‘Visiting other friends,’ said Vince. ‘As I said, I’m doing this as a surprise for her. However, I was thinking about somewhere to stay for this evening, so if you’re not fully booked …’
‘Actually we’re not.’ Belinda beamed at him. ‘We had an unexpected cancellation this morning, so I have a vacant room for two nights. If you and Imogen want to stay, you’d be more than welcome.’
‘She’s overnighting with her friends,’ said Vince. ‘But I’ll take you up on the offer, for tonight at any rate. And I know she’ll be very excited when I tell her about this. She didn’t remember where the house was and she’s lost touch with the other people …’
‘It’s such a shame when that happens,’ said Belinda. ‘I wish I could tell you where they are, but I’m afraid I’ve no idea.’
‘Agnes and Berthe are in the States and unwell now, so I can’t really talk to them,’ said Vince. ‘What I was trying to do was find out where my wife and her mother moved after the house was sold. Unfortunately Imogen’s mother died and she herself doesn’t remember.’
‘Oh dear.’ Belinda looked at him sympathetically. ‘That’s sad news. She looks such a vibrant woman in the photographs. I don’t think I can help you with that, but there might be something in the albums or the ledger to give you a clue. You’re welcome to keep them for this evening.’
‘Thank you,’ said Vince. ‘I appreciate it.’
‘I’d best be getting back to work,’ said Belinda. ‘Would you like the key to your room?’
‘Great,’ said Vince. He followed her indoors, where she registered him as a guest and gave him a big key on an old-fashioned fob.
‘We did think about electronic keys,’ she told him as she led him to the room on the ground floor. ‘But the house is so charming that we thought it would be inappropriate.’
The room, when he went inside, was light and airy, with patio doors leading to the garden.
‘You have everything you need,’ said Belinda. ‘There’s tea- and coffee-making facilities, water and free Wi-Fi. We don’t have a minibar in the room, I’m afraid.’
‘This is perfect,’ said Vince. ‘I’ll get my things from the car.’
‘I’ll leave you to it in that case,’ said Belinda. She gave him the code to open the gates, which, she said, also opened the door to the guest house.
When he’d retrieved his bag, Vince put the kettle on and made himself a cup of tea. He sat in the small tub chair beside the window and went through the photos in the album. Some had clearly been taken at the guest house, but others were on the beach or in the town. Not that they could help really, he thought. After all, the album had been left at the guest house, so everything had been taken prior to them leaving.
But where they hell had they gone? Vince was absolutely certain that Imogen was somewhere she knew well. It made perfect sense. Paris was still a possibility, yet she’d never spoken with any great fondness of the capital city. He remembered her shrugging once and saying that Paris was Paris but it wasn’t France. No, thought Vince, she wasn’t in Paris. She’d come back to where she’d lived before. To where she’d gone after this place. All he had to do was figure out where that actually was.
And then he did.
It was purely by chance and he couldn’t believe how fortuitously it happened. He’d been reading a review of La Vie en Rose on TripAdvisor and then clicked, as he often did, to see what other places the reviewer had been to. All over France seemed to be the answer, and Vince started to read the reviews because they were well written and sharply observed. He particularly liked the ones about French restaurants, especially the Parisian ones, where he agreed entirely with the reviewer’s comments.
Sometimes it’s better not to try your school French, SammieG had written. Better to be dismissed as a stupid foreigner for not having a word of the language than be sneered at for pronouncing l’addition incorrectly.
Vince found himself nodding in approval as he read, and then clicked on another SammieG review that had been posted a few weeks earlier. It was of a restaurant called Le Bleu, and it was the accompanying photograph that made him stop and stare. Because in the photo, captioned ‘Gerry and Imogen enjoy Basque cooking with a twist’, was his wife. Barely recognisable at first, with her beautiful hair hacked into a style that Vince found unattractively short, but it was her nonetheless. And the man named Gerry had his arm along the back of her seat as both of them looked straight at the camera.
