Page 7 of The Magic of Provence (A Year in France #3)

There was a surprising amount to do to throw a fairy party for a baby girl’s first birthday celebration.

Fi was dreading the actual party. Julien and Noah would be there and she had no idea how much her sisters might have told these men they were so in love with.

They were both still virtually strangers to Fi but they were also officially a part of her family now, which kind of gave them permission to ask questions she might not want to answer.

The busyness of preparing for the party was exactly what she needed to prevent the reappearance of what had been a crippling shyness when she was a teenager.

Ellie collected them straight after breakfast the next morning and took Jeannie to Laura’s house where she was going to babysit both her granddaughters while the three sisters went shopping in the biggest supermarket in Vence.

With it being a public holiday the next day they needed to collect a cake that had been ordered from the patisserie and ensure they had everything they needed, like the ingredients for a charcuterie board for the adults and supplies to make cupcakes, fairy bread and a fruit platter for the children.

‘I’ve got a flower cutter for making the fairy bread so they’ll look like daisies,’ Laura said. ‘Don’t let me forget to get the butter.’

‘Don’t tell me you’ve come without a list?’ Ellie was grinning. ‘Who are you and what have you done with my big sister?’

‘I’ve got a list. I might have forgotten to put butter on it, that’s all.’

The banter made Fi smile. There was a new lightness in her step this morning.

The colours, on food packaging she wasn’t familiar with, looked astonishingly bright – like the bags of mustard-flavoured crisps, cans of cassoulet and even the red-and-white gingham lids on jam jars.

The snatches of French she could hear being spoken around her were musical drifts of sound, and the smell of an astonishing array of cheese and charcuterie in the delicatessen aisle tickled her nose and made her mouth water.

Her whole body felt like the curl of an embryonic smile.

Some of the credit for feeling so much better had to be due to the deep, dreamless sleep of her first night at La Maisonette, despite having already been asleep for a good part of the day.

Fi knew that far more of this new feeling was due to the level of reconnection she’d found with her family, however.

To feeling as if she was back where she belonged.

Feeling loved.

It was only now that it was lifting that she realised how heavy the burden of her secret had been and how far away it had pushed her from the people she loved the most. How had she managed to ignore the pain that it was causing on both sides?

She had missed out on the support she could have had herself, but she hadn’t been there in any meaningful way when her sisters had been facing life challenges, had she?

Fi had a lot to make up for, and making herself go to a party despite dreading it felt like a good first step in the right direction.

‘What are hundreds and thousands called in French?’ Ellie asked as she reached for a golden-foil-wrapped block of butter. ‘And do they even have sandwich sliced white bread?’

Laura consulted her phone. ‘ Nonpareils are sprinkles. Or possibly vermicelles multicolores . They should be in the baking supplies aisle. I have seen the kind of commercial white bread we need.’ She made a face. ‘I’ve never bought it, though. I get all our bread fresh at the boulangerie.’

‘There are toys in here,’ Fi exclaimed, looking around as she followed the trolley. ‘And clothes. I need to get a birthday present for Lili.’

‘There are better places to shop,’ Ellie said. ‘There’s a lovely bookshop in the Grand Jardin that has toys as well.’

‘I could drop you both off in the square on the way home,’ Laura said. ‘You can go shopping, and if you can collect the cake from the patisserie near the bus stop, I can go straight home and make sure Mam’s coping.’

* * *

Ellie and Fi scrambled out of Laura’s car near a charming, antique carousel at one corner of the central square in the small city of Vence.

They walked beneath the delicate green of spring foliage on the majestic plane trees that enclosed the Grand Jardin, heading for a shop on the other side of the square.

Fi was drawn straight to the shelves of stuffed animals. She picked up a panda bear and then a fluffy green frog but put them both down quickly.

‘Oh… it has to be this.’

A soft toy donkey. Grey and white with fabulously long ears and a tail with a black tuft on the end. She chose a pink gift bag with fairies on it and they made their way to the cashier, but her attention was caught by a small display of children’s picture books near the counter and she paused.

‘That was my favourite book when I was little.’ The cover of the classic story of Madeline was so familiar with the Eiffel Tower and the two straight lines of little girls walking in front of the blue-gowned nun. ‘And look – it’s in English!’

‘There must be lots of children here being brought up to be bilingual in French and English. It’s a perfect gift.’ Ellie was smiling. ‘Do you remember Laura reading it to us?’

