Page 26 of The Magic of Provence (A Year in France #3)

‘He wants to see you.’ Jeannie let her gaze rest for a beat on each of her three daughters in turn. ‘All of you.’

‘Nope.’ Laura’s voice was as pinched as her face. ‘Not going to happen.’

Jeannie could feel the force field of whatever protection her firstborn daughter was pulling around herself.

She could understand why but, over the last few days, with the time she’d spent with Gordon Gilchrist in the hospital, she truly believed that this was the way forward.

A chance to heal something that had been pushed out of sight and allowed to fester for far too long.

‘Just to let him say hullo,’ Jeannie added. ‘It doesn’t need to be more than a minute or two. Seeing him… being in the same room with him…’ She had to pause and swallow past an odd wee lump in her throat. ‘I know it won’t be easy but you might find it makes things… I don’t know, clearer perhaps?’

It had for her. She’d known she still loved the man she’d married.

That she still missed him. But those feelings had been like faded sepia photographs compared to the ones that were beginning to show signs of life again now.

True love never dies, it seemed. Even if you tried to shut it away in a suffocating space so it couldn’t continue to hurt.

They might be more like strangers than husband and wife now, and it was impossible to know if they could ever be more than that again, but one thing was becoming very clear to Jeannie: she still cared very deeply about Gordon.

And she could forgive him. Maybe the real question was whether he could forgive himself.

He was still grappling with the fact that the nightmares that had haunted him for the entire life he could remember were actually memories of something real that he hadn’t been able to remember.

She could see how bewildering it was for him.

That it was frightening. And very, very shameful.

She was treading carefully so that it didn’t become too much for either of them to cope with.

Laura wasn’t about to tread carefully. ‘Things are clear enough already,’ she snapped. ‘He ruined our lives.’

Jeannie kept a steady gaze on her. Neither Laura nor her sisters would exist if it hadn’t been for the good fortune of her meeting and falling in love with Gordon.

And aye, things had become agonisingly difficult, but from where she was standing now, Laura’s life was far from ruined.

She had the love of a wonderful man and the blessing of a gorgeous baby girl.

She was living in a stunning house in one of the most beautiful places on earth and she was part of a family that was united again. Becoming steadily closer. Stronger.

Laura was clearly aware of her mother’s gaze. The way she dipped her head was almost an apology, but there was defiance in the flick of eye contact.

You needed protection back then , the look said. And you need it now, even if you don’t realise it. It was what I was supposed to do when I was the only one of us old enough to know what was happening. I failed back then. I’m not going to fail this time.

Ellie was frowning. She didn’t want to be in conflict with her oldest sister but she didn’t want to upset her mother, either.

She’d been the first to go looking for a connection with the French side of their family when she’d found the old photos that had taken her to the village of Saint-Martin-Vésubie, where she’d found the painting she’d fallen in love with.

She hadn’t told Jeannie about any of that because she hadn’t wanted to upset her.

The girls had all known how shocked she’d been when news of the inheritance of this little house – such a tangible link to a part of her life that had been destroyed – had come out of the blue like that.

Was Ellie curious about her father?

Aye. The way she let her gaze slide towards the painting hanging over the fireplace was a dead giveaway.

She’d had no idea that the artist she’d seen in the market when she’d first laid eyes on that painting was her father, and she might not recognise him as the same man when she saw him again.

Just yesterday, Gordon had been deemed well enough to pay a visit to the hairdressing salon in the hospital.

He’d had his long hair cut, his beard shaved off, even his eyebrows trimmed. It had made him look so much younger.

As young as that photograph of him she still had on her bedside table at home.

As good-looking as he’d ever been in that rugged Highlander way. The kind of man that could make a kilt a completely masculine, and very sexy, item of clothing.

So familiar that Jeannie knew, in that first glance, that her heart had actually stopped, because she’d felt the violent thump as it kickstarted itself again.

It didn’t hurt but, oddly, she’d been sure she could feel a trickle of blood deep in her chest. It felt as though she’d opened the door of a time machine and she was meeting the older version of the person whose image she’d kept in her mind, and her heart, for so many years.

