Page 46 of A French Adventure
A moment later, she handed Leonie the photograph from the sitting room.
‘I saw this last night. Who is it?’
‘You and me, shortly before your father took you away.’
Leonie studied the photograph for a moment. ‘We both look happy here and yet for years Papa always told me you couldn’t cope with me. That you didn’t love me enough. You weren’t a natural mother, that’s why he had to rescue and look after me alone.’
‘That is not true. I loved you from the moment you were placed in my arms – and I’ve never stopped. I extended my maternity leave to be with you, would have stopped working altogether, but Daiva insisted I returned to work when you went tol’ecole maternelle. Possibly because we depended on my money to pay the rent.’ Maxine tried, but failed, to keep the anger out of her voice. Leonie had obviously, as she had expected, accepted the lies Daiva had fed her down the years. She shook her head. What was it going to take to get Leonie to accept the true version of events?
‘You are telling me a different story to the one he told me,’ Leonie said, staring at her.
Maxine looked at her. ‘Are you really surprised about that?’
Leonie sighed and shook her head. ‘No. I’ve known forever that my father had a way of bending the truth to suit his purpose.’
Maxine nodded. ‘He did.’ She stood up. ‘Come on. I’ll show you your room.’
As Maxine opened the bedroom door, Leonie stared across at the toy on the pillow and burst into tears before running across the room and clutching him tightly.
‘It’s Anatole! You kept him. I’ve never forgotten him, I missed him so much in the beginning. Papa told me I was being a baby.’
Maxine went to give her a hug her but stopped. Leonie might not be a hugger. The days were long gone when she used to run to her for a cuddle four or five times a day.
‘My friend Olivia and I have a phrase we use when we’d like a comfort hug, we say I’m needy. Are you needy at this moment?’
Leonie gulped and sniffed. ‘I… I think I am.’
Maxine’s arms went round her in an instant and she held her tight, not caring that she too was crying as she held her daughter in her arms for the first time in thirty years.
31
Vivienne was waiting for Natalie to ring to say she’d landed at Nice airport and was about to pick up her hire car so when her phone rang, she snatched it up without looking to see who it was.
‘I have to tell you we’ve had another offer for the house, just five thousand short of the asking price.’
‘Hello, Jeremy,’ Vivienne said, needled by the fact that once again Jeremy hadn’t even said hello before straightaway hitting her with the details in an ego-led conversation. ‘That’s good. We can accept it,’ she said brightly. ‘Get things moving.’
‘Talking of moving, Sadie doesn’t want me to move out. She wants us to live here. Has got lots of ideas for modernising the place.’
‘I bet she has,’ Vivienne muttered.
‘The thing is, Viv, I don’t really want to move either and we were wondering about me staying put and buying your share.’
‘I’m sure your solicitor will have pointed out that legally I’m entitled to half the value of the marital home. So that translates to you needing to pay me roughly half of the current offer on the asking price,’ Vivienne said crisply. ‘If you want to do that, you can keep the house.’
‘Oh come on, Viv, you know I don’t have that kind of money stashed away. Besides, house prices have increased massively in the last few years.’
‘Exactly, so if you buy me out for less than I’m entitled to, how do you expect me to be able to buy another house? And Jeremy? Hasn’t it occurred to either of you I’m the loser in this situation? I’m having to move out whether I want to or not because of your affair. How can the two of you be so selfish and inconsiderate of my feelings?’ Vivienne took a deep breath and tried to calm down before she really lost it with her soon-to-be ex-husband. ‘I’ll email the agents and tell them we accept the current offer.’
‘I can do that,’ Jeremy blustered. ‘No need for you to.’
‘Okay. Anything else? Only I’m waiting for Natalie to phone to say that she’s landed in Nice and will be here soon.’
‘She’s coming all that way to see you? I haven’t seen her since… well, since I told her my news.’
‘You only told her half the news as well. How did you expect her to react when she heard Sadie was your new partner? Not to mention the fact that she is pregnant? Goodbye.’
Ending the call, Vivienne opened her laptop and pulled up the estate agent’s email. She’d write and make sure they knew the offer was acceptable. She wouldn’t put it past this new Jeremy to delay things in the hope she’d be forced to accept less than her due. As she sent the email, Vivienne gave a sigh. The thought of returning to England, to home, to all the problems that she would be faced with, not least divorce papers, was becoming less and less appealing. She looked at the photo of the Valbonne villa she’d taken on her phone. She’d transferred it to her laptop as soon as she’d got back to use as the wallpaper for her screen. She had to keep the thought that the villa in Valbonne was waiting for her uppermost in her mind, and that would make everything so much easier to deal with.
