by Jane Holland
Over by the bikes, Emily has stopped flirting with Daljit and Conrad, two cocky sixth-formers from somewhere very posh and English like Eton. She leaves them and saunters over to join you beside the old chapel. She looks hot in tight denim shorts and a midriff top, her flat, tanned belly on display, her navel pierced with a stud. She knows her own worth too, thrusting out her breasts as she sways towards Robin, swinging her hips.
All the same, she’s not happy.
Her eyes are narrowed, watching the two of you together. Like you, she’s jealous. But not in the same way. Her jealousy is colder and harder. It has a sense of purpose. Even destiny.
‘What was that?’ You turn at the crack of a twig in the darkness, staring nervously about. For a second, you think something moves in the shadows, shifting hurriedly out of sight. But you can’t be sure. ‘Is … Is somebody there?’
Robin stiffens and follows her gaze. Stepping up to protect his women, like the stout-hearted schoolboy he is. He scans the place, sees nothing but trees, bushes, the dark of the evening, and looks away again.
He raises his eyebrows, and says in a deep voice, ‘It’s Mr Nobody.’
Emily gurgles with laughter, her eyes bright as the stars looking down on you. ‘Ooh, spooky.’
You laugh with Emily, but nervously.
There’s music from inside the old chapel now. Robin frowns and lights a joint, his face lit up by the flame. Such a good-looking boy. The thick, sickening smell of the drug fills the air.
‘Bloody religious types,’ he mutters.
You look at him. Your father is a religious type. But are you?
Bold as ever, Emily takes the joint straight from his lips and drags on it, leaving a ring of scarlet lipstick round the end. She offers it to you too. But you shake your head and look away. Vicar’s daughter, trying hard to stay on the path of the righteous. Some nights you say yes though, and close your mind to what your father would think if he knew.
‘What do you think of Conrad?’ Emily asks you directly, not bothering to lower her voice. Almost as though she wants Robin to hear. Or Conrad himself, perhaps.
That’s more likely. Conrad isn’t very bright. He may have asked her to ask you if you want to sleep with him. That’s the way these things work on the Cap during the summer holidays. Go-betweens, secret messages, coded looks, pass-the-parcel.
‘Be honest, now.’ Emily takes another deep, exaggerated drag on the joint and holds the smoke in her lungs for a moment, then hands the stained cigarette back to Robin. Smoke curls out of the corners of her scarlet lips. ‘Do you think Conrad’s hot?’
‘He’s okay.’
‘But would you fuck him? If he got you alone.’
‘Emily,’ you protest, and glance at Robin.
Robin shrugs. ‘Don’t mind me.’
‘Would you?’ she presses you cruelly, like an Inquisitor.
‘No.’
‘How about Peter, then? Or maybe Jean-Luc?’ Robin asks, moving closer to join in with the questioning. He watches you curiously. ‘He’s about your age. Do you fancy Jean-Luc?’
‘Piss off.’
‘Oh, don’t be like that,’ your cousin exclaims, petulant now, and flicks back her long, silky hair. She’s a little bit drunk tonight, a little bit stoned. She’s flirting with you as though she’s your lover. Which maybe she is, or will be, depending on your interpretation of her night-time visits to your room. ‘It’s okay, nobody blames you for not liking Jean-Luc. He’s a fucking weasel. And Pete’s gay if you ask me, though he’s so deep in the closet he’s probably got mothballs in his mouth.’
Robin snorts. ‘Emily, for God’s sake.’
‘But Conrad’s dick will be worth the effort. Come on, you can tell Ems what you’d like him to do to you. Big hard rugger-playing Conrad.’ Her voice drops, becomes throaty. ‘I’m good at keeping secrets, everyone knows that.’
Robin flicks a soft head of ash from his joint and looks on indulgently, lord and master of all he surveys, as his girlfriend tries to pimp out her fifteen-year-old cousin to some spotty prick from Eton.
The view over the bay is soon forgotten.
