Chapter Five

 

DOUG HAD THOUGHT it amusing to blindfold me for the last hour of our journey. He felt it would spoil his surprise if I looked out at the beautiful scenery. The lack of complaint from me must have made Rebecca suspicious as both of us knew how much I hated not being able to see. In my stress-addled brain, I thought that if I couldn’t see France then technically I wasn’t in France. It was clutching at crushed lemons, as Rebecca would say, but it was my delusion, so I wasn’t going to argue with it.

“Pip,” Doug whispered into my ear. He had sounded more and more like a naughty schoolboy the longer we drove. “We’re just pulling up now.”

“Funny,” I said. “I don’t remember us being in a plane.”

Rebecca chuckled in the back of the car at my pathetic joke but Doug let out his sigh. It was the one he always used when he missed my point completely. He had never gotten my sense of humour.

“Baby,” he said. “You’re an odd one.”

The first time I’d heard that line, I’d been offended. Since I’d heard it countless times over the years all it did was make me picture Rebecca in my head. It was one of her best impressions of Doug. Another laugh fell from my lips, which must have made Doug think it was caused by him as he squeezed my knee. Sometimes I wondered if he understood me at all.

Before I could ask him, the car slowed to a stop and my heart decided to pound its way into my throat.

“I’ll get the door.” Rebecca’s voice bounced with excitement, which in turn, made my stomach wriggle. Okay, so she was the equivalent of an over-enthusiastic three year old with everything but still.

“Pip,” Doug said, helping me from the car. “Time to see your project for the next few months.”

If it was a nursery, I was running. The warmth on my skin made my muscles relax and I could smell . . . well . . . countryside. Freshly mowed grass, some kind of flower, and fresh clean air.

“Don’t look so worried,” he said, taking my blindfold off. “It’ll be ours then. We can start a life here.”

Vivid green, deep blue, rich reds, the colours flooded into my eyes. France had always been such a vibrant palette of colours in my memory but I’d put that down to the rose-tinted viewpoint I’d had. But no, France was vibrant, the trees looked abundant with health as if I’d stepped from a greyed-out print right into a Renoir.

A little stone bridge rolled over a gently trickling brook. An old farmhouse set in a vista. I stared for a moment at its blue door, paint peeling, grubby windows in the top panel. A little light hung over the centre, cocked to the side and smashed. It was framed by some kind of plant, maybe ivy, which had embraced the walls with splashes of pink and white. It was unloved but something about that door seemed to stir me.

France. I was in France once more. I turned to drink it all in as the hillside swept down to fields full of crops, interjected with swathes of lavender. The spire of a church peeked over a copse of trees in the distance. We had to be in the South with the Benedictine look of it. Sunshine felt like medicine here, like rays of health bathing my skin until it tingled. France did something to my soul. I could feel my heart thumping with joy at our re-acquaintance. I’d dreamed of it, yearned for it and now the dusty soil baked beneath my trainers and the endless blue sky welcomed me.

The down side was that it almost looked like her hometown.

 

She’d taken me to visit quite a few times in that year. Ajoux-Sur-Rhône, a quiet, quaint village nestled along the mighty Ardèche. Strong sweeping curves, rugged, untameable. She loved it there, working on her—

 

“Pip, I take it you like?”

I jolted myself out of my thoughts. Where was I? I needed to stop daydreaming. Focus, Saunders. “I love.” I walked to him and showed my enthusiasm with a kiss.

Rebecca cleared her throat. “So, what’s the job, Dougie?”

He frowned. He hated it when she called him that. “You always wanted to be an architect. I can’t give you a degree but I’m hiring you to project manage the renovations.” He smiled at me. “Meet your head carpenter.”

“What?” The both of us stared at him. Was he serious?

“Well, you both were something before you joined that place.” He added venom to “that,” which I knew was more to show he was on our side than anything else. “If you do a great job. Who’s to stop you there?”

I wasn’t sure which one of us wanted to kiss him most.

