Page 20 of A French Inheritance
‘I’ve had a text from Lucy,’ Jeannie said. ‘We’re invited for Sunday lunch this weekend. Twelve thirty for one.’
‘We can’t refuse a Sunday lunch invitation,’ Briony said, smiling.
‘I’ll text Lucy back and accept. It will be a good time to tell them that you’ve inherited the cottage and we will both be moving here permanently. They’ve been too polite to ask what’s happening, but I expect they’re curious,’ Jeannie said.
A cold breeze sprang up later that day and the two of them retreated to the sitting room for the evening. Briony, curled up on one of the settees, had headphones on watching a film on her laptop and Jeannie was reading on her Kobo, her mobile on the side table next to her. When a WhatsApp text pinged in Jeannie glanced at the ID and smiled before surreptitiously glancing at her daughter. Had she heard the message arrive? Unlikely, she was too engrossed in the film.
Jeannie stretched out her arm to pick up the phone and clicked on the message. It was a reply to one she’d sent Yann earlier that day.
Wonderful news. Is there a timescale? I’m home now, so let me know if I can help in any way. Can we have lunch tomorrow? xx
Jeannie closed the phone down. She’d reply later when she was on her own. Once they were living over here, she’d have to have a serious chat with Briony. Explain and hope that Briony would understand and be happy for her, that this – this what? Her old connection with Yann was definitely growing from a comfortable friendship into something more, but it wasn’t yet a true relationship, more of a liaison. Yes, liaison was probably the word.
14
Once she’d accepted Yann’s lunch invitation, Jeannie decided that there was no need to be secretive about lunch with an old friend of her husband’s.
‘Yannick has invited me to have lunch with him today,’ she told Briony at breakfast. ‘Just in the village – I expect there will be a lot of other people I can catch up with there too. You could always join us?’
‘You go and have a reminisce about the good old days. I might do a spot of weeding or just mooch around here, try to decide what to keep. Maybe open the garage doors and see what’s in there. Why not?’ Briony said as Jeannie shook her head.
‘I shouldn’t. There is so much stuff in there dating back years and years. Once you’re living here, there will be time enough to open those doors, trust me on that.’
‘That bad? Okay. What about the attic? Is that likely to be full as well?’
‘No, I don’t think so. The access isn’t brilliant, although there is a drop-down ladder. The family never found it that easy to put stuff up there – the garage was definitely the easiest dumping ground.’
‘I’ll do some weeding this morning and then maybe take a look in the attic,’ Briony said.
By the time Jeannie came out to say goodbye, Briony had weeded a couple of the flower beds and was starting on the pots. ‘The car keys are on the hook if you decide to go out.’
‘Thanks, Mum. I’m finishing up here and going for a shower. Have a good lunch. See you later.’
On the landing outside her bedroom, Briony glanced up at the ring in the ceiling hatch. Maybe her shower could wait. There was a long pole with a hook in Giselle’s bedroom which fitted perfectly, as she’d known it would. She gave it a gentle tug, the hatch opened and she pulled it and the ladder down carefully.
The ladder was steep and Briony held the handrails on either side as she climbed slowly and hesitantly. A small roof window gave a little light into the attic which spanned the whole of the top floor of the cottage and was boarded. Standing near the top of the ladder, Briony looked around. At first glance, the attic appeared to be empty, but as she turned her head to look to her left, she saw two cardboard boxes tucked away out of sight in the corner of the attic underneath the sloping roof that was behind her.
Carefully, Briony stepped onto the boards and, bent double as there was no headroom, pulled both boxes nearer the open hatch. One was open and seemed to be full of papers and cards, the other had been closed, with the cardboard flaps tucked in under each other. Neither box was particularly heavy and Briony decided she’d take them downstairs and go through them. The open one she simply dropped through the space between the ladder and the hatch onto the landing floor. A veritable dust storm lingered in the air for moments after it landed. She put the other, bigger box closer to the edge before stepping back onto the ladder. Pulling the box closer and holding it against her chest with her left arm and hand, she began to descend. Her right hand was tightly holding the stair rail as she slowly felt her way backwards down the ladder. As her feet finally stepped onto the landing, she let out a long breath. She placed the box beside the other one and pushed the ladder back up and the hatch closed into position with a definite click.
After a quick shower, she took the boxes downstairs to the dining room and put them both on the table. The open box was full of a mixture of letters, newspaper cuttings, old birthday cards and lots of black-and-white photographs – mainly formal family pictures of people who were long dead. And underneath everything was an old lockable leather-bound five-year diary complete with its key.
The second box, when she took a peek under the cardboard flaps, seemed to be full of sketches and a couple of finished watercolours. Briony knew instantly that they were the work of her great-grandmother Marie-Louise; they were so similar to the one hanging in the hall. Carefully, she closed the flaps down again.
Why had all these paintings and photographs been put in boxes and hidden away? Briony picked up the diary. Who had owned this diary? What secrets did it contain? And would any of those secrets reveal the truth about why the boxes had been left hidden in the attic for what appeared to be decades?
* * *
When Adam left to drive to the nearest builders merchants for some supplies, Lucy took advantage of the quiet to edit her latest video blog in preparation for loading onto the channel at her regular time on Sunday evening. Once she was happy with the video she carefully scheduled it to go live Sunday evening at eight o’clock French time.
‘Hi, anyone home?’ Elliot called out as he opened the back door. Django shot out of his basket as Luna appeared and the two dogs greeted each other with enthusiasm.
‘Coffee?’ Lucy said.
‘Please.’
‘What you are you doing home?’
‘My day off today. Thought I’d take Luna and explore Lac de Saint-Cassien. Still early in the year, so it should be quiet. The water adventure centres won’t all be open yet.’
