Plan B (40 page)

Inevitably, a buyer appeared far too quickly. Ten days after the house went on the market, Ella received an email from some English clients, describing what they were looking for. An old house, preferably in a small village, that they could use as a holiday home. They wanted at least four bedrooms and two bathrooms, and a big garden either with a pool or with potential for one. They wanted it to be already renovated as they did not want to spend time or money smartening it up. Then they described their taste: ‘terracotta floor tiles, white walls, exposed beams and an open fireplace’. Ella was so excited that she forwarded me the email.

‘Your house is so much to the English sensibility,’ she wrote at the end. ‘I know these are your buyers.’

I waited nervously for their arrival. There were vases of early daffodils on the mantelpiece and the table. Everything was tidy and clean. I felt that these people were coming to pass judgement on every aspect of my life. It was all tied up in this house.

The first thing that struck me was the fact that they dripped with money. Jim, who was filming their visit, gave me a cynical thumbs-up behind their backs. It pained me to watch them eyeing up my house critically. The adults were in their late thirties, and their two children were, I estimated, about seven and ten. They were a boy and a girl, both blonde. Alice jumped and danced around them, desperate to play. It was the school holidays in France, though not in England, and Alice was missing her social life.

I saw the children looking at the garden with interest, and, remembering the day Matt and I had first looked round, I told them to go outside, if they wanted, while their parents checked out the interior. Alice skipped after them, delighted. I had to drag her back to force her into her coat and boots.

‘This is my garden,’ she said grandly, entering into the spirit of the occasion. ‘These are my chickens. I’ll show you my swing.’ The girl took her hand and Alice basked in the attention.

The man was tall and broad. ‘Good tiles,’ he said approvingly as we walked slowly around. ‘Good sized dining room, too. So you’ve done the renovation yourselves, have you? Hard finding builders, I hear.’

‘I’ve done it myself. I’m on my own. It’s been quite a process, but worth it.’

‘I’d say.’ He nodded. ‘Smeg kitchen. Black granite. We like that.’

I laughed. The Smeg kitchen had been entirely Matt’s idea. I had, naturally, paid for it, but I would have been quite happy with something far more ordinary.

‘I think that’s a male thing,’ I said. ‘My partner liked it. The kitchen was his project.’

The woman, who was bright and tidy, with a tinkling laugh, looked at me with sincere curiosity. ‘He’s not on the scene any more? Sorry if it’s a personal question.’

I was very aware of the camera, for once, so I made my voice as resolute as possible. ‘He’s not on the scene any more because I discovered that he had another child, and indeed a wife, in London.’ I smiled, watching her trying to mask her excitement as sympathy. ‘That’s why I’m selling.’

‘No place for a lady to be alone,’ boomed the man.

‘It seems not,’ I agreed. ‘Unfortunately, because Alice and I both love it here.’

‘Well, you’ve done a stunning job with the house.’ He looked at his wife. ‘We could spend the hols here, couldn’t we, darling? Put in a pool?’

‘I’d say so.’

‘Good neighbours?’

‘Lovely.’

‘It’s nice to see a place that’s been done up to the English taste. The French prefer modern houses, by and large. Need to rip it all out and start again. This is exactly our style.’

I frowned. I knew plenty of tasteful French houses, and many French people who preferred old houses. Many had been priced out of that market. I didn’t say anything. I knew for certain that this family were going to buy my house, and that it was going to stand empty for forty-eight weeks of the year. Selling a house was not supposed to be easy. It was sod’s law that it was going to happen smoothly this time.

I accepted their offer, which was not far below the asking price. When I called Bella she was delighted.

‘Well done, Emma,’ she said, several times. ‘We can’t wait to have you back. You sound like you’ve really got yourself together.’

‘I have my moments.’

‘You’re OK though, aren’t you?’

I thought about it. ‘I really am, actually. I’m OK. I’m doing what I have to do, and we’ll start all over again in London, and maybe one day I’ll meet someone new. I hope so.’ This was a new hope of mine. I was beginning to feel ready to try again, and not with Matt this time.

‘Of course you will. You couldn’t fail to. How’s Alice?’

Christa called me, too. ‘Don’t bother househunting in London before you get back,’ she advised. ‘You and Alice can come and live here while you get things sorted out. Geoff’s dying to see you. He’s got a new lease of life since you and he got things out into the open.’

