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‘Are you sure you’re going to be OK?’ Amber said, standing by the taxi.

‘You know I’d stay if I could…’ They’d spent some time in the empty café, coming to terms with what they’d learned.

Becky had laughed, cried, laughed again, could barely get her head around the news.

But then Amber had checked her watch, grown paler, rushed upstairs to pack in time for her taxi.

‘You can’t stay a couple more days?’ Becky had asked her earlier.

‘I wish I could.’

‘It’s all good,’ Becky said now, trying to keep her voice from wavering. ‘I get it. Work comes first.’

‘Well, not always. Just…’

‘Seriously. It’s OK.’ She hoped her tone sounded convincing to Amber. In reality, she needed her best friend more than ever. But if Amber couldn’t see that this was the time to call in sick for a couple of days herself, or request unpaid leave or something, she wasn’t going to beg.

‘I really am sorry.’

‘It’s fine. Honestly. I know your work is a bit… there’s a lot of pressure.’ Becky forced her lips into a smile. It wasn’t fair of her to expect so much of Amber. It was just that every fibre in her being needed someone familiar at her side while she dealt with this unexpected twist in her life.

‘There really is. A lot of pressure. And there’s more. I was going to…’ Amber put her hand to her chest. ‘I wanted to talk to you about it all. There just wasn’t a moment. And then the maire guy said… well, you know.’

Becky nodded. ‘We can talk later if you want?’

‘OK.’ Amber checked the time on her phone. ‘I really am sorry.’

‘It’s OK,’ Becky said again. ‘At least you were here when it happened. You might not have believed me otherwise.’ She gave a weak smile.

‘Very true. I think if you’d called me and told me Maud was alive, I’d assume you were having a breakdown,’ she admitted.

‘A burnout and a breakdown?’

‘Why not? You always were an overachiever.’ They smiled genuinely at each other now.

‘I will take care of her, don’t worry,’ said Pascal who’d arrived home shortly after Georges had departed to find Becky yet again red-eyed from crying and sipping water.

‘Thanks. But I don’t really need it. I’m fine, honestly,’ Becky said.

‘Well, then I will be there to help you if you need.’

‘Thanks.’ They’d both said in unison. Then laughed. ‘Jinx!’ Becky said, harking back to a playground game they’d used to play.

‘Yeah, that doesn’t work in your thirties,’ Amber had said.

‘Damn!’

The taxi driver revved the engine, just enough to remind them that he was on the clock and that Amber did need to start her journey to the airport.

‘Have a good flight.’ Becky stepped forward and gave Amber a hug. Her friend gripped her tightly, almost as if trying to communicate how strongly she felt through the strength of her hold. ‘You really do complete me,’ she whispered, and felt a reciprocal squeeze.

When she stepped back, Amber gave her a small smile and slipped into the taxi, turning her face forwards as it pulled away and took her towards the airport.

Then it was just Becky and Pascal in the early evening sun.

Becky sat down on the edge of the pavement and hugged her knees, watching orange rays turn the tops of the buildings a golden colour, flooding one half of the pavement with light, but sending the road into darkness.

If she was honest, she was struggling to hold it all together.

Over the last twenty or so years, she’d barely given Maud a thought.

But since she’d been here, certain her aunt was dead, she’d started to remember her.

Mourn her in a way that she hadn’t before.

Now, suddenly, Maud was alive. And although it had always been the case, to her it felt surreal, as if something magical had happened, as if she’d been given a second chance.

Pascal moved forward and sat next to her, saying nothing. A physical reminder that he was there, even if he didn’t know what to say.

And what could they say? She wasn’t quite sure where the misunderstanding had come from.

Receiving the solicitor’s letter about the gift her aunt had bestowed on her, the language it had used.

The fact that she’d been reading it as a foreigner and had been too stubborn to hire a translator had meant that she’d jumped to all the wrong conclusions.

And Maud had seemed so old, even when she was a child, that she’d assumed the woman was at least in her nineties even back then.

Instead she was eighty-two, had moved to a retirement house – a kind of care home for those who needed minimal help – because she could no longer run the café, and had begun to struggle on the stairs.

‘She had no one to care for her,’ Pascal said.

‘And I think she didn’t want to be a burden.

Besides, she is happy at this place – it is not for those who are waiting to die, not immediately.

But in fact, it is full of people who are being cared for so that they can live. ’

Becky’s grandfather had been in a care home towards the end of his life. She had visited sporadically, hating the smell of the place, the fact that her grandfather had seemed to age rapidly once in situ , becoming more and more dependent and, eventually, confused.

Perhaps this was different.

