The Antique Love (22 page)

She put her bag over her head to keep off the rain and made a run for the college door. Her appointment with her tutor was at two, and it wouldn’t do to be late.

Mr Barnes’ normally stern features relaxed into a smile when she put her head round his door.

“So, back from Paris at last.” He got up to greet her. “You’ve been having a hard time of it, eh?”

“Yes, I’m sorry I missed the start of term. I had to stay in Paris to see my grandmother’s lawyers and sort out her affairs.”

Perhaps the strain of recent weeks showed in Sophie’s pallor. Mr Barnes, not normally noted for his compassion for his students, appeared to sympathise. He knew Sophie had a lot on her shoulders.

“It’s not going to be easy catching up with all the study you’ve missed. And your work placement will be quite a challenge. Think you’ll be up to it?”

Sophie nodded. She’d put her heart and soul into getting onto her course. Now she was about to start work experience in France, and she was determined to make a success of it.

“Actually, I’m really looking forward to it.” She smiled, a genuine smile, for the first time in what seemed to her like months. “And I hear I’ll be going to Lyon. Is that right?”

Mr Barnes took his seat again. “Well, you’re right to be excited. You’ve certainly struck lucky with this one.”

He pulled a glossy brochure from his briefcase and pushed it across the table.

“But let me warn you, your placement is no soft option. The man you’ll be working for has very high standards. Luckily, I could tell him quite sincerely that you were this year’s top student.”

Sophie accepted the compliment with a grin, and reached out eagerly across the table. Embossed in gold on the front cover of the brochure were the words
Pascha Silks
. The main shot showed a model striding down a catwalk, her stick thin figure swathed in glorious red silk. Behind her was a blitz of flash photography and A-list celebrities. Sophie turned the cover curiously.

“This will be a fantastic experience for you. The company is a textbook example of how to turn round an ailing business,” Mr Barnes enthused. “Pascha Silks produces some of the most fashionable textiles in the whole of Europe. The quality is high, and the MD’s standards are
very
high. We’ve been trying to get a student into this business for quite a while. Fortunately, this year there was no problem at all. The owner would consider only one student, and that student had to be you.”

Sophie sat stock still, her hand frozen in mid-air, her attention riveted to the brochure in front of her.

“Did you understand what I just said, Sophie?”

She gradually tore her gaze away from the open page and returned to her surroundings, eyes hazy.

“No I don’t.” Her gaze dropped back to the brochure she was holding rigidly in one hand. “You mean he asked for me by name?”

On the inside cover of the brochure was the headshot of a strikingly good-looking man whose eyes pierced the camera with an intense blue. Underneath, in bold type, were the words:
Monsieur Jean-Luc Olivier, Managing Director
.

Sophie looked up at her tutor again and spoke more forcefully. “I’m sorry, actually I really don’t understand.” Her voice rang loudly in her own ears. The photo in front of her was becoming a blur.

“Are you well, Sophie? Shall I fetch you a glass of water?”

Sophie barely noticed her tutor hurry away from his desk. She looked down again to find the azure eyes she had seen a few weeks previously gazing directly at her from the open page. She traced a hand over the picture. His hair was short. When they’d met four years ago, his hair had touched the collar of his leather jacket. Sophie had a sudden, vivid memory of reaching her hand up to grasp the back of his head. She cut off the thought and drew her hand back quickly from the picture as though it had burnt her.

The photographer had captured Jean-Luc with one of his rare smiles, his teeth white against his tan and faint laughter lines around his eyes. He looked extraordinarily handsome. Sophie put both her hands in her lap and clenched them. She must be more tired and strained than she thought. The blood was mounting to her cheeks in waves, leaving her feeling flushed and slightly feverish.

Her tutor re-appeared from nowhere with a glass of water, and Sophie sipped at it gratefully.

