Page 12 of Falling for Provence

She didn’t want to ask for her job at the care home back when she’d only just resigned. Or to go back to her flat to help with the clean up when so many unhappy memories had seeped into the walls there.

The only thing Ellie really wanted right now was the escape that sleep could bring. It would only take one more glass of wineand she’d be out like a light if she curled up on the sofa again. But she did need a blanket – something that she could pull over her head if the bats came visiting. She eyed the staircase. There were blankets in the bedrooms.

It took even more courage to get up that staircase than it had to approach the donkeys to rescue that child. Ellie remembered the fierce expression on her new neighbour’s face as she hesitated. That dose of contempt when he’d realised she wasn’t French. If he could see her now, he’d think she was pathetic as well as being a scruffy and unwelcome foreigner.

Did she care what he thought of her?

Not at all.

But maybe it was time she should start caring what she thought of herself again.

Ellie took a deep breath, lifted her chin and started climbing. She hurriedly slammed the door shut on the bedroom where the bats – and that cot – were and went into the other room to pull the cover and a pillow from the bed. Her heart was still thumping when she got back downstairs, but there was something else cutting through the disaster that her evening had turned into.

It was pride, she realised. It might have been a small thing, but she had done it, so she wasn’t entirely pathetic. And the bats were trapped behind the door, so she wouldn’t have nightmares about waking up to find them tangled in her hair.

The kaleidoscope of her day had images chasing themselves through her head, too fast to catch and keep, as she lay down a short time later and pulled the light cover over herself. Endless pots of hot water, including the last one that she had used to wash herself as best she could and rinse out her underwear. Dirt and dust. Hearing someone actually sayoh, là làand the promise of freedom that gleamed like the paintwork on that bicycle. The taste of the fresh baguette and the sweet softnessof the sunset. The intensity of that man’s glare and the shape of that small body in her arms.

The preciousfeelof a living child…

Oddly, as Ellie drifted into sleep, she realised that the ache hadn’t become any worse after all.

It hadn’t even made her cry.

4

The hours flew past the next day.

A courier had arrived in the morning with the suitcase that Laura had dispatched and, not long after that, Mike the plumber had turned up. Having assumed that any tradesmen Noah might dispatch would be French, it was pleasantly astonishing to find that Mike was English. A huge, genial Londoner, he had made the daunting task of making this house more habitable suddenly seem a whole lot easier.

‘You’ll have hot water by tonight, love,’ he promised, after a quick tour of the issues in the house. ‘And we’ll get those pipes running a bit better. I don’t do glass, but I can get the bats out, put a board over that window and find you a glazier. We’ll need to get someone else to check the electrics, but I’ll see what I can do about that broken hinge on the shutter while I’m here.’

‘That’s great. Thank you so much.’

‘No worries. Any chance of a cuppa before I get started?’

‘Yes, of course.’

Mike looked around in the living area as Ellie busied herself in the kitchen making a pot of tea. When he touched a wall, shards of plaster crumbled and rained onto the floor. ‘Thisneeds to be fixed as well. It will all need to be stripped off and replastered.’

‘I could probably do that,’ Ellie said. ‘If I can find where to go and get supplies.’

‘Anybricolageshop would have them.’

‘Bricolage?’

‘Hardware shop, love. DIY and house and garden supplies. Paint, tools, commercial cleaning stuff.’ Mike was smiling. ‘My favourite shops. Like Aladdin’s caves, they are. There’s a good one as you go into Vence from this direction.’

‘Good to know. Do you take milk?’

‘Yeah. And three sugars, ta.’

Ellie handed him the mug of tea. ‘I might go and have a look at thebricolagelater. I probably need a special cleaner for the tiles on this floor.’

Mike looked down. He tapped a tile with the toe of his boot. ‘These are calledtomettes,’ he told Ellie. ‘Traditional but not so popular now. You could replace them. Or cover them with vinyl or laminated wood.’

‘No!’ Ellie was surprised at her vehemence. ‘I really like these tiles.’

‘But some of them are broken. And they’re old-fashioned and… so dirty. It’d be a lot of work to clean them.’

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