“Could you be any more perfect?” Rebecca was close to it, I was sure. If she could have wowed him by batting her eyelids and looking up at him shyly for effect, she would have.

Doug folded his arms with his delight shining in his eyes. “Keep talking, keep talking.”

I kissed him again, this time with every single inch of joy I felt.

I think I shocked him by the wide-eyed look he gave me. “Wow, Pip. If I’d known this was all it would take to woo you, I’d have found you more wrecks to fix.”

At last, he was finally getting me.

“Berne and her father will be along later.”

I tripped over a divot in the grass and nearly ended up in the front wall.

Rebecca caught me, a flash of suspicion in her eyes. “Berne?”

“Yup,” Doug said with a chuckle. “If we’re in France then who else would I have to be the main contractor.”

Berne . . . How did he know her name? Had I talked about her that much? Oh brother, please tell me I didn’t talk in my sleep.

“I knew you loved it when you were in Marseille and you said that the woman you knew lived in Ajoux-Sur-Rhône.”

“I did?” I squeaked. Had I been drunk? I must have been drunk. I never mentioned her name. To mention her name was to . . . well . . . it sounded so good, so smooth, so—

“Yeah.” Doug was completely ignorant to me gripping onto Rebecca’s arm like it would save me. “When we first met. You were telling me how you would have loved to have worked with her on a project.”

Ah. Had I been merry that night. Our first date and nerves had gotten me into a gibbering mess. Doug, thankfully, had not noticed quite how drunk I’d been. Rebecca had nursed me through that weekend.

“Really?” Rebecca raised her eyebrows. “So this Berne will be working with us?”

“And her father,” Doug said. “After all, they are the local artisans.”

Rebecca caught me before I passed out on the spot. Oh crap, we were in Ajoux-Sur-Rhône, oh crap, oh crap. My heart beat so fast that I was sure that it showed through my rib cage.

“She okay?” Doug caught on that I was looking less than glowing.

“Heat,” Rebecca mumbled, gripping hold of me. “You want to get us inside in the cool?”

“Right.” Doug hurried to the door, unlocked it, and let us in the almost derelict open-plan cottage. “Have some water, Pip.”

I took the offered bottle and used it to focus on something other than . . . well . . . Slow sips, cool liquid, Evian was so smooth, Berne was smooth too . . . oh no . . .

“So talk us through what you want,” Rebecca said, leading Doug away to give me time to think. Thank God for her. Thank God she knew me.

Sipping at my Evian, I focused on the surroundings. There would be a lot of repair work needed to the stone. The rafters and floors were rotted through. Where I sat, on the damp remains of a stair, I could see black charred marks. It explained why the place had been open plan and why there was so much water. I hoped no one had been inside when the place went up in flames.

Curious, I got to my feet and wandered through to the left. It had been some kind of entertainment room, the remains of a billiard table in the centre. There was even a melted TV still mounted on the wall. The blaze had ripped right through the place so I was careful to watch my footing. It had been over a decade since I’d done anything more than DIY at the flat. However nice it was that Doug trusted me, I would need someone with a lot of experience to help. And Berne and her father had it in abundance. Berne was ten years older than me and well, she’d always been the voice of experience and wisdom and . . . just breathtaking.

Balls.

“Bonjour?”

Uh oh.

My skin tingled with just the sound of her voice. My heart pounded. I froze to the spot. Oh, how even a hello pulsed energy through me. I was in trouble.

“’Allo?”

She’d seen me. I tensed. Her heavy boots clomped on the hollow floors. I couldn’t pretend I was deaf. I couldn’t exactly throw myself out of the window and run either. For a start, that wasn’t polite and if anything, I was polite. A deserter, a coward but a polite one.

“Madame?”

Her hand touched my arm. I started with the reality of it. She was here, she was touching me. I needed to lie down.

“I’m sorry,” I managed, sounding like I was hyperventilating. “I didn’t hear you.”

Do not turn around, woman, stay staring at the mess. Where was Rebecca? Where was Doug?