Emily links arms with you and whispers something in your ear, heads joined together like co-conspirators. You’re talking sex and accessories, probably. The potential size of Conrad’s equipment, and whether he’s ever done it with a girl before. Exchanging dirty little secrets like girls do.
‘Time to go!’ Conrad shouts after a while.
The two of you wander back to the waiting motorbikes, still arm-in-arm. Back to Conrad and Peter and Daljit, back to the other girls in their skimpy beach wear. Robin trails a few feet behind, idly smoking his marijuana joint.
And Mr Nobody saunters unnoticed out of the shadows, following the three of you, heading for his bike too.
CHAPTER THIRTY
I pack my bag very early the next morning, while the house is still silent, then sling everything into the boot of my hired BMW. I stand with my keys in my hand, tempted just to jump in and drive straight to Nice airport. But I promised Tamsin I wouldn’t leave without a proper farewell, and it would be beyond cruel to break that promise.
I decide to drive quickly into town and buy her some flowers before I go though, as a thank-you as well as a goodbye present. It’s not much of a gesture, but it’s better than simply disappearing.
The car has been sitting in the sun and the interior is already scorching, despite the earliness of the hour. I climb into the driver’s seat, and feel sweat break out on my back immediately. It’s going to be a bloody hot day.
When I turn the keys in the ignition though, nothing happens.
‘Shit.’
I try again, but it’s completely dead. I close my eyes, unable to believe my luck.
I scrabble in the glove box for the car hire firm details, and call their twenty-four-hour emergency hotline on my phone. The man on the other end of the phone is deeply apologetic, but says he can’t get anyone out to fix the car until almost noon.
‘But I’m flying home today.’
‘Do you have another way of reaching the airport?’ he asks in excellent English, sounding very relaxed about my predicament. ‘If you leave the car unlocked and the keys under the sun visor, we’ll pick it up later. Don’t worry, just send us your taxi bill and the company will reimburse it.’
Reluctantly, I agree. But I’m not exactly ecstatic.
I’ll have to book a taxi later to take me to the airport. I have a card somewhere in my bag for the local firm I used before. But there are still the flowers to get.
Perhaps this is the opportunity I’ve been waiting for. My chance to get Lucille alone and find out what she knows.
Going back inside the house, I knock softly at Lucille’s bedroom door.
I hear the creak of bedsprings. Lucille opens the door a tiny crack and peers out, her expression deeply apprehensive, almost afraid. Her eyes are wide, her face sagging. She looks twenty years older in that instant.
She looks shocked to see me, I realise. As if she was expecting someone else.
‘Miss C … Caitlin?’
‘I’m sorry to come to your room so early in the morning,’ I say, stumbling over the French. ‘I know how much you value your privacy. But I’ve got something important to ask, and I wasn’t sure I would get the chance later today. It’s about something I found in the kitchen.’
Lucille blinks, clearly taken aback. ‘The kitchen?’
I glance past her. The bedroom looks to be in a mess, papers strewn all over the bed and floor as though she has been searching for some vital document.
‘Would you rather talk somewhere else?’
‘Such as?’
‘I don’t know. My aunt’s room?’
Lucille sounds horrified. ‘Madame’s bedroom?’
‘No, no.’ I struggle to make myself understood. ‘I meant, her sitting room downstairs. The large salon.’
She looks relieved.
‘I think Tamsin’s still sleeping
,’ I add, thinking this might make her feel better. ‘It’ll only be the two of us.’
But Lucille still hesitates, glancing down at her dressing gown and slippers. There’s reluctance in her face, and what seems like anxiety in the way she keeps biting her lip. ‘Very well. Five minutes?’
She wants to get dressed, which is understandable.
‘Of course. I’ll wait downstairs in the sitting room. I’m sorry if it’s inconvenient. But this is something I need to discuss with you before I leave for England. Something that won’t wait.’ I look at her. ‘I’m sure you understand.’
She doesn’t reply.
I get the feeling she understands only too well though.
Slipping downstairs into the empty hallway of the chateau, I hesitate on the threshold of the large front room. As usual, I can smell Tamsin’s perfume on the air. Today there’s something darker behind it too. The scent of decay, perhaps. Or am I merely imagining that?
