Songs of Blue and Gold (30 page)

She thanked him and said goodbye.

On a postcard from Sommières, she wrote to Alexandros: ‘Here I am in Adie's last Heaven.' She made sure to print the address in France clearly in the left hand corner where it was least likely to be obliterated by postmarks.

Months had passed since they were last in touch – and then it had been only an email from Alexandria giving little personal information, just a description of a café where Adie used to entertain his friends.

What had happened since to Alexandros and his wife – had they found a way to get back together too? And if so, were they making a better fist of it than Richard and she were? She couldn't help but think of Corfu, how she had
sensed freedom and new beginnings there, despite her grief and the defeated anger about Richard. It was now they were back together that she felt closed down.

The next evening she set out for Sommières and the literary evening at L'Espace Julian Adie. It would be an adventure, she tried to convince herself. With Richard still away in Paris – although due back later that night, according to a message left on her mobile, broken up and snagged during its satellite voyage – she had nothing else to do.

It would do him good to find her out when he got back.

The scent of pine drifted over scrub. Vineyards striped the landscape beneath the Pic de St Loup and the mount rose above the dancing road like a miniature Matterhorn from one side, then lost its spikiness and menace the closer it came. The evening sun was still warm through the car window. Melissa wondered how many times her mother had taken this road, how many lies of omission she had told in order to do so.

As she crossed the bridge over the Vidourle again, the clock on the gate tower opposite showed twenty to seven. She parked close to what seemed the smart hotel in town, the Auberge du Pont Romain. From the outside it looked almost bleak, utilitarian, but round the corner a gate afforded a glimpse of garden, and a swimming pool, cool trees, a life more lush.

With a quarter of an hour before the soirée was due to start, she wandered down to the river and stood looking out at the wide still water. The town was quiet now. A flock of birds flew over in formation against the weakening light.

Melissa took a few deep breaths. What was she doing here? She had no idea what to expect, had no expectations beyond turning up at the event. Neither did she have any knowledge of Gilles Barreau and his work beyond the titles of four novels listed on the flyer, roughly translated as
The Second Day
,
The Vault
,
The Road on Fire
and
Unforgiven
.

She was just going to slip into the back of the room and try to understand as much as possible. A sudden unpleasant thought occurred that Dr Martin Braxton might have had the same idea.

Other people were climbing the steps into the front courtyard. The building, she now knew, was an old Ursuline convent. Most of the audience were in couples. Any lone women were elderly.

She paid a small entrance fee at the counter inside. Conversations were rising as the audience milled around the sculptures holding glasses of wine or orange juice. She had a moment of panic. Would she talk to anyone? She had never liked walking into parties and pubs alone, feeling exposed and vulnerable. She took a ridiculously long time putting her purse back in her bag and studying the posters and flyers stuck up on the wall.

Wineglass in hand, she made a slow tour of the room looking surreptitiously at the women. There was no sign of Madame Massenet, nor the studenty looking girl with red hair. And which one of them was Annick?

After ten minutes, they were called into a room to the side where a man was sitting by a polished table stacked with books, and a woman was standing. Melissa took a seat
at the back and counted. Twenty-six people, all waiting expectantly. None of them was Braxton. The atmosphere hushed as the man – Gilles Barreau, recognisable as an older version of the author's photograph on the flyer – raised his eyes and smiled shyly. It was the woman who spoke first, to welcome the audience, especially, she said, those who knew the author's books well. There was a genial ripple of laughter at this.

She was rail thin, tall and bony. A cloud of dark hair and razor-sharp cheekbones, generous lips, very slightly slanted eyes. A striking woman, still wearing long hair over the age of fifty, but there was nothing hippyish about her.

‘We are very privileged to have this opportunity to hear his thoughts on literature and his work in progress. Ladies and gentlemen . . . the writer Gilles Barreau.'