The man who had been the absolute love of her life.

But, for whatever reason – her age, perhaps? – the last thing she’d expected to feel was any kind of physical attraction to him again. It was more than a wee bit shocking, to be honest. This journey was supposed to be about finding peace, not stirring up new emotional challenges.

And the emotions could be wrenching.

Showing Gordon photographs of his daughters that she had on her phone had not helped in retrieving memories. These were adult women and strangers to him. The picture of Lili, however – who looked exactly like Laura had at that age – had made him cry.

Jeannie had cried with him. She had touched him for the first time, for no reason other than a need for that physical connection. Holding his gaze, for the moment he’d accepted the eye contact, and then holding his hand, even after the screen of her phone had gone dark.

And yesterday he’d had tears in his eyes when he said he wanted to see his daughters.

His words had been in English, which he was, haltingly, beginning to use again, but it wasn’t just finding his way back to an almost forgotten language that made what he said so tentative.

He didn’t believe that they would want to see him .

One of them definitely didn’t.

One was torn.

And Fiona? The child who’d always been the most like her father? The child who had been so afraid that she was the most like her father? She was very still, as if she – like Jeannie – was absorbing how her sisters were reacting to the information.

There was something different about Fiona in the last few days. Ever since she’d come back from Menton, where she’d gone with Julien’s friend, Christophe, after he’d heard that his grandmother was gravely ill.

‘ I just wanted to help ,’ she’d said, on her return. ‘ And I could. I looked after Heidi while he was with his family in the hospital .’

She’d stayed the night, though, hadn’t she?

Jeannie hadn’t missed the glance that passed between Laura and Ellie when they’d heard that.

Fiona had shaken her head and said that was only because it had been late by then.

And there’d been a crisis. She would never have forgiven herself if something else had gone wrong and it was her fault that Christophe was too far away to be there for his grandmother’s final moments.

His nonna was lovely, she’d said. Like the grandmother that none of them had ever had.

Nothing had happened between herself and Christophe, she’d added, with a finality that precluded any further interrogation. Nothing .

It could well be that she was protesting too much, but Jeannie wasn’t going to pry and the warning look she’d given the others seemed to have hit its mark. Whatever had – or hadn’t – happened, Fiona seemed…

…more at peace.

Aye… she was happier.

She wasn’t planning to go back to Scotland, she’d announced.

She was going to apply for a long-stay visa on the grounds of having family here, to get past the ninety-day limit for a visit, and Laura said she’d help her with an application for citizenship, which was possible when you had a French grandparent.

Fi said that, if it was okay with Ellie, she’d like to stay on in La Maisonette for a while.

She could pay rent. With her share of the inheritance that had come from this house being sold to Julien, she had enough money to live on while she decided what to do next with her life.

She might travel, she’d said. Or get a job somewhere.

Ellie’s eyes had lit up. She’d told Fiona that she didn’t need to pay rent; caring for the house and the donkeys would be enough, especially if she was interested in working for Ellie.

‘ I’ve got an idea for a business ,’ she’d said.

‘ I was on the point of starting it when I got pregnant with Bonnie and it got shelved. I’ve even got a name for it.

Two names, I haven’t quite decided. It’s either “Stone Flowers” or “A Touch of France”.

They’re going to be paving stones with mosaic flowers set into them, like small pieces of the old pathways in St Paul de Vence . ’

My goodness, how excited had Ellie sounded, and looked, as her words tumbled out.

‘ I’ve got bags of concrete and mortar in the cellar and buckets of beach stones I’ve already collected but I desperately need another pair of hands.

Ones that aren’t going to be required by a small human at inconvenient moments, like when a batch of concrete needs to be used before it sets . ’

Laura had approved of the idea.

‘ I’ve got contacts ,’ she’d said. ‘ With interior and exterior designers – here and in Scotland. I could help, too. ’

Jeannie let the flash of what had been going on with her daughters in the last few days fade from her thoughts.

Laura certainly wasn’t about to approve the idea of visiting her father. She was opening her mouth to say something else but Jeannie beat her to it.