Bellevue-sur-Mer. The name translates as ‘beautiful view on sea’. Looking out from Bellevue-sur-Mer certainly gave a beautiful view of the sea, along with the hazy headlands of the Côte d’Azur. The beautiful coast and its sheltered harbour had made Bellevue. At first, just a few fishermen’s cottages were built on the shore; then, during the nineteenth century, Bellevue grew into a small village with its own shops and church. Slowly the village spread out from the waterfront and up the hill until it became the town it was today.
Tucked neatly into a corner of a horseshoe-shaped cove, the old harbour was now a busy port de plaisance, a public marina, crammed with rows of brightly painted fishing boats, which bobbed in rhythm on the turquoise waters alongside the great white motor yachts of the rich. Luckily – or perhaps not – for the town, the waters were not deep enough for cruise ships, or the boats of the mega-rich which used a town a few miles along the coast. But for the medium-rich, the retirees and the businessmen out to impress, Bellevue-sur-Mer marina was a popular port of call, where they could moor their boats, restock and recharge their electricity while taking lunch.
If you were lucky enough to own one of those floating gin palaces, you might sail out into the bay and, once you hit the horizon, turn and glance inland. It was worth doing, for, from out at sea, the sight of Bellevue was as pretty as a picture-postcard village, with its pastel-painted cottages rising sharply up the hillside, the twisting lanes and roads zigzagging up to the brow of the green hill, behind which loomed the grey craggy foothills of the Alpes-Maritimes. If you visited during the winter months, from December to May, you might see the snowy caps of the ski-stations, a few miles inland.
Along the shoreline of the town there were cafés and little shops selling the usual tourist tat – everything from tea towels and lavender bags to calendars and tin trays. There was even a casino.
Near the Gare Maritime stood a small house, divided into two apartments – the kind of building which in England would be called a maisonette.
In the lower apartment lived Theresa Simmonds.
When the bottom fell out of her life, Theresa had left her home in London and moved here permanently. She had been coming up to the age of sixty when she lost her job; she had no pension yet and was left with no income and nothing to do. So, on a whim, she had sold up and moved to Bellevue-sur-Mer.
For the last three years Theresa had been part of a tightly knit gang of expats, who had been running La Mosaïque, a small restaurant on the seafront, a few doors down from her flat.
Theresa cooked. Her friends William, Benjamin and Carol managed the front of house, taking the positions of welcome desk and bookings, maître d’, hostess, sommelier and waiting tables between them. They also did the lion’s share of the boring stuff: checking that their licences and insurance were up to date and filling in the annual tax returns. Ex-actress Sally Connor, formerly Doyle, helped out all round, in particular doing the publicity and driving the van to pick up supplies, like the daily fresh fish from a stall on the shore in nearby Cagnes-sur-Mer. Zoe, very much older than the others (though, if you had been rude enough to ask her, she would deny it), had invested her money in the restaurant, and between trips to spas in Switzerland, from whence she returned home with puffed lips and a dubiously smooth forehead, she brought many of her well-heeled friends to La Mosaïque to eat and spend, spend, spend.
Theresa, at a mere three years’ residency, was the newcomer among the gang. And, as her French was still not good enough, she was unable therefore to do anything demanding public-relations skills, unless it was in English. But, anyway, she was happiest behind the scenes in the kitchen.
The purchase of the restaurant had come with the unexpected benefit of a unique mosaic medallion which had been cemented into the pretty floor by the previous owner. The mosaic turned out to be a self-contained, signed work by Pablo Picasso.
Today was an exciting day for Theresa and all the other owners of La Mosaïque, for the mosaic medallion, valued by experts for at least one million euros, was about to go under the hammer at Sotheby’s in Paris.
The gang had had to wait a long time for this. The artwork was taken to the French capital, where it was checked out and researched. After several months it was proved to be a genuine creation of the famed master of twentieth-century art.
Once estimates and reserves, along with very costly insurance and storage costs, had been put on the medallion, it was photographed and advertised all over the world, and, after what felt like a very long time indeed to the owners of La Mosaïque, it was finally put into the annual Sale of Important Modern Art.
Today was the day when all would be decided and they would know how rich they had become.
Theresa was totally on edge. William and Benjamin had pulled the straws to be the two who went up to Paris to attend the sale, while the others sat round the table in Theresa’s apartment, waiting for the phone to ring with news. When the draw happened Theresa felt relieved to be staying at home, but now that the sale was imminent she wished she was in the saleroom as the anticipation was starting to make her feel queasy.
