The French for Love (4 page)

In the oak trees an owl hoots gently.

I raise my glass. ‘Thank you, Liz,’ I whisper.

CHAPTER THREE

A Gentleman Caller

To-Do list:

• •
  Clean house
  
• •
  Sort out Internet connection
  
• •
  Order books on reading list for Master of Wine course
  
• •
  Food shopping
  
• •
  Weed garden
  
• •
  Take car to car wash to get rid of mud from yesterday’s close encounter with ditch and Blue Pickup Guy
  
• •
  Remember to ask Mireille about Blue Pickup Guy.
  

T
ime goes by, as Madonna observed in one of her more philosophical moments, so slowly. Especially when it’s two in the morning and the prospect of sleep has become as unlikely as the prospect of a reliable man or a steady job. Despite the fact that I’m exhausted after the long drive, I toss and turn all night, my mind abuzz with a jumble of thoughts and memories in the unfamiliar darkness of Liz’s bedroom. I’m a fully paid-up, card-carrying insomniac these days, ever since Ed left. And then losing Liz and being made redundant in swift succession thereafter haven’t exactly enhanced my state of mind.

Keep taking deep breaths and letting go, I remind myself. And speaking of letting go...

Coming back to the office after Liz’s funeral, my mind had still been in France. The sunshine and birdsong of the French countryside seemed more real than the grey English sky and the Monday morning roar of high-street traffic.

I’d settled down at my desk, trying to focus on work. The office door banged open and Annie crashed into the room, breathless and laughing at some exchange she’d just had with the staff in the shop downstairs. She’s the buyer for New World wines and is as voluptuous, brash, loud and warm-hearted as many of the wines in her portfolio.

‘Hooray, Gina, you’re back! Did it all go okay?’ She hugged me warmly. ‘Got time for a drink after work tonight? I need to tell you all about the most gorgeous man I’ve just met.’

‘I like the hair,’ I said. Annie changes her hair colour about as often as she changes her men. Which is very often. When I’d left the previous week, she’d been a redhead. She was now a dramatically dark brunette. But with Annie Mackenzie, one always senses that blondeness is never very far away.

I settled down to work and, on automatic pilot, I opened my emails and realised I was reading one from Ed. ‘So sorry to hear of your aunt’s death—saw her obit. Presume you must be in France. Thinking of you. Love E.’

It was the ‘Love E’ that really got my attention.

It’d been over three months since we split up.

As I was mulling this over, my phone beeped, signalling an incoming text message, and I fished it out of my bag. From: Ed. ‘Call me when u get this. X’.

Heavens, what was going on? Love Ed? A kiss? After months of radio silence. I was confused. I clicked the message shut, then sat staring at the computer screen for a few seconds before reopening the email to scan it again. Whichever way you looked at it, it was a definite invitation to reopen lines of contact. Hah, maybe he’d realised what he was missing now his ‘bit on the side’ had moved to a more central—and no doubt less exciting—position. He’d moved out of my flat and into Camilla’s in Pimlico in one smooth step, smoothness always having been one of Ed’s most obvious character traits.

But perhaps now he’d broken it off with her, I thought, and I imagined a highly satisfactory scene where we would meet up and he’d be contrite, begging me to take him back. Naturally, being strong-minded and highly principled, I would turn him down. But then after a suitable period of begging and a campaign involving several large bouquets of flowers, boxes of chocolates, etc., he would convince me that he had truly seen the error of his ways and would be faithful to me forever more, I would take him back, forgiving him in a mature and dignified manner. My life back on track for marriage and motherhood. Perhaps even a diamond ring would feature at this point...

I snapped myself out of my reverie with a shake of my head. ‘Yeah, and watch out for flying pigs, too,’ I muttered under my breath.

I was still in a state of distraction when Harry Wainright leant out of his office and said, ‘Gina, can I ask you to come through, please?’

And so it hardly sank in at first when he told me that the company had been bought by one of the big chains.

And then he’d dropped the bombshell. ‘I’m sorry, Gina, and I know the timing couldn’t be worse with all you’ve been going through, but I’m going to have to let you go.’

