by Celia Imrie
Sally knew that this was true, but she had planned to buy out Ted’s share.
Sian put her hand out and rested it on Jackie’s arm. ‘You’d be lucky to get to Cannes in two hours in that little thing. And that’s with a calm sea and a following wind. I’ll run you to Cannes in the car when you need to go, Jackie. It’ll take all of half an hour. We’ll put on headscarves and dark glasses and wind the top down and pretend to be 1960s filles BCBG.’
‘You really are a sport, Sian. I think I’ll take you up on that.’
‘When’s your showing?’
‘Weeeelllllll . . . ’ Jackie screwed up her mouth. ‘I’m not absolutely sure. But I think it’s on Wednesday or Thursday.’
Destiny interposed. ‘When you’re all saying “Cannes”, do you mean Cannes the film place, with the red carpet up all those steps?’
‘That’s the one,’ Sian smiled. ‘You must be pretty used to red carpets by now, Destiny.’
‘I am, Sian, I am. Perhaps I could come with you both?’ Destiny blotted her red lips with her napkin. ‘I adore everything to do with showbiz. I’m never happier than when I’m in a lovely dress and people are taking pictures of me.’
Sally looked out to sea again and wished she was bobbing about on her boat – or was it Ted’s?
14
Theresa woke very early on Monday morning. She felt exhausted; in her dreams she’d been running up and down ladders all night long.
But yesterday had been productive. They had discussed and made decisions on several things: the menus – both the look and the content; which wholesalers and meat and fish suppliers they would use; the cutlery and plates; even the laundry where the napkins and tablecloths could be washed daily.
William had made enormous spreadsheets, and pages of costings that covered everything from staff rotas to profit margins.
Carol had presented a magnificent portfolio about advertising, complete with designs and ideas for the layout of the dining room. Theresa wondered where she had found the time. Maybe Carol didn’t need sleep, even after a heavy day’s painting. She was now staying in Theresa’s box room. Theresa had definitely seen a light on in the early hours this morning, and heard, through the door, the swish of bits of paper being torn from a pad, followed by the fevered movements of rubbing out. Carol was obviously still at work on the design.
Last thing yesterday, before locking up, Theresa and the gang had gone to see the wonderful work Monsieur Leroux and his team had managed to accomplish in such a short time.
Apart from finishing touches – fitting downlights into the holes that were wired and ready in the ceiling – it really was now a case of furnishing the place. Carol was going to decorate the plain dining-room walls to give the restaurant, in her own words, ‘a bit of oomph!’
Theresa rolled over in bed and looked up through the window to the steep dark well leading up to the Hôtel Astra. She could hear a couple arguing. ‘I want to go to Grasse, to see the perfume places,’ said the young female voice. ‘But I thought we’d agreed we were going to Monte Carlo?’ said the man.
‘Monte Carlo – I know you’re only wanting to get tickets for the Grand Prix.’
Theresa laughed. The young woman pronounced the X, giving it an altogether different meaning.
‘Typical man!’ said the woman.
‘Well – you know what they say,’ said the man, his voice rising. ‘All cows go to Grasse!’
Then she heard a slap.
Oh dear, thought Theresa. That was what holidays were all about – falling out with your nearest and dearest.
She sat up and yawned, then shuffled into her clothes and had a quick wash before making her way across to La Mosaïque to let everyone in.
When she got there, she found the front door ajar.
She hadn’t knocked on Carol’s bedroom door, knowing that she’d been up working into the night, but maybe the woman was a complete insomniac and had crept out and was here before her. Or perhaps William was inside, measuring up for table sizes or the welcome desk.
She walked through the empty dining room, and pushed open the swing door into the kitchen.
Things were not as they had left them last night when they all locked up.
The doors to the oven, fridge and cupboards were hanging open.
What on earth was going on?
She hurried on through to the yard, calling, ‘Hello?’
The back door was ajar and the outside store cupboard was also open. Theresa noticed that the padlock had been forced.
What the hell?
She turned and noticed that the drain cover had also been removed, and not put back flush to the ground. She was about to make her way into the cellar when there was a rapping on the front door. Instinctively, before going through she picked up the broom.
