Page 34 of The Riviera House Swap

It didn’t bother her that much – she had the rest of the exchange students to hang out with. A lot of them had clustered together, and she wasn’t the only one without a pen pal at her side. But Pierre was right: she did feel a little out of sorts.

‘It’s OK,’ she lied.

‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘we can sit together?’

She wasn’t used to boys being so direct. Her only two relationships so far had both involved a friend of the boyin question telling Bess he liked her and asking her out via whispered messages.

Everyone said that French boys were more sophisticated. Perhaps this was what they meant?

‘OK,’ she said, shrugging slightly but inwardly delighted.

19

NOW

By 3p.m., Nina had drunk so much caffeine, she probably wouldn’t sleep for several days. She’d had a few problems getting her order right. She kept asking for black coffee, but finding instead of the larger cup she’d expect back home, she’d be given a tiny, thimble-sized espresso. Each time, she’d vow to remember to ask forcafé allongé, but she was so distracted by her mission to spy on Pierre, whenever the waiter returned she’d simply say ‘un café’ and the whole process would repeat.

How many espressos, she wondered, sipping her third, would it take to induce some sort of mania? She felt a tingling in her fingers and decided that this simply had to be her last. Of course, she could order a tea (or a tea latte) but the thought wasn’t tempting. She’d had a bowl of lunchtime soup at the start, but they stopped serving food at 2p.m. And there were cold drinks on offer, but after more than two hours of sitting and waiting, she was ready to leave. Clearly Pierre ate his lunch at his desk, or perhaps there was an in-house canteen or a back entrance? Either way, she wasn’t going to get lucky twice in one day.

It was a bit of a blow – she was hoping to find his favourite eatery and another lunchtime, ‘accidentally’ bump into him there. It would be harder if she simply had his workplace to go on – what could she do? Register as a new client? Follow him into reception? She was familiar enough with romance novels to know that meet-cutes can happen almost anywhere, but had yet to see a believable romance which started by the heroine going into the reception of a bakery head office.

This was hardly a romantic situation, in any case. It belonged more in a documentary about amateur detectives, she thought glumly as she drained her tiny cup, ate the chocolate the waiter had put on her plate and – feeling thoroughly sick – went to pay for her mistakes.

She wobbled onto the street and decided to take a walk before going back to Jean-Luc’s. She needed to clear her head of thoughts and her body of stimulants, and it seemed like the best way to do both. Gone was her earlier positivity at seeing Pierre, and as well as still feeling slightly sick, she also felt slightly silly.

When she arrived at the seafront twenty minutes later, she began to regret her decision not to bring a jumper with her. While the weather was still mild, the sea infused the air with a nip of autumn coolness, and goosebumps appeared on her arms in almost instant protest. She folded her arms across her chest and found a bench overlooking the water where she could sit and think and shiver for a moment before heading back.

Behind her, the pathway was wide, allowing for cyclists, walkers and even the odd skateboarder to drift by with ease. A couple of women glided past on rollerblades, laughing and moving effortlessly. There was something wonderfully free about it. She hadn’t ever mastered her blades as a child, but then she’d had gravelled paths, potholes and kerbs to contend with. This smooth path would be ideal for giving it another go. Perhaps something else for her list.

She breathed deeply, feeling the freshness enter her lungs. People said sea air was good for you – she wasn’t sure if there was any science behind it, but she always felt better for spending some time in close proximity to a beach. Was it the air itself, or the feeling of timeless restfulness that the sea evoked in her? Its large, ever-changing, half-living expanse – full of mystery and depth that humans had yet to fully explore – made her feel small. The same way she’d sometimes feel when laying on her back looking up at the stars on a summer night. Tiny, insignificant.

The thought of her own inconsequentiality was terrifying in some ways, but reassuring in others. The little risks that she was taking really didn’t matter. Whatever happened would happen. And when it had, she could always come back to the sea. And the sea would be there, waiting, restless yet calm, dangerous yet enticing, timelessly pulling itself back and forth from the shore.

She’d read about cold water swimming recently – the idea that submersing yourself in icy water was good for your health. The article she’d found had been in a Sunday supplement and contained a huge photo of women of a certain age standing and shivering together at the water’s edge. Rather you than me, she’d thought.

But she did like the sea. And although the water would be cool this time of year it – probably – wouldn’t be freezing. Perhaps she should grab her cossie one morning and give it a go. After all, she was here to have new experiences, not simply hunt down a man from the past.

For now though, she felt herself begin to shiver and decided it was high time to make her way back to the warmth of Jean-Luc’s place, or at least to grab a thicker jumper from her suitcase. She stood and turned, taking in the unusual sight of a sculptured shoal of fish, in enormous, undulating, wrought iron behind her. She knew that Cagnes-sur-Mer was a former fishingtown and supposed that the fish in some way marked that important part of their history. But she wondered too whether it was a sign – the idea of fish in the sea, that there would be other ‘Pierres’ in the future if this didn’t work out. Then she laughed at herself – the sculpture, she read, had been installed in 2006. It was hardly likely that the universe had inspired a sculptor to create iron fish, that the local council had paid a no doubt enormous sum to erect the things, all because some crazy forty-year-old English woman might have a crisis of romantic confidence close to twenty years later.

She made her way back towards the centre, passing white apartments with immaculate balconies, topping restaurants and shops and bars below. The place had a holiday feel; despite the fact that it was low season, there were still unmistakable tourists walking towards the front or browsing in the shops. As she got further from the shore, the apartment blocks grew smaller and houses began to pop up – a variety of shapes and sizes, most painted in white or peach, with terracotta roofs.

She turned into a street with patchwork paved walkways and again into another, expecting any moment to see Jean-Luc’s house – which would be a relief as she’d been walking now for thirty minutes and the back of her shoe was starting to rub. Only when she reached what she thought was the right street, she realised she must have taken a wrong turning somewhere.

Pulling her phone from her bag, she flagged up Jean-Luc’s address and discovered to her horror that she’d somehow drifted off course. She’d been so sure she’d been going the right way, even congratulating herself on her sense of direction, but had actually been heading diagonally away from where she wanted to be.

Damn. She considered trying to hire taxi, but it seemed excessive. The walk would do her good, she tried to persuade herself, and turned in the right direction. Her phone, obliviousto its surroundings, barked out a command for her to turn left, and she quickly muted it, blushing.

By the time she reached the front again, she was limping and reconsidering her thoughts about taxis. She sank onto a bench outside a shop and pulled off her shoe. The back of her ankle was red-raw, rubbed beyond blisters by the walk. Admitting defeat, she picked up her phone to see whether her Uber app would work on the French Riviera.

‘Are you OK, madame?’ a man’s voice behind her said.

She jumped, knocking her shoe from the bench to the ground.

The man rushed around to pick it up and, kneeling, offered it to her. It would have been almost fairy tale like, his handing her the shoe as if she was Cinderella. If only there hadn’t been blood on the back, and if the shoe had been delicate and feminine rather than the rather sweaty white sandal she’d favoured today. ‘Thank you,’ she said, taking the shoe from him quickly, hopefully before he saw the state of it.

He was dressed in blue overalls and smelled of petrol and grease and no doubt came from the garage on the corner. Perhaps he’d seen her tending her foot and suspected there might be a broken car for her to fix. At the same time, he looked disarmingly familiar, and she felt her brow furrow as she tried to place him.

‘It is Nina, oui?’ he said.

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