Two Days in Biarritz (2 page)

The waitress came over and placed the receipt on a saucer as Annabel retuned from the ladies’.

“Where’s Kate?”

“Your friend, Madame? She has left.” 

Why did she do that?
Annabel felt around under her seat until her hand fell on her bag.
Where did she go?
This was odd. Annabel was anxious to continue her discussion about Damien.
Her mind was a dizzy haze of twinkling lights and aromas from the kitchen. She’d had too much to drink and needed a coffee to bring her back to normal. She reached into her bag and put some money on the table.

“Your friend paid, Madam,” the waitress said.

Annabel stood up on unsteady legs and felt around for her coat that had fallen off the back of her chair.
This was most strange.

“Would you like a coffee?” the waitress asked Annabel, noticing her condition.

“No, thank you, I really have to go.” She had flashes of her conversation with Kate. She had taken it very well, considering. There were no outbursts or condemnations –
but where could she have gone to?
She carefully stepped out on to the street, anxious not to fall but felt the ground swaying up to greet her. She couldn’t remember the way back to the hotel but the steady roar of the ocean called her to take a left.

“Annabel!” a voice called but she ignored it.

She hobbled down the road, the cobblestones feeling like stones in her shoes. A strong arm grabbed her from behind and she turned to see deep brown eyes stare back at her.

“Nico!” she exclaimed and flung her arms around his neck. Her legs went from under her for a second and he carefully held her up with his arms gripped around her waist.

“It’s lucky I found you, Annabel,” he whispered. “You should not be on your own with so much to drink.”

“’ave you seen Kate?” Annabel was disoriented and her memory had turned to mush.

“I was on my way to Desperados,” Nico said, surprised to find her in such a state. Where was her friend? “I will take you back to the hotel.”

The receptionist had seen some sights that night already but was shocked when Annabel was assisted up to the desk only a few minutes after her friend disappeared into the night in the taxi.

“What is your room number, Annabel?” Nico asked.

“Can’t remember,” Annabel said, her head slumping under its own weight.

“
Vingt-sept,”
the receptionist replied, handing the key over to Nico, judging that Annabel was in no fit state to make it to the second floor on her own.

Annabel was getting heavier with every step. Nico negotiated the bedroom door like a fire-fighter and plonked her down on the bed where she collapsed in a heap. Annabel moaned and flipped over to
the other side of the double bed.

Nico put the key down on the dressing-table and left the drunken woman in her slumber. Maybe he had been wrong about her after all. She didn’t look as appealing anymore.

* * *

A few hours later the sun beamed through the window and burned onto Annabel’s closed eyelids. She ruffled around the bed, unsure of her surroundings. She raised her head with some difficulty. The room was empty. She floundered around looking for her watch.
8.02am.

Where’s Kate? What happened last night? How did I get back
?

It was all incredibly vague – she had only snatches of memories to cling to. But she remembered telling about Damien. Why did she do that?

She went to the bathroom in search of her friend but all of her belongings were gone. She looked for Kate’s bag but that too was gone. A sinking feeling ran through her stomach. It was a nightmare. She looked around for her handbag and was grateful to find her mobile phone still sitting in the pocket. She dialled Kate’s number but it rang out for a few seconds before stopping suddenly. This was serious. She really needed to find out where Kate went last night. And she only had a couple more hours until her flight back to Dublin. She wished she could turn the clock back. Just forty-eight hours and everything would be as it was, as it should be.

Chapter 2

Two days before

Thursday 9
th
March, 10.50 a.m.

Annabel stared out the window of the plane at the wispy clouds against the perfect cerulean-blue sky, her thoughts drifting back to the first time she saw Kate. It certainly didn’t feel like twenty-seven years ago. They were two scrawny girls, barely teenagers, thrown together by fate and circumstance. She could just as easily have sat somewhere else that day.

Time had left its mark on both of them. She
tried to imagine how she would feel if she were in Kate’s shoes. She wanted to kill Stefan for walking out on her best friend. It was such terrible timing coming up to her fortieth birthday. It was always easier for men – he had a new girlfriend ten years his junior and a baby on the way. Despite her positive and energetic nature, Kate had to be devastated.

“
Ladies and gentlemen, we will shortly be arriving in Biarritz airport, I ask you to make sure your seatbelts are fastened and your tables are in the upright position
.”

Annabel looked down and rearranged her seatbelt as the plane steadily started to make its descent.

The journey through Arrivals was refreshing after the hustle and bustle of Dublin airport. Her bag was on the conveyor belt in what seemed like a matter of seconds and she walked straight out to the taxi-bay where a line of cabs were waiting. The chill of winter still hung in the air – it didn’t feel any warmer than Dublin before she left. She took the Megane at the front of the line and settled into the back seat as the driver courteously put her bag in the boot.

She was prepared mentally for a few scattered houses and bars by the road as Kate had told her they were visiting peasant country but she hadn’t expected them to be so pretty. By the time she arrived on the outskirts of
Biarritz she felt like she had travelled through a colourful painting.

As
the taxi rolled up to the hotel, Annabel could hear the roar of the Atlantic Ocean beating off the edge of the seashore. The perfectly polished promenade of granite tiles sparkled with reflected light from a recent shower. To their right the bare trees bent over, their branches curled away from the gushes of warm wind rising off the sea. Annabel was almost in a trance at the scene.