“Are you sure you’re up to this, Sophie?” Mr Barnes was hovering behind his desk. “I know you’ve had a lot on your plate recently, but it’s not like you to succumb to nerves. I’ve always thought you a very resilient young woman.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, with a calmness she was far from feeling. “I’m just a little over-tired. Obviously I recognise Monsieur Olivier. I just hadn’t realised…” She picked up the brochure again, at a loss how to explain the scale of her astonishment. “I hadn’t realised this was his business,” she finished lamely.

“Well, why would you? He took over his family’s silk mill four years ago, after he retired from grand-prix racing.”

Of course she’d known he’d retired. The news had grabbed all the headlines. But she’d always imagined him retiring to the beaches in the south of France with his millions and a Ferrari. And a couple of designer blondes.

She pressed the icy water glass against her cheek. None of it made any sense.

“Did you say he asked for me by name?” She wondered what Mr Barnes made of this strange request and tried to keep the question nonchalant.

Mr Barnes didn’t seem to think it unreasonable that a business owner would want to take on a student as talented as Sophie. “We sent him the CVs of our top students,” he said. “At first he refused to take on anyone, as he has refused every year, but a few weeks ago he got on the phone personally. He wanted to take you, and only you. I explained that the placement would be delayed because of your grandmother’s death, but he refused to take anyone else. Said he was prepared to wait as long as it took for you to finish sorting out your grandmother’s affairs in Paris.”

Far from clearing matters up, her tutor’s answer had only increased Sophie’s bewilderment. The blue eyes in the photo were smiling back at her with an infuriating calm. She had the strong sensation of being manipulated. He had discovered where she was, and for reasons she couldn’t begin to guess at, and in spite of the callous way she’d left him, he wanted to see her again after four years of silence.

“What if I don’t take up the placement?”

Her tutor’s brows drew together in a flash. “Not take it? That would be insane. A moment ago you were excited about going to Lyon. Why on earth would you turn down a brilliant opportunity?”

He was right. What reason could she give? Because I’ve slept with Jean-Luc Olivier, and I deliberately made him think I was a slapper? She imagined herself saying the words out loud for one ridiculous moment and shook her head hopelessly. No one would even believe it. Jean-Luc Olivier was a champion racing driver who had a stream of glamorous girlfriends, including film stars and singers. He was a hero to millions of sports fans, and his face was recognised around the world. Sophie Challoner was a penniless student whose face was barely recognised in her own street. Who would ever believe they’d once spent the night together?

Her tutor broke in with unusual gentleness on her thoughts. “Is it your father, is that it?” he asked. “Is he still ill?”

“Oh no, no.” Sophie looked up then. “He’s been well for months now. It’s taken a while, but he finally seems to be through the worst of his depression. I think he’ll be okay with my brother whilst I’m away.”

“Well, what then?”

Sophie’s expression fell.

“Let me tell you the position,” her tutor continued, pressing his fingertips together. “If you don’t complete a work-related project, it will be taken very seriously by the board of examiners. You will fail to graduate.”

Sophie swallowed. She had no idea why Jean-Luc Olivier wanted her to work for him. If he really wanted to see her again after that night—and from the look on his face when she’d walked out of their hotel room, she doubted that very much—why had he made no effort to contact her all the times she was in Paris? Why wait until now? It made no sense, but Sophie found that she had no interest in uncovering his motives. She was being manipulated and out-manoeuvred, and she didn’t enjoy the feeling one bit. No one had told Sophie Challoner what to do since her mother died, leaving her in charge of her family. She lifted her head.

“I was last year’s top student, you said it yourself. I know it’s late in the term, but I can find a different placement. I’ll just work twice as hard.”

Mr Barnes frowned. “It’s not as easy as that. If you work for this guy this year, there’s every chance he will take another student from us next year and the year after. If you don’t take up this offer, you’ll ruin the chances for future students of working with Jean-Luc Olivier. Student placements like this are damn hard to come by.”

Sophie realised the truth of this with a sinking heart. Jean-Luc’s inscrutable face looked up, smiling, from the photo. She swallowed. After a moment, she raised her head and forced a smile.