Aging lilies and roses have been arranged in a vase on the central table, bowed heads beginning to shrivel, a few dropped petals on the table.
That’s all I can smell, I tell myself.
Dead flowers.
The front room is in darkness. I drag open all the shutters to let in the daylight, and catch a glimpse of my reflection in the gilt-edged mirror over the mantelpiece. I turn to study myself critically. Only very light make-up, my jeans and pink top casual, but my hair is piled up on the back of my neck in a reasonably smart chignon, ready for travelling. It’s the same way Tamsin was wearing her hair on the day I turned up for Emily’s funeral, I realise.
I remember the way Tamsin kissed me that day: her warm, regretful embrace, the sadness in her eyes. A sadness that must be doubly hard to bear, following news of my father’s death. She’s not alone in her depression. It was hard getting out of bed this morning. Not just the cool light of dawn and the earliness of the hour, but Robin’s deceit and my father’s death weighing heavily upon me. I should have been there with Dad, even if he tried to put me off coming home. Instead I was thinking only of myself as usual.
I shall never forgive myself for spending Dad’s last few precious hours with a bastard like Robin. But before I leave France, I can make things right with Tamsin at least.
I hear a sound and go back to the door.
Lucille is descending the broad staircase, neat and professional again in her habitual grey dress and white apron. Something about her expression makes me shiver though.
There’s that unpleasant scent again.
Like rotting.
‘Thank you,’ I say in French as Lucille follows me back into the sitting room. The blue shimmer of the sea is hard to ignore, but I turn my back on the view for once. I don’t ask her to sit, and remain standing myself. This won’t take long. ‘May I ask you something, Lucille?’
‘Of course.’
Slowly, I pull the folded beach photograph from the back pocket of my jeans and open it up. My hands have a slight tremor. My heart is beating fast.
‘I found this in the kitchen,’ I tell her, and watch her face for any kind of reaction. She glances down at the photograph without comment, her lined face emotionless. ‘In one of the wall cupboards. I was wondering if you knew anything about it.’
She shrugs and looks hurriedly away from the photo. ‘No idea.’
I don’t believe her tone. Flat and noncommittal. Unsurprised too, despite our smiling, tanned faces marked crudely with red crosses.
‘Do you think Emily could have done this to our faces? Crossed them out like this?’
Now she looks startled. ‘Emily?’
‘Who else would have had access to the kitchen? That’s where I found it.’
Wordlessly, she shakes her head.
I straighten out the crease in the photograph, and study the others who were on the beach with us that day. It’s a posed shot. Maybe a dozen tanned teenagers are gathered round a beach barbecue on Cap d’Antibes, grinning and affluent in designer shorts and bikinis, our three faces in the front row, each one marked with a cross in thin red biro.
I force myself to examine their suntanned faces again. The ones not crossed out in red pen, that is. Ever since finding this photograph, I’ve been struggling to remember them, those other rich kids and hangers-on we knew at the Cap, most of them children of ex-pats or wealthy holiday-makers muscling in on the beach scene there. It’s taken time, but I can now recite most of the names with what I feel is reasonable accuracy.
But not all of them.
‘Unless somebody sent Emily this photo, and she left it in the kitchen. By accident, perhaps? You might have put it in the cupboard for safe-keeping. Or maybe one of these kids in the photograph brought it over.’ I hold it out. ‘Do you recognise any of them?’
I pause, running my finger across the faces of kids whose names I think I know. One or two still elude me though. ‘What about her?’ I point to Charlotte, a tall blonde with sunburn and protruding teeth, staring into the camera lens with obvious disdain. Then a golden-skinned young man, his face partly obscured by the crease down the centre of the photograph. He’s vaguely familiar. ‘Or this guy, in the Yankee baseball cap?’
But Lucille is not even looking at the photograph. ‘I have no idea,’ she repeats in the same dull manner.
I hear a noise from upstairs. Tamsin perhaps, stirring early for once. It makes me wonder if I woke her, wandering the house so soon after dawn. Though she can’t have had an easy night either.