Monsieur Leroux was standing just inside the open front door holding out a hand for the ritual morning shake.
‘Madame Simmonds, bonjour!’
‘Monsieur Leroux, venez!’ Theresa indicated to him to follow her. ‘C’etait vous qui a fait ça?’ she asked. ‘You did this?’
‘Mais non! Bien sûr!’ Monsieur Leroux looked around the kitchen as he pursed his lips and shook his head. He inspected his work more closely for damage.
‘Les jeunes,’ he said. ‘Les mecs.’
‘Young troublemakers?’ asked Theresa. Bored kids with nothing to do, she presumed. Local ruffians with little else to fill their time except by causing trouble. That must be the explanation.
But somewhere deep inside Theresa knew there was more to it than that.
She phoned William to let him know about the pranksters, then asked Monsieur Leroux if he could change the locks and reinforce all the entrances.
Theresa thought about her row yesterday with Marcel and wondered if he had been behind all the little things that had happened since they started work on the place – the young man she saw in the dark, the cigarette butts, the Zippo lighter and now this. Could his anxiety about a rival restaurant opening just up the road have led him to employ scare tactics? Perhaps he wanted to make them fear opening so much that they pulled out? Maybe he was simply being nosy and wanted to see what he would be up against?
But then why not just ask Theresa to show him round? She’d have been only too willing. Surely Marcel was man enough to speak up.
Theresa put down the broom, which she realised she was still gripping. She would not be scared out of this place. They’d all invested too much now, both in time and money, to start being intimidated, whether it was by kids or Marcel or whoever.
They were days away from being ready for inspections. Once they passed successfully, and had the certificates framed and plaques put up outside, they would be able to open their doors to the paying public.
Theresa felt proud, but that feeling was diluted by this fresh worry.
In one week they had all worked wonders. They could not surrender now, not when they were so close to achieving what had at first seemed impossible.
15
Sally could hear Jackie moving about downstairs. She was tempted to turn over and go back to sleep but did not want to be seen as a really hopeless hostess, even when the guest was uninvited.
She was pulling on her blouse when the phone rang.
It was Diana. ‘How’s life with Miss Jolly-What-Ho?’
Sally couldn’t help but laugh.
‘Downstairs,’ she whispered. ‘Making breakfast.’
‘Well,’ said Diana. ‘I saw her cosying up to all those others at your table yesterday and wondered if, now that she has some new friends, she might leave you free today to join me for lunch somewhere along the coast. I’ve got three more days left to play before work really kicks in. I saw a lovely little place hanging from a rock down near Cap-d’Ail or Cap Martin or one of those obscure zillionaire-inhabited Caps. Fancy it, Sal?’
‘I’ll call you back in an hour, Diana. But I think the answer is yes.’
Sally put down the phone and went d
ownstairs to find Jackie seated at the table, sipping a cup of tea.
‘Hope you don’t mind, old bean,’ said Jackie. ‘But I helped myself.’
‘No problem,’ said Sally, actually feeling a little put out. ‘Is there enough in the pot for another cup?’
Jackie winced. ‘Oh dear. Only filled up for one. Waste not want not and all that.’
Sally gritted her teeth and refilled the kettle.
While her back was turned away from Jackie she asked her if she would be busy today.
‘Oh, rather!’ said Jackie, biting into a piece of toast. Sally realised that Jackie must have raided the freezer too, as that was the only place in the house she could possibly have found a sliced loaf. Tom had bought it and put it there and Sally had forgotten all about it. ‘Sian is going to drive me up to see the hillside towns – tourist stuff, you know – and then help me do a bit of marketing on the old film. We have to go into Cannes too, so that I can try to get her a last-minute festival pass.’
Sally wondered how many film credits Sian could prove. Or perhaps, being at the marketing end of things, she could get in as a finance person.
Outside in the road a car pulled to a stop and there were a couple of toots on the horn.
‘That’ll be Sian now.’ Jackie sprang from her seat, cramming the remains of the toast into her mouth. ‘See you this evening, old girl.’
After an hour, when she had eaten her own breakfast and washed up for them both, Sally phoned Diana and agreed to be waiting by the quay at a quarter to noon.