She had made sandwiches and tea, but felt unable even to look at them. Carol and Zoe hunched over the table. The phone sat in the centre, pride of place, like a Sunday roast.
Sally was with Theresa, wiping down the tops and packing the dishwasher, fussing around her while she laid a tray with plates, cups and cutlery.
‘I just need to keep busy,’ Sally said as she sprayed a whiff of surface cleaner over the fridge door and dabbed at an imaginary smear.
‘It’s like waiting for a prison verdict,’ said Zoe.
‘I’d prefer to think it’s more like knowing whether or not we have the X-factor,’ drawled Carol, a beautiful American from Muncie, Indiana, who had in fact, before undergoing surgery to become herself, been christened and brought up as Mark. ‘Even if we get the lowest estimate, I feel I have to say that. Only half a million? Gee, I’d be happy as a clam being forced to share that half a million between the six of us. But if we hit the bingo, and we bag several millions each, well . . .’
‘Dream on, dear,’ Zoe interrupted Carol’s reverie. ‘If we get the lower estimate, you’ll only be sharing what remains of the half million after you’ve paid me back, paid off all our creditors and got La Mosaïque back on its feet. And as the debts are mounting daily, frankly, dear, what remains to be shared from five hundred grand would be mere pin money.’
‘If there’s anything left at all,’ added Sally, puffing the spray at a nearby light-switch and polishing it. ‘We have to strike it big or we are doomed.’
The problem was that, for the last three years, the owners of La Mosaïque had steered their way through extremely rough waters. And their difficulties had not been brought on by their own lack of industry or imagination. Twice, since the joyous opening, the restaurant had come really close to bankruptcy.
It was only a few months after they opened that the result of the Brexit vote had shaken them all, leaving them worried that, depending on how the whole catastrophe was managed, they might be left high and dry, unable to continue working or even living here in France. The worst scenario that they could imagine had them all being forced to give up everything they had worked so hard for here, and obliged to return to a country which, for the majority of them, had not been home for a very long time. Theresa felt she had only just upped sticks to settle here, and the thought of doing it all in reverse was too horrible, particularly as she would then consider it all to have been a failure. It would certainly look that way, she knew, to her not-so-close friends in London. Not only did the referendum result leave the gang of six owners of La Mosaïque in limbo, but it impacted the profits of the business too. The other local expats, who made up a fair percentage of their regular clientele, started pulling in their horns, preparing for the worst. It was obvious why they did this. The first thing that people who feared for their future cut back on was inevitably the unnecessary expense of dining out. Tourism from Great Britain also diminished during this time.
They were quite unprepared for the second enormous blow – a tragedy which occurred only three weeks after the Brexit vote.
The nearby city of Nice was hit by a devastating terrorist attack.
On 14th July 2016, right after the annual firework display, held to celebrate the Fête Nationale, a machine-gun-wielding terrorist had ploughed through the crowd in a heavy lorry, killing eighty-six people and hospitalising almost five hundred more.
That night the restaurant had been closed for the holiday.
Theresa and Sally had gone into Nice together to have some fun. When the lorry struck they were caught up in that terrified crowd. As they ran for their lives, Theresa injured herself trying to leap over a set of overturned bins in a side street. She was left for six months with a bad limp, and had been unable to stand for long periods, which made cooking difficult.
Although Sally stood in, she herself was in no state to work, and as a result the restaurant had no choice but to take on a temporary chef.
Though not physically injured, Sally was badly shaken. For two months she was unable to drive, as whenever a lorry came towards her she went into the shakes and had to pull in to get herself back together again.
Carol took on her duties as van driver.
Even now, almost three years later, whenever either Theresa or Sally heard a police or ambulance siren, they still broke into a sweat and their hearts battered in their chests. Post-traumatic shock took some getting over.
Carol and William were particularly assiduous in their care of Sally and Theresa, but no one quite foresaw the next direct result of the dreadful attack.
Many foreign tourists, mainly the English and the Americans, cancelled their holidays on the Côte d’Azur, while local people simply stopped going out after dark. Even during the day the streets were markedly quieter. For the first week the city was eerily silent and still, and for months afterwards it was a ghost of its former self.
As if the attack itself were not bad enough, the city of Nice and all its satellite towns and villages suffered an enormous financial downturn. By the end of the year 30 per cent of bars and restaurants in the area had closed, including establishments which had been successful and well known for decades. Some of the busiest streets, like the famed Marché aux Fleurs in Nice, were suddenly lined with boarded-up buildings which, before the attack, hosted thriving brasseries, cafés, burger bars and restaurants.
