Page 1 of Summer on the French Riviera
PROLOGUE
Gabriella Jacques was more tired than she’d care to admit. All through the months of January, February and into March, sheer adrenaline had kept her going and boosted her flagging spirits when she wavered with the effort of organising the move to France. It would, she knew, be worth it in the end, but selling and moving house for only the second time in her life was far more stressful than she’d anticipated. There were so many bittersweet memories of her time living in Dartmouth, the town that had adopted her as one of their own, her life with Eric and, when Harriet was born, their happy family life. Until it all changed when Eric died. Not that she wasn’t looking forward to returning to her childhood home in Antibes Juan-les-Pins, she most definitely was. The chance of a proper family reconciliation, with no more broken promises, had to be seized and brought to fruition if at all possible. Elodie, her twenty-four year old granddaughter, had carried her along on a wave of hyper-energetic enthusiasm as well as practicality, although even she was starting to flag this last week of February.
Since their return from Juan-les-Pins in France two days after New Year, with the decision made to move there permanently, the two of them had gone through the long, and continually evolving, to-do list that had been the first thing Elodie had started writing, sitting at the breakfast table, the morning after they had arrived home. Every time they ticked something off as done, another job invariably took its place.
‘So much to do. I suppose it will all come together in the end,’ Gabby sighed.
Elodie glanced at her grandmother. ‘Are you sad about selling this house? We could rent it out instead. Give you an income.’
Gabby shook her head. ‘No. A clean break is better. We’re going to be too far away to be able to keep an eye on things, so it would mean the hassle of getting an agent to handle things – and I’m a bit anti agents at the moment, as you know. I’d just not realised how much was involved. When your grandfather and I bought this house, I remember it being a lot simpler, but then, in those days, we didn’t have so many things.’
Having to go through the contents of a house that had been her home for over three decades and share unwanted, unneeded, possessions between the local charity shops before consigning the rest as rubbish to the bin had been unsettling to say the least. Everything Gabby had picked up seemed to taunt her with some unspoken memory demanding attention before she disposed of it.
Elodie gave her grandmother a concerned look. Gabby, more her mother than grandmother if the truth be told, had been the one constant presence in her life since she was four years old and Harriet, her mother, had forsaken them both for Australia. At New Year, Gabby had celebrated not only her seventieth birthday but also their joint decision to move back to the villa of her childhood that she’d inherited from her father Hervé. When Harriet’s unexpected decision to join them for New Year in Juan-les-Pins had culminated in Gabby inviting Harriet to move into the villa with them, Elodie had been both shocked and wary of her mother’s acceptance. She had the feeling that adjusting to having the stranger who was her mother living in the same house was going to take some time.
‘Has Harriet given you a date for when she is coming?’ Elodie asked. The original plan had been for Harriet, who was currently renting a small cottage on the outskirts of Bristol, to join them within a fortnight of their return from France and help with the packing up of the house. But she’d rung Gabby to say it would be the end of the month before she could make it, if not later. It had proved to be later.
‘The day after tomorrow.’ Gabby said now.
‘Cancelling at the last moment seems to be a habit of hers,’ Elodie said with a sceptical look. ‘Let’s hope she doesn’t cancel for a second time. I suppose she could have changed her mind about moving with us?’ She glanced at her grandmother.
‘I’ll ring her again this evening.’ Gabby gave an inward sigh. She too worried about Harriet cancelling again, but the last time they’d spoken, she’d insisted that she was on board with their future plans for a life together on the French Riviera. All Gabby could do was to hope and pray that she meant it. That Harriet wouldn’t be the reason for her family falling apart again. She wished for nothing more than that both her daughter and her granddaughter would eventually form a conventional loving mother-daughter relationship. After all she, Gabriella Jacques, wouldn’t be around for ever.
1
No matter how well organised a house move is, something always goes wrong on the day. Things get broken, empty rooms show their desperate need for decoration, boxes are dumped into the wrong rooms, and moving-in day invariably descends into a chaotic shambles. Which is when the conscious thought, why on earth did I think moving here was a good idea, becomes lodged in the brain.
For Harriet Rogers, standing in the room that was to be hers in Villa de l'Espoir, that moment came as she watched the removal men drive away, leaving herself, Gabby and Elodie facing a veritable pile of boxes that would, once unpacked, become a recyclable mountain in its own right. The fact that, for once, the sun had hidden behind a sky full of grey clouds had added to the frustration of the day. Now, as the time approached six o’clock, the sun had finally decided to shine on this their first evening in Antibes Juan-les-Pins.
Gabby was in the kitchen going through various boxes with the word ‘kitchen’ written on them in red that had actually reached their correct destination. Thankfully, the kettle and the microwave had surfaced early on, largely, Harriet suspected, due to the fact that the removal men needed copious amounts of tea and biscuits to keep them going. Elodie had done a dash to the nearest boulangerie at midday, buying freshly filled baguettes for them all and a tarte tatin to slice up.
