‘Gloria’s back. She turned up last night.’
‘She what?’ His face was a picture. ‘What the... ?’
‘Yeah, yeah. Been there, done that.’
‘But when you say she’s back, do you mean she’s back back? As in, back for good?’
‘She’d like to be. But ultimately it’s down to Rupert, isn’t it?’
Ryan wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘I hope he’s not stupid enough to be persuaded.’
‘Me too.’
There was nothing more to be said. I turned and called for the dog to follow, but she seemed reluctant to move from her shady spot.
‘Leave her with me,’ Ryan suggested.
Back at the house, I took the bedlinen that Rupert had washed down to the bottom of the garden to peg it out, then stuffed another load in the machine. That done, I pulled my phone out of my pocket to put Alain in the picture.
‘Hi. Am I still seeing you this afternoon?’ he asked.
‘Yes, but I need to tell you something. Gloria’s back.’
I heard a sharp intake of breath. ‘When?’
‘Last night. It’s a long story. I’ll fill you in when I come round.’
‘Where is she staying?’
‘She’s installed with Rupert. He slept on the sofa. Nowhere else he could go.’
There was a silence as he absorbed the news. ‘You need to get away from there sooner, if you ask me. I had an idea for today, so wear shorts and trainers, okay?’
I didn’t need telling twice. ‘Okay. But I need to catch Rupert on his own first. I want to talk to him.’
‘I bet you do.’
Rupert found me before I could look for him. I was sitting on a bench halfway down the garden, nervously twiddling my thumbs. The dog had deserted Ryan and come to keep me company, after all.
‘Hi. I’m going to Alain’s soon, if that’s okay?’
‘Of course. It is Sunday.’
I eyed him carefully, trying to gauge his mood. ‘Where’s your coffee companion?’ The last thing I needed was the enemy bursting in on us.
‘Unpacking. Why?’
‘I was hoping to talk to you.’
He let out a resigned sigh, lowered himself onto the grass and stretched his legs out in front of him, leaning back on his elbows with the dog’s head in his lap. His leaner frame suited him. Not that he’d looked seriously overweight before, being broad with it, but it made a difference. And his experimental beard had settled into a close-cut, grizzled grey that lent him a charismatic quality, with his silver hair slightly overlong and wavy.
‘You’re looking good, Rupert, now you’ve lost weight. Much healthier. And I like the beard.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Has your wife said any more about it?’
‘Not yet. I’m sure she will. She thinks I should get my hair cut.’
‘Don’t. It goes with the beard. Kind of bohemian.’
He smiled, then shot me a warning glare. ‘If you’re planning on interrogating me about Gloria’s return, Emmy, I’d rather you didn’t.’
Upon hearing her name, the dog’s ears pricked up and she gave a little yap.
‘Why did you have to call her Gloria?’ I lamented. ‘That poor animal is going to get so confused, now the original Gloria’s here.’
I refrained from adding that if Rupert did resurrect his marriage, he would have to rename either his dog or his wife, and I wasn’t sure which would be more easily trained.
He stroked the dog’s ears. ‘Then she’ll have to be confused for a while. She won’t be the only one.’
‘Rupert, I’m worried about you.’
‘Well, then, that makes two of us.’
We sat in silence for a moment or two. I wanted to respect his wish not to be interrogated, but surely it was better for him to talk.
‘How did Gloria take you sleeping on the sofa?’
He swatted at an overly friendly wasp. ‘Badly. She tried to... persuade me to change my mind. But you’ll be pleased to know that I resisted.’
‘Good for you.’
He shrugged. ‘It wasn’t difficult. I only had to think about her rolling around with Nathan and the two of them running off together. Hardly an aphrodisiac.’
‘She hasn’t said what went wrong between them, then?’
‘Hasn’t said, and I haven’t asked.’
I nodded, studying his face for any sign of how much I should ask and how much he might want to talk. ‘How do you feel about her coming back? Were you... pleased to see her?’
