She examined the inside for a hidden compartment but found nothing. Then, bit by bit, the real story behind the box came back to her. The box hadn’t been hers; it had belonged to her cousin. How had her father got hold of it? Perhaps the letters would explain.
Her name had been written carefully in ink on one of the envelopes, with a note beneath it scrawled in pencil: ‘Read this one first.’ She opened the envelope and pulled out an elegant sheet of writing paper.
Chanteloup, 16 September
Dear Françoise,
I’m setting off with Charles on the Tour de France because I can’t bear the thought of wasting away in my armchair. I hope with all my heart that you can forgive me for leaving you. I wasn’t brave enough to talk to you about this. One word from you would have been enough to make me stay; I miss you.
When you were a little girl, you always said that this box was the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen, but at the time your mother and I weren’t able to buy you one. I found this one on the internet (eBay) and I thought it would make you smile.
I couldn’t have asked for a better daughter. Take good care of yourself.
Papa
Françoise sat on the bed holding the letter for a long time, her heart heavy. She reread it, smiling at the word ‘eBay’, but she soon felt tears running down her face again. The second letter had been written hastily in pencil on several sheets of squared paper that looked as though they had been torn out of a notebook.
14/10/2008
Dear Françoise,
Since I wrote the letter you have just read, a lot has happened in my life, much of it unexpected. I have discovered a new favourite region: Brittany! Adèle has told me she will try to go there on holiday, I hope you’ll be able to go with her. I have recently seen Ginette again (Charles’s sister, who remembers you). She is a wonderful woman and someone I care for very much. She’d be very happy if you visited her one day; her address is 14 Passage des Pêcheurs, 85690 Notre-Dame-de-Monts, where she has a very lovely house. George N’Dour, who sent you this letter, is one of the many friends I have made along the way on this trip. Please keep in touch with Charles and Thérèse as well, who are going to sell their house and go travelling. The Tour has also shown me how much I have underestimated my neighbour Charles for the last thirty years. He is a brave and generous friend, who knows a lot more about the world than he lets on. This goes for Thérèse too. I am leaving them the Renault (you must remind the notary). Promise me to keep an eye on them, and to lend them a hand if they ever get in a tight spot money-wise.
Lastly, this has been a chance to get to know my granddaughter again. Adèle is a remarkable young woman. She has made me a very proud grandfather. She will be able to tell you about all of our adventures in detail, because we wrote to each other a lot during the trip, and she knows all there is to know. I made her promise to tell her grandchildren about our journey! I hope that you will take good care of yourself. You have given me so much over the last few years, and I will never be able to thank you enough. All my affairs are in order (thanks to you!), so don’t worry about that. As for me, I’m going out on a high note. Because it’s like with family reunions; better to leave while you’re still having fun, so you keep the best memories.
All my love,
Your father.
All was silent in Françoise’s room, in the hotel, in the street, in the town. There was nothing left to say.
Sunday 19 October
Chanteloup (Deux-Sèvres)
It did not take long to organise the funeral. Françoise and her father had had it all planned for a long time, and her father had been very precise about what he wanted. Later, Adèle would remember certain details about the ceremony: the grey marble that perfectly matched the sky, the plastic flowers, the wicker chairs in the church, her shoes crunching in the gravel in the cemetery, the unfamiliar faces gathering around his grave. Just like at any other funeral. She had not felt at ease.
It was the morning before the funeral that she would remember the best. She and her mother were at her grandfather’s house getting changed. In the house next door, Charles and Thérèse were also getting ready. Adèle had barely had time to walk around the village she had not seen for ten years. All of her attention was focused on her mother, who was trying to hold back tears. Even now, Françoise was as elegant and well turned out as ever. Adèle went downstairs to make coffee in the kitchen. The house still felt lived in. Her grandparents’ house, that she thought she had forgotten. How wrong she was.