“
Quinze euro, s’il vous plaît,”
the driver said, interrupting her meditation.

She
held up the digits on her right hand three times.

“
Oui, Madame
, fifteen
.”

The driver
huddled underneath his beige jacket with his curly head tilting backwards to see his passenger. Annabel dug deep in her purse and handed over the exact amount. How convenient it had become to travel to France! No money exchange. Frequent flights. Not like the old days when she travelled every summer as a teenager with Kate.

“
Merci
,” she said, stepping out of the car.

The driver
took her small travel-bag out of the boot and left it in front of the hotel.

Hotel Windsor
: the name conjured images of a time gone by when the English upper classes frequented the resort. It was much as she had expected but the smell of the sea and the roar of the waves were more thrilling than she had imagined they would be. This sleepy little French town at the end of winter was an excellent choice for their reunion at this fragile time.

She steadily ascended the stairs to the foyer
, pulling her bag along without difficulty.

The receptionist was dressed in a dark suit with equally dark
-rimmed glasses framing her eyes. Her black hair was pulled severely into a French knot.

She greeted Annabel with a courteous smile.
“Bonjour, Madame.”

Before she got a chance to reply,
an excited voice called “Annabel!” from behind her.

She swung around, tossing
her long blonde curls away from her face, and saw her friend rise up from her seat, her arms ready to embrace her, those doe-shaped brown eyes that had melted the hearts of so many men over the years glowing. Her hair was dyed of course, because Kate’s hair wasn’t that black even at thirteen. The reddish-pink highlights were a bit of a shock but Kate assured her later that red was the new blonde in French fashion.

The two women rushed to each other like old lovers and held on tightly in a bear
hug. Kate’s pink jumper was soft as it brushed against Annabel’s cheek.

“I can’t
believe you got here so quickly! I was just settling down to ring a couple of galleries,” Kate said with a beaming smile.

“I can’t believe it either
– my flight was fifteen minutes early.”

They stood back from each other
, taking stock. They had long been familiar with the lines on each other’s faces, they both looked well.

“I love the hair.”

“Well, you know me, I’ll try anything once,” Kate grinned. “Your mac is gorgeous and I hate you for fitting into those skinny jeans.”

Annabel smiled inwardly. She was finally slimmer and trimmer than Kate

“Do you want to get lunch?”

“Yeah, good idea. Our room won’t be ready for a while.”

They left their bags in the care of the receptionist.

“I need to freshen up
first, what about you?” Kate asked.

“Yeah
–
toilettes
this way.”

The two women glided through the small and informal lobby decked with cosy leather armchairs and ubiquitous
MDF-trimmed bar. Annabel’s handbag swung over her shoulder and her cream raincoat rested neatly in the crook of her other arm. She observed the multicoloured embroidered mule bag that Kate swung nonchalantly from her arm.

“When did you start to use a handbag?”
she asked in amazement. She was always the one weighed down with eye-shadows and hairbrushes and was now startled by the huge appendage carried by Kate.

“I need the make-up to hide the wrinkles. Time’s finally caught up with me as we are here to witness
!”

“I’m right behind you
, girl!”

The two st
ood in front of the brightly lit mirrors fixing and tweaking the blemishes on their faces.

“You wouldn’t have a deodorant?” Kate asked.

“Sure!” Annabel said, delving deep into her bag.

There was a familiarity about the question. Even though they hadn’t seen each other in nearly two years
, they both appreciated the intimacy they shared. It could only be forged by years of friendship that had started when they had no preconceptions or expectations of how a friend was meant to be. Annabel was the closest Kate had to a sister and, although Annabel had two of her own, she had shared all her landmark moments in life with Kate.

“I feel much better,” Annabel said
, wiping her hands clean with the courtesy towel.

The two women
strode out of the hotel in search of the wonderful restaurant they felt sure was waiting for them. They passed under a Victorian walkway, beautifully decorated with wrought-iron moulding, as the sun started to peep through the clouds.

“How’s
Colin and the kids?”

“I swear
, Kate, sometimes I wonder how they manage to function when I’m not around. Then to top it all, Colin’s not talking to me because I went to a fashion show last night – would you credit it? I spent two hours yesterday afternoon making Shepherd’s Pie and lasagne so they wouldn’t starve over the next two days and he’s in a huff because I go out the night before coming away,” Annabel sighed.

“He knows he’d be lost without you. Did the kids mind you going
away?”

“Sam is obsessed with his X
-box, Taylor is too busy with her horse and I told Rebecca I was getting her an art set that you could only get in France so she let me go with her blessing.”

“So your
kids aren’t materialistic then!” Kate smiled. “What was the fashion show like?”

“It was the only pla
ce to be in Howth last night. June Stokes did MC,
Image
magazine were there and all the major glossies. I couldn’t have missed it. Besides the proceeds were in aid of the school so I just had to go, didn’t I?”

“Of course you had to support the school,
” Kate grinned and nodded her head.

It
was so like Annabel to be found mingling mid-week with the local cognoscenti. Annabel had nothing to prove to anyone but was always trying to prove something to herself. She feared so much the loss of her Yummy Mummy status.

They leisurely came to the end of the walkway. Annabel was first to spot
some locals behind a restaurant window serving themselves couscous from a hand-painted bowl.