It was a miracle that, principally thanks to Zoe’s continued financial support, La Mosaïque had survived at all.
But for the owners of the restaurant, their joint faith in the future had been secured by the knowledge that they owned this Picasso mosaic, and that it was proceeding through the stages towards a sale at the auction house. Hopefully the mosaic would achieve a great price, with which they would pay off their debts and then divide the profit.
‘We’re lucky,’ said Zoe. ‘The economic downturn means that more and more people are turning to tangible things like Bitcoin and art.’
‘But I thought Bitcoin was only virtual,’ replied Sally.
‘Who cares?’ Zoe knocked back her cup of tea as though it was a shot of eau de vie. ‘Truthfully I’d think we’re likely to reach about six mill.’
‘A mill each,’ crooned Carol, munching on a langue de chat.
‘La la la la la!’ Theresa put her fingers in her ears. ‘Please, Zoe, let’s not tempt fate.’
‘Theresa’s right,’ said Sally, moving over with the second tray, and taking a seat round the table. ‘It’s not as though this will be pin money for us. After the events of the last couple of years, well . . . If we don’t get good money, we’re all done for.’
Theresa laid the platter of sandwiches next to the teapot. She still couldn’t face eating, she felt so tense. ‘Not totally done for, Sally; we’re still scratching along. It’s not over . . . yet.’
‘For one awful moment,’ Zoe put her hand to her wrinkled chest, ‘I thought you were going to say, “It’s not over till the fat lady sings,” and then . . . God forbid, you were going to sing to us.’
Theresa did not like the implication that Zoe thought she was fat, even though, as she smoothed her hands down her sides, she could feel definite rolls of flab around her waist. She preferred to think of herself as slightly embonpoint.
‘I still don’t understand what we’re doing huddled around this phone?’ asked Carol. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to link up on the net? Then we could see it live and not be dependent on those two keeping us informed.’
‘No unofficial filming allowed.’ Sally grabbed a tomato sandwich and took a bite. ‘I imagine no one wants to have their buying splurges recorded and put on Facebook for their husbands or wives to see.’ She took a second bite just as, with a loud shrill tone, the phone rang.
Everyone leaned away from the table.
‘Well, go on.’ Zoe jerked forward. ‘Somebody answer it.’
Theresa put down the teapot and picked up. ‘Hello?’
All four faces strained to listen to the voice in the phone applied to Theresa’s ear.
Everyone slouched back to their original positions.
‘Actuellement, il reste le même que d’habitude. Oui. Je t’aime. À demain.’ She put the phone down. ‘That was Cyril. About the meat delivery. Did we like the new sausage? Do we want to increase it up to the old level yet.’
All four women let out a sigh and reached out for the sandwiches.
‘“Je l’aime”, Theresa.’ Sally corrected her French. ‘“Aimez-vous la nouvelle saucisse?” Correct response – “Oui, je l’aime.” Not “Oui, je t’aime.” Unless you want Cyril to think you love him.’
‘Je l’aime,’ repeated Theresa. ‘I always get that one wrong. Je l’aime.’
‘Moi non plus,’ added Zoe, making a reference to the 1960s racy song ‘Je t’aime . . . mois non plus’. ‘But to be fair, I do adore his sausage.’ Zoe laughed alone at her own joke.
‘How can Cyril be so stupid? He knows why we’re cutting back – like everyone else around here.’ Sally swallowed the last of her sandwich. ‘And, anyway, he could have asked me yesterday. I was chatting to him at the market. He was asking whether we’d all move away from Bellevue-sur-Mer once we were rich! Marcel seemed very worried by the idea.’
‘Why would Marcel care?’ asked Zoe. ‘He owns the brasserie next door. I’d think he’d be whooping it up at the idea of us all buggering off. His business would double without us.’
‘This is nerve-racking.’ Theresa fiddled with the teapot. ‘Why don’t they just get on with it?’
‘Perhaps lots 1 to 254 are taking longer than expected,’ said Carol. ‘The timings they give are mere approximations, you know.’
‘Like the estimates they give us on the works of art, you mean?’ said Sally, reaching for a second sandwich.
Carol held up her large hands. ‘I don’t know why we’re all being like this. After all, whatever we get is a win. No?’
‘If we get the lower estimate, it’s only a mini-win,’ said Sally.