I was still nervous of Christa. ‘Are you sure you’re all right with it all?’

She snorted. ‘I’ve already told you I am. It was a long, long time ago. Sarah’s misdeeds were completely overshadowed by her death, and you weren’t exactly an accomplice. It only concerns Geoff and me, and we came to terms with it years ago. For God’s sake, just stop asking.’

‘OK. Sorry. We’d love to come and stay with you. Thanks. It’ll make it all a lot easier.’

I spoke to Greg, too. ‘I’m moving back to London,’ I told him, trying out the idea.

He took a few seconds to respond. ‘Seriously?’ he said in the end. ‘Sure?’

‘Not really, but I need a plan, and all of you guys, my family, are in London. When are you off to Cuba?’

He answered at once. ‘When Rosie’s got the all-clear. She’s doing well. We’re just going to see how she goes.’

I walked down to Martine’s house to tell her that the house was under offer.

‘More English?’ she asked.

I nodded. ‘I’m afraid it’s going to be a holiday home,’ I confessed. ‘I’m really sorry.’

‘You don’t need to go,’ Martine said doggedly. ‘It’s OK to be alone here. I am.’

‘I wish I could stay,’ I told her, and I meant it. It was an enormous wrench.

Alice’s school were surprised and disappointed that I was withdrawing her.

‘She’s doing so well,’ her teacher told me. ‘She is one of the easiest pupils. She understands French, and she speaks beautifully, and she plays and eats and sleeps. If only they were all like that. We will all miss Alice.’

Half our boxes had never even been unpacked. I taped them up again and looked for the number of the international removals company, so that I could ask them to take it all back across the Channel. When I made that phone call I felt, for the first time, that I was admitting defeat.

‘I remember you,’ said the man who answered the phone in the Brighton office. ‘Coming back?’ He laughed. ‘Not all it was cracked up to be?’

I almost forced myself to laugh along and agree with him. At the last minute, I decided to embarrass him with the truth.

‘Oh, it was more than it was cracked up to be,’ I assured him. ‘It’s just that Matt, you remember him?’ He grunted in affirmation. ‘Matt turned out to have a wife and child in London, so he’s not living here any more and this is all a bit rural for me on my own.’ I seemed unable to stop telling strangers. It did me good every time I said it.

The man surprised me. ‘I’m really sorry to hear that, love,’ he said. ‘The bastard, eh? Plenty more pebbles on the beach, as they say here. I’m sure you won’t be alone for long.’

I smiled. ‘Thanks,’ I told him.

That night, I told my conversation class that I was leaving at Easter.

‘Why?’ asked Chloe.

‘Because my family and friends are mostly in London,’ I said. ‘Because there isn’t enough work for me here. Because Alice needs to be near her father.’

Bernard frowned. ‘Her father should come to her. Not her go to him.’

‘I know. But—’

‘There is always work for a teacher of English,’ Alain butted in. ‘There are many language schools nearby.’

‘I suppose so, but—’

‘You don’t like it here because it’s too rural,’ Chloe said confidently. ‘Especially around St Paul. You want to get back to London because you miss the city and the vibrantness.’

‘Vibrancy. No, that’s not it. I love it being rural.’

Alain looked at me. ‘Then why do you go?’

After the class, he waited behind for me. I looked at him with a bright, teacherish smile.

‘Alain,’ I said. Normally if students hung around to talk to me alone, they were either going to an English-speaking country on a work trip, or they needed me to translate something.

Alain was about forty, dark-haired, and I had always admired his looks. He took care of himself. He dressed well, groomed himself well, and his face was at ease with itself. He always made me think of French film actors.

‘I am sorry to disturb you,’ he said, in English. ‘I wonder, will you have dinner with me next Saturday?’

It was Saturday, the day of my date, and I was getting ready to go to market. I had just received the deposit on the house sale, and had used it to write a cheque which paid the builders off completely and finally. I was feeling strange, mixed up. The house was finished, and we were leaving in three weeks, and I was going out with a man I hardly knew that evening. Alice was going to stay overnight with Coco and Louis. This was a proper date. I didn’t think I’d ever been on one of them in my life.

