Page 14 of A French Affair
‘I got the feeling that he was a real gentleman. Obviously well educated. Easy to talk to.’ Fern picked up her wine glass and took a sip before saying quietly, ‘He asked if “my husband and I” would have dinner with him one evening.’ She glanced at Belinda. ‘I told him Laurent was dead and then basically ran away, fast. I feel so stupid. I’m fifty-four years old, my kids behave more grown-up than I do.’ Fern gave a heavy sigh.
‘Ah,’ Belinda answered, a thoughtful tone to her voice. ‘Moving on is hard, isn’t it? I found it difficult being alone after my husband left me and I couldn’t shake the apathy off for months. Nigel and Molly giving me a job was my saving. I had to get out of the house and go to work. It must be even harder after a bereavement to pull yourself back into the world.’
‘True. My first marriage, which ended in divorce, was different. It was my decision. I did the right thing for me and the children and I got on with life. But I never expected to lose Laurent like I did.’ Fern bit her lip knowing tears were dangerously close again.
‘Do you like running the auberge on your own?’
‘Honestly? Laurent and I were a team. It was fun opening our home and entertaining people. We really enjoyed it.’ She sighed. ‘On my own, it’s different. Harder. I love it when I’m busy in the summer with guests, cooking and gardening, but I’ve learnt that the majority of holidaymakers prefer to drive south in search of the sun. It’s rare all six rooms are filled. And, as you can see, from November to April, it’s dead around here.’
‘Does the auberge give you a good life?’ Belinda asked.
‘Yes, but being solely responsible for everything, with no one to talk through problems with is a drain. I rather fancy working for someone else and not being the person in overall charge.’
‘And how’s the social life around here? How many times this winter have you been out for lunch or dinner with friends?’
‘I have lunch once a month with my brother-in-law,’ she said. ‘And Laurent’s son, Fabian, comes for dinner occasionally. That’s about it.’ She shrugged. ‘I walk Lady a lot. So plenty of fresh air.’
‘No girly natters with friends? No Ladies Wot Lunch around here?’
Fern laughed. ‘If there are, I’ve never met them.’
Belinda regarded her thoughtfully. ‘Speaking as a very new friend, you’ve got to get to grips with life again. Would you consider selling this place and starting somewhere new? Or does it hold too many happy memories for you to leave?’
‘It’s complicated and not that easy to sell up,’ Fern said. ‘This place has been in the LeRoy family forever. When Laurent and I married, I sold my house in the UK and we used the capital to do up this place. We were in our forever home, where we were going to grow old together. And that’s the problem now. Under French inheritance laws, as Laurent’s widow, I can live here until I die, but in reality it is Fabian’s inheritance. It’s an arrangement which gives me a home but no access to capital. Or the ability to move,’ she added quietly. ‘Without an income, I can’t afford to even rent somewhere.’
‘Can Fabian buy you out? Or agree to sell it? Does he want to live here? Run the auberge?’
‘I think Fabian and his family will eventually live here. Whether they will run the place as an auberge, I don’t know. Fabian doesn’t have any money and couldn’t afford a mortgage large enough to pay me back. There have been a few hints about me closing the auberge and letting them move in with me.’ Fern shook her head. ‘As fond as I am of Fabian and his wife, that arrangement would be a disaster. Selling the place is out of the question, the extended family would be horrified at the thought. It’s such a large part of their heritage.’
‘Difficult,’ Belinda said. ‘I hadn’t realised French inheritance laws were so complex. Would you like to return to the UK?’
Fern shrugged. ‘To be honest, I don’t know any more what I do want. I do know things have to change though. Bumping into Scott today has made me think a bit more about the future. Oh.’ She looked at Belinda. ‘I’ve realised who he reminded me of – Richard Gere.’
‘Shame you ran away from him then.’ Belinda smiled. ‘Dinner with a Richard Gere lookalike could have been your first step into a new life.’
10
The next week at the campsite sped past as Belinda got to grips with a mountain of things. One of the first things she did, unbeknown to Alain, was to save everything on the office computer to a memory stick and download it onto her laptop. That way, there were no arguments when Alain wanted to work on the computer. It also had the added benefit too that she could work from the comfort of her own room at the auberge of an evening before wandering downstairs to enjoy a nightcap with Fern.
