Page 24

Two days on, when her phone trilled, she guiltily pressed Dismiss. It was the second time Mum had rung that day. As she looked at the screen, frowning, and pressed Decline, she saw Pascal looking at her from behind the stepladder.

‘Everything OK?’ he asked.

‘Just Mum.’ She made a face.

‘You are declining a call from your mother?’ His face was somewhere between impressed and aghast. ‘I would never dare.’

‘Not sure I dare myself. I’ll be for it when I finally do answer,’ she admitted.

‘Have you had a fight? Argued?’

‘No, it’s just…’ She dipped her brush into the tin of white paint and began to stroke it onto the skirting board, turning it from dull mahogany to something fresher. The walls were now finished, and this was the final coat.

She hated decorating. But spending time with Pascal, barely talking, just getting on with the job in hand, had been surprisingly soothing. There was something lovely, too, about seeing the café gradually become a new version of itself.

In the days that had followed their night together, they’d settled into something that felt like a friendship.

Neither mentioned anything more and while for her, the question sometimes fizzed between them, she didn’t let herself say anything out loud.

What was there to say? I wish you wanted to stay and be with me, even though I’d turn you down if you asked ? ‘It’s complicated.’

Pascal laughed. ‘Complicated, I understand completely.’ He stepped back from where he’d finished papering the back wall and inspected his work, hands on hips.

She watched him – his narrow frame in its customary chequered (and now paint-splattered) shirt, messy jeans; hair with a few flecks of blue paint in it.

And felt a sudden rush of affection for him, but forced herself to face facts.

They’d had a one-night stand and now he was helping her decorate, probably more out of loyalty to Maud than anything else.

‘Have you spoken to your mum yet?’ she asked. ‘About your book deal, moving back to Paris?’

She’d meant it to be a genuine question, but he turned and laughed. ‘Touché,’ he said. ‘I am also guilty of withholding information from my mother. Although I would ignore her calls at my peril. But then it is complicated for me too.’

‘Sorry!’ she said, grimacing. ‘You know what, if we ever have kids, let’s make a promise never to… well, you know. Pressure them to the extent that they have to lie to us.’

‘Kids?’ He looked at her, eyes sparkling with mischief.

She flushed. ‘I meant, with other people of course.’

He gave her a little grin that showed he’d already known how she’d intended the sentence to sound. ‘Yes, we will have to make sure we do not use our children to right our own wrongs. Fulfil our regrets.’

‘Is that what you think our mums are doing?’

He shrugged. ‘My mother thinks she should have started younger, made more of herself. So it is my job to live her life instead of my own. At least, that’s my impression.’

She nodded. She understood. ‘With my mum, I suppose it’s more about protecting me. She went through some hardship, and having money makes her feel safe. She just wants the same for me, I guess.’

Pascal nodded. ‘ Je comprends .’

Straightening up, Becky inspected the section of skirting board she’d now finished. There were just a couple of metres to go. Pascal’s eyes followed hers.

‘It looks good,’ he said.

‘Yours too.’

‘I think perhaps another day or two and it will be complete.’

And then what? she wondered. Would she start trying to employ a new manager?

Tell Maud it was all too much, and that someone local ought to take it over?

Leave Vaudrelle and return to work? Part of her still wanted to drop the brush, flag down a cab (a literal impossibility in Vaudrelle) and get back on a plane as soon as possible: reclaim her life, her flat, her best friend.

And her work too, she supposed. Although for some reason, although she loved her job, she didn’t feel in such a rush where that was concerned.

She sighed more loudly than she intended.

‘What is wrong?’ Pascal said, walking over to the skirting board as if to take another look. ‘It looks fine!’

‘It’s not the painting. Just… feeling a bit…’ she said, shrugging in the place of an adequate word.

The past days had been spent visiting Maud, working in the café, then taking a break before continuing to decorate in the evening.

Busy days. But productive. And they’d given her the kind of buzz her job had used to do before it became all-consuming, and she hadn’t had time to think about whether she enjoyed it or not.

She’d been struck on one of her walks yesterday when she glimpsed herself in the window of a shop and seen that she was smiling. She’d looked different. Lighter.

But that was because, she’d reasoned later, she was effectively on holiday. This wasn’t real life. If she stayed – and she wasn’t really considering that, not in any real sense – these exceptional, unusual days would become ordinary days. Would she enjoy them so much then?

She wasn’t sure what the future held, or what the right direction was.

But she knew that she wanted to see more of Maud while she could; that she wanted to find out why Amber was angry at her – if indeed she was.

Against her better judgement, she still had this underlying desire to get Mum’s approval; to make her proud.

And all of these things fought one another daily in her mind.

Except when she was decorating, or sometimes when she was talking with Pascal, and she found herself briefly existing only in the moment – the feeling slipping away the second it was noticed.

‘You are unhappy?’ Pascal asked. ‘Homesick, perhaps?’ He picked up a second brush and dipped it into the gloss she was using for the skirting board. Then, kneeling down a little farther along the wall, he began to help her with her task.

‘I just don’t know,’ she said. ‘There are so many unanswered questions, if that makes sense?’

‘With Amber?’