Vince felt such a surge of anger and betrayal through his veins that his head felt as though it was going to explode. The sneaky bitch had left him for another man after all. And for this Gerry bloke, who was singularly unattractive, with his round face and slightly glazed eyes. Balding too, thought Vince as he enlarged the photo. He’d been spending the last few weeks worrying about her, while she’d been cheating on him with some other guy. She’d be sorry, he thought. She really would.
It was a while before his rage abated enough for him to check the location of the restaurant, and he frowned when he saw that it was in a town called Hendaye on the south-west coast. He’d never heard of it before and he was certain that Imogen had never mentioned it. Why had she chosen it? Because of Gerry? Was he someone from her past that she’d managed to hook up with again? Was he the one who’d lured her away, who’d planned her disappearance?
Vince got up from his chair and went outside. He looked at the house from the garden and tried to imagine his wife living here. It was easy, because the atmosphere of La Vie en Rose was exactly what she’d tried to recreate in her Dublin kitchen. Yet she hadn’t come back here. She’d gone to this Hendaye place instead. Presumably because she didn’t think he’d find her there. But she was wrong. She was always wrong.
He returned to his room and began looking for travel options. Annoyingly, they were limited. Much to his disgust, there wasn’t a train, and there only seemed to be direct flights every second day. There were lots of connecting flights through Paris, which gave him more flexibility but would be almost as tiresome as driving. But he knew that there’d be an extra fee to pay for taking the car to the other side of the country and leaving it there when his contract was to return it to Marseille.
Imogen’s disappearance was causing him nothing but trouble, he thought. But at least he knew where she was now. She couldn’t hide from him any more. When he found her, he wouldn’t let her know how very angry he was. He wasn’t going to alienate her. He’d treat her with the compassion she clearly believed she deserved. As for Gerry … He gritted his teeth. He would deal with Gerry, whoever the hell he was. He would make him see that there was no future for him with Imogen. He would put an end to this nonsense once and for all.
He would bring her home.
And things would change for ever.
Chapter 29
Imogen arrived at the Villa Martine exactly on time for its scheduled clean that afternoon. Unlike previous occasions, her ring on the bell was answered by a male voice asking who was there.
‘It’s me, Imogen,’ she replied. ‘Here to clean.’
‘Come on in.’
The gate swung open and she pushed her bike up the path. By the time she reached the house, Giles was standing on the doorstep.
‘Hi,’ he said.
‘Hello.’ She smiled at him. ‘Back from your … well, I was going to say holiday, but obviously being here is a holiday for you already.’
He grinned at her. ‘A few days with a friend. A few days here. And then back to Paris. But I’ll be here again in August for a couple of weeks.’
‘I do like the way French people take holidays,’ she told him. ‘At home, random days off can be seen as slacking.’
Giles made a face. ‘You can’t work all the time,’ he said. ‘You need to recharge the batteries. Your mind works better after a break.’
‘I agree with you.’ Imogen walked past him into the kitchen and then gave him a horrified look. ‘What on earth was going on here?’
‘I’m s
orry,’ said Giles. ‘We had people to dinner last night and I cooked my special rabbit stew.’
‘Pauvre lapin,’ said Imogen as she looked at the blackened Le Creuset pot soaking in the sink. ‘It seems to me that he was overcooked.’
‘It was delicious,’ Giles said. ‘But we should have cleaned up.’
Imogen wanted to agree with him. Although the plates had been loaded into the dishwasher, the kitchen table was still littered with cups and wine glasses, which Giles began to pick up.
‘Leave it,’ she said. ‘It’s my job, after all.’
‘Cleaning the house, not cleaning up after us,’ said Giles. ‘This was thoughtless. I forgot that you might be coming today.’
‘It’s not so bad.’ They must have been drinking till all hours, thought Imogen, looking at the glasses.
‘If you’re sure …’ said Giles. ‘I was on my way out. Sorry again.’
‘No problem.’
