Page 2 of The Bordeaux Book Club

As usual, Grace’s enthusiasm made Leah feel slightly drained. She resolved to rummage in Grace’s medical cabinet next time she was around to see if she was taking some high-strength vitamins, or something. Whatever it was, Leah needed a healthy dose of it herself. Despite being almost fifteen yearsGrace’s junior, she often found herself ready for bed by nine o’clock, whereas Grace’s restless energy often kept her up and active into the wee small hours.

‘So, you’ll come?’ Grace said.

‘Um, well, do you need me to?’ Leah asked, hesitantly. ‘I mean, it sounds as if it might be a… well, a nice size already.’ She longed to say no, rehearsing the word in her head. But somehow it wouldn’t come. What was it about Grace? Something about her manner, her confidence, made Leah feel she ought to agree with everything she said.

‘Of course you must come!’ Grace responded, missing Leah’s reluctant tone entirely. ‘Won’t be the same without you.’

Leah doubted this very much, seeing as she would probably end up sitting in the corner and watching others talk about books she might not find the time to read. But she found herself agreeing anyway.

‘How does she do it?’ she asked Nathan as he walked into the hallway a few minutes later, banging his gloved hands together in an attempt to warm them up.

‘Who? Scarlett?’ he said, glancing at the stairs as if their teenage daughter might suddenly make a rare appearance from her room.

‘No – Grace. I always tell myself I’m going to say no to things, and I end up agreeing.’ She slipped her phone into her pocket and walked through with him into the kitchen.

He laughed. ‘You have to admit, she does get people involved.’

‘Which is great, if they want to be,’ she said. ‘Only she can’t seem to take the hint.’

‘Did you actually tell her you didn’t want to do it?’ he asked, sitting in the chair opposite and beginning to worry at a knot in his shoelaces.

‘Well, not in so many words…’

He fixed his eyes on her. ‘Well then,’ he said.

‘I know. But she’s… Well – you know Grace!’ she said weakly.

‘That I do. Whether I want to or not.’ He smiled and she found herself grinning back.

‘Exactly.’

‘So what are you going to do?’ he asked, picking an apple from the fruit bowl and biting into it hungrily.

‘I guess I’m going. I mean, I think she probably just wants the moral support of a friend. And I do always say I ought to read more,’ she said.

He nodded. ‘Well then, sounds like it’s problem solved.’

1

FEBRUARY

‘As you can see, it’s quite the spread,’ Grace said proudly, gesturing towards the coffee table on which she’d laid out an array of different biscuits, all home-made of course, stacked on an elaborate, three-tier stand.

She’d asked Leah to arrive a little earlier than the others, to be there to chat to newcomers if Grace got tied up answering the door or making tea. It seemed a little excessive to Leah, for an event that promised four or five guests at most. But she’d agreed. Because when it came to Grace, for some reason, she always did.

She’d pulled up outside Grace’s house at six. As she’d exited the car, she’d seen her friend, standing in her warmly lit living room, hand to mouth, looking uncertain, almost fragile for a moment. Then she’d turned and noticed Leah’s car, smiled and given a small wave.

‘It’s lovely, Grace,’ Leah said now, glancing at her watch and hoping beyond hope that she wouldn’t be the only one to turn up. Grace seemed supremely confident – supremelyGrace– that there’d be several attendees, but somehow her confidence only seemed to inflate Leah’s own worry and doubt that the evening might not be the success Grace hoped for – as if Leahhad absorbed any negativity into herself and held it on behalf of her friend.

Grace’s sitting room was spotless as always – wooden furniture, painstakingly chalk-painted in pastel colours, parquet floor shining from a recent polish. Grace had an eye for furniture and a penchant for upcycling, and had even reupholstered the vintage sofa herself a few years ago. The only part of the room that wasn’t gleaming was the area by the bay window, where Grace’s bookshelves stood stuffed with texts, ramshackle and disorganised and somehow at odds with everything else in the house. But then Grace was an avid reader; she probably enjoyed rifling through and pulling out books and simply didn’t have time to rearrange them every week. Once when Leah had mentioned them, she’d given a dismissive wave towards the disorderly shelves and simply said, ‘Oh I’ll get to it. I just never seem to have the time.’

When the doorbell finally chimed, Leah’s hand jerked, sending coffee whirling in her mug, but thankfully not sufficiently to make a spill. She felt a flood of relief that it wouldn’t just be the pair of them. ‘That’ll be our first member!’ she said, in a voice that barely sounded like her own.

She wondered, sometimes, why she felt such a loyalty to Grace. While they’d known each other a few years, they weren’t particularly close. Perhaps it was because Grace had helped her and Nathan at the start – pointing them in the right direction for getting the permissions they needed for their home improvements, and introducing them to several growers via the gardening group. Leah enjoyed her company, for the most part, but they’d never quite clicked in the way she had with friends back home.

Before she could speculate further, the living room door opened and Grace appeared with a tall man at her side. He was dressed in paint-splashed jeans and enormous work bootsand stood, hands-in-pockets, looking slightly awkward as she gestured to one of the chairs. ‘Make yourself comfortable, George!’ she said. ‘Have a madeleine!’

‘Are you sure it’s…’ he said, indicating his far from pristine attire. ‘I can always…’

---