‘I did wonder why people kept saying they were visiting her,’ she admitted. ‘I thought it was nice that they paid their respects, but it did seem a little… excessive.’ She gave a small smile.

‘ J’imagine ,’ he said. ‘We must have seemed very strange to you.’

‘I just can’t… She must think I’m awful ignoring her for so long after she gave me the café. And then coming over but not visiting. Why didn’t you tell me?’

Pascal shrugged. ‘I believed you would come eventually. I thought perhaps you were nervous because you hadn’t seen her. Of course I could not know what you really thought.’

‘No.’ Becky shook her head. ‘What an idiot.’

‘We are all idiots in our own way.’

‘Thanks. That’s… very reassuring.’

Pascal laughed. ‘I love your British humour and – how do you say? – sarcasm. How you find a reason to laugh even when the situation is bizarre or even sad.’

‘I think we just do it because it stops us from crying.’ Becky smiled, blinked rapidly and managed somehow to stop her tear ducts filling again.

Pascal nodded. ‘But you have no problem with letting out your emotions?’

Becky laughed properly then. ‘If I told anyone back home you’d said that, they’d be stunned!’ she said. ‘Honestly, I haven’t cried in years until I came here.’

‘It is that bad here?’

‘No… it’s…’ she began, then looked at his face. ‘Oh, you’re joking.’

He grinned. ‘See, I am learning the British humour.’

They were silent for a moment.

‘Do you think you will visit her now?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘I’m going to… try. Tomorrow, maybe? If you can show me the way? But I’m kind of terrified. That’s why I was a bit down that Amber decided to go. You know, in spite of everything.’

‘I think she felt bad too.’

‘Yeah.’ Becky nodded. ‘Still, it would be so much easier going through this with her.’

‘You are partners, perhaps?’

‘Not in a romantic sense. Just been friends since… forever. We rent a flat together. We’re stand-ins for each other’s useless families who never seem to turn up to anything, or when they do turn up, seem to create difficulties…’

‘You have known her since a child?’

‘Yeah. We were five, I think. At school. She moved to the area and I was the one picked to look after her when she started class. We’ve seen each other through everything.

Her parents’ divorce, my dad… when he died.

She was there for me. Kind of propped me up a bit.

Until I could carry on.’ Becky picked up a little stone and began rolling it between her fingers.

‘Just wished she could have visited Maud with me. Selfish probably. I know she’s got her own stuff on. ’

‘She has problems?’

‘Nothing like that. Although I think work’s a bit full-on right now.

She’s an accountant and I’m not sure she likes it that much.

Only she doesn’t have any holiday left in her entitlement, so she’d have had to ring in sick or take unpaid leave in order to stay.

I do get it. But I’m still sad about it. ’

‘I expect she is too. She seemed sad for much of the time here, I thought.’

‘Yeah?’ Becky looked at him. ‘I didn’t notice that.’

‘Perhaps you know her better than I do. She just seemed very… thoughtful. Quiet.’

Pascal straightened his legs, then turning slightly, clambered to his feet. ‘Listen, I am no Amber, but I can take you tomorrow. Go with you when you see your aunt who has risen from the dead.’

‘You will?’ She got up too, touched his arm.

‘ Oui, of course. It might feel a little strange for you. Perhaps for both of you.’

‘And do you think… would it be OK if you kind of explained to her what I thought. Maybe call her before we go? Because it’s a lot to explain and might be kind of… awkward.’

He looked at her. ‘Yes, if you want. Although I think Maud will probably find it very funny. She has a remarkable sense of humour. There is nothing wrong with her mind, it is sure.’

‘Still…’

‘Of course.’

Becky felt a flood of gratefulness rush through her. She stepped forward and gave Pascal a squeeze, wrapping her arms around his back. ‘Thank you so much,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry about when I said you were nothing, you’d done nothing.’

‘And I am sorry that I said you were just a job.’

‘Oh yes,’ she remembered. ‘I forgot you’d said that.’

‘Ah, merde ! Then I wish I hadn’t reminded you!’

She looked up at him, hands still loosely around his waist. And in that moment, he bent down and let his lips gently touch hers.

Becky had felt adrift – lost without her job, away from home, away from Amber – and trying to come to terms with the wonderful, terrifying, strange news that her aunt was alive.

But as soon as their lips touched, she felt a jolt of connection.

As if somehow all of the uncertainty, the feelings that fizzed and churned in her head, her stomach, stilled.

And she felt suddenly rooted. That even though she was two hundred miles and a stretch of sea away from her London flat, from her mother, and even though her best friend was at this minute moving farther and farther from her, she was closer to home than she’d realised.