“It is a tragedy, non?” Berne’s voice gave a hint that she had recognised mine. Her questioning tone almost adding, “Is that you?”

I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t cope. It was too raw, too real, she was too real.

“What happened here?” My voice was shaking. I tried to keep my tones clipped, unrecognisable. Why, I didn’t know. She would soon see me. What would she think? Would she still think I was beautiful? Would she be?

“A rich man from the city bought it.” I remembered enough to know that to her, the city meant Marseille. “He had the place gutted, but he spent no time here.”

Berne speaking English, her dropped H’s and her smooth tones. It was always a tone or two higher when she spoke a foreign tongue. In French it was deeper, richer . . . melodic, enchanting, the way she caressed each vowel was so—

“Ah, so you’ve reacquainted!” Doug strode into the room with a clomp. “What do you think, Pip? Can you fix her up?”

Fix anything? The effort of standing felt like I had run around the South of France, twice.

“Pippa?”

My skin did a rippled Mexican wave when she whispered my name. Uh oh. How did I get out of this? What was the proper conduct? How did one greet a woman, who was the love of my life, a woman I’d abandoned, in the presence of my soon to be husband? I couldn’t just stand and stare at the devastation.

Move, woman . . . you need to move. “How did you find the place?” I sounded unnaturally cheery as though I were either about to pull out a gun or dissolve into maniacal laughter.

“I was looking, the guy said he was done with the place.” Doug walked to me and placed his hands on my waist. “Thought there was no place you’d rather have a holiday home than where Berne was.”

Silence.

Thick heavy silence.

Berne was taking it all in. I could feel her watching me. I knew her well enough to know she was taking in every detail. Doug’s words would confuse her no doubt. I wasn’t meant to care anymore. I left after all. Why would I want a holiday home in her hometown? Who did that, ever?

“So,” Rebecca said, clapping her hands. “You guys fancy some sunshine discussion?”

I heard the sound of footsteps behind me as I riveted my gaze to the charred table.

“You want to help me grab some rocks to arrange for it, Berne?” Rebecca asked, always the hostess. “It’s a pleasure to meet you at last by the way.”

“It is nice to meet you also—”

“Rebecca.”

The, “ah,” in Berne’s response made me smile. I’d talked of Rebecca a lot during my time here. Berne had always wanted to meet her. I think to determine if there was anything going on between us. It was one of the reasons why I hadn’t told Doug about the true nature of my relationship with Berne. He’d think the same thing. That, and I was a chicken.

Doug left my side to join the introductions. “I’m Doug Fletcher. We spoke on the phone.”

“Oui.” Berne’s tone was icy at best. “I did not know that you knew of me.”

His confident laugh showed just how much of a clue he didn’t have. “Course. Pip talked so fondly of you that I’ve been itching to find an excuse to meet you.”

Now I knew that was a lie. If I’d mumbled anything about her, it had been on that first date and at no time since. I couldn’t. I’d loved her so much that it physically hurt.

“She did?” Berne sounded shocked.

I closed my eyes. What must she think of me?

“So, let’s head outside and talk shop, yeah?” Rebecca saved the day once again. I owed her chocolate for a month.

I heard the three of them leave, walked to the billiard table, and resisted the urge to curl up on top of it until it all went away. It had taken me two years of living in a daze just to not wake up with her on my mind. Banishing her from every conscious thought, I had slowly, surely begun to crawl from the emptiness being without her was. I still wasn’t over it. I doubted I ever would be.

“Pip, you doing okay there?” Rebecca walked in and stood by my side. “Berne senior has just showed up so I thought I’d come check on you.”

“I’m just great.” I sounded more like I’d been impaled on something sharp.

“Pip, you said that you wanted to marry Doug.”

“I do.” That sounded like a question.

“By the look on her face and the deer-in-headlights reaction you’re sporting, something tells me there’s unfinished business.”

That was putting it mildly. “I’d better get out there before she says too much.”

