Page 43 of A French Country Escape
There was a pause. ‘Yes. I know Maddie; she has a little girl, Jade.’
Sasha noticed the pause and waited for him to say more, but he smiled at her and carried on eating. When he didn’t add to the sentence, she decided the pause had been more of a hesitation because he’d spoken the sentence in English. They’d both placed their telephones on the table and Sasha picked hers up. She’d say something in French, Jean-Paul was trying so hard to speak English. She typed the sentence in and then struggled to pronounce one of the French words, so she held her phone out to Jean-Paul.
‘Avez-vous jamais eu envie de vivre ailleurs qu’en Bretagne?’
‘Live somewhere else?Non. I am happy here with the life I have on the farm. My parents couldn’t wait to retirement and move to Bordeaux.Peut-êtreI feel the same when I am old,’ and Jean-Paul laughed.
Sitting there enjoying Jean-Paul’s company with both of them getting to know each other, Sasha realised how much she already liked him. Perhaps this was a friendship that could grow to be so much more.
It was late when Jean-Paul looked at his watch. ‘I have to go. I have some late lambs expected and I need to check all is good.’
Sasha walked out to the car with him.
Jean-Paul turned to her. ‘Merci.I have a lovely evening with you. Next time I treat you.’ Standing there, he gave her a gentle kiss before murmuring, ‘Bonne nuit. À bientôt.’
Sasha’s heart skipped a beat. ‘See you soon,’ she said quietly, smiling at him as he got into his car.
About to close the door, he stopped and gave Sasha a serious look. ‘I am sorry,maisI have to say something. I tell you this because I like you and your brother. Maddie is not good for Freddie. Please tell him be careful and not too quick to become involve. “Il ne serait pas le premier et je doute qu’il soit le dernier.”’ And he closed the car door and drove away.
Thoughtfully, Sasha turned to go back into the cottage. Her French wasn’t good enough for her to understand the last sentence he’d muttered, but she’d picked out a couple of the words – ‘pas le premier’, which she translated as ‘not the first’, and then the final phrase ‘qu’il soit le dernier’,which she was fairly certain meant he wouldn’t be the last either.
She poured the rest of the wine into her glass. What the hell did she do now?
32
Now that she was no longer up at the orangery every day and her time was once again her own, Sasha slipped back into a quieter routine but one which was no less busy, and the days began to speed by. Walking, playing and training Mimi and Mitzi took up a lot of her time, but she was determined to get on top of decorating the cottage, getting her workshop up and running properly, as well as the terrace and the garden. Sitting out on the terrace with Jean-Paul the other evening had been lovely. This summer, she planned on lots more al fresco occasions. First, though, she’d finish organising her workroom.
The small cupboard took the contents of several boxes of her craft things and paint supplies. Sasha set up her laptop and printer on the desk before emptying the two boxes of stationery into the eight drawers of the desk. She spent the rest of the day uploading the pictures of thetrompe l’œiland updating her website and Etsy pages.
And all the time running through her mind was the problem of what to do about Freddie. If, in fact, she could or should do anything.
In the end, the decision was taken out of her hands.
Freddie brought Maddie and Jade for tea one afternoon. Jade stayed happily playing with Mimi and Mitzi in Sasha’s garden while Freddie showed Maddie over his cottage.
‘Mummy says when we get back to England I can have a puppy,’ Jade said, gently stroking Mimi. ‘But we aren’t going back until August and I really, really, want one now.’
‘You’re going back to live in England?’ Sasha said, startled.
Jade nodded. ‘Granny and Grandad are going back to their old house and Mummy and me are going to live with them. It’s all bloody Brexit’s fault,’ Jade said solemnly.
‘I don’t think you should swear like that,’ Sasha said.
‘Grandad says it all the time.’
‘Maybe, but little girls shouldn’t.’
‘I don’t think Grandad wants to leave France, but Granny says they have to.’
As much as she wanted to ask Jade more questions, Sasha didn’t feel she could quiz the little girl about her family or her mummy. It was none of her business where they lived, but she had a horrible feeling that Freddie was going to end up being hurt.
‘Shall we go and see if we can spot any dragonflies by the lake?’ Sasha said. ‘I’ll have to put Mimi and Mitzi on their leads though, otherwise they’ll be jumping in the water.’
Peter and Freddie had recently spent some time clearing the weeds away from the edge of the lake. Tall yellow irises were clustered in places and the huge plate-like pads of the pale pink water lily flowers were covering a large area of the surface. The nearby white buddleia bush was alive with butterflies and the long branches of the graceful willow dipped its fingers in the water.
Sasha couldn’t see any dragonflies hovering over the water lilies, but there was a ‘plop’ in the water and Jade looked at her, excited. ‘Is that fish?’
‘Might be,’ Sasha said. ‘Or possibly a frog.’