Harriet ran her hand through her hair and sighed. This last week had been difficult. When she’d finally arrived in Dartmouth to help pack up Gabby’s house, Elodie, in particular, had made it clear to Harriet that she’d let them down by not coming to help earlier, adding to the guilt that Harriet already felt. The tentative relationship that had started to develop between the two of them over Christmas and New Year had proved to be a fragile bond that needed more nourishing, not the neglect that had occurred over the last couple of months. Now they were all actually together in Villa de l'Espoir, all Harriet’s doubts broke through her carefully constructed mind barrier and rushed to the surface.
How could she explain how terrified and anxious she’d felt at the thought of returning to Dartmouth and potentially meeting up with people from her past? The less time she spent there limited the likelihood of that happening – particularly if she stayed in the house and didn’t venture out. She eased her guilt by making a secret pact with herself that she’d work extra hard in France to help to get the villa straight.
By arriving so late to help, Harriet’s plan had almost worked, but then on their last evening, Gabby had insisted on treating them all to fish and chips to be eaten on Bayards Cove. ‘I want to make a new happy Dartmouth memory for the three of us,’ she’d said.
The late March evening air had been cool but with a welcome feeling of spring all around, with daffodils in the various planters on the embankment. The town had been quiet as they’d walked through and bought their supper from Elodie’s favourite fish and chip shop, before making their way to Bayards Cove. Glasses of wine were bought from the pub, The Dartmouth Arms, and sitting on a bench on the cove overlooking the river the three of them had tucked into their fish and chips.
Eating her supper, Harriet had watched the activity on the river. The lower ferry, with its tug alongside, didn’t look a lot different to the one she’d grown up with, the one she’d routinely jumped on to go to Paignton or Torquay. The ramp had still clattered and jarred its way down noisily onto the access slope as the ferry had motored in far enough for the two to fit together safely for vehicles to drive off and those waiting along the embankment to board.
Gabby had been the first to finish her food and as she had screwed up the packaging she’d started to reminisce. ‘I remember sitting here so many times with Eric, and the two of you at different times when you were younger. And now here we are a three-generation family, making a Dartmouth memory to take with us into our new lives.’ She’d been silent for a moment before turning to Harriet. ‘Do you remember coming here with your dad?’
‘Of course. Our Sunday mornings together were special. He’d buy a pint of beer for himself, a lemonade for me and we’d share a large packet of crisps.’ Harriet had smiled at the memory. ‘The times I tried to get him to buy me a proper drink. I was eighteen before he’d even buy me a lemonade shandy.’ She shook her head. If he’d ever heard about the cider she and her friends downed on a Saturday evening, he’d never let on. Screwing up her own empty packaging, she’d held out her hand for Gabby’s and Elodie’s. ‘I’ll go put these in the bin.’
‘I’ll take the glasses back to the pub while you do that,’ Elodie had said.
Walking across to the rubbish bin, Harriet had smothered a sigh, remembering how numb she’d felt for months after her dad had died, unable to process her grief about the loss in her life or cope with the huge cavity it had created. Saying she was devastated didn’t come close to how she’d truly felt. She might have been almost twenty years old but, childlike, she’d assumed that he’d always be there; to interrogate her boyfriends, to tell her off when she did something stupid, to finally walk her down the aisle when she married the love of her life and, later, to bounce his grandchildren on his knee. He and her mum had been such a perfect fit, the yin and yang of her life. She loved them both dearly and had promised her dad she would look after her mother. A promise she was aware she had spectacularly broken with her actions after his death. Thankfully, he had never known how badly she had behaved, how promiscuous she’d been or the selfish way she’d left the two most important people in her life and fled to the other side of the world.
Now she was back from Australia and the three of them were reunited, she intended to do everything, everything, in her power to make amends to them both. Gabby, who’d greeted her return without voicing any recriminations she might have harboured, had accepted her return with a true mother’s love. Elodie, though, had taken a while to come to terms with her mother being back in her life. Her wary reconciliation at Christmas in Antibes Juan-les-Pins had shown that it wouldn’t be easy establishing a mother-daughter relationship after an absence of twenty years, that it would have to be worked towards. Bridges between them needed to be built, old wounds needed to heal and, at the very least, a tentative trust had to establish itself. Healing the breach with Elodie was the most important of several problems that Harriet needed to address to regain her own self-respect.
‘Hattie? Is it really you?’ A woman’s voice had broken into her thoughts. Her fear of being seen had been realised. And, of course, of all people, it had to be her best friend from Torquay.
‘Lizzie. Fancy seeing you.’ Despite herself Harriet had found herself smiling at her old friend, as Lizzie had started to chat away excitedly.
‘How lovely to see you after all these years. We must have a catch-up. Are you back for good?’ Lizzie had asked.
‘It’s lovely to see you too,’ Harriet had said, starting to try and to explain that she was back in Europe for good but about to move to France when an excited Lizzie had interrupted her.