‘Stop moaning. It would still get us out of hot water.’
The phone rang again. This time Theresa didn’t wait, and snatched the receiver. ‘Allô? . . . William! Any news?’
‘Put it on speakerphone,’ said Zoe. ‘Let us all hear.’
Sally fiddled with the phone base and eventually got the speakerphone turned on.
‘There’s an internet bid of two million,’ said William. ‘They’re starting at two million.’
Carol crossed herself and rolled her eyes up to look at the ceiling.
They all leaned in towards the phone, straining to hear the auctioneer as he called out the bids.
‘Two million five hundred thousand . . . Two million eight . . .’
‘Can you hear all right?’ William said.
‘If you’d shut up we might,’ snapped Zoe.
Sally hushed her.
‘Three million . . . Do I hear three and a half? Madam? The gentleman in the green tweed suit?’
‘I hope he isn’t accidentally bidding while he’s waving his phone about,’ said Zoe. ‘A green tweed suit sounds quite William’s style.’
‘Four million . . .’
‘Alleluia!’ Carol made jazz hands.
‘I need a stiff drink,’ said Theresa.
‘Four million five . . . Yes, sir. Five million . . . Six million . . .’
‘Six million and rising!’ hissed Sally, closing her eyes. ‘There is a God.’
‘Seven million . . .’
‘With seven million we won’t need to run a restaurant,’ said Sally. ‘We can just live the life of Riley.’
‘Who is this Riley?’ asked Zoe. ‘I’ve often wondered.’
‘Shut up, Zoe!’ Theresa was still leaning over the phone.
‘Spoilsport.’ Zoe scoffed. ‘I think we can all sigh an enormous sigh of relief now. Can’t we?’
‘Wait a minute . . .’ William said.
‘Is there a bottle of champagne in the house?’ yelled Carol.
‘What?’ It was William, whispering hoarsely into the phone. ‘WHAT?’
‘WHAT?’ replied everyone, excitedly pressing in around the table. ‘WHAT???’
‘I don’t believe it,’ said William. ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Someone’s jumped up to ten million. Haven’t they?’
William’s breathing echoed loudly down the line.
‘William?’ said Theresa, trying to sound level. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Tell us!’ echoed the others.
‘Just a minute, Theresa.’ William had cupped his hand over the receiver. They could hear the muffled sounds of him talking in French with someone in the auction room.
‘Perhaps they leaped up to twelve!’ shouted Zoe in the direction of the phone on the table. This received no more than further muffled sounds from William.
Then he said abruptly, ‘I’ll call you back,’ and hung up.
As Theresa put the receiver back into the base, a strange silence fell on the group. All smiling, but biting their lips with anticipation.
‘Perhaps someone fainted?’ suggested Sally.
‘Probably Benjamin, thinking about all those drugs he could buy.’
‘Shut up, Zoe.’ Sally slammed her cup down on the saucer. ‘You know he’s stopped all that stuff.’
Carol grabbed the receiver.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Sally. ‘He said he’d phone us back.’
‘I can’t wait. I’m phoning him.’
Theresa wrestled the receiver from her hands. ‘Carol. Sally’s right. Something has clearly happened. Someone’s been taken ill or whatever . . . I’m sure William, of all people, will phone us back the moment he gets a chance.’
Carol rose from her seat and strode round the room like a prisoner trapped in a cage. She threw her arms up and cried to the ceiling: ‘I just can’t stand the waiting.’
‘Shall I make some more tea?’ suggested Theresa, also rising from the table.
‘No,’ everyone called in unison.
‘But a stiff gin wouldn’t be out of the question,’ added Zoe.
Theresa went to the kitchen cupboard and pulled out a bottle of Bombay Sapphire and plonked it down in the centre of the table beside the phone, then went back for glasses, bottles of tonic and a lemon.
At this moment the phone rang again.
Zoe was first to grab the receiver. ‘William, dear boy, how rich are we?’
The others were silenced.
Sally reached forward once more, trying to activate the speakerphone button.
‘What do you mean? . . . But they can’t do that. You’re not serious? So now what? The bastards. I understand. I’ll tell them. Yes.’
Zoe put the phone down. She sat well back in her chair and whispered, ‘Sod it!’
The others gathered like vultures around a dead cow.
‘Well?’
‘We’re bolloxed.’ Zoe grabbed the gin bottle, poured some into her teacup and knocked it back in one. ‘Zero,’ she said. ‘Nil, nought, nothing, bugger all. The bastards!’