He became quite animated. ‘Pleased? No. I’m angry that she turned up out of the blue like that. But I understand why. If she’d got in touch – if she’d asked – I’d have told her where to go.’
Sensing his change of mood, the dog transferred her allegiance – or her chin, anyway – to my lap.
‘Do you know how long she intends to stay?’ I ventured.
‘Until we’ve discussed everything, I suppose.’
Well. That told me far more than he intended. The fact that he was willing to discuss things with Gloria for as long as it took to come to a decision... It meant he wasn’t ruling out the idea of them getting back together. I couldn’t deny that I was shocked by that, but I kept my expression neutral.
‘Can you... Can you envisage a future together?’
‘I don’t know.’ He scrubbed a hand across his face, then looked away, fixing his gaze on a bee buzzing busily around a bright yellow bloom. ‘Dare I ask if you have any thoughts on this?’
‘Ha! I have a great many thoughts, and you know full well that most of them are unrepeatable, but I have no intention of voicing them. What I think, what your friends might think, none of that matters. What matters is how you feel about Gloria. What you want. Everyone else will fall in with it.’
He pulled at the grass by his side. ‘I’m scared,’ he murmured.
I tried hard to hide my shock. ‘Scared? Why?’
‘By wanting to reconcile, Gloria’s asking me to make a far bigger choice than she realises. It’s not all about whether I take her back or not.’ He gave a wry shake of his head. ‘Although there’s the unspoken suggestion that if I don’t, she’ll take me for every penny she can squeeze out of me. But she’s asking so much more of me than that.’
‘In what way?’
He looked me in the eye. ‘I know my friends believe I’d be better off without her. So what she’s asking me to do, effectively, is to distance myself from people I’m close to, people whose company I enjoy.’
I frowned. ‘I guess you’re probably right. I don’t see what would be in it for her, to come back to a bunch of people she doesn’t like and who don’t like her.’
Rupert smiled sadly, glancing around the garden at his hard-won domain. ‘No doubt things would get so awkward that she would persuade me to sell up and move on. Start afresh, with a new set of friends that suit her better.’
The idea that Rupert might give up this place that he loved so much shocked me far more than the idea of him taking Gloria back. ‘Would you do that?’
‘I think I’d have to accept that if I decide to make a go of it with Gloria, it would be the likely outcome.’ He gave me a direct look. ‘It would leave you high and dry, Emmy, which would be a disgrace, after I persuaded you to come out here.’
I swallowed down panic. ‘Your happiness matters more to me than that. I do not want you basing your decision on my job. It might take months before you decide to sell, and months again to actually do it.’ I didn’t add that I knew damned well that Gloria would have me out on my ear the minute Rupert agreed to take her back.
Sensing our melancholy, the dog shifted and whined. We both looked at her, and a new horror dawned on me.
‘What about...’
Rupert reached out to stroke her with sad affection. ‘She would have to go. Gloria hates her.’
I took a long minute to decide how much to say. ‘It seems to me that Gloria’s asking you to give up an a
wfully long list of things you love, for just the one thing – her – in return.’
‘But she’s not asking me to give anything up, is she? Not yet. All this is just me jumping ahead to the inevitable outcome.’
‘Then I suppose you need to decide if you still love her, and if so, how much you love her and how much you’re willing to give up to be with her. Whether you can forgive her for what she did with Nathan. Whether you’ll be able to forgive her in the future for all the compromises she’ll expect you to make, or whether you’ll end up holding it all against her.’
‘Is that all? My head may explode!’
Good job I hadn’t asked him the thing that was at the forefront of my mind then: did he trust her not to run off again, once she’d made him give everything up to be with her?
I shifted the dog’s head from my lap, stood, and popped a kiss on his cheek. ‘There’s no rush, Rupert. Gloria’s not going anywhere, more’s the pity. Take as long as you need.’
13
When I arrived at Alain’s, I found him sitting at the dining table, working.
‘What are you doing that for, on a glorious day like this?’
‘I needed to do something complicated to take my mind off Gloria.’
