Page 54 of Falling for Provence

The door-knocker, shaped like a delicate female hand holding an apple, was shinier than Julien had remembered it being.

‘Did you polish it?’

Ellie nodded. ‘Laura thought it was new, but I said it had just needed a bit of love. Like everything else in La Maisonette.’

She was tilting her head towards Julien, although they were too far apart to kiss. She turned her arm so that when his hand reached her wrist she could cup her fingers around it. When Julien turned his hand over, it felt like the most natural thing in the world for their fingers to interlace. Loosely, so that they could still move and play with each other in a slow, gentle dance.

‘And she took so many photos of the flowers I painted on the walls in the other bedroom. She knew why I’d avoided going in there for so long. She almost cried… and Laura never cries.’

The child’s bedroom.

Julien said nothing for a moment, but he knew she would feel the change in the pressure of his fingers against hers. That she already knew he’d understood how significant her caring for Theo had been that night and that he’d been so proud of everything she’d achieved in her time in his country. That he would always be in awe of her courage and her creativity and her ability to offer love. He couldn’t go there again, knowing how hard it would be to survive the aftermath, but he was confident that Ellie would be brave enough one day – not just with a lover but as a mother as well. That she would find all the love she so deserved to receive in return.

‘She must be so proud of everything you’ve done here.’

‘I think so.’ Ellie smiled. ‘I didn’t really see much of her, though. She spent more time with the estate agent than me. She said it was business – they were making up the marketing information for the property and he was taking her to some of the highlights this area has to offer. They even went as far as the lavender fields in Provence so that she could include them in the brochure, but I think there was more to it than that.’ Ellie shook her head. ‘Not that Laura would admit it. Quite the opposite, in fact. She even told me that she never wanted to be in any kind of serious relationship. Ever.’

‘Oh?’ Had Ellie’s oldest sister been through as much of a disastrous marriage as he had himself? ‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘Has she had her heart broken?’

‘It’s more that she’s afraid of relationships, I think. She’s seen too many examples of how bad they can be.’

‘Like yours?’

‘Mmm.’ Ellie was biting her lip. ‘But it goes deeper than that. It was about what happened in our family and how we lost our father. She was the oldest, so she was far more a part of it than me, or my other sister, Fiona.’

‘You had trouble? With your father?’ A chill ran down Julien’s spine. Had Ellie been abused in some way? Physically? Sexually? The thought made him feel ill.

Ellie caught his gaze for a heartbeat. ‘It’s a long time ago. I won’t bore you with it.’

She began to slide her hand away from his but it felt like it was stretching something important. Something that would break as soon as he couldn’t feel her skin against his, so he caught her hand and held it tightly. As if he could protect her from what had happened so long ago?

‘I want to know,’ he said. ‘Please… tell me.’

He let her sit in silence for a long minute while he refilled their glasses. And then he waited patiently, and Ellie began to fill that silence with her memories of happiness and hurt from her early childhood. It was clear that she had adored her father and had the kind of pleasure Julien hoped Theo would remember from playing with his papa or listening to him reading a story.

‘But he was an alcoholic,’ Ellie continued softly. ‘He was getting drunk in the daytime and he lost his job. He got angry a lot, and I know Mam and Laura got scared. And then something happened. He hit another man and hurt him badly, and then… he just disappeared. He ran away…’

Julien could feel the confusion that the child Ellie had been left with. The fear and grief when her father simply vanished from her life, but the relief that was mixed into the emotional turmoil, that her mother and sisters didn’t need to be scared any longer. Thank goodness Theo had been too young to have memories of his mother that would last a lifetime. And that he had no knowledge of what might have created his father’s – guilty – sense of relief. He never would. Julien would make sure that he believed his mother had loved him so much that the thought of leaving him would have been incomprehensible.

‘Look…’ Ellie pulled a smaller envelope from amongst the newly printed photographs. ‘These were inside a book I found in the garage. This is my father and his brother. It was taken in Cornwall in the nineteen-fifties.’ She put another couple of faded photographs on the table. ‘This one’s really old. We thought the woman might be our grandmother on our father’s side of the family. She was French. We didn’t know that until we heard about this house that my uncle had owned and we had inherited. The church looks French, doesn’t it?’

It was a wedding photograph of a couple standing in front of a church. There was a bell tower to one side and the rest of the church was quite plain apart from a round image of a saint painted on the highest part of the front walls and a gilded figure on the roof above it.

Julien frowned. There was something familiar about the church. He picked up the other photograph. Perhaps these were the same two boys from the photo taken in Cornwall, but this was when they were much younger. One of them looked no more than Theo’s age here, squatting beside a small channel of fast running water in the middle of a cobbled street, watching his brother put a toy boat into its current. A woman was watching them, seated in a café amongst other shops on the street, and she seemed to be laughing.

Julien’s eyes widened. ‘I know this place.’

‘Youdo?’

‘It’s a small town called Saint-Martin-Vésubie.It’s very close to where my grandmother lives in Roquebillière.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Oui… I thought I recognised that church in the other photo, but this…’ Julien pointed at the small boys and their boat, which they were about to float down the tiny man-made river in the cobbled street.‘I know that café. I have eaten there. And thisgargouillein the main street is very distinctive.’

Ellie tried to repeat the word but stumbled.

‘Agargouille,’ he repeated slowly for her to copy. ‘It’s a channel. An old word for a throat, I believe.’

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