‘With everything! I came here with all these plans. This… agenda. And now Maud’s alive, and there’s no way I can sell the café. And Mum’s offered me money – I could buy my dream flat, go back to my job. Live the life I wanted so much.’

‘But?’

‘I just don’t know any more,’ she said simply. ‘All my life I’ve had this planned trajectory – this route that I was expected to take. And the easiest thing was just to take it. It’s worked out great… on paper.’

‘But you are not happy?’

‘I’m just not sure I know what I want! How am I supposed to decide what to do if I have no idea where I’m headed?’ She longed suddenly for the clarity of one of Mum’s five-year plans. A recipe to follow to lead her life in the right direction.

‘Your eye,’ Pascal said, seemingly noticing immediately. ‘It is vibrating.’

Not again! She touched her hand to her eye, before realising she had paint on her fingers. Instantly, it began to sting. ‘Oh, God.’

‘ Attends ,’ Pascal told her, standing up and striding quickly to the sink.

He ran a clean tea towel under the water then rushed back, kneeling down next to her and gently dabbing at her eye.

‘I think it is OK,’ he said, giving her the towel to hold over her eye, which was still stinging slightly.

‘I don’t think anything got into the eye itself.

’ He gently put his hand under her elbow and encouraged her to stand and walk to one of the yellow chairs.

She sat down gratefully, not enjoying the throb of her eye, but if she was honest, enjoying his touch; his evident care.

‘I will get the doctor,’ he said. ‘Just to be sure.’

‘No! Oh, you really needn’t.’

‘He is a friend, he will come,’ he said confidently, getting out his phone.

She was grateful, moments later, when he told her the doctor was nipping out of the surgery at the end of the village to make a quick house call. ‘He will be here in five minutes.’

‘Really? That’s impressive.’ She tried to remain stoic despite the throbbing and stinging sensation.

The doctor arrived, sporting jeans and a short-sleeved chequered shirt. He looked to be around fifty years old, his hair still glossy and full, the lines around his eyes and mouth giving his age away. He looked at her eye and tutted. ‘ Mon Dieu , you were lucky, madame .’

While adding a solution to some cotton wool and expertly dabbing at her sore eye, the doctor explained how while a tiny bit of paint had entered it, it had confined itself mainly to her lower lid. Any more and it might have been a catastrophe.

She felt her heart turn over. It was that serious?

The idea of it made her feel a little shaky.

The doctor created a makeshift patch from some gauze and plaster tape, leaned down and carefully applied it to her sore eye.

‘You will be OK. I will send a nurse tomorrow to remove the dressing,’ he said, straightening up.

Pascal shook the doctor’s hand and walked with him to just outside the door, where the two men stayed chatting in the sunshine before the older man turned and walked back in the direction of his surgery.

Pascal re-entered to find her holding her hand over the gauze, feeling rather shaken. ‘It hurts?’ he asked.

‘No. It’s OK.’

‘We should probably wear goggles.’

‘Yes. Or maybe not put painty fingers into our eyes.’

‘That sounds like good advice.’

She felt herself smiling a little.

‘Let me see again,’ he said, kneeling before her and gently lifting her hand and inspecting the gauze, his face just centimetres from hers, as if he were a doctor with X-ray vision to boot.

It was nice, feeling his face so close to hers.

She looked up at him with her one good eye and marvelled at his thick eyelashes, the depth and concern in his expression.

‘You will live, I think,’ he concluded, not moving his head.

She gave the slightest inclination with her own and moments later their lips brushed in a gentle kiss.

She hadn’t realised just how much she’d been longing for him to touch her again until that moment when she felt herself melt. She put her arms up and around him, pulling him a little closer for another kiss. Then another. Until:

‘ Non ,’ he said, standing up abruptly. ‘We should not.’

‘Oh!’ she said, feeling her cheeks get hot. ‘I’m sorry I…’

‘ Non, do not be sorry. It is not that I do not want to,’ he said, crouching down again so they were the same height. ‘But if I kiss you again, I will ask you to stay. And I know that you must go. And I will want to stay here too, but I cannot.’

‘What if I did stay?’ she said unthinkingly.

‘You want to stay?’

‘I could if I wanted to.’

He laughed. ‘This is true. You are a free agent.’

‘You too,’ she pointed out. ‘Didn’t you say once that you could write from anywhere? Why does it have to be Paris?’ She blushed. ‘I’m not asking you to stay. Obviously. I just mean, sometimes I wonder why I tell myself I have to do this or that… I suppose we just know what’s best, long term.’

‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘Or maybe we are afraid.’

She nodded, looking up at him.

‘Jean-Paul Sartre, he said that being afraid is good… I think it was: “Fear is the consciousness of an anxiety in the face of the possibility of a choice”.’

She nodded again. ‘Letting a problem in can be the start of a transformation?’

‘That is very wise. Which philosopher said this?’

She blushed. ‘I’ve paraphrased it a bit but… Jerry Maguire.’

He looked confused for a moment then laughed. ‘Well, I think this Professor Maguire must be a very intelligent man.’

She laughed.

And then they were kissing and for a moment she could let go of her future and just be present. Moments later, she gave him her hand and let him lead her to the bedroom. Whatever the future held for them, it would be silly to waste such a wonderful moment.