Everything came back to her in a powerful wave of memory. She was amazed to find that she still remembered where they kept the coffee cups, the tea towels, and the instant coffee. And the porcelain pot where her grandmother had hidden her secret supply of marshmallows. The soup tureen on the sideboard where her grandfather had kept his receipts. The pencil drawer. She remembered the garden, which could be seen from the window above the sink – it was much smaller than she remembered, of course, but she recognised all the trees, the rocks, the lilacs, the pond at the end of the garden, and the blue ropes that formed a barrier around it. As she looked around the room, happy, colourful memories appeared from every corner. All the little trinkets in the house suddenly became precious; she would have liked to keep every last one of them, like rare flowers or butterflies on a pinboard. But could she preserve the familiar smell of the cupboard where they kept the board games or the taste of the toffees that came back to her when she saw the blue sweet box? Or her grandfather’s careful handwriting on the cheques she received from him on her birthday? She knew it would have made her grandfather smile to see her reminiscing like this. She had to repress the urge to send him a text message. Before she had time to be sad that this was no longer possible, she caught sight of something that caused yet more childhood memories to come rushing back like an incoming tide. It was a photo of her mother as a little girl in a pretty handmade frame that reminded Adèle of being pushed around outside in a wheelbarrow overflowing with hay. A reproduction of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in the hall brought back the taste of orange blossom that her grandmother used to give her in a glass of water before bedtime. Colourful stacks of paperback books reminded her of endless rounds of Pope Joan where she was always allowed to win. The Duralex glasses in the kitchen represented the bunches of primroses she would bring to her grandmother from the neighbours’ field. And there were countless others, memories returned to her in a never-ending flow of images, words, smells, arguments and peals of laughter, every Christmas and Easter, children’s games, scraped knees and her grandparents’ smiling faces. Before she knew it, hot tears were streaming down her face as they had done when she was a little girl staying in this same house.
It was in the little kitchen that Adèle mourned for her grandfather; not in the cemetery, and not before the marble plaque that would later be put up in his memory. Adèle paid her respects to him in his own house, and bestowed upon him an honour that would have meant more to him than any medal: pride of place in her memories of a very happy childhood.
Tuesday 21 October
London
At last, at the end of the eighth take, they managed to get the scene perfect, and the director called it a wrap. ‘Cut! That’s it! It’s a wrap, ladies and gents!’ The whole team burst into applause, there were hugs and cries of congratulation, even a few tears, probably due to tiredness rather than joy. The executive producer, David Lerner, a tall, lanky blond figure who was pushing fifty but still dressed like a Cambridge student, turned up as if by magic and announced that everyone was to join him down in the basement once the set had been cleared. As always, Adèle was the last person to leave the set, having checked that everything was in order, nothing important had been left behind, and everything in the old house was back in its rightful place. She checked every floor, walking down all the corridors with their creaking floorboards, checking behind all the doors. This place almost felt like home, after a month spent in these musty rooms. Her spirits were high, and her min
d was still buzzing: not only was the shoot over, she had plans afoot and the future was looking up, but she had just received this seemingly impossible text from her grandfather, and it had given her a lift.
By the time she got down to the basement, the party had already started. There was champagne and cheap canapés going around and the room was filled with laughter. Adèle made her way through the throng and managed to get herself a glass of champagne. She didn’t notice the producer, the production manager and her assistants whispering about something in a corner of the room. Suddenly the producer’s voice was heard asking for silence.
‘Excuse me everybody … Excuse me! OK, thanks. I’d just like to say a few words. I want to say a huge thank you to all the cast and crew for your excellent work. I’ve seen the rushes and it looks fabulous. We had a viewing with the head of the channel and she’s over the moon as well. I am so proud to have been a part of this film, which I am sure will be a huge success. So thank you all for your excellent work. Cheers!’
‘Cheers!’ chorused the crowd in reply, applauding enthusiastically. The producer raised his voice again over all the commotion.
‘One more thing, one more thing, and then you can start drinking again. OK, we also have a birthday to celebrate today!’ The assistants brought out a cake with a candle in it.
‘Adèle, where’s Adèle? Ah, there she is, there’s our Adèle!’ And everyone broke into a round of ‘Happy Birthday’.