“I suppose that means I don’t have much choice, then, do I?” She picked the brochure up off the table. “You’d better tell me all about it. I’ve missed a couple of weeks when I should have been researching this place, and I’ve a feeling I’m going to need to stay on my toes. I don’t want to let Monsieur Jean-Luc Olivier catch me out.”

Not a second time, anyway, she promised herself.

* * * *

Later that night, as she was sorting through her things for her return to France, her father poked his head round her bedroom door.

“All sorted then, Sophie?” His voice was cheerful, but she knew the effort it was costing him to let her go. Although Jack would be there to look after him, he would miss her for the two months she was away. She reached up and kissed his cheek.

“Yes, it’s all sorted,” she said softly. “Come in, I’ll tell you all about it whilst I’m packing.”

Her father sat down at the old school desk where Sophie had done her homework in happier times, in the days when her mother had been alive and before her father began his slow slide into illness. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

She pressed the Pascha Silks brochure into his hands.

“Looks good, doesn’t it?” she said brightly.

Her father turned the cover. The owner’s imposing presence was even more arresting in the smallness of Sophie’s bedroom.

“Jean-Luc Olivier,” he said. “That’s a surprise. You’ve done well there, Sophie. His company’s silks are doing really well. Seems they were on all the catwalks at London Fashion Week.”

Sophie looked down at her father’s greying head affectionately.

“Dad, you always amaze me.” She laughed. “I didn’t know you read the fashion pages.”

Her father grinned back. “Well, it’s more the sporting pages I’m interested in. He was brilliant on the racing track until he retired. It’s a strange coincidence, though, isn’t it?”

“Coincidence?” Sophie echoed uncomfortably. She turned her back and carried on packing.

“Yes. He was at your grandmother’s funeral. Didn’t you see him? His uncle was a friend of your grandmother’s.”

Sophie made a business of folding and re-folding one of her pencil skirts.

“Actually, I had already met him before the funeral,” she said eventually, hoping her voice sounded casual. Her night with Jean-Luc Olivier definitely belonged in the category of
Things Not To Discuss With Your Father
.

“Really? When?”

“You know the eighteenth birthday party
grand’mère
wanted to throw for me in Paris? He was there.” Sophie finally placed the skirt neatly in her case and began folding a shirt without turning round.

“Oh, of course. That time when your grandmother thought she’d introduce you to all the rich husband material in France.” He suddenly laughed out loud. “Perhaps she thought Jean-Luc Olivier might propose.”

Sophie laughed, too, a small, empty sound. “Even
grand’mère
couldn’t think that. Jean-Luc Olivier has a different girl on his arm every week.”

“Anyway,” her father continued, “your grandmother’s isn’t the place to find a husband. Remember that family friend of hers who visited once?”

“Do you mean Louis?” Sophie asked. “That was years ago, Dad. It was a teenage crush.”

“And he dumped you as soon as he saw where you lived. Jumped up snob. How dare he think you weren’t good enough.”

Sophie’s expression lost its sparkle. Although she could joke with her father, the experience was still painful. In her schoolgirl innocence, she imagined her first boyfriend’s love for her would transcend the fact that, unlike their wealthy grandmother, the Challoner branch of the family lived on a housing estate in north London. The reality was that as soon as the bourgeois Louis Saint-Jacques had seen their litter-filled street, with its boarded up shop on the corner, he had rushed back to Paris, leaving a curt goodbye and lasting damage on Sophie’s psyche. Not only that, to excuse the callous way he’d behaved, he spread vicious lies amongst her grandmother’s friends, saying he had to leave London because Sophie was only after his money.

Sophie looked out of the window of her room, where the remains of the daylight were falling onto the shabby gardens. Below her, her old neighbour, Mr Khan, was clearing up the broken glass left by youths the night before. She liked Mr Khan. She liked a lot of her neighbours, but Foxglove Avenue was a long way from the yachts and villas and ski resorts in which her grandmother’s friends were found.