December 2016
Lilianne’s mother’s illness lingers for days and Paul steps in to cover the lunchtime bar shift, while I prepare the food. He frets about the time he’s losing on laying the floors and by mid-afternoon he’s heading back to site, where he works on into the evening. We’re both exhausted and relieved when Lilianne returns.
“How’s your mum coping?” I ask her.
“Crisis is over. Until the next one.” She raises her hands in a dismissive gesture. “Perhaps they will move into a maison de retraite.”
Lilianne will be free to get on with her own life but it may not be the life she’d choose. She exudes wistfulness like a perfume. How I wish she and Henri could overcome their mutual myopia and see a joint destiny.
After our lunchtime customers have left, I leave Lilianne in charge and cycle up to surprise Paul at Les Quatre Vents. There’s something I need to discuss with him.
When I arrive, flushed and breathless from the bike ride, he’s standing outside, smoking. His clothes smell of tobacco with a lingering whiff of paint or varnish. I’m not happy about the smoking but at least he’s stopped smothering himself in that musky after shave. He drops his cigarette and stamps it out before greeting me with a hug.
“Can’t wait to see inside.”
I prop my bike against the wall and follow him into the house. The elm flooring has worked its magic, lifting an otherwise-cold open plan space and transforming the bones of a once-derelict building into a comfortable home.
“What do you think?” Paul asks.
“Stunning but . .”
“But what?”
I stretch out a hand and wave at the exposed concrete floor of the kitchen area.
“Come on, say it. Don’t you like it?”
“It’s just . . . I thought you’d be a bit further on, that’s all.”
Paul grimaces. “My fault. Took me a while to get into practice. Made a few false starts.” He steps nimbly across an open pack of boards and indicates a scuffed area of floor with the toe of his shoe. “I wasted a whole pack here. I cut planks to fit, then realised I was laying the boards in the wrong direction.”
“You mean from side to side of the room?”
“Yeah. Didn’t look right so I pulled it all up and re-laid it on the horizontal so it runs in a continuous line through the house.”
“It certainly has a wow factor,” I agree but my spirits slump at this lack of progress. What if the Brownings find a buyer? He takes my arm. “Come and look out the back.”
Together, we stroll around to the rear of the building.
“Oh my!”
The digger the Bergers hired to dig the trenches is still parked on the grass, looming over three deep pits. Beside it is a vast black plastic tank, almost as tall as me, waiting to be installed.
“Watch your footing. That pit’s two metres deep. If you stumble in there I’m not sure how I’d get you out.”
We circumnavigate the first trench, squeezing through the narrow gap beside the digger and Paul knocks on the hollow polyethylene tank.
“The waste from the house collects in here and solids sink to the bottom as sludge.”
“Gross.” I wrinkle my nose.
“Yeah, but it slows down the process so bacteria can break it all down. Gradually new waste water flushes it through into these next pits where we’ll have perforated pipes buried in gravel, way below the surface, to complete the treatment. That’s called a drain field.”
“Enough,” I protest, but still he hasn’t finished.
“By the time the effluent comes out the other end, the water should be pure enough to drink!”
I shudder. Now’s my chance to ask him. I take a deep breath. “Paul—I want to go to London to see Owen for a few days. Could you cover for me at the bar?”
I read my answer from the spark of alarm in his eyes. He rearranges his expression and waves his arm towards the digger.
“Of course you must go but right now it’s impossible. The guys will be installing the new septic tank in the next couple of weeks. I’ll have to be on site to oversee the work.”
“How long’s it going to take? Can’t Giles Berger manage it for you?”
He sighs. “We’ve had too many false starts. It’s hard enough getting the Bergers to take responsibility for their own work.”
I press him. “What about Henri?”
“He doesn’t have the experience.”
“So you’re saying I can’t go and visit my son?”
“He’s coming here for Christmas, isn’t he? If I press on now, there’s a good chance we’ll be in the house by then.”
“Well, get on with it!” I yell, turning my back on him.
I fetch my bike and ride back to the bar.
*
Lilianne has finished clearing up. Her hands are red from the washing up—she’s been neglecting herself, forgetting her routine of applying hand cream.
“I missed you,” I tell her. “And I’m sorry but I used up most of the freezer stocks while you were away.”
