heading straight down the slope at a cracking pace and whooping loudly. As he got closer and closer, he seemed to pick up speed until I put my hands over my eyes, waiting for the sound of bone splintering as he hit something at the bottom. 'You all right, girl?'