The woman took her place in the audience, and Barreau unwound himself from his chair. He too was tall and thin, dressed in a golden brown corduroy suit and open-necked dark blue shirt, with hair down to his shoulders but retreating from his noble forehead. His face was dominated by a long hooked nose. It was hard to guess at his age from the back of the room. It could have been anything from forty to sixty.

‘As those of you who were kind enough to read
Unforgiven
will know, or at least those gracious enough to allow me to talk about it at such length in the Bar Paysanne all those evenings during its genesis and composition,' he began in a mellow
basso profundo,
to friendly laughter at what sounded like a local joke, ‘my themes are the small man and the big universe.'

References to part of his plot construction and details from
his books followed. They meant nothing to Melissa, but she understood the gist effortlessly, so long as she did not strain after words she did not recognise.

‘As the great Julian Adie, under whose auspices we gather for these evenings, once said to me—'

His words were an electrical charge, almost as if she had willed them into sound. She physically jolted.

‘—there is a deeper reality where we are all particles of the same time and space, what he called the continuum.'

Melissa sat further upright, concentrating hard, but he said nothing more about Adie.

Her mind wandered during some of the rest of his talk, which mainly concerned the ideas at the core of the novel he was newly engaged on, and the physical practicalities of writing. Then it was over, and she joined in the applause.

The striking-looking woman got up and came to the front again.

‘Thank you very much, Gilles, and thank you for coming everyone, as ever,' she said, beaming around. ‘For your diaries, the next literary soirée will centre on the work of Jean Giono, to be given by Monsieur Lambert who is coming from Forqualquier.'

‘Thank you, Annick,' said Barreau, and kissed her on both cheeks.

Annick.

Melissa stared at her, unable to think what to do next. Was that the end of the evening, or would there be more drinks and a chance to talk? They could all be going off to dinner now. All around chairs were being scraped back and the sound level was rising. Barreau and Annick were speaking confidentially
at the desk, while she was gathering up the books he had used during the lecture. Through the open door back into the main space, people were still standing around. The aroma of coffee drifted in. Perhaps she was in luck.

Should she approach Barreau, or Annick? Both were daunting propositions.

Uncertain whether to stay or go through to the main hall with the crowd Melissa tried to assess whether it might be better in here where it was less likely she would be interrupted by some jocular, back-slapping friend who had come to support them.

She made her move.

Annick looked up with a small, quizzical smile.

More composed than she felt, Melissa extended her hand and introduced herself. ‘It was very interesting – thank you so much.' Lame, inconsequential words.

Close up, Barreau was clearly older. Fine wrinkles fanned out from his eyes and his ready smile revealed ageing teeth, crossed on the bottom row.

‘You are very kind,' he said. The obvious question hung.

‘I came here yesterday to see the permanent exhibition devoted to Julian Adie.' There was nothing for it but the truth. Well, some of it. ‘I recently read his biography.'

Their twin stares were penetrating.

‘It was only then I realised that he had lived in Sommières for so many years. It seemed I was so close, I had to come and see it for myself . . . especially in the light of his famous “sense of place” . . .'

‘That's quite right,' said Barreau, reasonably. He tucked some notes into a battered leather folder.

Annick knew there was more. Melissa could tell from the
way she nodded, very deliberately. ‘So what did you think?' She was direct, still smiling, but there was definitely steel under her pleasant tone of voice.

‘I'm glad I came.'

Here was the chance. ‘I asked yesterday whether there was anyone here I could talk to about Adie, and I was given your name. You knew him, I believe?'

‘That's right.'

If she was involved in the running of L'Espace Julian Adie, she must have been used to all kinds of people asking about him, from scholarly researchers to the plain curious. She could so easily stonewall any questions.

A spark fired from her eyes, yellow-brown eyes like a wild animal, ringed expertly with kohl.

‘Would it be possible to talk to you about Julian Adie?' asked Melissa.