I turn over in bed with a sigh. My eyes feel gritty with weariness, and thoughts flutter and whirl in my head like a flock of noisy starlings that refuse to settle down for a quiet night’s roosting.

And so, that awful day when I heard I’d lost my job, of course I’d called Ed. Drowning in grief, shock and despondency, those messages he’d sent out of the blue seemed as though he was holding out an emotional lifejacket.

We met in the local Italian restaurant, familiar territory since we used to go there on Friday nights to celebrate the end of the working week, relaxing over plates of spaghetti puttanesca and a bottle of house plonk. Ed was already there when I arrived—notable in itself as he is usually late as a matter of course—and stood up solicitously to embrace me as I reached the table. He ordered a bottle of wine, a Barolo from the top end of the wine list I’d noticed, rather than our usual Valpolicella, and I was pleased and cautiously flattered that he was making such an effort. Where is this going, I wondered, trying to ignore the glow of hope that had rekindled itself in my heart. Had he and Camilla split up? I’d forgotten how very good-looking he was, and how utterly charming he could be when not otherwise distracted. I asked Ed, with a smile of irony at the normality of the question after the turmoil I’d been through in the last seven days, how his week had been.

Ed is Director of Sponsorship for an events company. When you come down to it, this means he sells advertising. But of course it would never do to voice such a vulgar thought. The job mainly involves wining and dining contacts made through the Old Boy networks of the public schools of southern England and persuading them, in the most gentlemanly manner of course, to part with large dollops of money to have their companies’ names displayed at polo matches, rugby fixtures and regattas. Apparently at the moment things weren’t going too well, due to the recent economic nosedive, and it was proving, Ed admitted over his bresaiola and rocket salad, to be a bit of a bore.

‘But that’s enough about me. More importantly, how are you?’ he asked, reaching a sympathetic hand across the table to hold mine.

The glow of hope flickered into a small flame.

‘I was so sorry to hear about your job. Still, in the big scheme of things, it’s funny how it’s worked out really, isn’t it? You’ve obviously reached an important crossroads in your life. What are you planning on doing next, now you have carte blanche?’

I was surprised that he saw my current situation in quite such exciting and positive terms, but Ed’s always been an optimist and I thought perhaps he was right—I should see this as an opportunity for a fresh start rather than having the distinct feeling that I was being swept rapidly up a certain well-known creek without a paddle.

He gazed across at me over the flickering tea light and the bottles of oil and vinegar as I described the calls I’d been making and the copies of my CV I’d sent out, completely fruitlessly. ‘The wine industry seems to be taking a similar battering,’ I explained. ‘Like your sponsorship, I suppose wine is seen as a luxury item, so when times get tight it’s one of the first things people cut back on. The supermarkets will carry on undercutting everyone else, so they’ll be okay. But I don’t expect Wainright’s will be the only independent wine merchant to disappear. And at least they were bought out. Some of the independents are sure to go under. Every wine buyer in the country will be sitting tight and trying to hang on to their job. So it looks like I’m going to be a lady of leisure for the foreseeable future.’ I‘d tried to make light of my situation, which actually sounded even more dire to me when I had to explain it like this.

The waiter appeared with our plates of pasta and then suggestively brandished an oversized pepper grinder in my direction. ‘Pepper for the
bella signorina
?’ Ed waved him away and poured me some more of the dark red wine.

‘Well I’d like to propose a toast,’ he said with a flourish of his own glass. ‘Here’s to ladies of leisure. I was sorry to hear about your Aunt Liz, of course, but talk about good timing. Presumably she’s left everything to you? Bit of a silver lining as it turns out, eh?’

For a few seconds I continued to smile as I tried to work out what he could possibly mean. And then, as realisation dawned, a wave of icy cold water washed over the blaze of hope that, I have to admit, had by now been burning brightly within me, extinguishing it completely.

‘I’m sorry?’ I said frostily. ‘I’m not sure I quite follow.’

Ed continued breezily, ‘Well, she must have been pretty minted, and you were certainly her nearest and dearest relation, just like a daughter in fact, so surely she’s come up trumps just when you need it most. I always did like the old girl—a great character.’