The fear of facing Berne paled in comparison to the fear she would tell Doug the truth. I couldn’t face that conversation. I couldn’t face having to explain to them both why I was so pathetic. The shame of it made me sick for a start.

With Rebecca trudging beside me, I stepped out into the sunlight and promptly wanted to get in the car and speed off.

“Won’t work,” Rebecca whispered, holding my elbow. “Doug’s got the keys.”

“I hate that you know me so well.”

“I know.”

Berne appeared from around the back of that little beat-up van her father had when I was here. It had been ancient then. It made Winston look like a spring chicken.

Berne however looked even more spellbinding than she had when I had known her. I had to stop for a moment at the sight of her. Tall, olive-skinned with shoulder-length brown hair that she always tied back when working but never enough to stop a strand on each side from falling into her hazel eyes. The sun just seemed to dance across her skin. I couldn’t explain it but Mediterranean blood seemed to make her blessed by sun.

“You were right,” Rebecca said, forcing me to move. “She is French.”

I could only nod, feeling as though I were being led to the gallows.

“In fact, she’s gorgeous . . . I mean look at those arms.”

The prompt did not help. Berne had spent her life lifting stone and spent her summers on the Ardèche kayaking. Needless to say, the term buff should have her as the description in the dictionary.

“Not to mention her as—”

“You’re not helping!” I glared at Rebecca.

She chuckled. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this flustered. There is a woman beneath the lady after all.”

“It’s not funny.” Now I sounded like I was begging. “I can’t do this . . .”

“Hey.” Rebecca rubbed soothing circles on my back. “You’ll do great. It’s just the shock of seeing her, that’s all.”

“Right.” I could work with that. “A shock.”

“Besides, Doug is rich and handsome.”

I nodded, puppet-like. “Rich and handsome.”

“And a man,” Rebecca added with a sly smile. “Important for you being straight and all.”

“Quite.” I turned to walk the rest of the way, ignoring the teasing in Rebecca’s voice.

“Really, really straight. Not staring at those lips, nuh, uh.”

Was I?

Balls.

I was trying to read what Berne was saying, that was all. I took a deep breath. I had absolutely no feelings for her what-so-ever, nope. Not one.

 

TORTURE WAS A strong word to use but it was the only one that could describe our little business meeting. Doug and Berne’s father made hard work of communicating through Doug’s terrible French and Berne’s father’s broken English.

Rebecca could speak the language as fluently as I could but acted ignorant, enjoying Doug’s attempts, while I stared straight down at the floor, trying to avoid Berne’s gaze.

My heart happily pounded away as if I was swimming lengths in the pool, my brain joining in the torment by replaying every clandestine memory it could find.

I knew there was talk of me working closely with my old friend, as Doug kept calling her. I knew the plan was that Rebecca would project manage. I was sure that Monsieur Chamonix was quite confident that we could have the project finished by Christmas and from Rebecca’s laughter I knew she thought that was crazy talk.

Snippets, moments of the afternoon flittered by but what was noticeable by its absence, was Berne’s voice. Like me, she had not uttered a word.

As the sun started its evening descent, Doug made the suggestion to leave us alone while he, Rebecca, and Monsieur Chamonix headed to see a problem section. Neither of us could really refuse. What possible reason could there be for two old chums, as Rebecca was calling us, not to catch up?

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Rebecca left hanging in the air as the three of them abandoned us.

Traitor. That’s what she was. A traitor.

“Pippa?”

I closed my eyes, wondering if I tried really hard like in The Wizard of Oz, I’d wake up in Kansas or even better, somewhere they didn’t have rattlesnakes.

“Pippa, you cannot bury your head. I am right here.” The purring sound of her dropped h’s made my stomach gurgle. I rubbed it.

“Must be hungry.” I didn’t believe my own words for a minute.

“That is because you did not eat.”

The feel of her hand on my arm sent a shivery ripple up my skin.

“Doug,” I said, clearing my throat. “Doug is always hungry.”

Oh nice one, Saunders. Start off by shoving your fiancé in her face. Bravo, you numbskull.