I was considering going on to Villeneuve after doing the vegetable shop. I could not afford to, but I was nonetheless keen to buy myself a new outfit. Alain was taking me to a restaurant I’d heard of but never been to. There were, it seemed, many good restaurants around, and now I was about to leave without ever having visited any except the pizzeria and the crêperie in St Paul. Both of them were favourite haunts of Alice’s. At least, I told myself sternly, I would get to try out this one. It had a Michelin star. Celine liked to take Coco there, and Coco had raved to me about the open fire, the ambience, and the rustic chic.

‘Actually,’ she had said, pensively, ‘it’s quite like your house.’

I knew Alain was divorced, because he had talked about it in class. If I had had to choose anybody I had met in France to take me out, I would have chosen Alain. Yet the idea petrified me and I did not want to go at all.

‘Shall we go to Villeneuve after the market?’ I asked Alice as I put two wicker shopping baskets into the car.

‘It’s
Villeneuve
,’ she corrected me. She pronounced it exactly like a French person. My daughter’s French was now officially better than mine.

‘Sorry. So, shall we go there?’

I looked at her. She was busily climbing onto her booster seat and arranging her animals on her lap.

‘If you like, Mum. Can we go to a café?’ She looked at me eagerly and, perceiving something unusual in my mood, adjusted her request upwards. ‘Can we have pizza for lunch?’

‘OK. Just this once. As a special treat. You know we don’t really have any money for that sort of thing. But what the hell. Sold the house. We may as well.’

She beamed. ‘Thank you, Mummy. Thank you thank you.’

It was a gloomy day, with thick grey clouds and the threat of rain. Drizzle seemed to hang in the air, ready to drop at the slightest provocation. I had blow-dried my hair and put on some pale lipstick for the market, as I usually did these days. I knew there wasn’t an umbrella in the boot, because I remembered Alice and me sheltering under it a week ago, running screaming from car to house in the middle of a sudden drenching downpour. My glossy hair would get wet, my make-up would suffer, and I would have to blow-dry it all over again for my date. It did not matter.

When I reached the top of the road, I waited while another car drove up, then turned into our road. It had a non-local registration, with 60 at the end of the number plate. I was mildly curious, because Pounchet on a rainy day in March was not a magnet for tourists.

I was even more curious when the car stopped next to my house.

‘Look, Alice,’ I said. ‘That car’s stopped at our house. We’d better go back and see who it is.’

She barely looked up. ‘‘Kay.’

I reversed down the road and stopped next to the car. I got out into the moist air, pulled my long coat tightly round me, and walked over to the green car.

Matt and I stared at each other. I tried to think of something to say, but nothing came to mind, so I decided to let him speak first. I looked at him closely while I waited. He looked pretty much exactly the same as he had always looked. His face was tight and closed, but his hair fell in the same way, and he was as tall and strong as ever. I thought I even recognised his clothes.

‘Hello, Emma,’ he said, eventually.

‘Hello,’ I replied. I listened to my voice as I said it, and hoped I sounded normal. I went back to my car and opened Alice’s door and unclicked her seatbelt. ‘Look who’s come to see you, Alice,’ I said, holding her hand as she jumped down. I regulated my breathing, made myself stay calm.

She looked. Then she hid behind my legs.

‘Alice,’ I said, pulling her out. ‘Look. It’s Daddy.’

She shook her head and hid her face in my skirt. I picked her up.

‘Alice,’ I said again. ‘Daddy’s come to see you. You’ve missed Daddy, and he’s missed you. Give him a kiss.’

She looked at him, and he smiled at her. Suddenly, she wriggled down.

‘My daddy!’ she shouted, breaking into a run. Her face was alight with joy. ‘My daddy, my daddy, my daddy!’ Matt caught her in his arms and picked her up, squeezing her tightly. He pushed his face into her hair and shut his eyes.

‘Alice,’ he said softly. ‘I’ve missed you so much.’ He looked at me over her head. ‘Can I come in? Were you going somewhere important?’

I drew a deep breath. ‘No. Just to market. Come on.’ I took my keys out. ‘You must still have keys of your own, haven’t you?’

‘I’ll give them back.’

I didn’t reply. When I’d opened the shutter over the kitchen door, I looked at him. He was still carrying Alice. He looked serious. He did not look as if he had spent the past seven months being happy. He was wearing a brown jumper that I knew well, his old jeans, and a new waterproof jacket. His blond hair was, I thought, slightly longer than it used to be, and I could tell instantly that he had shaved that morning, because his skin was still pink with the shock.