Page 28 of The Village Cafe in the Loire

‘I’ve seen the customers! And you should see this place, Amber, it’s nothing like the cafés back home.’

‘No, probably not. But maybe it’s right for the place. Look, I’m not being horrible. I do understand that you’re… up against it. Stressed. But they’re only chairs. So what if he doesn’t think they’re right. People will sit on them anyway.’

‘Anyway, I’ve bought them all now.’

‘But maybe next time you get something, well, just involve Pascal a little. It can’t hurt. Unless you decide to ditch this whole plan, you’re stuck with each other for a while.’

‘So you’re taking his side.’

‘For God’s sake, Becky. Try to see things from someone else’s perspective for once.’

‘Pascal’s?’ she snorted.

‘Well, yes. And mine. You’ve just called me three times at work when you know I’m up against it here, that personal calls are forbidden. You’ve said it was an emergency but all I can see is that you’ve had a falling out with Pascal. But you called me anyway, knowing that it would make my life difficult.’

‘Amber! I didn’t mean?—’

‘Look, I’m at work. It’s… I’ve got to go.’

‘No! I get it. I won’t call you at work again. But now you’re here, don’t go. I need someone to talk to.’

‘Don’t we all?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Look, you know I’ve got your back. But maybe Pascal has a point. It wouldn’t hurt you to listen sometimes. You’re very good at… telling people things. But when’s the last time you actually stopped to listen; considered that someone might have had a point?’

‘Wait a minu?—’

But the line was dead.

11

After her fight with Pascal and subsequent phone call with Amber, Becky didn’t feel like coming out of her room. The last thing she wanted to do was face him, or have him see her face all red and streaked with tears. Eventually though, she became so hungry that she thought she might begin to gnaw the woodwork; it was time to take a risk.

She searched ‘local restaurants’ on her phone, but details were sparse. Nobody seemed to have a website, and the information thrown up didn’t include any contact details.

Left with no choice, she went to the bathroom and put on enough make-up to hide her red blotches. Then, wrapping a light coat around her, she crept downstairs as stealthily as a teen sneaking out to see a forbidden boyfriend. Pascal was in the kitchen, so she crept out the back way instead, across the little patch of grass – another underutilised area – behind the café, then over the small wall onto the patchwork pavement.

It was only nine o’clock – still light and still with enough warmth in the air to make her coat unnecessary after five minutes’ walking.

The main road through the village was flanked either side by stone houses, of various designs. Some three storeys high, with attic windows open to let the cooler evening air in; others were squat bungalows or renovated barns. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the design – as if the town had sprouted up organically according to need, with no real central plan.

One or two businesses were tucked along the way – a hairstylist’s bordered by two ordinary houses, then a front for some sort of decorating firm. A small shop, which had closed at 7p.m., its windows gloomy with no light from within. She put her face to the glass like Charlie from Roald Dahl’s famous book – wondering what delights she might glimpse inside. But it looked to be mainly pots of jam and tins of confit, an empty windowed cabinet where perhaps there’d been pastries earlier in the day.

Anyway, what was she going to do? Break in? She’d had enough food with her for her first evening – a sandwich she’d acquired on the plane that had been too enormous to eat, a couple of glasses of Pascal’s wine and some bread to mop it up with had felt fine. In Tours, she’d grabbed a few bits and pieces from a small grocery store at the retail park, but now supplies were running low, and she barely had a croissant to her name.

Now she was hungry and too annoyed with Pascal to get off her high horse and ask him where she could get something to eat. Her phone beeped as she walked along and she looked at it keenly, but it was just an overdue text from her phone company welcoming her to France and reminding her about roaming charges. Still nothing from Amber.

Before she could think too much about the argument and torture herself again with her friend’s words, a smell hit her nostrils and she sniffed the wind like an animal picking up the scent of a tasty piece of prey. Someone, somewhere, wascooking.Please be a restaurant, she thought.Oh, please be a restaurant.

She turned down a little road just beyond the tiny church with its mismatched stained-glass windows and enormous wooden door, and could just make out a lit-up window with a sign above the door which read: ‘Chez Régine’. Jack-bloody-pot, she thought, picking up her pace.

The restaurant was tiny, only served one special, and was almost empty, but it was open. And that, by this point, was all that mattered. She walked in and took a seat at one of their small wooden tables, nodding at an elderly couple across the other side of the room. The smell inside was even more delicious and she was horrified to hear her stomach start to growl audibly, certain that everyone within a ten-metre radius must be able to hear the noise of her digestive juices grumbling.

Then, at last, a woman stood at her side, notebook poised. She looked to be about forty, with a long floral dress, apron around her waist, beautiful wavy hair tied back. She smiled. ‘Qu’est-ce que je vous sers?’

And of course, this was where her little bit of French came in handy. They’d done a whole unit on cafés at school and she could just about work out that she was being asked what she wanted. She pointed to the specials board. ‘Le plat du jour?’ she said. She wasn’t entirely sure what it was, but she knew it would be food. And right now, that was enough. ‘Et un verre du vin rouge,’she added in her imperfect but hopefully understandable French. As long as wine would be served, she didn’t much care about her grammar.

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