Page 65 of Sisters Making Mischief
‘You said you have a brother,’ I said, ‘other family members?’
‘Yes, and they were kind and supportive, but people have their own lives to lead, a family tree branches out over the years, and the shade underneath can be very dark. I am not looking for sympathy, I assure you. I am just trying to answer your question. Sometimes I think I was a coward. I didn’t take chances, opportunities that might have changed me.’
‘No, I think you are being unfair to yourself. Life is difficult. We deal with it in our own way.’
‘I, like you, also worried too much about what other people would think,’ he said.
I laughed. ‘Aren’t we a silly pair? Have you metother people? Some of them are awful.’
He laughed, too, raised his wine glass towards me and we chinked them together in a toast.
‘Here is to the future,’ he said, ‘doing things because we want to, because we can.’
I liked the sound of that.
We were there for a long time, just chatting and enjoying watching other people come and go. It was not the sort of location that would have been mentioned in any good food guides or tourist brochures, but it was a pleasant place, calming and restful. Our waitress was a middle-aged woman in a pink overall, who didn’t seem bothered that we were spending a long time over our simple meal. Occasionally she went back to the kitchen, returning with someone’s main course or dessert. Onceor twice, she asked if we needed anything, sometarte tatinperhaps or acrème brulée, and we said no, but in the end we had coffee which came with amadeleinein the saucer.
‘Right,’ Luc said at last, ‘I suppose we had better get back and hand over the glass panes, otherwise your sister will be worried about you.’
‘I doubt it,’ I said, ‘we both know she’s been pushing me to spend time with you ever since I met you.’
‘And,’ he said, ‘most importantly, I still haven’t taken you to find some spectacles to replace the ones you slammed in your car door.’
I spluttered with laughter. ‘I was so cross, wasn’t I? And so embarrassed. I’m sorry I shouted at you.’
‘Tout va bien,’ he said, with a grin.
And suddenly, it felt that yes, everything was okay.
Despite my previous concerns about spending time on my own with him and getting to know him. Even the fact that I definitely found him attractive, it had all been so ridiculously easy.
Was this a good thing? But then did change always have to be hard? Couldn’t it sometimes happen almost unnoticed?
21
Luc drove me back to Potato Farm, and the early evening shadows lengthened across the fields and hedgerows. He pulled to a stop outside the kitchen door, and almost immediately, Isabel opened it and Marcel and Antoine shot out, sniffing eagerly at the wheels of his car.
‘Everything okay?’ she said, darting looks between us.
‘Fine,’ I said, ‘we went and had lunch somewhere after we had finished with the plants.’
‘Where did you go?’
I turned to Luc, and he mentioned one of the villages with the unpronounceable names and Isabel nodded.
‘Has the shepherd’s hut arrived?’ I asked.
She nodded. ‘Come and see it, it’s so sweet, I almost want to move in there myself. I mean, it needs sorting out and prettying up – you can be in charge of that – and bed linen and towels of course, but it’s like a little playhouse. When we have done that, I must take some pictures to put up on my website.’
‘I’ll put the spare glass in the greenhouse and then leave you to it,’ Luc said.
‘You don’t have to go,’ Isabel said.
‘I still have some painting to finish; I really want to get it all done before my things arrive. I’ve had them in storage, and now I think I want to get them back, so I can do some sorting out of the things that matter to me.’ He threw me a look. ‘Today has made me feel I should be organising myself at last.’
‘Well,’ Isabel said, as we watched the taillights of his truck disappear up the lane, ‘what was all that about? What did you say to him.’
‘Oh, nothing much.’
