Not to be outdone, Leigh slammed his own chair back. All three of us were yelling across the table, spittle flying everywhere. Not the most intimate bodily fluid shared between us, but unwelcome, nonetheless.
“Oh yeah? Setting up your own camp there, are you?” Leigh’s square-jawed handsomeness twisted into something ugly. “Don’t be too hasty. If you’d have paid our marriage more attention, we might never have been having this conversation. You’re not so perfect yourself, Casp. That Formula 3 season turned you into a fucking stress monster, and you know it.”
“You didn’t mind so much when it won us the National fucking TV Award, though, did you? My number one bloody fan, all of a sudden.”
“You were just supposed to look competent, not try to win the whole bloody thing.”
“And you were just supposed to be my co-driver, not shove your dick in Jonas’s arse!”
All colour drained from under Leigh’s fake tan. He’d fallen silent, too, which was unlike him. Jonas's crushing silence was equally atypical. And a welcome draught ghosted across my sticky shirt, almost as if someone had finally, blessedly, opened a window. Or even the office door.
I turned my head to look. A serious, youngish woman loitered in the doorway, unsure whether to enter. And who could blame her? Emma, presumably, the tardy viticulturalist.
Leigh pulled himself together first, holding out his arms in an effusive greeting. He hardly knew her, but he’d always been able to switch personas on a pinhead. Funny how little things rankled after the love had gone.
“Ah, Emma, I was hoping you’d be able to pop by. Welcome to the show!” Normal handsomeness returned as he smiled at her in that genuine, endearing way he always had, even before fixing his crooked teeth, back in the days he reserved it solely for me.
“Welcome,” I parroted, my stomach sick.Turn around andrun for your life.“Great to have you on board!”
Leaping to his feet, Leigh clasped her hand. “Yes! Welcome on board the good shipMy Big Gay Adventures! I can’t wait to set sail!”
Warmth blossomed under my shirt sleeve as my fingers prised the fresh scab from the wound. A trickle of heat meandered down my arm. Yes, the love had most definitely gone, but Christ, it had been determined to drag my sanity with it.
CHAPTER 1
MAX
Everyone has a price, and everything is for sale.
Hidden in my quiet corner of L’Escale, I overheard a lot of trash talk. From tourists, mostly, the rich, confident ones—usually middle-aged and male— braying in voices loud enough to knock the froth off my pint. They spoke in such certain tones that not only did their voices carry, but people halfway digested their throwaway opinions as the gospel truth before even parsing them.
This little homily, however, was my least favourite, principally because it wasn’t true. Not in my world, anyhow. I supposed that in Paris, where people compared their cars, their apartments, their jobs and their wives to those belonging to the similarly suited man readingLe Mondeon the metro opposite, measuring happiness by material possessions was a perfectly acceptable way to judge success.
Or perhaps I was talking out my arse too.
Everyone has a price, and everything is for sale.
Well, not me. And not my dog.
I liked dogs. And cats. Most animals, in fact. You could always tell what dogs were thinking because they only had four moods: sad, happy, cross, and concentrating. They never lied, either, or made fun of me. When I was a child and my mind constantly whirred, playing with our mongrel, Keegan, was the only way to block out the clashing of my family all talking at the same time. Dogs became my favourite topic of conversation; I could list every breed and their average weight in kilos, from the English Mastiff (68 to 113 kilos) down to the smallest chihuahua (1.3 to 2.8 kilos). When I acquired my black lab, Noir, currently weighing in at 29.1 kilos (below average weight on account of only having three legs), my dad worried I’d become obsessed afresh. I won’t. Sometimes they all forget I’m now an adult.
I took a long draught of my beer, nodding at a couple of familiar faces. The baker was having a quick drink after an early shift. He wasn’t for sale either. Just like his dad before him. Come to think of it, L’Escale itself would never be up for auction; the same family had passed the bar down the line, in some form of watering hole or another, since my grandfather was a boy.
I supped a little more.
These capitalist go-getters didn’t grasp the truth. They could visit our island for a few months, throw their money about our pretty restaurants, and even buy up a few of our pretty houses, but they’d neverownthe island. Not really, because the island wasn’t for sale either. Every blade of grass, every salt marsh, every oyster bed, and each acre of vineyard belonged to one local family or another. Cash poor maybe, but most of us sat on a patch of something solid that God wasn’t making any more of.
My dad, for instance, owned half of nine hectares of oyster beds, inherited from his uncle thirty years ago. My older brother, Nico, owned the other half, as well as the goldmine oyster-tasting shack tagged onto it. Nico’s best mate, Florian, was the boss of a couple of salt flats his grandfather passed on to himwhen I was still a boy. The weary baker at the bar, sharingpâté en croûteand a carafe of local red with the mayor while putting the world to rights, rented out a pony manège and twelve acres of donkey-grazing land over at Ars, although you’d never know from how hard he grafted.
And, courtesy of my mother dying five years ago, just before my twentieth birthday, I was gifted the deed to a small vineyard. Just over two hectares, with a decent-sized property lording over it and a pair of tiny gatehouses.
Given the choice, I’d have preferred keeping my mother. I missed her constancy. I missed regular touch from another human being, even if the sensation of their skin against mine, especially when uninvited, sometimes felt like the brush of a thousand stinging nettles.
My dad wandered into the bar, just as I contemplated heading for home. Checking I was in my usual spot, he threw me a wave, then stood at the bar too, where a couple of his mates had already split a jug of Warsteiner. I didn’t expect more acknowledgement—we’d spent all day working together. Recognising my dad’s voice, Noir thumped his tail on the floor. With a grunt of permission, I let him trot over to say hello.
Generally, I nursed my beer alone. Since moving out of my dad’s place and into one of the gatehouses at the entrance to my vineyard, I lived alone too, except for Noir. I ate alone, showered alone, listened to the radio alone, and slept alone. Because I didn’t talk much, and my brain worked differently to most, folk assumed I was simple and gave me a wide berth. Nico and his mate Florian, one of the best-looking blokes I’d ever clapped eyes on, did not fall into that category.
Sometimes—like now, as they waltzed into the bar—I wished they would.