Fi nodded.

‘You could be the first person to read it to Lili. I think Laura would love that as well.’

Fi found herself swallowing hard. This was going to be another difficult step back into her family but, if she could find the courage to let her adorable nieces into her heart, it could add something she had come to believe she would never have in her life.

Whether or not she deserved to have the joy of even other people’s children in her life was another matter.

One that could stay safely locked away, for as long as possible.

She’d already given her family more than enough to process, and perhaps they all needed the time out that focussing on Lili’s birthday was giving them.

They collected the birthday cake from the patisserie and admired the beautifully crafted, white-spotted red mushrooms on the top with a tiny fairy doll sitting amongst them.

‘ C’est génial ,’ Ellie told them. ‘ Merci infiniment .’

‘I need to learn some French,’ Fi said when they were back out on the street. ‘What’s génial ?’

‘Awesome. C’est génial is “this is awesome”.’

‘I’ll remember that.’

It was an easy walk to Laura’s house from there, back past the Grand Jardin.

Outside the boulangerie an old woman was sitting on the footpath, her back against the wall, a battered hat on the ground with coins in it.

She had a cane basket beside her, filled with tiny bouquets of white flowers and green leaves.

‘Oh!’ Ellie paused. ‘I’d almost forgotten. It’s the first of May tomorrow.’

Fi lifted her eyebrows. ‘Of course it is. That’s Lili’s birthday. Don’t you remember Laura joking about having been in labour on Labour Day?’

‘Yes, but it has another significance here as well.’ Ellie was opening her wallet. ‘It’s why they gave Lili her name, in fact. It’s not only Labour Day here but la Fête du Muguet .’ She handed a note to the woman. ‘ Six, s’il vous pla?t .’

‘ Merci .’ The woman counted out the posies – each made up of three stems of blooms and one leaf, tied with a piece of rustic brown string in a bow.

‘ Merci à vous .’ Ellie’s response sounded automatic. She held the posies up to Fi to sniff as they walked on.

‘Mmm… Lily of the valley.’

‘It’s a tradition to give these flowers to all your friends and family on May Day,’ Ellie told her. ‘It dates back to some medieval king. You’ll be able to ask Julien about it at the party. I think he paid more attention to his history lessons at school than Noah did.’

Maybe she noticed that Fi had suddenly gone silent.

‘You will come to the party, won’t you?’ Her tone was anxious. ‘It’s just family,’ she added, reassuringly. ‘Like it was at Christmas.’ She caught Fi’s gaze and her face softened. ‘ Your family.’

Fi took a deep breath. ‘I’m looking forward to it,’ she said.

* * *

Fi took her own car to Laura’s house the next afternoon, because it felt like an insurance policy that made it so much easier to gather the courage she needed. If it all became too much, at least she had the means to escape back to the little house. And the donkeys.

Surprisingly, she really was looking forward to the party. She could hear a burst of laughter as she followed the trail of pink and silver balloons they’d tied onto tree branches that led to the terrace at the back of the house.

Male laughter.

She was ready for this. Ready to meet her brothers-in-law and accept the kisses on both her cheeks because… well… this was France and that’s how people greeted their friends and family.

What Fi wasn’t ready for and what stopped her dead in her tracks was that it wasn’t only Julien and Noah out here on the terrace. There was another man with them. A total stranger.

And… he had to be the most beautiful man Fi had ever seen in her entire life.

He looked like a film star. Or a model that could have been used for some famous statue – like Michelangelo’s David – that needed someone with a perfect face and a body to match. He was tall and slim, with black, wavy hair and dark eyes…

Dear Lord… dark eyes that were looking straight back. At her …

Fi couldn’t move.

She couldn’t even take a breath.

A heartbeat longer and this could have been excruciatingly embarrassing, but she was saved by a small human shape that appeared with a huge smile on his face.

‘ Tatie Fi…’

It was five-year-old Theo, Julien’s son and Ellie’s stepson, and he was closely followed by the rest of her family. Bonnie was in her mother’s arms, dressed in a pale pink sleepsuit dotted with red hearts.

‘She’s so cute .’ The urge to reach out and touch one of Bonnie’s tiny hands was irresistible. Her hand was actually starting to move towards her niece as Ellie smiled proudly.

‘Would you like a cuddle?’