And it wasn’t, not really. The dishwasher was a two-drawer affair, which meant that she could put all the glassware in the bottom and wash it on a different cycle to the crockery and cutlery in the top. When she’d programmed them and started the washing, she turned her attention to the pot, which wasn’t as hard to clean as she’d first feared thanks to Le Creuset’s forgiving nature towards burnt-on food. She wiped the table, then returned to her more usual system, which was to begin upstairs and make her way downwards.
She worked automatically, dusting, polishing and sweeping, comfortable in the rhythm that she set herself. She’d lost half a stone since she’d come to France and she was sure it was all down to the amount of physical work involved in cleaning houses. She wondered if she could incorporate her cleaning routine into a diet and exercise plan for the future. Maybe she could write a book, she thought, and it would become an instant best-seller, after which she could give up cleaning for ever and live off her royalties. Oliver’s publishing house could publish it for her. It would be a win-win situation. She smiled to herself at the idea, and hummed beneath her breath as she worked, comfortable in what she was doing, untroubled by her thoughts. In the last few years, living with Vince, her free time had invariably been consumed with worry about the mood he might be in and what she needed to do to keep him happy. She’d always believed that if he was happy, she’d be happy too. Although that had become impossible. And she couldn’t help feeling responsible for making him unhappy, and for being the author of her own misfortune whenever he took his unhappiness out on her.
But everything’s OK now, she thought as she opened the door of the library. I’m making a new life. And with a bit of luck he will too.
‘Oh.’ She’d been so preoccupied with what was going on in her head that she hadn’t realised there was anyone in the room. Now she saw that Oliver was sitting behind the rosewood desk, a pile of paper in front of him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you.’
Oliver blinked a few times as though trying to figure out who she was.
‘It’s OK.’ He took off a pair of narrow-rimmed reading glasses and placed them on the desk. ‘I was absorbed in what I was doing. I didn’t know you were in the house. Did you let yourself in? I didn’t hear the bell.’
‘Giles did,’ she said. ‘He’s gone out now.’
Oliver nodded. He stretched his arms over his head before standing up.
‘You don’t have to abandon your work because of me,’ said Imogen. ‘I can leave this room until later.’
‘Are you nearly finished?’ he asked.
‘I still have the kitchen to do,’ replied Imogen.
‘The kitchen!’ Oliver suddenly looked aghast. ‘Giles had friends around last night. I told him to clean up after himself, but it was a mess this morning.’
‘It’s OK,’ said Imogen. ‘The dishwasher is doing most of the work.’
‘Nevertheless …’ Oliver shrugged. ‘Do you need a break?’
‘No, I’ll get on with it,’ said Imogen. ‘René expects me back with the keys.’
‘I was going to have a coffee break myself,’ said Oliver. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like to join me?’
‘If you insist.’
Something in her words made Oliver look at her curiously.
‘I’m not insisting,’ he said. ‘I’m asking. And if you really don’t want to join me, please don’t feel you have to.’
It had happened with René too, remembered Imogen. He’d asked her to join him for coffee and she’d thought of it as a command, not an invitation. But Oliver, like René, hadn’t been upset with her when she’d demurred. Both of them had been relaxed about it.
‘I don’t want coffee,’ she said. ‘But a glass of water would be nice.’
‘And you can take five minutes out to have it with me?’
‘Sure,’ she said.
She followed him into the kitchen, where he took a bottle of Perrier from the fridge and filled a tall glass while he waited for the coffee machine to warm up. She brought the water outside and sat at the table, where he joined her a couple of minutes later.
‘I guess it puts you in a difficult position,’ said Oliver. ‘I say I want a coffee and you feel obliged to have something too. I didn’t think of that.’
‘It’s OK,’ she said.
‘It’s because I don’t see you as an employee,’ he told her.
But she was an employee and she was never going to forget it. Not like Carol.
‘So how’s life going for you?’ He took a sip of coffee and sighed appreciatively.
‘Pretty well,’ she said.