‘But . . .’ As she sank into her chair, Theresa felt oddly calm. ‘How can that be?’
‘The sale was stopped and the mosaic was withdrawn.’
‘By William?’ Sally slammed her fists on the table, rattling the gin bottle. ‘Has the man gone mad?’
‘You won’t believe this.’ Zoe sighed and poured another measure into her teacup. ‘Lawyers arrived . . .’
‘Lawyers?’
‘From the Picasso Estate. They got there just at the crucial moment and halted the sale.’
‘Halted the sale?’ echoed Sally.
‘But they can’t?’
‘They did.’ Zoe took another swig from her teacup. ‘They say that the work was illicitly taken by Old Mother Hubbard, or whatever her stupid name was, and never did belong to her. They say that she was never Picasso’s mistress – she was his cleaner. And, while cleaning, she had stolen it. And if the mosaic did not ever belong to her, equally it does not belong to us.’
‘So who does it belong to?’ Theresa took a deep breath.
‘According to those lawyers, it belongs to the descendants of Picasso.’ Zoe shrugged and started to shout. ‘As though they needed the money, the little, spoilt, grasping, tight-arsed, nappy-wearing, ugly little sods.’
‘So there’s no sale?’ Carol put her face in her hands. ‘Oh Gaaadddd.’
‘Do we get some kind of compensation?’ asked Sally. ‘We must get something?’
‘Nothing.’ Zoe shook her head. ‘As I said: zip, zilch, sod all.’ She quaffed some more gin. ‘Actually I’m wrong. We not only get sod all, we will be given the present of a massive bill from the auction house for administrative costs, photographs, insurance, storage, advertising . . . and the rest.’
Theresa felt as though she was about to fall through the floor. Suddenly everything was blurred. She feared she would pass out. She stretched forward for the gin.
‘Now what?’ she said, gripping the blue glass bottle to steady herself. ‘That is the question.’
‘Well, I suppose the first thing . . .’ Zoe looked at her watch ‘ . . . would be for you lot to go to La Mosaïque and open up. You’ve got one booking for tonight. Table for one. Me.’
‘Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, Zoe,’ said Sally. ‘Thank you for still having faith in us.’
‘Who’s talking about faith? I’m quite aware that you won’t be able to pay me back the money you owe me in pounds, shillings and pence, or even in euros for that matter, so instead you can pay me in kind. Starting tonight.’
Whey-faced, William and Benjamin had arrived in La Mosaïque at the end of the night’s service, having flown down from Paris immediately after finishing the dire business concerning the mosaic.
The group stayed in the dining room of the restaurant and talked until late into the night about the consequences and choices of the day’s debacle.
They could choose to engage lawyers to fight the claim, but having no evidence of the sex life of the late Widow Magenta, the previous owner, or of her relationship with Pablo Picasso, they knew that, by hiring anyone to defend them, they would probably only be throwing good money after bad. After all, the Picasso Estate was obviously not short of a bob or two, and would have enough dosh to buy the best legal team in the world to fight their case.
‘Tomorrow the restaurant is shut, as usual, and I propose we use our day off to get the accounts straight. I will do this myself, with your help, Theresa, if I may.’
Theresa paced about the room. ‘Well, I don’t know much about money, but I did used to work for a solicitor, so I vaguely know my way around the law, albeit the law of Great Britain.’
The way things were going she feared she would be back working in a London solicitor’s office all too soon.
‘Once we know exactly where we stand financially, then we can choose whether to sell up or struggle on.’
‘When will we get your verdict, William?’ asked Carol. ‘In here, tomorrow evening?’
Sally piped up. ‘No. That’s too sad. Let’s meet at mine. For once I’ll cook. I’m no Theresa, but it’ll be like the old days.’
Everyone agreed that that would be a good idea. Sally would prepare the main dish, Carol would bring starter and dessert and Benjamin would get the wine.
‘Honestly, William, what are our chances of survival?’ asked Theresa, her stomach filled with the dull ache of fear. ‘Now that we won’t be getting this money which we’d all been depending on.’ Her head was so full of the grim thought of being forced to sell up and move back to dreary old Highgate that she barely listened to his reply.
William shrugged. ‘Let’s say we’re going to have to be very creative. I suspect our best chance of staying out of jail is by selling up our interest in the restaurant and going our own different ways. And if necessary taking the first steps towards declaring insolvency.’
Theresa slumped into the nearest chair.