Page 53 of The Magic of Provence

‘And that’s what all this time with Christophe is all about, aye? Keeping Nonna happy by pretending you’re more than friends?’

‘That’s the plan.’ Fi had told her sisters about the fake dating idea. What she hadn’t told them was that she wanted to try and help Christophe regain at least some trust in women. She certainly hadn’t admitted that playing her part in the fantasy was irresistible because it wasn’t real and that made it feel safe. Safe enough that she could even let another hope simmer quietly in the back of her mind – that Christophe might kiss her again one day and she wouldn’t freak out.

‘What if Nonna bounces back and lives for years?’

‘We’ve talked about that. If my visa doesn’t come through, I’ll have to leave France for a few months and we can work something out to let her down gently. That I’ve got a job somewhere else or I got homesick. In the meantime, I’m getting to go to lovely places so we can take the photos that are, apparently, the best part of Nonna’s day.’

Ellie shook her head. ‘I hope you both know what you’re doing, that’s all. Ah… this is the photo I want.’ She turned the screen towards Fi. ‘I thought we could start with just a single flower and plain grey around it. A coloured roundish flat stone in the middle and the petals will be oval shapes on their sides. I’ve got a rubber hammer to tap them in. Let’s find a nice one for the centre.’

They both turned back to play with the stones again.

‘Where did you go to collect all these?’ Fi asked.

‘The garden centre,’ Ellie said. ‘Sadly, you can’t just go and take buckets of decorative stones off the beaches. You have to buy them.’

‘How ’bout this one for the centre?’ Fi held it up. ‘It’s kind of round and it’s almost red, like the darkest tiles of La Maisonette’s floor.’

‘Nice.’ Ellie nestled the large flat stone into the centre of the frame. ‘Let’s find some pale ones for the petals.’

Ellie showed Fi how to settle them gently into place in the sand so that they made contact with the sheet of wood beneath. It took time to choose the right shape for each stone and position them to her satisfaction.

‘So…’ Ellie asked, as she sat back on her heels a short time later to examine progress. ‘Where was it that you went yesterday? Back to that riding school in the forest that you discovered last week?’

‘No…’ But Fi was distracted for a moment. What a discovery that had been. A house and a riding school, with one group of small children on ponies trotting around a ring and an adult on a horse getting ready to take a group of older children on a trek along one of the forest paths.

‘That would be my ultimate dream,’ she’d told Christophe. ‘To have a riding school of my own.’

‘In a forest?’

‘Or near a river. Or in the mountains. Anywhere. But a forest would be perfect.’

‘Because you love trees?’

‘Oui. Because I love trees.’

It had become a private joke, hadn’t it? Because that had been how Christophe had persuaded her to go and help him with the donkeys in the forest. The day it had all begun. Or had that really been at Lili’s birthday party – when she’d seen him smile for the first time? When, so disturbingly, she’d been aware of wanting to be closer to a man, instead of running away?

‘Hullo!’ Ellie’s tone was amused. ‘Earth to Fi…?’

She had to shake off the memory of the way Christophe’s smile made his eyes crinkle at the corners.

‘It was a lovely park near the coast yesterday,’ she told Ellie. ‘It had cork trees. Have you ever seen one? They’re extraordinary.’

Fi had been fascinated – as much by the enthusiasm Christophe had for explaining so many different things as for the actual trees themselves. She loved the way his eyes would light up. She loved listening to his voice with that unique accent and the ability to sprinkle words from all sorts of other languages into what he was saying. He could probably tell her about something as ordinary as, say, the sand or small stones she was working with today, and she would be more than happy to listen.

‘Never seen one.’ Ellie was starting to place different sizes of plain grey stones around the flower they’d created, filling all the empty space. ‘They’re a kind of oak tree, aren’t they?’

‘Yes. They can get the bark stripped off every ten years or so and it doesn’t kill the tree. You can get fifty thousand corks for wine bottles from the bark of a single tree.’

‘Is that right…?’

Ellie’s interest seemed to be merely polite but Fi was back in that park in her head. Watching Christophe’s face come alive because he was so interested in something. Feeling his hand reach for hers to put it on the extraordinary bark of the tree so that she could feel it.

‘They feel kind of bouncy,’ she told Ellie. ‘Christophe said that’s because it’s full of millions of air cells and when they get cut they act like tiny suction cups and stick to the glass inside a bottle’s neck. How amazing is that? And the bark is all up and down like ripples in water or rocky hills. You can almostfeelit growing. It’s weirdly warm, too.’

Or had that been Christophe’s hand resting, ever so lightly, on top of hers as she explored the texture? Was that why the curious warmth from the tree seemed to filter right into the centre of her body through that touch? Why it was impossible not to close her eyes, just for a heartbeat, and remember the feeling of his lips resting on hers? To let that delicious ripple of sensation deep inside briefly blur the distinction between fantasy and reality.

‘I’ll show you the photos later.’

---