His mobile phone, on the pink tablecloth beside a half-eaten bread stick, suddenly vibrated. He glanced down at it and then smoothly—too smoothly—returned his gaze to my face. ‘Gina?’ he asked, as I glared at him in cold fury.

I reached over and picked up his phone. On the illuminated square of the screen was a little yellow envelope and next to it the name Camilla.

‘Ah, yes,’ I said, ‘how is the lovely Camilla these days? Still your landlady? Or did you finally strap on a pair of balls and decide to stand on your own two feet for a change? No?’ I continued, as his gaze flickered uncertainly to the plate of food in front of him. ‘So you’re still living with her, but thought it would be worth checking me out again in case I’d suddenly become a better financial proposition? I should have known. The trouble with you, Edmund Cavendish, is that you are, and always will be, a complete arsehole. Thanks for supper, but sorry, I’ve just remembered I’d rather be at home scrubbing the mould off the shower curtain than waste one more second of my life in your company.’

Shaking with rage, I pushed back my chair and stalked out of the restaurant, Italian waiters with their oversized pepper grinders scattering before me as I went. Not such a
bella signorina
after all, evidently.

And my fury had propelled me to my front door and up the stairs to my flat before I collapsed on the sofa and lay there, breakers of humiliation, pain and grief crashing over me as I contemplated the twisted pile of wreckage that my life had become.

I must finally have fallen asleep because I come to and the morning light is streaming in at the window, casting the clusters of wisteria flowers that hang outside into elongated, dancing shadows across the bedspread. I lie there for a while longer, my head feeling thick and heavy after yet another troubled night, lost in thoughts of the past few weeks.

After that ghastly evening with Ed, when I finally accepted what a complete loser he really is, I’d plummeted into a deep depression. I spent my days lying on the sofa eating my body weight in chocolate HobNobs and watching
Bargain Hunt
on TV. The odd glimmer of hope would come when an envelope landed on the doormat in response to one of the job applications I’d sent in, only to be dashed as the words of yet another polite rejection swam before my eyes and I’d reach for another biscuit to numb the pain.

I was in grave danger of becoming an expert on Art Deco ceramics and developing a backside the size of the Bay of Biscay.

The days were bad enough, but I particularly dreaded the nights, contemplating each one with trepidation as it stretched before me, a dark desert to be crossed alone, knowing that in the shadows my anxious thoughts lurked, waiting to ambush me and harry me, nipping at my heels like a pack of wild dogs. Some evenings I would drift asleep in front of the television before dragging myself groggily into bed an hour or so later, only to lie there wider awake than ever the minute my head hit the pillow. Sometimes, relieved that another restless night was over, I would fall into a deep sleep just as dawn broke, floundering in a quicksand of troubled dreams which relinquished their grip on my mind only reluctantly when I woke, leaving me queasy and emotionally drained.

One of these dreams still stays with me with particular clarity. In it I’m trying to get to France—I have to get to France to see Liz urgently—but am held up at every turn. Firstly I have work to finish (ha!), then I jump into a taxi to get to the airport only to find Ed sitting in it. He insists we go back to his place to pick up his suitcase. I realise we’ve missed the plane, so I go to catch a bus to the station, but there’s one just pulling away and I run to catch it but my legs are like lead weights and my lungs constrict so that I can hardly move. I push on though and get to the station. The Eurostar is—miraculously—still there and I go to buy a ticket. But there’s a long queue and it’s not moving. I crane my head to see who’s holding it up and Ed turns to smile at me from the front of the line. Weak-kneed with relief, I go up to him, but he turns away. Then I see he has bought two tickets and I know the second one is not for me. In desperation, I get on the train anyway just as it pulls away from the platform. But instead of whizzing soundlessly through the countryside, it seems to have developed the same problem as my legs, and drags itself along laboriously. I get out and miraculously find myself at Sainte Foy—hooray, nearly there; hang on Liz, I’m coming. I force my leaden limbs to carry me up the hill and finally I turn into the drive under the oaks. But the courtyard is empty and the trees are skeletons and I know I’m too late. All I can hear is my desperate, gasping breath and then a magpie flutters down from one of the trees and starts towards me with menacing intent. It gives a rasping cry and I wake with a start.