‘Mu-u-um, it doesn’t work, Mum. I can’t see Aunty Nicole at all!’
‘I’ll be right there, sweetheart. Just enjoy your breakfast.’
Ella had changed from kids’ pyjamas into slim-fitting cherry-coloured trousers and a sleeveless candy-stripe top in pinks and yellows. It was a riot of colour and he felt oddly drab and sombre. Perhaps he should have packed some casual clothing? He only ever carried hand luggage on business flights, which did not leave any room for casual clothing, but he just might be a tad too formally dressed for a French farmhouse.
It was only as he moved closer that Seb realised that the TV was connected to a huge computer case with a well-worn keyboard and mouse attached.
This wasn’t a TV. It was a personal computer. And, from the age of it, was probably powered by a steam engine.
Another long sigh came from Dan and the little boy’s shoulders dropped even lower as Ella placed a brightly coloured plate with delicious-looking billowy fruit pancakes and a glass of milk in front of him.
‘Hello, Dan.’ Seb smiled down at the face that was twisted into a curious expression as Dan chewed. ‘What have you got there?’
Dan gulped down his bit of pancake and waved the remaining portion towards the monitor, scattering soft crumbs onto the keyboard and table as he did so.
‘Aunty Nicole sent a letter and pictures of elephants! And big mountains with snow.’
‘And where exactly are these mountains, Dan?’ Ella asked.
His lips twisted for a second and then he nodded with a big grin. ‘India. The elephants are in India.’
Ella glanced once at Seb, then shrugged. ‘Close enough. Well done for remembering.’ She gestured to the table. ‘Please join us, Seb—I will have some scrambled eggs and ham ready in two minutes.’
‘Wonderful,’ he replied, his stomach growling in agreement, but as he looked at the display of large-size pancakes, croissants, preserves and baguette laid out for a more adult breakfast at the end of the long table furthest away from Dan Seb made his second executive decision of the day and sat down in the chair next to the little boy and leant forward so that they could stare at the screen together.
The Internet browser did have emails, but the photographs attached to the message were taking so long to open up that Dan would be in school before he saw anything.
‘Um, see what you mean. Mind if I have a go?’
‘Mum. Is it okay if Seb touches the ’puter?’
Seb glanced up at Ella, who was still stirring eggs, and she smiled at him and nodded. ‘Only if he promises not to break it,’ she replied with a smirk, her teeth pressed into her lower lip to block the laughter.
‘Oh, I promise,’ Seb replied earnestly, and Dan looked at him, nodded once and passed him the mouse so that he could concentrate on holding his beaker of milk with both hands.
It had been a very long time since Seb had seen such a decrepit piece of equipment with the processing speed of a small slug. In fact his mobile phone had better connections.
Just as Ella was bringing the pan of eggs towards the table, Seb pushed back his chair. ‘Back in a moment, please start without me.’
In fact it took him a good few minutes to jog up to his room, slip back to the kitchen with his laptop and forward the email to himself so that Dan could read the message on the laptop instead of the TV screen.
‘Here you are, Dan.’
‘Where’s the clicky mouse?’
‘Inside. You press on here instead. And that little box sticking out of the side means that I can connect to the Internet wherever I go in the world.’
Dan’s eyes widened in delight. And he yelled out loud and clapped his hands together as a brightly coloured photo of a woman smiled back at him with a dramatic backdrop of ice and mountains.
‘Look, Mum—it’s Aunty Nicole.’
Ella took a second to spoon the creamy scrambled eggs onto ham and toasted sourdough bread on Seb’s breakfast plate, then lifted the hot pan away from Dan’s head and peered over his shoulder.
‘It certainly is. Look at that lovely hat she is wearing! Thank you, Seb. That was very thoughtful. Please. Feel free to read the message. It’s not private.’
Dan nodded several times as he chewed and mumbled his thanks through a full mouth.
Seb smiled back. ‘You are most welcome.’ And then his smile faded. ‘She’s not due back in Paris until Monday evening, and then plans to fly south late Tuesday.’
He sat back and pursed his lips. ‘Well, that’s a shame. I was hoping to see Nicole but I have to fly home late Monday.’
Seb glanced up at Ella. ‘My apologies, Mrs Martinez, but in that case there is no reason to stay here any longer. I’ll drive back to Montpellier later this morning.’
Dan’s eyes widened in astonishment. ‘You have to leave? Already?’
Ella kissed the top of Dan’s head, her hands on his shoulders, but the smile had faded from her mouth. ‘Don’t you remember what Aunty Nicole said? This is Seb’s work. He lives in Australia and that is a long way from here. Now. Time to check on Milou and get ready for school. Okay?’
Dan nodded furiously while sliding off his chair, a pancake clutched in one hand, but stopped to pat Seb on the arm.
‘Can I send you a mailey message on the ’puter? Please? Can I?’
‘Sure,’ Seb replied, between mouthfuls, and then shot a glance towards Ella. ‘If it’s okay with your mum.’
Ella looked from Seb to Dan, then grinned. ‘Maybe later.’
Ella sat down opposite Seb as soon as Dan had skipped up the staircase and exhaled loudly before she poured two cups of fragrant coffee.