Zoe was down there, sitting on the sea wall, swinging her legs and rooting through her capacious handbag.
‘Hey, Sally!’ she called brightly. ‘Off to your motorcycle-maintenance class?’
‘Zoe!’ Sally laughed. ‘Will you ever give up on that old joke?’
‘How’s the gorgeous boyfriend?’
Sally perched on the wall next to her friend. ‘I wonder, Zoe, if he doesn’t prefer the boys, you know. He’s been at sea ever since with that footballer.’
‘Ah yes,’ Zoe peered over the top of her specs. ‘While you “cavort with his busty model wife, Destiny, twenty-four”. Isn’t that how they put it?’
‘There’ll be no cavorting on my side,’ said Sally.
‘I knew a Russian once. Lived up in Èze. Wife had a huuuuge b . . . ’
Zoe’s lips started to vibrate and she was unable to finish the word.
She tried again: ‘A huge b . . . b . . . ’
When the stammer recurred Sally suggested: ‘Bosom? Bust?’
‘No,’ said Zoe decisively. ‘A huge b . . . ’
‘Bottom?’
‘No, no,’ cried Zoe. ‘She had a huge balalaika.’
Together they watched William and Benjamin cross the car park and go towards the Magenta building.
Zoe sang: ‘Bill and Ben, Bill and Ben, off to work they go.’
‘I thought that was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?’
Zoe glared at Sally and pulled her spectacles even lower down the bridge of her nose. ‘I swear I won’t ever tell anybody you just said that,’ she said. ‘We don’t want the LGBTQXYZ community baying for your blood now, do we?’
‘I meant the song was from . . . ’
‘Do you know, Sally, I wouldn’t touch that Magenta place with a fifty-foot pair of tongs.’ Zoe’s head swerved in the general direction of the restaurant. A signwriter, up a ladder, was slowly painting its new name above the frontage – La Mosaïque. ‘Too much history, you know.’
As Sally was starting to regret not being part of the gang working to create the new restaurant, she was glad to hear this.
‘Why do you say that, Zoe?’
‘That Magenta bird was a wily old thing. Very tricky.’
‘And I suppose that you, Zoe dear, are a breeze.’
‘I am! I am!’ Zoe’s voice swooped like Dame Edith Evans’s famous ‘handbag’. ‘But compared to Magenta I’m a soothing southern zephyr. Franca Magenta was the mistral, a maelstrom, a hurricane, a nasty piece of work.’
‘Really?’ Sally was always unsure whether to believe anything Zoe said, as she was so keen on exaggeration. ‘Why do you think that, exactly?’
‘Why?’ Zoe was back into the ‘handbag’ mode. ‘Why not? All that voluptuous Italian thing, for a start. The wobbling flesh, the plunging necklines, the ever-so-slightly too tight and short skirts and tops. Always on the pull. And on top of that there was the usual southern Italy culture . . . you know.’
Sally did not know; involuntarily shrugging one shoulder, she let Zoe know it.
Zoe flapped her arms about. ‘Italians, you know, Sicily, Sardinia, horses’ heads on doorsteps, “He sleepah with the feeeshes.” All that stuff going on but with a row of dribbling lusty-eyed men in her wake. She was hell.’ Zoe sniffed.
‘You’re just jealous, Zoe.’
‘Not me. Too much intrigue around that one. Flies around . . . And let’s just say, she was not a woman’s woman.’
‘I always thought that Franca Magenta was just a simple peasant type. Salt of the earth. Come to Mamma. Eata your dinna!’
Zoe laughed so hard Sally feared she might fall off the wall.
‘Darling Sally, always the innocent lambkin. I’ll tell you something. She had lovers in every cupboard, popping in and out of windows. Her particular penchant was for the famous rich elderly.’
‘Well, that’s a new definition,’ Sally smirked.
‘I think the old bitch was hoping to feature in somebody’s will. Don’t think she managed it. But she took her tits out for those mad old boys and they did give her things in return: jewels and stuff. She had a fair old stash by the time she was shoved into the home.’
‘And there’s me thinking she got her money from the restaurant.’