‘Has it succeeded?’
‘No. Come here and help me out.’
I gave him an innocent look. ‘I don’t think my maths is up to it, Alain, to be honest.’
‘Not interested in your brains.’
‘Charming!’ I went over and sat across his lap, snaking my arms around his neck. The kiss was long and much needed by both of us.
‘Better?’ I asked him.
‘Mmm. Better.’ He leaned in for another. ‘Ouch. I’m getting cramp.’
I slapped at him. ‘I’m not that heavy.’
He stood and moved past me to the kitchen, patting my backside on the way. ‘No. You’re just right. Lunch?’
‘Please.’
He put together a tray of cold meats, tomatoes, olives and bread, and we took it outside.
‘You’d better tell me the whole story,’ he said in a resigned tone as we helped ourselves.
So I did. Alain needed to know what was going on, and I needed an outlet for the numerous emotions that Gloria’s return and her attitude had provoked in me.
When I’d brought him up to speed, he was as wound up as I was. ‘Are we presuming that Nathan left her?’
‘I can’t imagine she left him only to come back to somewhere she hated enough to run away from in the first place. But the whys and wherefores don’t matter. What matters is that she’s back, and she thinks all she has to do is to snap her fingers for Rupert to welcome her with open arms.’
‘Surely he won’t?’
‘I don’t know, Alain. When she left him, he admitted their marriage was already on shaky ground, but even so, he was really shocked by her desertion. What bugs me is that he’s been going through a kind of healing process since, in his own way, and I didn’t think he was too unhappy.’
‘But?’
‘Well, it’s possible that he’s lonely, isn’t it? I don’t get that impression – he once told me he wasn’t designed for marriage. And even if he is lonely, taking Gloria back won’t solve that. I don’t see how their relationship would be any different from before.’
Alain stood and began to pace.
‘We could do some French,’ I suggested. ‘It might take our minds off Gloria.’
‘How many swear words would you like to learn? Because I have a fair few at the tip of my tongue right now. Anyway, I have a better idea.’
He took my hand and led me to the large shed at the bottom of the garden, where he dragged out two bikes. His and...
‘Yours, temporarily. If you like it, yours to buy for fifty euros.’
I stared at the foreign object with panic and dismay. ‘What?’
‘One of the neighbours is selling it, so I said you might like to try it. This is the perfect opportunity, don’t you think? We need a distraction, and we need physical exercise to get rid of tension.’ Seeing my expression, he laughed. ‘Not that kind. Not yet, anyway. You can come closer. It won’t bite. Climb aboard so I can adjust the saddle.’
Gingerly, I straddled the bike. I hadn’t been on one since I was ten, when my friend fell off hers and knocked a front tooth out, pouring copious amounts of blood onto the pavement in the process. I pointed this out to Alain, to no avail.
‘You’ll be fine, I promise.’
He fiddled with spanners, adjusting various parts of the bike until he was satisfied that it was suitable for me, but I remained unconvinced, thinking wistfully about the day I’d originally imagined us having. I’d assumed he’d asked me to wear shorts and trainers for a country stroll, then there would have been more lounging in the garden, an afternoon ‘nap’... Instead, I was going to get all sweaty and permanently damage all the muscles you use for cycling, which in my case hadn’t been used in years.
We set off, Alain in the lead. I was a bit wobbly at first – a lot wobbly, in fact – but the residential streets were Sunday-quiet as we cycled past neat family houses surrounded by lawns parched yellow from the sun, and by the time we were on a proper road out of town, I was confident enough – unless a car went past at speed, when I had a habit of closing my eyes and praying, something that did nothing for my steering.
Alain turned off onto a country road with less traffic, and I began to relax and almost enjoy myself, daring to take my eyes off Alain in front to take note of what we were cycling past. It was obvious, of course, but it was a much better view cycling than driving. My walks from La Cour des Roses had only passed farms and fields, but now we cycled past vineyards and I could see how perfectly straight the rows of vines were, a deep summer green. Beyond them, on a slope, stood a huge cream-coloured house with a grey roof, several round turrets lending it a castle-like appearance, honey-toned wood shutters at the tall arched windows and doors and large weeping willows standing guard at every corner – presumably the vineyard owner’s residence. Very formal and fancy.
