Page 68 of The Little Provence Book Shop

Monique looked at him, not quite smiling. ‘It was my pleasure,’ she said. She began to get to her feet.

‘Oh, no, don’t rush off,’ Adeline said. ‘André’s not staying.’

She walked up to the man whom she’d spent the last two hours opening up to. Saying so many things that she hadn’t expected to, things that might ordinarily be too much for a first date. But it had felt so comfortable, so familiar once they had finally begun to talk, and her carefully constructed guard had crumbled under the warmth of his gaze, the squeeze of his hand over the table. And the couple of glasses of Pinot Grigio had helped enormously too, of course.

She stepped just outside the front door to see him off. ‘Thanks again. I had a lovely time.’

‘Me too.’ He kissed her, softly, moving his hand to the small of her back and holding her to him.

‘Thank you.’

‘And I’ll see you again?’ His was a question rather than a statement.

‘When I get back,’ she smiled.

‘Good luck tomorrow,’ he said as he turned to leave.

‘Thank you.’ She realised that although she’d spoken abouteverything with André tonight, her feelings of worry and anxiety and stress at the impending meeting had disappeared during the time they were together.

Inside, Monique looked at her quizzically. ‘So he behaved himself?’

‘Monique! Of course he did!’

‘Ah, he is a good boy,’ Monique nodded. ‘A little wild, perhaps, when he was growing up. But I think he is becoming a good man. Perhaps not good enough for you,’ she added, pointedly. ‘But a good man nonetheless.’

Adeline laughed. ‘Glad to hear it,’ she said, wondering whether Monique still harboured secret hopes for her and Michel.

They faced each other. ‘Well, I will go,’ Monique said. ‘We must get some rest before tomorrow.’

‘Yes,’ Adeline agreed. And there it was, the feeling in her stomach back again. ‘Or try at least.’

Monique leaned and kissed her forehead – a gentle, motherly gesture. ‘Yes,ma belle, we will try.’

‘Monique,’ Adeline said, her voice sounding small, uncertain, as her friend opened the front door into the warm night air.

Monique turned, her eyes deep and dark in the shadows. ‘Yes?’

‘Will it… Will it be OK?’ she asked. ‘Do you feel that things are going to work out?’

Monique pressed a hand to her chest. ‘With all my heart, Adeline,’ she said. ‘With all my heart.’

As she shut the door, Adeline felt a little embarrassed at having asked. She didn’t fully believe Monique could feel such things, predict the future. Know things that were unknowable.

But she had to admit that hearing Monique’s confidence sent a flood of calmness through her. As if, on some level, she could feel it too.

32

‘Is it a castle, Mummy?’

Adeline smiled as she crossed the road towards the station building. It was an impressive sight – stone-built, with an enormous clock tower at one end, and a roof that was tinted green. Cars lined the three taxi lanes outside and swarms of people disappeared through the more modern sliding doors of the entrance.

Stepping inside was a little like travelling forward in time – the clean, tiled floor, glass-fronted ticket offices, digital ticket machines and shiny-signed cafes seemed initially out of place in such a beautiful old building. The modernity reminded Adeline of home – of rushing for a train in London, grabbing a takeaway coffee, buying a ticket on a digital screen, taking an escalator to the correct platform. After seven weeks in St Vianne, she’d become used to a gentler pace of life, of scenery that had barely changed for decades.

It felt odd, too, to have Monique at her side – the woman who’d seemed to belong to St Vianne, whose style and way oflife seemed to belong to a simpler time, now somehow out of place in this contemporary setting.

Being here awoke something in Adeline, a strange homesickness for things that she’d known all her life. Her time back in London, her friends, even her apartment. The Petite Librairie felt a million miles away, and when she allowed her mind briefly to drift over recent events – the tingle in her fingers when she’d chosen the book for Claude, the connection she’d felt with the Dickinson poetry, even the date with André – it seemed odd, as if it were something she’d dreamt rather than experienced.

They soon found the right platform and, ten minutes later, an eight-carriage train trundled to a stop in front of them. The speaker loudly proclaimed the stations they’d stop at between here and Toulouse, and then they were on board, walking down aisles with digital numbers displayed above, trying to find their seats.

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