‘That place? God, no. For starters, the food was repulsive. I wouldn’t have put it past the woman to have served up her enemies’ body parts in those famous ragouts of hers. The French didn’t have such strict meat laws then, remember. There were quite a few men who vanished.’
‘They probably just caught a boat back to Sardinia, Zoe. They do leave from here daily all year round.’
‘Not from here, Sally. You have to go along the coast to Genoa.’ She tutted and shook her head. ‘The vibes that place must still have.’ Zoe shivered. ‘Before I opened a new enterprise in that building I’d get the place exorcised. There’s probably a skeleton or three under the floorboards and another down the drains. So anyway, Sally . . . ’ Zoe paused and looked Sally in the eye. ‘What’s all the gossip about you knocking around with all these famous people? Marcel is full of nothing else; he’s telling everyone about you sitting at a table with the whole front page of Hello! magazine.’ She paused, then added, ‘Well, that and the Magenta place opening to ruin his business.’
A taxi swerved down the hill and swept along the front.
‘Come on, Sally, spill the goss.’
Sally stood.
‘I’ll have to tell you next time, Zoe. I’m off on a lunch date.’
‘Not with that Russian Handsome Harry, I suppose.’ Zoe peered into the back seat of the car as it came to a stop.
‘Aha!’ she said with an inscrutable smile. ‘No. Not a boyfriend, then. Off to join the rich and famous. Well done you! Ta-ra, old girl!’
Sally stepped forward to open the back door.
Although she rather resented being called ‘old girl’ by a woman easily old enough to be her mother, if not her grandmother, Sally was delighted that Zoe now had a new game to play next time they met.
As the car pulled out, Sally thought she heard Zoe say: ‘You and Franca Magenta – one thing in common: fame by proxy.’
Diana greeted Sally warmly, although her daughter Cathy did not turn her head from the front seat to say hello.
‘I get carsick if I change direction,’ the daughter said in a quavering voice. ‘But Ma is so looking forward to seeing you. I hope you don’t mind me sitting in the front, do yo
u?’
Sally noticed Cathy was clutching a half-opened packet of low-salt, gluten-free crackers.
Diana, as usual, looked radiant and utterly glamorous.
Sally bit her lip and wished she’d remembered to check her lipstick before getting in. What was she going to talk about over lunch? The whole day ahead was rather daunting.
Diana poked the driver’s shoulder.
‘To lunch, to lunch!’ She threw her arms up and cried: ‘“There is no sincerer love than the love of food.”’
‘Oh God!’ Sally instantly recalled a moment in another of the plays they’d done together at Frinton. ‘Arms and the Man! “Ann loves you that way . . . ”’
The two women continued in unison: ‘“She patted your cheek as if it were a nicely underdone chop.”’
As the car sped up the hill, they both threw back their heads and laughed.
No, thought Sally. This wouldn’t be so difficult after all.
16
Theresa had phoned Imogen’s mobile repeatedly, only to be greeted with ‘Not now, Mum. Not a good time.’ Imogen’s voice had seemed pretty tense on every occasion and at the end of the last attempt Theresa had signed off with ‘Ring me when you like, darling. I’m always here.’ When Imogen had responded with ‘Fine. Whatever you say,’ and then hung up, Theresa had made up her mind to stop trying her daughter for a while, and wait for Imogen to call her.
For Theresa and her colleagues the next few days were fraught. William had decided he would have to fork out for a car. He added it to the restaurant’s initial expenses by way of his mother’s favourite maxim: ‘You have to lay out to pick up.’ She had abided by this in the betting shop or on the racecourse. William had come to realise this catering venture was always going to be as big a gamble as betting on the horses anyway, so as he got accustomed to his new white Peugeot Bipper, he felt completely justified. He efficiently busied himself whizzing everyone around, dropping them off at various shops, outlets and catering suppliers.
In between taxiing the others, William swung his time between the mairie and the accountant’s office. The opening date had been fixed for ten days away. William had also brightened up. Everything in the legal department was, amazingly, running to schedule, and without any hitches. If the building work also kept on track, some inspectors would be making their rounds on Friday and the rest on Monday morning.