Alain turned to check that I was okay every few hundred yards, and stopped now and again to hand me a bottle of water he had fixed to his bike. The road was reasonably flat, the weather hot, but the movement of the bike meant that a light breeze caressed my face. Eventually, he turned off onto a dirt track, which had its advantages and disadvantages – no traffic to contend with, but the rougher surface meant harder work for my legs, and the odd pothole added the extra excitement of wondering whether I might fly over the handlebars. Even so, the enjoyment of it slowly came back to me – that childhood freedom of pedalling along with no real destination in mind and no worries to plague you. The sun was hot, a gorgeous man was by my side, leaves tickled my arms and the rushing air cooled my face as I whizzed along, loving every minute.
Finally, Alain came to a stop and handed me a banana. ‘For energy. Enjoying it, after all?’
I gave him a sheepish smile. ‘Yes.’
‘Good.’
‘It might not be, if my legs collapse under me when I try to get out of bed tomorrow morning.’ I grimaced. ‘I am so unfit!’
‘What makes you say that? You’ve kept up with me all right.’
‘Yes, but I never do any of this stuff. You go running every morning and you enjoy cycling. I only have the odd stroll and chucking the occasional ball for Gloria to keep me fit.’
He laughed. ‘Does she fetch them for you?’
‘I meant dog Gloria.’
‘I bet you’re a lot fitter than you think. Much fitter than when you were working ten hours a day in an office. You do more than your share of physical work at La Cour des Roses. And you must be burning off a fair number of calories with me.’
His smile was wicked and my pulse, already racing from the cycling, pepped up the pace even more as I thought about what my reward for my exertions might be.
Alain’s eyes flashed with laughter and desire, the gold flecks reflecting the sun. His smi
le was wide in his handsome face, his legs and arms long and strong and tanned. I’d never made love in a field before, but I wished I had a more devil-may-care attitude now.
Tearing my eyes away before I suggested something uncomfortable and possibly illegal, I turned and peered over the hedge behind me at the field beyond. This tall crop had been bothering me as we whizzed past on our bikes – I couldn’t work out what it was.
‘What’s that?’ I asked him, scrambling closer to get a better look.
‘Cob corn.’
The minute he said it, it was obvious. Between the large, dark green leaves, I could see the stringy husks clinging to the tall, thick stalks.
‘Come on, country girl, we’d better turn back before you get too tired.’
Back at the house, with an unspoken agreement, we climbed the stairs hand in hand – but at the door to his room, I hesitated, practicalities knocking at the small section of my brain that wasn’t filled with him.
‘Alain, I...’
He groaned. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind. Please.’
I aimed a pointed glance at the bulge in his shorts and smirked. ‘No. But can I have a quick shower first? I’m sticky and disgusting.’
‘Me too. You go first and I’ll follow you in.’
When my eyes widened, he laughed. ‘The bathroom’s not big enough for that, Emmy. I meant one at a time.’
Mindful that I didn’t want Alain’s... enthusiasm to wane, I was quick. When I left the bathroom wrapped in a towel, he kissed me briefly on the lips and sent an appreciative glance my way before going in there himself.
As I heard the shower running, I felt slightly awkward. Last time, things hadn’t been this premeditated – we’d just fallen into bed together. Should I perch demurely on the edge of the bed? Or should I lie wantonly across the bed, my towel gaping enough to flash a little thigh and cleavage?
When he came in, I was standing at his bedroom window, looking out across the rose fields and catching the breeze from the open window. I turned to see him standing there, a towel anchored on his hips and an enquiring look on his face. A jolt of lust punched through every nerve ending I possessed.
His mouth twitched. ‘I don’t think this is going to work if you stay over on that side of the room.’
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