“He seems like a nice man.” Her tone didn’t seem to agree with her.

“Wonderful. And rich and handsome.” That was what Rebecca said, right? Rich, handsome, wonderful, yes.

“He cares for you deeply.”

I nodded and slid my left hand in my pocket as though I’d committed a crime.

“Pippa, he said you talk of me?”

Well done, Doug, tell her that why don’t you. What kind of a thing was that to say anyway? “Yes, well . . . Why not?”

She grunted and I tensed for it. I couldn’t even look at her. I just kept my gaze on the bridge as if it could save me.

“Perhaps because we were lovers, non?” She teased out the word lovers in a way that made me want to run to the car, smash the windows, and crawl inside. I couldn’t do this, she was too Berne . . . too her . . . too . . . French.

“He doesn’t know.” I shrugged, feeling her gaze on my face. Was she looking at my lips? “He can’t. I can’t . . .”

“You wish to marry him yet you conceal your deepest truths?”

That made me glare at her. I was face to face with the beauty I had spent a decade trying to erase from my mind. She’d aged to perfection—the sun had highlighted her hair in touches only nature could pull off. Her hazel eyes deep and as big as ever and those—

“He doesn’t need to know everything,” I squeaked, stepping backwards. Desperation pounded in my neck. Could you have a neck attack? “I . . . he . . .”

“You run away from me,” she said, her hand on my elbow, those eyes searching. “I wake to find you gone. No trace . . . nothing.” The hurt flashed across those gorgeous eyes. “You turn up now, here, with him. You think I stay quiet?”

“No.” My heart felt so constricted by her pain that tears filled my eyes. “I didn’t know anything about it, I swear.” Touching her hand, I felt the familiar calluses from her work, knowing how hard those hands worked, how strong. “I would never have done that to you.”

“Yet you wish me to remain some sordid secret?” Berne stepped away. “You wish to play pretend, very well.” She looked at the house. “I would not want Vivienne thinking that I would be unfaithful to her anyway.”

Didn’t that one land like a prize punch? “Vivienne?” I knew that I’d disliked that name all along. What kind of a person was called such a name, huh?

“Oui, my lover.” Again, that longer than necessary emphasis which gave me another shudder. “We have been together many years.”

Ouch again. It didn’t matter that I deserved it.

“Yes, well. You were always too good for me,” I snapped.

My words sounded so angry that I almost took them back but I heard Rebecca’s voice. I turned from Berne and stomped towards the doorway.

“Do we have a place to stay or do you expect us to live in a ruin?” My tone was even icier to Doug who seemed not to notice.

“Sure, I hired the place down the road. Rebecca’s got one all to herself for once.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want that?”

Poor Doug twigged that I was beyond PMS and held up his hands. “Now, Pip, Rebecca isn’t that far away—”

“Her place have two rooms?”

Now Rebecca was staring at me along with Berne who cast a suspicious glance in her direction.

“Does it?”

Doug nodded. Poor man must have wondered if I was crazy. “Yes . . . but—”

“Then you can find me there.”

Doug sucked in his chin. He wanted his own way. “Now, Pip—”

“Key.” I was sure that if he didn’t hand it over, I may drop to the floor and kick and scream. Toddlers had it pegged, there was nothing like a good temper tantrum.

I’d never even had a heated word with Doug before but why not start now. I could be one of those neurotic wives that had him followed and changed his diet on a whim.

He handed it over and I didn’t miss the look of “help me” shot Rebecca’s way. Rebecca shot him one back that said, “Don’t look at me, she’s a lunatic.”

Berne studied the whole situation, sussing out where the lay of the land was, who Rebecca was, and reading my every emotion like I’d been written just for her. How did she do that? It was unfair. Spectacularly unfair.

“I will help her to unpack. I am delighted to catch up with my old friend, non?” Berne could barely keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “You can drive.”

She threw the keys at me and I caught them dumbstruck. I knew I wasn’t the only one staring at her. Doug sprang to life first and piled my things into her van like he’d get on the next plane to England. Wow, this was going well.

