Page 32 of The Bordeaux Book Club

‘You didn’t!’

‘Yeah, guilty! Just a bit of bantz though, not… I wasn’t horrible to the kid or anything. I just said – we were having a piss… sorry… pee, and I said I was surprised he wanted to come and spend time with a load of middle-aged bores.’

‘Speak for yourself!’ Leah said, in a tone of mock-offense.

George laughed.

‘What did he say?’ Monica asked, leaning forward in her chair.

‘He said it was his mum’s idea,’ George said.

It was hard not to laugh. ‘Oh, bless him,’ Leah said. ‘Still, there’s nothing wrong with being a mummy’s boy, I suppose.’ She thought about Scarlett. How would her own daughter react if Leah suggested something? Or if Leah phoned out of the blue and asked her to come home? She was pretty sure Scarlett would ignore her completely on both counts.

Scarlett seemed to prefer spending time with anyone other than Leah these days. It was probably considered healthy and natural, this breaking away from her adult influences and finding her own identity and all of the other things the parenting books said. But it would still be nice to feel as if she mattered. Leah would see her daughter, sometimes, with a couple of friends, laughing away and wonder why the smiles always seemed to disappear whenever she appeared.

Grace returned with a tray of wobbling coffees. ‘Hope it’s not too late for all this caffeine,’ she said. ‘I probably should be on tea really.’

‘Ah, you’ll be alright,’ George said, reaching for his latte. ‘When in France and all that.’

They lapsed into silence as each of them personalised their drinks with sugar, stirred, sat back in the comfy chairs that surrounded the low table and sipped.

‘So, what brought you to France?’ George said to the group. ‘Like, I know why Monica’s here – with Peter being a pilot and that. But what about you, Grace?’ he said, sitting forward and smiling at her with genuine interest.

Grace flushed slightly – a startlingly rare occurrence – and cleared her throat. ‘I suppose I have to say my errant husband,’ she said. ‘Long divorced now.’ She looked at her hand as if to confirm the absence of a wedding ring. ‘But it feels sort of disingenuous to say that, really.’

‘How so?’

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Not disingenuous tohim. Disingenuous to France, well, and to myself, I suppose. It was his idea to come, but he never really settled. And, yes, I… perhaps initially, I stayed to prove him wrong. To show him that I could make a good life here.’ She shrugged, clearly a bit uncomfortable. ‘But I’ve come to love the place. So, I suppose I feel that yes, I came here for him. But Istayedfor me – nothing to do with him at all. No credit to Stephen.’ She lifted her coffee as if in a toast.

Leah nodded, reaching out a hand and giving her friend’s arm a small squeeze. ‘Well, you’ve certainly showed him,’ she said. ‘You have such a full life here.’

George was silent for a minute, his eyes fixed on Grace. ‘Alright George?’ Leah asked him, and watched him jump slightly as if startled.

Grace shifted slightly in her chair. ‘And, of course, Leah’s here to live the good life!’ she said, deflecting everyone’s attention onto her friend.

Now it was Leah’s turn to feel a little uncomfortable. ‘Not exactly “the good life”,’ she said. ‘Just… a better one. I mean, a better one forus,’ she added in case anyone thought she’d had some sort of religious conversion or had become a missionary or something. ‘We were slaves to our mortgage and jobs over there and we wanted… I suppose we wanted to try something different.’

George was nodding. ‘I get that,’ he said.

‘Only now,’ Leah said, with a half-smile, ‘it’s not quite working out the way I’d hoped.’

‘Trouble in paradise?’ Grace quipped, looking at her much more pointedly than was comfortable.

Leah felt flustered. ‘Not paradise, exactly,’ she said. ‘At least Adam and Eve managed to grow an apple. We can’t even manage a serving of potatoes.’

They laughed and made sympathetic noises as she told them about their latest crop, leaving out the argument attached to it. ‘And until we manage to grow serious amounts, I’m stuck doing copywriting shifts three or four days a week. It’s better than our life in the UK, but I feel… it’s like I’m not fullyhere.’

‘So, you regret it?’ George said. ‘Grass wasn’t greener in the end.’

‘Oh, no, I don’t regret coming!’ Leah said, shaking her head emphatically. ‘Not moving here. Definitely not. Maybe I regret being a bit unrealistic about what growing our own stuff and being self-sufficient might mean, though. There are only so many ways you can create an egg-based meal!’

‘Have you told Nathan this?’ Grace asked her.

‘No. He’s… well, he’s a bit sensitive about it all. Like,his garden. And he wants it all to work so badly, I just can’t,’ she admitted. ‘No. We’ll find a way to get things established,’ she added, picking up her coffee and sipping as if to end the subject. ‘How’s Bella?’ she asked Monica once she’d swallowed.

‘Oh great, thanks,’ Monica said. ‘Smiling and laughing all the time now.’

‘That’s so sweet.’

---