Page 58 of Falling for Provence

Keeping up with Theo meant there was no time to look around and try to spot the café that would have been where her father and uncle had been playing in thegargouilleso many years ago, but when they reached the church where her grandparents had been married, there was plenty of time to let the moment sink in. Oddly, Ellie found herself thinking about a completely different church.

The beautiful Église Saint-Grégoire in Tourrettes-sur-Loup that was forever embedded in her memory due to having become lost in the fantasy of something too good to be true – that she had been marrying Julien there.

She had yearned for that future hard enough for it to hurt, assuming that it could never happen in real life. But was it possible that it could? That glimmer of hope became a little brighter. Bright enough to make her eyes water, but Ellie was smiling as she blinked and took out one of the two photos she’d put in her pocket that morning.

She could feel Julien looking over her shoulder as she glanced up from the black and white image to the soft, Mediterranean colours of the church in front of her and the faded painting in the circle. At the same moment, the bell in the ancient tower to one side began to strike the hour. Five slow notes that filled the air and echoed between the stone walls of surrounding buildings.

Ellie tilted her head to smile up at Julien. ‘This is magic,’ she said. ‘It’s like I’ve stepped into this photograph or gone back in time, or someone has just waved a wand and made a picture come to life.’ She pulled in a deep breath. ‘Thank you so much for bringing me here. I think I know why I love France so much – it feels like at least part of me belongs here.’

‘Of course it does.’ Julien sounded matter-of-fact. ‘You have French blood in your veins. Part of youdoesbelong here. Maybe…’ He was holding her gaze. ‘…you should stay?’

Ellie’s breath caught somewhere deep in her chest. Did Julienwanther to stay?

Hope was as much of a drug as falling in love, wasn’t it? Ellie knew she might be in danger of instant addiction.

‘Why don’t you keep La Maisonette?’ Julien added. ‘You already own a third of it.’

Oh… Could it be this easy to remain a part of his life? For long enough to win his trust? To earn at least acceptance if not approval from the women in his family?

‘It’s a good house,’ he added. ‘I thought of buying it myself if it ever came on the market, so that my grandmother couldlive closer, but when I talked to her about it, she made it very clear that she would never leave the village she’s lived in all her life.’ He was watching Theo, who was being drawn back to the miniature river on the main street. ‘You and your sisters could use it for a holiday house, perhaps, if you didn’t want to live here?’

Did he think there could be any reason why shewouldn’twant to live here? Like, how awkward it might be to have an ex-lover as a neighbour?

The thought didn’t get a chance to embed itself in her head, fortunately. Julien was looking up at the sky.

‘We should go,’ he said. ‘Those clouds might be a long way away, but the weather forecast did have a warning for a possible thunderstorm today and they can be quite violent at this time of year, with lightning and thunder and hailstones.’

They walked back up the hill towards the car. Theo clung to his father’s back with his arms and legs as he was piggybacked, still holding the branch he’d found. It wasn’t easy to keep up with Julien’s long strides, but Ellie could understand why he was in a hurry. Was Theo afraid of thunderstorms, like Pascal? She wanted to get home herself and make sure her little dog had been okay on his own all afternoon.

But even that underlying sense of urgency couldn’t prevent her stopping, so fast she almost lost her balance, outside a window she hadn’t noticed on the way down to the church.

‘Oh, look!’ she exclaimed.

Julien was several steps ahead of her, but he turned and, when he saw Ellie’s face, he came back.

‘Oh là là…It’s the painting you liked.’

It was.

It was the big painting that she had fallen so instantly in love with when she’d seen it at the first summer market she’d been to in Vence. The one with the chapel-esque stone building.The one with the mountains as an indistinct background to the brightness of red and white flowers in the grass and stones in the foreground, made even more stunning by the impasto technique of layering the paint – probably with a knife or just fingers – to give it both a three-dimensional effect and the suggestion of movement, as if a breeze were blowing across the meadow.

There was a link here that felt important: that this artist, whose work touched her heart so much, might come from the same village that the unknown side of her family might have lived in.

‘Is this where he works, do you think?’

Julien looked at the sign hanging over the door. ‘It’s a gallery rather than a workshop, so it may just be in here for sale. Have you changed your mind about buying it?’

Ellie shook her head. Reluctantly. Because if this painting wasn’t way out of any price range she could afford, it should be.

‘Why don’t I ask?’ Julien suggested, as if he’d read her thoughts. ‘Or there might be a smaller version in the gallery?’

So they went inside, but the other paintings on display were clearly by very different artists. Julien spoke, at some length, to the woman behind the counter.

‘I don’t think the artist wants to sell the painting,’ he told Ellie. ‘He’s asking over a thousand euros.’

‘Someone will buy it,’ Ellie said. ‘And he deserves to be paid that much.’ She led the way to the door, knowing that she’d held them up long enough.

‘Apparently no one knows his real name,’ Julien said as he stopped outside the gallery to pick Theo up again. ‘He lived on the streets for a long time but now he lives in an old stable on a farm. Nobody sees him during the winter, and that’s when he does his paintings. And then he comes out in summer and takes them to the market to earn money for more paints and food. People call himl’ermite.’

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