Page 36 of Falling for Provence

‘Coquelicot,’ he said. And nodded. ‘Marguerite.’ He pointed at the carrots. ‘Ils aiment les carottes.’

Ellie understood something as well. Her French practice today had included things she liked. Like cheese and wine and lemons.

J’aime le fromage.

J’aime le vin.

J’aime les citrons.

She smiled at Theo. ‘J’aime les carottes,’ she told him.

He stared at her, still wary.

Ellie changed her intonation into a question. ‘Theo aime les carottes?’

He was still staring at her, and he didn’t smile back. But, after a long, long moment, he shook his head. Just one slow shake, but it was enough to delight Ellie. It might be on a very basic level, but they could communicate. That made it easier on more than one level, because it reminded Ellie that Theo was a little boy, not a baby. His hair was dark and curly, so unlike the red-haired genes that were strong in her own family. This was Julien’s child, not her own.

She could do this.

Pascal helped. He came with them to feed carrots to the donkeys and waited while they collected some lemons on the way back. He ate the crust of Theo’s bread that got dropped accidentally on purpose when Ellie offered her unexpected guest a bit of supper, and wagged his tail when Theo put out a tentative finger to touch his ear.

Time ticked on and the light was fading. Ellie wondered if she should take Theo back to his own house and put him to bed but, despite being curious about what it was like, the thought of being alone in Julien’s house was daunting enough to keep her in herown safe space. Besides, she had a pair of dark eyes, remarkably similar to his father’s, watching her carefully with no sign of their owner being tired.

There was no television in the house, but she knew how easy it would be to find something online that might entertain Theo, like a cartoon or a funny animal video. Reaching for her phone, however, she spotted something else. The paper and pencils she’d used to create her limoncello recipe. She put a blank piece of paper on the table in front of Theo, picked up a pencil and began a rapid sketch, leaving some exaggerated ears until last.

The little boy’s eyes widened dramatically. ‘C’est Coquelicot…’

Ellie nodded, smiling. And kept sketching.

‘C’est Pascal,’ she told Theo, as she worked. It was an easy portrait to do, with that distinctive, droopy ear. ‘Yes?’

This time it was Theo who nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said.

Ellie wondered if his mother had spoken English with him. Or maybe Julien was bringing him up to be bilingual. How tragic was it that he’d lost his mother at such an early age. And that Julien had lost the woman he’d loved so much. Ellie tore off another sheet of paper.

‘Your turn,’ she said to Theo. She piled the differently coloured pencils in front of him. ‘What can you draw? Marguerite? Theo? Papa? Or shall I draw something for you, and you can colour it in?’

If Theo understood what she was saying, he gave no sign of it, but he did pick up a pencil and make a mark on the paper that turned into a laboriously drawn circle. Two uneven dots near the top of the circle came next, and then a wobbly line near the bottom. It was, almost, a smiley face.

Theo put his pencil down and looked up at Ellie.

‘Papa,’ he said.

‘That’s…’ Ellie searched through the French phrases she was trying to commit to memory. ‘C’est génial,’ she told Theo, with sincerity, because itwasawesome.

And then Theo smiled at her for the first time, and it went straight to Ellie’s heart and wrapped itself into something so tight it felt like it was cutting too deep, and she had to stand up and turn away.

Maybe she couldn’t do this, after all.

Noticing the book that she’d dropped gave her a reason to move, and Ellie had learned long ago that moving physically was always the best way to get past a disturbing thought. As she picked up the old book, she noticed the corner of a bookmark poking out. It wasn’t a traditional kind of bookmark: it was a rather dog-eared, small envelope that had several photographs inside it. Ellie pulled one of them out – an old black and white photograph of two young boys.

For a moment, Ellie forgot where she was and what she was doing. Was this what she’d both hoped and feared she would find in the shed? A link to the forbidden side of her own family? She turned the photograph over to find faded words written in ink, the date at the end too blurred to decipher.

Jeremy and Gordon. Cornwall.

Ellie sank onto the couch as she stared at the image again. The boys both looked younger than ten years old. They were sitting on a stone wall, grinning at whoever was taking the photograph, holding ice cream cones and looking happy enough to be on a summer holiday in Cornwall. One of those children was her father, but Ellie didn’t know which one. She hadn’t even known he had a brother let alone whether he was older or younger.

And yes… as she’d feared, there were memories trying to surface, along with emotions that held streaks of pain. This was very different to the sore place in her heart that Theo’s smile had just touched. This was so deep that it was like trying to capture a fragment of a dream that was already evaporating. On one level, Ellie didn’t want to catch it at all. On another level, however, it felt like she had no choice.

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