“Then I will stay late today and cook,” she says. “What do we have? Poulet? Legumes? Cabillaud?”
I check my stock list. “We have chicken and vegetables, but not cod.”
She fidgets, but makes no move towards the kitchen to get started. Her face is pinched and her skin looks sallow. After a week of nursing her mother, day and night, she must be exhausted.
“Emma, there is something I must tell you. Something not nice.”
She must be planning to hand in her notice!
“Lilianne,” I stutter. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“Ah—you think I am leaving the bar? Well, perhaps I am. That is for you to tell me.”
Lilianne lowers her head and studies her hands. “It’s about the notes.”
“Notes?” I rack my brains.
Has money gone missing from the till? But Lilianne rarely deals with the takings. That task is down to me and Henri.
She raises her head and allows her eyes to meet mine. “Texts.”
“Texts?” The word is hollow and meaningless. And then I remember. “Those poisonous messages?”
“They were from me.”
I stare at her. “What!”
“I sent them.”
“I don’t believe you. Why would you do such a thing?”
Lilianne is talking in riddles. She’s not her calm, elegant self. Her face is blotchy and her left eye inflamed; she rubs it with the back of her hand and it turns pinker.
“I went a little crazy. Looking after my parents while my life rotted away but I think it was because of Henri.”
“Henri?” Now I’m really confused. Is she trying to tell me Henri was involved in sending those messages? “He’d never be so cruel!”
She flinches and continues in a flat voice, barely above a whisper. “Last year Henri and I were having a relationship. I thought there was a future for us. But it ended—soon after you arrived.”
So there was a connection between Lilianne and Henri! Yet they always behaved so coolly to one another. More like strangers than work colleagues but that doesn’t explain why Lilianne targeted me with hate texts. Was she lonely after breaking up with Henri?
“What happened?” I ask. “With Henri.”
“Henri ended it. I think he could only see you.”
“What?” I’m beyond stunned.
I remember Paul once hinted that Henri was smitten with me, but it seemed unbelievable so I took it as a sign of Paul’s jealousy at me spending so much time with another man. Henri and I were business colleagues. Nothing else.
I think back over the past year, remembering occasions when Henri stood close beside me, or took my hand and held it for a little too long and remember Lilianne sometimes walking in on us. But those were times when we were exchanging confidences—him telling me about his childhood; me explaining about Owen—and Zak.
“There’s nothing between Henri and me,” I tell her, shuffling my feet. “Never has been.” Never will be.
“What I did was wrong, Emma. I wish I could change it. I will carry on and do the cooking now, but I think you will ask me to leave my job.”
“I can’t discuss this now, I have to collect Mollie. I’ll think about it over night and we’ll talk again tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Lilianne says quietly.
When Mollie and I arrive home from school, a light is flashing on the answerphone. Calls to our landline are rare so I’m convinced this message will be from Peter Browning ringing to tell me the cottage is sold and we have to move out. After Lilianne’s confession and the disappointment of not being able to go and see Owen, today is tainted with bad karma. I can’t take any more bad news. I leave the answerphone to blink itself into a stupor.
Mollie’s asleep in bed and I’m dozing in an armchair, when I hear Paul scraping his boots on the metal doormat. Reluctant to talk, I keep my eyes closed and feign sleep. Paul tiptoes around me on his way to the kitchen and returns with a beer but his next action cuts through my torpor.
He jabs his finger on the answerphone play button and a voice I’ve not heard for a while—friendly, breathy and commanding—addresses me by name.
‘Hi Emma—and lovely Mollie—Tante Eve here. It’s been a while—sorry. I’ve missed you Mollie. I’m coming to see you soon, I promise, and I’ll take you out for a treat after school. Okay, sweetie? Love and kisses.’
I open my eyes and sit upright, straining to listen. There’s a click as Paul presses one of the answerphone buttons.
“Can you play that again, Paul? I didn’t quite catch that.”
He turns to me, with a strained expression. “I’ve deleted it.”
“Why?”
“She’s messed you about Emma—and Mollie. You’re well shot of her.”
I agree with him. It doesn’t matter to me, but Mollie was fond of the woman she called Tante Eve and quite upset when she seemed to lose interest. But I wish I could hear it again to remember word for word what she said in her message.