‘Did you enjoy the barbecue?’
She nodded. ‘It was good fun. Nice to meet different people. How much longer did you stay on the beach after I left?’
‘Someone came with a guitar,’ said Oliver. ‘There was music. And more wine. A lot more wine.’
‘Oops.’
‘It could’ve been worse,’ said Oliver. ‘I got home before dawn.’
She wondered if Virginie had come home with him.
‘How long are you going to stay working for Bastarache?’ he asked when she didn’t say anything.
‘I don’t know,’ replied Imogen. ‘The work is seasonal.’
‘Do you plan to stay in town? If there isn’t anything?’
‘I haven’t decided yet,’ replied Imogen. ‘My plans are flexible.’
She loved being able to say that. She loved thinking that her life wasn’t mapped out for her any more.
‘And are they flexible now?’ asked Oliver.
‘At this exact moment?’
‘In general,’ he clarified. ‘There’s something you might be able to help me out with.’
‘Help you out? How?’
‘I have a meeting with my author in San Sebastian tomorrow. I think I mentioned him to you before. The guy who wrote a book set in the Basque country. That’s what I was reading when you came into the library earlier.’
‘I don’t see how I can help you,’ Imogen said. ‘I know nothing about writing or editing. Especially in French!’
‘He’s living with an Irish girl,’ Oliver told her. ‘She writes a great blog about being an Irishwoman abroad. I know it’s very short notice, but I wondered if you might come with me and talk to her while I’m closeted with him. To break the ice socially, you know, one Irish girl to another.’
‘You’re right. It’s very short notice. When did you come up with this particular idea?’
‘While I was making coffee,’ he said. ‘I’d been thinking about the meeting earlier and how I was going to deal with him. Paul Urdien has a reputation for being a little difficult to deal with. Not in a horrible way, thankfully; it’s simply that he’s nervous and anxious about the process. I was hoping the girlfriend might be a way to reassure him.’
‘She might not have the faintest desire either to reassure him or meet me,’ said Imogen.
‘I understand that, of course. But when I was talking to him on the phone, I got the distinct impressio
n that she was very involved with him and his work, so …’
Imogen gave him a doubtful look.
‘If it doesn’t work out, you can do a bit of exploring on your own,’ said Oliver. ‘If you don’t mind, that is. It was Maman who acquired Paul’s book for the company, and she’s the one who dealt with him and his girlfriend when they came to Paris for an initial talk. She thinks I would be a better fit for him editorially, but obviously it’s entirely up to him. However, we both think that the girlfriend will be an influence.’
‘I’m still not convinced that me befriending her will be much help.’
‘Everything helps,’ said Oliver.
‘Maybe.’ Imogen was still doubtful.
‘You’ll think about it?’
‘I see where you’re coming from,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how good an idea it is, but if you’d like me to come along to your social evening, I will.’
‘Thanks.’ Oliver looked pleased. ‘But it’s not an evening. It’s a morning meeting, followed by lunch.’
‘In that case, I’m sorry,’ said Imogen. ‘I have to work during the day. I don’t have time for lunch.’
‘Even on a Saturday?’ He sounded horrified.
‘Afraid so,’ she told him.
‘I can’t believe you have to work at weekends.’
‘The weekends can be busy times for cleaners,’ said Imogen. ‘I don’t usually have too much on, but I have a house to do in the morning.’
‘How long will that take you?’ asked Oliver.
‘A couple of hours. It’s not part of my work for René. The house belongs to his ex-wife, Céline Biendon.’
‘I know Céline,’ said Oliver. ‘She was at the barbecue too, wasn’t she? With a new man?’
‘Yes, she was,’ said Imogen. ‘Anyway, I clean her house on Saturday mornings.’
‘I’m not meeting Paul until noon,’ said Oliver. ‘Maybe Céline wouldn’t mind you starting earlier than usual?’ Then he shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. I’m trying to pressurise you into doing something you might not want to do or have time for.’
The Missing Wife Page 29