‘I am so sorry about that,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Dan seems to love anything to do with computers and technology. I have no idea where he gets that from.’
Then she looked up at him with a faint smile. ‘I am sorry that you have to leave so soon. I know Nicole will be very disappointed to have missed you. She was so looking forward to having you here.’
Seb took a long sip of the delicious coffee, and savoured the aroma and flavour with a satisfied sigh.
‘As am I, but I do have a question. You are clearly an excellent cook, Ella, but you are also a busy mum. I’m surprised that Nicole asked you to organise her birthday party. That’s a lot of work for one person.’
Seb reached into a pocket and pulled out his personal organiser. ‘If it helps, I could make amends for my absence by arranging for an events management company to take care of the party. I would be happy to do it.’
Ella replied with several quick shakes of the head.
‘Thank you, but no, Seb. Nicole didn’t ask me to organise her birthday. I volunteered. I asked her to give me the chance to do it.’
Just as Ella was about to tell him the long list of reasons there was a sharp knock on the kitchen door and a small dark-haired older woman with bow knees sauntered in, nodded at Seb, deposited a basket of what looked like apricots on the kitchen floor, then kissed Ella on each cheek before heading back to the breakfast table.
Ella’s friend was wearing blue dungarees and old boots set off with a jaunty wool scarf. She leant against the sink and slurped down the coffee as Ella dived into the box.
‘Oh, these are fantastic!’ Ella squealed in perfect French with enough of the local accent that Seb could not help but be impressed. Unless you had been born and raised in this area, most people did not notice the subtle differences between the dialects in the different towns of the Languedoc. But Ella seemed to have picked it up perfectly.
Then she looked up and remembered that Seb had no clue as to who their visitor was.
‘Oh, sorry. Introductions. Yvette. Do you remember the Castellano family who used to live here? This is Sebastien Castellano visiting from Sydney.’
‘Of course I remember,’ Yvette replied and nodded once. ‘You’re Helene’s son. Used to play football with my boys after school when we had the farm.’ She scanned his business clothing for a few seconds before
adding, ‘I heard that you’ve done well for yourself.’ Then she slurped down what was left of the coffee, grabbed another pancake and waved one hand in the air with a friendly goodbye and was gone before Seb had a chance to reply.
‘What was that all about?’ Seb asked in a dazed voice.
‘Actually that was quite a speech for Yvette,’ Ella replied. ‘The forecast is for a mistral storm over the weekend and I need to bring in the cherries today or risk losing them.’
She stopped rummaging around inside the basket and glanced back towards the kitchen door before whispering in English, ‘Yvette is a wonderful babysitter and totally brilliant with the garden, but I am a bit worried that she’ll try to help me out from the top of a wobbly ladder in the orchard, so, would you mind doing me a huge favour?’
Ella licked her lips a couple of times. ‘Could you keep Yvette talking and away from ladders until I get back from the school run? I don’t want any accidents, but I promise that I won’t be long and you can get on your way the minute I get back.’
Then she gave him a lopsided grin. ‘I was forgetting! This is your chance to catch up with all of the gossip. Won’t that be the best fun?’
CHAPTER FIVE
BEING interrogated by Yvette for almost an hour about every detail of where he had been, what he had studied, what he had done and where he had travelled in the past eighteen years had not been what Seb called fun.
And she had made him work. By the time Ella wheeled her bicycle around the corner of the house, he had emptied three wheelbarrows of plant clippings, heard potted histories of most of his old schoolmates and made rash promises to welcome assorted members of Yvette’s extended family to Sydney.
So he was more than happy to hand over the reins to Ella, who vanished into the kitchen with Yvette the minute she got back, leaving him trapped outside on the patio.
At last! It was finally time to get packed and on his way back to the business world he understood.
So he had to find a way into the house that did not involve going through the kitchen. The fastest way would be to sneak in through the sitting room and what had been his mother’s salon.
Sebastien glanced through the open patio windows of the long wide room and stopped dead in his tracks—his feet frozen to the floor.
Hanging above the heavy stone mantelpiece of the original fireplace was a photograph he had never seen in his life. Of his mother.
Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, startling him with their intensity, after the shock of seeing her picture, life size, smiling back at him.
Hardly believing his eyes, he clenched his toes hard inside his made-to-measure shoes and breathed out slowly through his nose before taking a step across the threshold onto the marble tiles.
Only the fireplace was familiar in this strange mix of a room that had originally been two rooms—the formal parlour and the salon. The dividing wall was gone and the long sitting-room windows had been replaced by wide glass doors that opened out into the garden and allowed light to flood into what had been a rather dark space.
That light seemed focused like a spotlight on his mother’s image. She must have been in her twenties when the photograph was taken and the photographer had captured her in a moment when every aspect of her beauty and grace were at their height.
She looked stunning. More like a film actress or professional fashion model than the woman who had kissed him goodnight and made his favourite chocolate cake every Friday—just because she felt like it.
How had he forgotten how very beautiful she had been?
Her sparkling hazel-green and amber eyes shone out from the flat surface behind the glass, as bright as her perfect smile that could light up any room in seconds. Even now this simple colour photograph dominated the room.