 

ONCE MY THINGS were in the Chamonix van, I drove us in awkward silence. The roads were so tight that I wanted to breathe in as we squeezed through lanes. To the left, up the hill, was a huge ruined Benedictine abbey. We’d had picnics in the grass expanses between the old buildings dotted around. To our right, the hill sloped down. The village plonked in a smooth plateau. The sun beat down through the windscreen as I slowed the van to look. Every single inch of the square was etched in my memory. The cragged steps of the houses, shutters painted green or blue, the flowerbeds spewing vibrant reds, yellows, and whites.

I swore it was even the same group of elderly men playing boules on a patch of muddy stone. France in the summer, how I loved it. I could almost hear the clink of coffee cups. The scent of rich café mixed with freshly baked bread. Humming chatter of locals, their accents so different from the North. The relaxed soul-soothing beauty of a small country square centred around a tree that had white blossoms during the summer months.

Berne’s parents lived on the edge of the square in a large stone house with green shuttered windows. Monsieur Chamonix’s furniture and masonry shop sat to the side of it, hand-painted letters on the peeling wooden sign. The furniture and sculptures were Berne’s. It was why I’d been sent to study under her by a friend of my father. She could work any surface, any material with ease, but stone was her forte.

The cottage Doug had rented for Rebecca was straight over the crossroads towards the gite holiday park. I knew it the second I saw the key. It was where my father’s friend had stayed and why he’d known of Berne in the first place.

My father had been supportive. More so because he’d wanted his youngest daughter to explore her love of language other than wood. He had a view that after that year, I would have endured all the culture I could stand and come home. I would then have been ready to marry a doctor, or even better a man with an estate, and live some weird Jane Austen parody.

Unfortunately, I’d returned back from France a gibbering wreck who’d spent the first two years secretly spending my money on counsellors. Then, Rebecca’s father had found out about her and we’d headed off to London.

Again, my father had been gracious. He’d bought our house so we could rent a flat in it cheaper. He did love Doug. That was my soul redeeming feature. I’d bagged the rich man and so to my father all was well.

I didn’t quite feel that way. What I felt was akin to a kept woman. I had gone from parental allowance to a pathetic excuse for a job and would probably have a credit card and allowance from Doug. My older sister was happy living like it. She completed the collection with two kids, a dog, and a Land Rover. I’d never wanted that and yet, here I was on the very same path.

Only, I was in a dinky van with a woman who had meant freedom once. Now, she just reminded me of how empty everything seemed to have become. 

The little cottage was in a row of holiday conversions. Ample parking space, two floors, a nice veranda on which to enjoy the spectacular views and shutters painted in different colours. What was France without painted shutters?

I shut off the engine and stared out over the steering wheel.

“Answer me some questions, s’il te plaît.”

Sighing, I rolled my head to look at her. “I’ll try.”

“Why did you leave?” Her eyes tracked over the painted front door.

“I got scared.”

We both knew that. Why was she bothering to ask?

“Who is Rebecca, a lover?”

“Oh goodness no.”  Berne smiled at the force of my denial. “She’s my best friend in all the world, like I told you.”

She held my gaze. “Do you love him?”

“I’m marrying him.”

“That is not what I asked.”

I picked at the steering wheel, which was faded from the years of sunshine baking it. “I know.”

Her smile crinkled the corners of her eyes. That seemed to satisfy some train of thought and she squeezed my knee. “Let me help you unpack and we will start again . . . as new friends.”

Those words hurt even more than her confession about Vivienne but that’s what I wanted, wasn’t it? The fact she was talking to me was enough after all I’d done.

“Friends it is.”

 

THE AFTERNOON WAS a mix of joy and angst as Berne helped me to unpack in silence. Doug, it seemed, had been preparing and had brought a million essentials. I swore the man had packed half of England. Some of it would have to go to his bachelor pad up the road. I had no intention of turning on the whisking machine thingy, let alone deciphering what I needed to whisk in it. The more stuff we unpacked the more Berne found it funny. She’d only been with me a year and she knew I couldn’t cook a sandwich let alone anything else. I was no baker and certainly no Mary Berry.

