Page 5 of Vine

“Evening.”

“Evening.”

My brother’s effusiveness matched my own. Nonetheless, we were solid.

Florian, on the other hand, treated me to the usual warm hug and kiss he bestowed on most of his friends, which I enjoyed more than he’d ever know. Not a stinging nettle in sight. Another sign I was an adult; I no longer fixated on Florian. He had a very nice long-term partner, and, more to the point, obsessive crushes on random men were unhealthy. I didn’t do that anymore.

As Florian pulled back, a half-smirk played about Nico’s lips. “I hear you’re going into showbiz,” he commented. “And there was me thinking you only had a face for radio.”

And a voice for silent movies, but I got by. Giving him the finger, I drained my pint and contemplated another, seeing as Nico was buying.

News travelled fast in our village, especially in January when fuck-all else was happening. Nico hadn’t expected a response. When I said I didn’t talk much, that extended to family.

Florian’s hypnotic green eyes absorbed me thoughtfully; I almost met his gaze with my own ordinary brown ones. “How long has it been since old Edouard retired?”

I pulled a face. “A year? Maybe eighteen months.”

“I thought you were going to see if the vineyard owner next door wanted to rent the vines from you? And let his son lease the house?”

“Changed my mind.”

Patiently, Florian waited for more. His smile was sweet enough to draw blood from a stone.

“The television crew want to turn it around. Then I’ll rent it to him afterwards, when it’s back up and running again. In time for the vendage. Everyone’s a winner.”

On this island, we looked after our own. The vineyard owner next door was more than happy with the arrangement.As was my aunt, who had negotiated a good price on a couple of caravans the television people would rent. L’Escale and the boulangeriewould do okay out of it, too. And, as I said, not much happened here out of season. With a bit of luck, the British film crew would provide us with some much-needed entertainment.

CHAPTER 2

CASPIAN

Emma pulled into a roadside layby so I could observe a ‘normal’ January vineyard up close. Rows and rows of woody blackened stems twisted up from the ground, each neat line of dead-looking sticks separated from the next by a narrow patch of marginally healthier-looking grass. At about chest height, each stem divided into two; the bare branches spread out horizontally to loosely drape over thin wire trellises.

“Are you sure you haven’t taken a wrong turn? You’ve brought me to a bloody cemetery! This lot look like mass war graves! As if I wasn’t fucking depressed enough.”

Emma patted my knee. She was a thoughtful, considerate person, all round. By contrast, I’d been a dreadful travelling companion. My failed marriage trailed me everywhere. The sense of betrayal and hurt had lost immediacy but become a steady diet.

Which is another way of saying I’d whined and bitched about spending nine months with Leigh and Jonas since we left London. “Or mass crucifixions,” I added mournfully.

Emma gave a bark of laughter, and I added tolerance to her list of attributes. “Oh, get over yourself! Remind me again why I agreed to have you in my car?”

“God knows. Unless you’ve already dined at the top of the Eiffel Tower with a cheating bastard and his wanker lover, and deduced it's not to your liking?”

According to the satnav, we were about a mile or so from our final destination. I expected Emma was counting down the minutes until she could escape the car. Leigh and Jonas would be joining us tomorrow, after romantically detouring via Paris, the scene of my ex-husband’s first foray into adultery (to my knowledge, at least). The camera crew and techy guys had already gone on ahead a couple of days earlier.

Our viticulturalist was very nice, in alet’s roll our sleeves up and face the Blitztype of way, determined to make the best of a bad situation. A countenance in perfect balance to mine; I admired her fortitude. We’d bonded over a series of tetchy planning meetings and my subsequent commentary in the pub afterwards as the shitstorm she’d stepped into gradually sank in. And, bless her, Emma was not a fan of cheating spouses (her dad being a serial philanderer with a heap of broken marriages and hurt kids behind him), which meant her sensibly shod feet were firmly rooted in Camp Caspian.

Cutting the engine, she wound down the car window to get a better look, and a chilly blast of wind bit my face. Beyond the vineyard, across a barren expanse of marshland, the wintry Atlantic Ocean loomed forbiddingly. I shivered.

“Come on, Emma, at least agree it has a funereal vibe.”

She twisted in her seat to give me a brisk onceover as I made a song and dance of warming my hands against the air blower. My meds sent me constantly seesawing between hot and cold. “Someone got out of bed on the wrong side this morning.”

“Sorry.”

Every side of the bed was wrong these days. And it would only get worse. For the foreseeable future, the bed was in a room down the hallway from Leigh and Jonas. But Emma wasn’t to blame.

“You promised me you would cheer up once we left London.”

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