She was wearing a pale pink dress with the slight shimmer of silk in the ruffles on the collar, and a single string of pearls he knew that his father still kept in a wooden box in his bedroom that Seb was not supposed to know about.
On one shoulder was a corsage of white and pale pink rosebuds chosen to match the exact same shade as her dress and she had raised her left hand towards it. She was wearing a ring with a large heart-shaped diamond-cut pink stone on the fourth finger—but it was not a ring he recognised.
Intrigued and fascinated by the maelstrom of emotions whirling around inside him, Seb moved closer to the fireplace until he was within touching distance of what was obviously an amateur photograph.
One thing was clear. She was looking straight into the lens of the camera and at the person taking the photograph with a look in her eyes that was absolutely unmistakable. It was the look of love. Because if Helene Castellano had a flaw, this was it.
She was incapable of hiding her true feelings—about anything.
She might have told him that the garden frog he had presented her with when he was seven was the best she had ever seen, but he had only had to look at her face to know the truth. And she had released the poor frog back into the river by morning.
He had loved her so very much. When she was taken ill, he had felt so powerless to do anything to help her that her last weeks were a whirlwind of kind words and fierce anger and frustration, which he took out on everyone and everything around him.
In life she had taught him about respect and hard work. Her death had taught him what it felt like to love someone so much and then have that love snatched away from you.
Her heart had been an open book.
His heart was locked tight closed and was going to stay that way. Other men might be foolish enough to risk falling in love and start a family. Not for him.
The blood pounded in the veins in his neck.
The photograph could have been taken by Luc Castellano, the man he had called his father for the first thirty years of his life. But it could equally have been a friend or relative at the same party. He simply could not know! And yet this photograph had been deliberately left behind when they emigrated!
Possibilities raced through his mind in tune with the blood pounding in his heart. What if his birth parents had been in the same room when this photograph was taken?
This photograph could be the clue he had not even acknowledged that he had been looking for. The first step to finding the answers to so many questions he had buried deep inside about his parentage.
Questions which now burned to be answered.
He had been a fool.
The growing feeling of unease and anxiety that had sat on his shoulders ever since he found out that his dad could not be his natural father suddenly made sense.
It had nothing to do with the business deal, and everything to do with understanding who he truly was, and the decisions his parents had taken to give him a safe family life.
Instead of feeling elation and exhilaration that he was within sight of the greatest business deal of his life, standing at that moment in front of his mother’s portrait, all he could feel was a hollow emptiness that needed to be filled.
The Helene Castellano Foundation meant everything to him going forward and he refused to let that work suffer because he was preoccupied with his heritage and his past. He had to put that behind him.
He had come here to ease his mind before starting work on the greatest adventure of his life. Nicole was not around. So he would have to do the job himself.
It was time to face the facts and get the answers he needed.
There was a rustle of movement behind Seb and he swung around, his mouth hard with emotion and resentful at the intrusion.
Ella bustled happily through the patio doors, her arms wrapped around a china bowl packed with a stunning arrangement of fresh early sunflowers and green foliage, which she carefully lowered onto the low coffee table in front of the sofas, turning the bowl from side to side to give the best viewpoint.
Only when she was satisfied did she stand back, nod once, and then march over to the dressoir sideboard and start rummaging around in a long bottom drawer.
‘Thank
you for staying and looking after Yvette. Do you like the portrait? I found your mum’s photograph in a box in the attic. Nicole’s designer had some modern abstract above the fireplace but it was totally wrong. Doesn’t she look wonderful?’
Her words had emerged with such a gush and a rush that Seb had to take a second to form an answer.
‘Yes, she does,’ he replied, turning back to face the portrait so that Ella could not see his face as he composed himself. ‘I’ve never actually seen that picture before. I don’t have many family photographs so it’s quite a surprise.’
Ella shoved the drawer closed and pushed herself back onto her feet with a satisfied sigh. ‘Here is the original print. These were all in the same box in the attic.’
Seb stared at the brown card wallet that Ella was holding out towards him and steadied himself to accept it from her, only they both stepped forwards at the same time and for a fraction of a second their fingers slid into contact, a gentle stroke of skin against sensitive skin.
Instantly a burst of hot energy ran through Seb’s hand, then arm and body, like a small electric shock. It was so unexpected and surprising that he half coughed out loud, breaking the heavy weight of silence. The awkwardness of the moment made him look up from the folder into Ella’s blue, blue eyes. And found that she was staring back at him. Wide eyed. Startled.
In a blink she sucked in a breath, waved her arms to the air above her head and squeaked. ‘More in the attic. I’ll go and, er, try and find them for you.’
Before Seb could reply Ella fled away into the corridor, her sandals making a light pattering on the wooden staircase.
Clearly he had not been the only one to feel the connection.
Mentally shaking himself for being so obvious in front of a widowed single mother, Seb sighed heavily. More photographs? He didn’t even know that these photographs existed, and here they were. For strangers to see.
He flicked open the folder, and quickly sorted through the jumble of mostly black and white prints he found inside.
The Last Summer of Being Single Page 6