It scared me just how easy it was for Berne and I to fall into a comfortable peace. It was almost as though I had never left and our lives were not separate. It had always felt so effortless with her. We made the perfect team. Working side by side, it felt . . . it felt . . . a relief to be next to her.

Balls.

The thought dawned on me as we unloaded the last of the boxes and panic raced around my body. There was no way I could do this. No way I could be around her for any extended period of time and not feel, not want—

“It will take some adjusting,” Berne whispered, her strong hand on my elbow. “We will find a way. Do not worry.”

Did I even want to adjust?

I shook my head free of the thought. Doug, I was marrying Doug. He was going to be my husband. We were going to make a rugby team. The sudden nausea of that made me drop the box I’d been carrying.

“You over think this, oui?” she said, picking up the box and heading to a pantry-like cupboard. “One thing at a time. We are taking boxes up the stairs, cleaning the kitchen, nothing more.”

Out she came with a mop and bucket and proceeded to fill it with soapy water. It was something she had done as routine. Her mother had drilled it into her that a clean kitchen floor was essential. I’d missed that little quirk.

“Then why does it feel like . . . ?” I clamped my hands over my mouth. How dare I even think such a thing?

“Because we once did it before.” Berne’s smile twinkled through her eyes. “As I recall, it took a long time, non?”

The fact that one, she knew what I was thinking and two, she had brought up our moving-in day made heat, embarrassment, and a very unwelcome tingle burst through my system. My brain turned to mush with the memory. I was in awe, still, of my own reckless behaviour. Whatever had come over me, I didn’t know.

“I see that you do not forget so easily,” she said. “Mais, I am sure you have many more memories with him.”

I snorted. “Are you joking?” Closing my eyes at my own emphatic confession, I tried to ignore Berne’s soft chuckle. Something told me that she was enjoying the torment she was inflicting. “I mean, of course. Why wouldn’t we?”

Berne looked as convinced as I felt, a strange “uh oh” sounded in my head as everything around us seemed to take a breath. Her eyes fixed on mine. I was too close to her. Had I moved or did she? Either way we were getting closer. Each breath harder to take, each beat heavier and louder. Her full, moist lips—

“Pip?”

In my haste to put as much distance between us as possible, I clattered over the mop bucket. The soap suds gushed all over the floor. I felt my feet slip and flung my hands out to stop myself.

I couldn’t.

I smashed nose first into the pantry door.

“Pip?” Rebecca’s voice grew more urgent and I heard her barge in through the doorway as if she were riding to the rescue. “Pip, what—?”

“This is why I don’t do housework.” I reached up to touch my nose only for Rebecca to bat my hand away.

“Ice compress,” she muttered.

“I have it here.” Berne’s voice. Such a wonderful sound.

The cooling vapours of freeze-dried peas made my throbbing nose calm, if only a little. I looked up at her trying not to show I was in pain. “Id it brogen?”

“Pardon?”

“She said is it broken,” Rebecca translated. “Should hear her when she gets a cold.”

I loved Berne’s gentle smile. She looked as though she wanted nothing more than to ask Rebecca to fill her in on every gap she’d missed. I wanted to tell her every detail but then I’d have to explain why . . . no, no, bad idea.

“Imb fine,” I managed, reaching for the pantry door to pull myself up but it was remarkably difficult bearing pea compress. “Jub neeb to get up.”

They hoisted me to my feet and carried me to a leather and delightfully squishy sofa.

“Doub?”

“Monsieur Chamonix has taken him to the local old pub, I think, something about football?”

Berne beamed. “Marseille play Lyon tonight. It will be fierce.”

“Doub won hab a clue.”

Berne raised her eyebrows and Rebecca stepped in. “Doug isn’t a sport kind of guy unless you count golf, which I don’t.”

