Page 22 of Secrets Beneath a Riviera Sky
‘Good. We need to start thinking about clearing out what we can. Come up mid-morning, we can have coffee and then we can go through things together and make a list of the contents. We won’t get rid of anything until we know who this Serge Cortez is exactly, and whether he is likely to want a say in how we dispose of things but we can at least get rid of the rubbish and clean the place up a bit.’
22
Strolling through the narrow streets from Lower to Higher Suquet with Theo holding Cerise on her lead the next morning, Agnes suppressed a shiver of apprehension. Oscar was dead, there was nothing he could do to hurt her physically now but what of the hurtful memories that the house itself was likely to stir up in her head? The memory of how helpless and powerless she’d been, unable to stop the things that were happening to her.
Within two or three years her life as Mrs Oscar Agistini had become completely under the control of her husband. Where she went, what she wore, what she ate, what she read, wherever she took Francine, the friends she made – everything she did was decided by Oscar. Perhaps if she hadn’t fallen pregnant so quickly, or suffered so badly from morning sickness she would have been more alert to what started to happen during those nine months and took over her life afterwards. Although whether she would have been strong enough to stop his coercive behaviour was doubtful.
As Theo opened the front door and called out ‘BonjourFrancine’, Agnes took a deep breath. It was just a house that she’d lived in a long time ago. The memories of that time needed to stay buried deep in the life of the woman she’d been then, not upset the woman she now was. She’d pretend all the mental cruelty, all the physical hurt, had happened to another person in this house, someone separate from her. Someone she didn’t know. She was, after all, a different person now. She’d walk in and view the house dispassionately like a stranger would. After all, she hadn’t been here for so long she was a stranger.
‘I’m in the kitchen,’ Francine called out. ‘Come on through.’
The kitchen had been modernised and Agnes breathed a relieved sigh. So different to how it had been as to be unrecognisable to her and she happily sat at the kitchen table to drink the coffee Francine made her.
‘Jasmine not here?’ Agnes asked.
‘She’s upstairs working,’ Francine said. ‘She’ll probably be down later.’
After coffee, Francine picked up a notebook and pencil and the three of them started to move through the house. The memories came slowly to Agnes at first. Disjointed from each other. The furniture in the sitting room had changed but in amongst it there were a couple of pieces from the past. The bureau where Oscar had dealt with the paperwork for his property business was still in the same place, pushed back against the wall, a well-worn briefcase leaning against it. A MacBook Air laptop sat on its leather writing surface. Agnes recognised the wing chair in front of the bureau, it had been upstairs in the main bedroom.
A large leather settee was placed directly in front of the inbuilt log fire, cutting the room in half and blocking free movement. The shelves on the left-hand side of the fireplace had been removed, replaced by a single shelf, wide enough to take the television that stood on it. The right-hand side bookshelves were still there but empty save for a few boating magazines and a couple of old paperbacks. Nothing in the room ruffled Agnes’s equilibrium. The dispassionate stranger persona she’d taken on temporarily remained calm.
‘Do we have to go through all this paperwork?’ Francine said standing by the bureau and opening a few drawers. She rifled through some files in the top drawer. ‘There’s a file here with your family name on it, Maman. Oh, there’s also a large envelope marked “For the attention of Agnes Agistini”. Wonder what that is?’ Francine held it out to Agnes. ‘Do you want to open it now?’
Agnes, uneasy about what the contents might be, shook her head. She’d rather open it in private later. ‘Leave it there for now. I’ll collect it later as we leave.’
‘The rest of the files are probably a mixture of business and personal stuff,’ Theo said, joining Francine at the bureau. ‘Oscar closed the business when he finally retired about six years ago, but there’s still the occasional official paper showing up and needing to be signed. It’s difficult to work here in France after retirement and he said it wasn’t worth the hassle.’
‘Hopefully it won’t be too difficult or take too long to go through,’ Francine said.
‘Would you like me to go through them for you?’ Theo said. ‘It would probably be easier for me to do it.’
‘Merci, Theo, I accept that offer.’ Agnes breathed a sigh of relief as they all left the room and made their way upstairs. There had been no horrible memories rushing to the surface in there.
Francine opened the door of the bedroom she was using. ‘Just the furniture in here really. The wardrobes and cupboards are empty – apart from my stuff of course. Now for Oscar’s bedroom,’ she continued and walked along the hallway. Francine saw Agnes glance at the remaining closed door. ‘He appears to have shut that room off years ago.’ She glanced at Theo who nodded.
‘He never said why he stopped using it,’ he shrugged. ‘Simply said he preferred the other one.’
Agnes pulled the door open a few inches and peered inside. The dispassionate stranger resolve wobbled as she gazed at the neglected room. A room that she’d spent so many unhappy hours in, trying to find a way forward. There was no need to step over the threshold of this room so she didn’t. Carefully she closed the door and followed Theo and Francine to the final room.
‘I’m sorry, I meant to strip the bed and wash everything before you came up to the house,’ Francine said.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Agnes said, gazing around the room. It was just a bedroom, no sinister vibes stirring things up in her mind. She slowly crossed to the bureau and looked at the French mirror standing there. Agnes looked at Francine.
‘Do you remember how much you loved polishing this with me?’ Turning her attention back to the mirror she said. ‘It was my grandmère’s and I used to keep all my jewellery in the secret drawers. I also hid some money in it whenever I could but there was never enough.’ Agnes sighed, remembering how hard it had been to even save a few francs out of the housekeeping Oscar gave her. He was always asking to see receipts. If it hadn’t been for Theo she’d never have got away.
‘They’re not really secret drawers though, are they?’ Francine said as she pulled first one and then the other open. ‘They aren’t very deep either.’
‘Oh, that’s not the secret bit,’ Agnes said. ‘You take them both out,’ and reaching to the back of the gap she felt around. ‘This is the secret bit, if it works after all this time. Voila,’ and as she pressed the side of the framework inside around the base the back fell open revealing an empty cavity. A memory of keeping the Celtic necklace hidden in there for years, never daring to wear it in public, slipped into her mind. Even when she was living in England, it had taken years before she’d taken it out of her small jewellery pouch and started to wear it regularly. In those early days, the memories it provoked were just too sad for her to contemplate. She put the drawers back in place.
‘I think technically this belongs to me anyway as it was my grandmère’s so I think I’d like to have it,’ Agnes said.
‘I don’t think anyone will argue with you over that,’ Francine said, reaching out for the comb on the bureau. ‘Shall we take this ready to go to the notaire? It has a few hairs in it.’
‘No. Let’s leave it until we have a date for the next rendez-vous,’ Agnes said. ‘We know where it is.’
‘Do you want to go up to the attic room?’ Theo asked.
Agnes shook her head. ‘Non. I don’t think there is any need and Jasmine is working up there. No point in disturbing her.’ The attic had never been converted in her day there was little point in her seeing it now.