Drawn by the lit tower of the castle, she ventured further into the labyrinth of medieval passages before leaving, intrigued by the layers of history all around, the ancient buttress making near tunnels of some of the smaller alleys. The high walls were studded with the glow of lamps from the rooms behind. Down on the street, the shadows were deep, making masks of passing faces. Her heels echoed on the brick paving, hard as she tried to alter her steps to dull the sound.

At least she was leaving with something: a time and place to meet Annick back in Sommières in two days' time. But how likely was it that she would know anything about Elizabeth? Melissa was clutching at straws. She felt embarrassed already at the prospect of having to explain herself.

On the road back to St Cyrice there was almost no traffic. Yet she drove carefully, feeling detached and yet anxiously sensitive to every movement on the road, or more usually to the side of it. A small reckless animal scurried across the glare of her headlights, and the scrub moved so freakishly at one point that she feared a wild boar or a deer was about to run out into her path.

The
bergerie
was dark and still. Either Richard was in bed asleep, or he had not returned as intended. In the silence after she cut the engine, Melissa could hear only the rapid beats of her own heart. There was no moon. She opened the car door again while she found the right keys and used its feeble pool of illumination to unlock the house.

A red light blinked on the answering machine in the hall.

The metallic impersonation of Richard's voice filled the emptiness: ‘Still in Paris . . . taking longer than I thought. Sorry. I'm at the Hotel Delavigne. Out at a business thing tonight – it's about seven now – so I'll speak to you in the morning. Night.'

Melissa glanced at her watch. It was after midnight. She hesitated, then told herself that this was what normal couples did: they called late at night. The display held the number of the last incoming call. She pressed the button and waited, impatient to tell him about her evening.

‘Hôtel Delavigne,
bonsoir
.'

‘Mr Richard Quiller, please.'

‘Just one moment.'

Synthetic strings.

‘I'm sorry, Mr and Mrs Quiller have not returned yet. Would you like to leave a voicemail?'

She should have expected it. Perhaps the truth was that she had done, and all she was doing now was confirming her suspicions. Her heart did not lurch. All she felt was anger and resignation.

‘No,' she said. ‘No message.'

She should have asked how long they were staying, invented some plausible reason for asking when they had arrived, but she had no need of it, not really. She had all she needed to know. And all she wanted to know.

The charade was over.

Next morning she threw the clothes he hadn't already taken into a suitcase, along with his gadgets, his radio, books, swimming pool brochures with their pencil notes, and his ridiculous plans for the garden.

She didn't even want it in the hall. It went into the stone lean-to shed at the end of the house. Slamming the door on the last evidence he had been there, she stripped off and dived into the pool as if baptising her solitary state.

After a pot of black coffee, she was crackling like electricity along a wire.

Melissa rang the hotel in Paris and asked to be put through to Mrs Quiller.

The same metallic strings soared in her ear.

Then a woman's voice answered. ‘Hello?' There was not a trace of wariness. She recognised the voice straight away.

‘Sarah?' she asked pleasantly.

‘Yes.'

Melissa ignored the icy punch to the stomach.

‘Is Richard there?'

‘Er, not at the moment. Who is that?'

‘It's Melissa.'

‘Oh . . . Melissa!' Perhaps she was pointing, pantomiming at the phone for Richard's benefit. ‘I was just here . . . going over some paperwork, before this afternoon's meeting . . . how are you?'

‘Don't even try it!' cried Melissa. Then managed to pitch at some semblance of dispassionate control. ‘Tell Richard . . .
when
you see him . . . that if he comes back to St Cyrice it will only be to collect his stuff, which is in the outhouse, but really I would prefer never to see him again. He will be hearing from my solicitor.'

‘But—'

‘That's it. Spare me any more.'

She put the phone down.

Twisting the gold band until it hurt, she worked her wedding ring off. For weeks afterwards she was unable to stop probing the bare stem of that finger. Its absence felt strange, just as its newness had been, the first time she had slipped on the precious metal of Richard's promises.