“It is more a hobby than a professional sport you feel?”

Rebecca nodded. “Sport should make you exert and sweat, and you shouldn’t have people carrying your equipment for you.”

I looked at Berne who perched on the edge of the kitchen table as Rebecca sat next to me. “I prefer more active sports also.” Ever the diplomat, the woman should have been running the country by now.

“You want to stay, eat?” Rebecca asked, getting to her feet as though she had mischief on her mind.

“Imb sure Berne wan to go homb.”

Berne raised her eyebrows once more.

“She said make yourself at home.”

I scowled at Rebecca but she was too busy luring Berne into the kitchen where the two of them cleaned up my mess. “So you’re a stonemason by trade?”

“Oui. I was going to join the gendarmerie mais I decided that I prefer it here.” Berne took the mop bucket that Rebecca had refilled and started to sweep across the floor.

“You live here permanently?” Rebecca moved around the incoming mop and washed the ingredients in the sink.

“Here and the city,” Berne said.

Rebecca looked at me.

“She meanb Marbsay.”

“Ah, so you still live there too? Do you do the same thing there?”

Berne picked up the used bucket and emptied it outside. Sounds of sloshing water gushing into a drain mixed with Rebecca’s chop chopping on the board.

“No, I go there to see Vivienne.”

My nose seemed to hurt more at the sound of her name. It was a dumb name, like Virginia, I mean . . . come on, who called their kid Virginia?

“I take it she’s not just an old chum?” Rebecca flashed me a wicked grin. I wanted to curl up into a ball and cry.

“Non,” Berne whispered.

“You been with her long?” Rebecca seemed to read the look on my face and frowned. I got up and wandered towards the bedrooms.

I didn’t want to know how long they had been together or how wonderful life was for them. Just hearing her say that she had even looked at someone else felt like my insides were being ripped out through my stomach. No, better to pretend that she wasn’t invading my thoughts with her gorgeous smile or her laugh, or . . .

Oh, get a grip. Focus, decor, rooms. Inspect the rooms like mother.

The bedrooms were everything that could be expected from a holiday rental, neat, airy, and without personality. My nose had calmed enough for me to regain some sense of smell and I breathed in slowly, trying to clear the foggy pain.

I sneezed, nearly knocking myself backwards.

Holiday places all had a summery, musty smell that seemed to linger. I stood, wondering what it was. I discounted frozen pea. The linen was fresh, the sheets no doubt were crisp, yet every place I’d been abroad smelled like . . . well . . . adventure.

“Rebecca is asking if you would like to have bacon in your omelette?”

Rebecca knew full well that I always had bacon in my omelette and was checking on me. So much for decor. I couldn’t give a crap where I was as anywhere Berne happened to be in was perfect. “You were set on the gendarmerie. Why did you really come back?”

Berne smiled. “Mon papa, he had a stroke. My brother was already doing so well in the force that it seemed only right that I come back to help.”

I stared at her with the news. I couldn’t imagine how much she’d been through. She adored her father, as had I.

“It is okay,” she said with her trademark effortless shrug. “He is a little slower, a little bossier, mais . . . he has good health.”

What must he think of me? I was sure that he must have known Berne and I were much more than friends. “Does he recognise me, I mean today?”

“Oui. You are hard to forget.”

I made the mistake of meeting her eyes. Love or lust or whatever went on between us was meant to fade over time, was meant to be smothered by my abandonment. Instead the space between us seemed to me as though it may shimmer and pulse with the force of my own feeling. Oh, I was in trouble, real trouble. Leaving was supposed to stop this, was supposed to drive these feelings away.

“Ladies.” Rebecca cleared her throat, frowning at me once more. “You ready to eat or what?”

“Yes.” I snapped my eyes away from Berne. “Yes . . . starving.”

The soft chuckle from Berne as I walked by told me that she understood exactly how I felt. Earlier, I wondered how we’d get through the project together without me losing myself but right now, I would be happy just to get through dinner.