The amount of work that needed organising threatened to overwhelm her a few times, there was so much. Her to-do list was endless: organise five or six local women to clean the cabins, the café and the manager’s house; a team of men to pressure-wash the shower and toilet blocks before painting. Alain took over the job of organising the outdoor teams of workers, leaving Belinda to deal with the teams working inside. In addition, there was the website to bring up to date, pods for the glamping area to source, lots of new equipment to order, not to mention finding staff for the season.
A routine established itself over the course of that week and the days continued to fly by. Every morning, she left the auberge just before eight o’clock, stopped in the village for a couple of croissants and a salad baguette for her lunch. Fern had lent her a cafetière and she’d stocked up on ground coffee from the village shop, instant coffee being one of her personal bêtes noires. By the time Alain strolled in at about ten past eight the coffee was ready. Over a quick coffee and croissant, they caught each other up on how things were progressing and what their individual plans were for the day. At midday Alain disappeared for lunch, leaving Belinda to eat her baguette and deal with her emails. The afternoons followed a similar pattern with them both concentrating on their allotted tasks. Belinda shut down her laptop around four thirty most days, said goodbye to Alain and made her way back to the auberge.
Although there was so much to do, the campsite was definitely beginning to respond to all of the noisy cutting down, pruning back and mowing work that had happened over the last few days.
One lunchtime after everyone including Alain had disappeared for an hour or two, Belinda decided to eat outside in the sunshine. The only noise she heard as she made her way along the path towards the river was the tweeting of various birds. Belinda recognised the call of a blackbird, pigeons cooing away in the tall pines and a chaffinch singing perched amongst the burgeoning branches of an oak tree before hearing a noise that stopped her in her tracks. The whrrr-tapping sound of a nearby woodpecker. A sound she hadn’t heard in years. A sound that took her right back to her childhood home, where it had been a noise that was taken for granted in the background of life.
A picture of the old stone mas that had been home for so long floated, unbidden, into her mind as she walked. A simple two-storey building, it hadn’t been a prestigious place, shambolic described it better. A shelter built long ago by a Breton farmer to house various animals and his family. Down the years, it had been enlarged and converted in a haphazard manner, the cows moved into a separate shelter and their previous accommodation had become the kitchen of the house. Belinda smiled, remembering how her father had done the final conversion and turned the old milking parlour at the back of the house into her bedroom. She’d loved that room, with its view out over the countryside and the field shelter for Lucky.
Lucky. That had been the hardest part of that awful day when her life had fallen apart. Knowing she was leaving the pony. Inconsolable, she’d cried for hours until her mother snapped at her. ‘For God’s sake, Belinda, shut up. I feel like crying too, but it won’t solve anything. Lucky will go to a good home. Your dad will make sure of that.’
Belinda did stop crying eventually, but only because she didn’t have any tears left to spill. Years later, she’d realised her difficult relationship with her mother had started its downward spiral that day with her lack of empathy over leaving Lucky. It was a breach of the mother–daughter bond that had never completely healed. Jean’s refusal to allow Belinda to even mention, let alone contact, her father ensured the fracture remained. Belinda was convinced her mother’s barely audible last words, ‘I’m sosorry’ and the deathbed promise to ‘Go and lay the ghosts’ she’d been coerced into making had been her mother’s final plea for forgiveness.
Belinda came out of her reverie with a start as BB gave a short sharp bark before racing off, heading for the cabin where Bernie lived. She hadn’t had a chance to question Alain about Bernie, they’d both been so busy. Perhaps this was her chance to get to know him. As she hurried to catch BB up, she saw a man weeding the small patch of garden that surrounded the cabin. The ginger cat was curled up fast asleep in the basket of the bicycle that was propped once again against the fence.
‘Bonjour,’ she said when she reached the man and held out her hand. ‘I’m Belinda Marshall. I was hoping to see Bernie.’
The man patted BB before he straightened up and shook her hand.