It took Adèle a few moments to realise they were talking about her. She blushed as she blew out the candle. Once again, the producer cut short the applause.
‘So, before Adèle makes her speech – don’t think you’re getting away without one, Adèle – I’d like to say thank you not only to the birthday girl, but also to all of our runners and assistants who have probably worked harder than anyone else here. On set, I am sure all of you noticed that we have several highly qualified assistants’ (at this point, several of the more important crew members nodded in agreement) ‘and I would like to tell them that they’ve done a remarkable job, and I say remarkable because I know – having been in that position myself – that they think we don’t notice them at all. So, guys, you should know that you have been noticed, and believe me, even if the tasks seem menial at times, I’m telling you that your work is essential, vital to the shoot. So I wish Adèle and all of our runners the very best of luck in their careers in television and cinema. Cheers! And now I’m going to hand you over to our birthday girl.’
Adèle was shaking her head and trying to step back but the producer insisted, clearly in a mischievous mood.
Adèle was still bright red. She hated giving speeches, but it looked as though there was no way out of this one.
‘Thank you, thank you very much, David. Um, for those of you who don’t know me, I was the crashing noise in the middle of the fourth take. I dropped my phone, but, um, not because I’m clumsy. Something unbelievable had just happened and it was shock that made me drop my phone. You see, I’d got a text from my grandfather wishing me a happy birthday. The thing is, though, I went to his funeral last weekend.’
The crowd suddenly fell totally silent. There were a few nervous laughs. Adèle felt very uncomfortable standing in front of the silent room.
‘Well, it sounds a bit morbid, but it actually made me really happy. I mean, after the shock had worn off.’
Alex, who was standing near her, asked the question on everyone’s lips: ‘How did he do it?’ Someone suggested that it was possible to programme phones to send texts at a certain time in the future. Another wondered if it had been a delay with the operator. Maybe someone else had written it for him, or perhaps his phone had been hacked?
When the voices had died down, Adèle said softly:
‘Actually, I’d rather not know how it happened. I think my grandfather would have preferred me not to try to work it out.’
And with that, the party resumed; people moved back into their little groups and the mystery text message became the subject of many an animated conversation. Adèle told a good number of the crew about her grandpa’s Tour de France, speaking to people she had been deliberately avoiding for the last month. She even told people about her renewed relationship with him, the past mistakes that had been forgiven, the indifference that had kept them apart for years. The ingenuity of the two old men was a particular cause for hilarity. Old people were not at all like you assumed they were! The actor who had replaced Irving Ferns at such short notice nodded firmly in agreement. All around the room, people were recalling family memories, musing on the state of their health, telling anecdotes from the days before the war. Never before had people at a wrap party talked so little about film and so much about grandparents.
The following week, phones were ringing in retirement homes across England and even Poland, Scotland and Italy, and happy, timid voices spoke to one another for the first time in years. But Adèle had no idea.
One year later, on 21 October, Adèle received another birthday text message from her grandfather. And on her next birthday, and the one after that. She never tried to work out where they were coming from.
But every year, on 25 September, she would send him the same text:
In memory of the Tour. All my luv, ur Adl.
About the Author
Caroline Vermalle is a former BBC producer and the prize-winning author of seven novels. Having travelled the world with her family and built a wooden house in a forest, she now lives between a small seaside town in Vendée (France) and a small seaside town in the Eastern Cape (South Africa) with her son, a black cat and her husband, South African architect-turned-author Ryan von Ruben.
Anna Aitken studied French and German at St Peter’s College, Oxford. She has co-translated two novels by Guillaume Musso. She currently lives and works in London.
Copyright
First published in France as L’avant-dernière chance
by Éditions Calmann-Lévy
Copyright © Éditions Calmann-Lévy, 2009
First published in Great Britain in 2015
by Gallic Books, 59 Ebury Street,
London, SW1W 0NZ
This ebook edition first published in 2015
All rights reserved
© Gallic Books, 2015
The right of Caroline Vermalle to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
ISBN 9781910477052
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