Guiltily, I fold the photograph up again and push it back into my jeans pocket. ‘Okay, it doesn’t matter. Maybe my aunt will know.’
Her eyes widen, her expression reproving. ‘Madame is not well enough. You must not trouble her with such nonsense. And she will not be able to remember anyway. You know that.’
I hesitate, meeting her eyes. Then nod reluctantly.
‘Fair enough.’
The photo is hardly nonsense. It’s evidence, in fact. Though of what I’m not entirely sure. But she’s right about one thing. Tamsin was fragile enough last night, and her memory is growing worse by the day. Tamsin will only become incoherent with grief if I show her a menacing photo of her dead daughter, Emily’s beautiful face erased by a red cross.
Besides, I’m flying home soon to bury my father. However badly I want to clear up this mystery, Dad has to be my priority.
‘Look, would it be possible for you to take me out to the shops?’ When she does not respond, still glaring at me for posing a threat to her beloved Madame, I smile apologetically. ‘I’m sorry. I know it must be very inconvenient, especially so early. But my car is dead and I’d like to buy my aunt some flowers.’
‘Right now?’
I glance at my watch. It’s a little after eight. But French shops open early.
‘If possible, yes.’ To my dismay, she looks horrified, so I add, ‘It won’t take long, I promise. We can take the Rolls Royce, can’t we?’
Lucille hesitates, and for a moment I fear she is going to refuse, which would be awkward. Then she nods, though her lips are pressed tightly together.
‘Thank you,’ I say, and turn to the door.
‘Wait, Miss Caitlin. I … I put the Rolls away in the garage last night, after I picked you up. Let me bring it round to the front for you.’ She smooths down an invisible crease in her lacy white apron, just as I creased out the fold in the photograph a moment ago. Frowning, she reaches round to unfasten her apron ties with the expertise of long practice. ‘It will only take a few minutes. Please wait in the hall until I return.’
‘Of course.’
I watch as she heads for the kitchen, presumably to collect the car keys. The sound of her low heels clicking on the floor is a sharp, achingly familiar sound. It brings back my childhood summer here, me and my cousin playing a rather sophisticated form of hide-and-seek with some of the other teens, and Lucille chasing us from room to room, remonstrating angrily in her swift, machine-gun French.
I smile, but sadly.
‘I’ll just run up for my purse,’ I call after her, and then make for the stairs. ‘I won’t be long.’
As though in response, there’s a dull thud from somewhere in the house. Like a door banging shut. Downstairs or upstairs, though?
‘Lucille?’
No response.
But I think I hear voices.
I take a few steps down the hall towards the still swinging kitchen door. ‘Lucille, was that you? Did you say something?’
No response.
‘Lucille?’
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The kitchen is surprisingly untidy. The table is unwiped, cluttered with jars and glasses as though she has been clearing out the cupboards. There’s a fly buzzing against one of the high windows, seemingly caught in a spider’s web. Unwashed cups and plates are heaped up in the sink below it, the tap dripping loudly and disconsolately into a dirty pan.
I try the back door but she must have locked it behind her. There’s no key anywhere in evidence. I wipe one of the murky glass door panels with my fist. But all I can see outside are umbrella pines and the distant glitter of sea through a gap in the hedge. I put the Rolls away in the garage last night. Let me bring it round to the front for you. Didn’t Lucille tell me last night she couldn’t find the key to the garage? That Jacques had left his job without letting anyone know where it was?
A muscle jerks repeatedly in my eyelid.
Stop being so suspicious of everyone, I tell myself. Lucille must have found the garage key after we’d gone to bed last night. That’s all.
When I head back out into the hall, the house is perfectly still. Almost as though it’s listening to me. Which is fanciful, to say the least.
I stand at the bottom of the sweeping staircase and gaze up into shadow. The shadows seem to be looking back at me, and not in a friendly way. Again, fanciful.
An unnerving thought, all the same.
Taking a deep breath, I find the light switch at the base of the stairs and flick it down, flooding the landing with light from two massive, cut-glass chandeliers.