by Serena Kent
By the time Frankie’s plane landed, Penelope found herself chewing a croissant, cursing her lack of self-control and justifying it on the grounds of keeping up her strength, both for the whirlwind that was her old friend and for the terrors of the autoroute drive back to the Luberon. The roads always reached peak danger around midday, as the French allowed nothing to get between them and a good lunch.
When a stream of obviously British visitors had begun to emerge blinking out of the customs hall, she wandered over to arrivals.
The shriek resounded.
“PENNY—YOU—ARE—LOOKING—gorgeous, YOU OLD TART!”
Frankie was a woman let loose, a thousand sequins glittering under the fluorescent light. She bore down upon Penelope, arms open wide. Every square inch of flesh not covered by shimmering pink was a quite unfeasible shade of orange. From under a hat the size of a café table, there appeared a wide smiling row of perfect teeth. A millisecond later Penelope was swept up, powerless as a rag doll in a bone-crushing embrace. Frankie was a big woman.
“I’m here! No need to worry about anything! So good to see you, darling!”
In spite of a very English mortification at such displays of emotion in public, Penelope could not help smiling, and returned the affection. Frankie might be overdressed, overjewelled, overbearing, and sometimes just plain loud, but there was no doubting the gold of her heart.
“It’s good to see you too, Frankie. It really is.”
“You know I’ll never let you down, Pen. Whatever it takes, eh?”
“I know. Thank you.”
“You can stop the misery eating, too.”
“What?”
Frankie raised her eyebrows and nodded towards Penelope’s mouth. “Croissant crumbs,” she hissed. “Dead giveaway.”
Penelope hastily brushed away the offending evidence. “You know me too well, Frankie.”
“So, off to the new villa—I’m just dying to see it. All the way from Heathrow—which was more appalling than ever, by the way—I’ve been dreaming of sitting on the terrace of your beautiful house, glass of rosé in one hand, bottle in the other, admiring the view! And trying to get over what’s happened,” she added hastily as she saw the look on Penelope’s face. “Terrible business.”
Penelope steeled herself.
“Well, the thing is, Frankie . . .”
“A nice bowl of olives and a beaker of chilled pink, just the tonic to get you back on your feet—”
“Slight change of plan.”
“Change of plan?”
“The house isn’t quite . . .”
“Quite what?”
“Quite ready for guests—or me, really . . .” Penelope’s voice faded away. “It’s in no state for visitors. I’ve booked you into the Hôtel St Pierre with me.”
Frankie was having none of it. “Don’t worry about me, Pen. I’m used to slumming it. When we did up the manor at Billericay, we only had one bathroom for over a month!”
“There’s no water.”
“You know me, Pen, love a challenge! Let’s get going and show ’em how it’s done.”
“And no electricity . . .”
“Ah, now that might be a problem, Pen. No electricity—no hair dryer! And no fridge.” The full horror dawned. “No fridge, no ice-cold booze!”
“Plus a ceiling that decides to shed its load on various random occasions. A hard hat wouldn’t go amiss.”
“But the whole point of me coming was to get you used to being there after . . . what’s happened. Make it feel comfortable and like yours.” Frankie might have registered disappointment, but she was clearly willing to forgo her expectations for the greater good.
“I know, but—”
“The hotel will be fine. Probably for the best.”
“We can still go and see the house.”
“Course we can! Now, where are we going for lunch?”
Frankie grabbed her arm and propelled her friend and her capacious designer suitcase towards the exit.
* * *
IT TOOK a little over an hour to return to Apt from the airport, though the time whistled by, assisted by an excitable monologue from Frankie. The firm was doing well, Johnny was being a pain in the arse, but she still adored him—he was off with his mates at their villa in Marbella, playing golf. The three children were respectively working as an accountant (“very useful when he takes over the firm”), at law school, and at university, studying nursing. The dog was in kennels.
Penelope was glad the dog had not accompanied its mistress. Perky, a Rottweiler, had come close to taking pieces out of her on several occasions, and loved only its master and mistress. Anyone else was viewed as an opportunity for a quick snack.
To Frankie’s delight, the terrace restaurant at the Hôtel St Pierre was pleasantly filled with late Sunday lunchers and still serving. They were shown to a corner table overlooking the trickling river. The menu was very promising indeed. The first carafe of rosé disappeared rapidly, to be replaced by a second.
“Well, they are rather small, darling,” said Frankie.
Next to Frankie, many things did look small. Her face was wide, her shoulders were wide, and her hands were studded with enormous rings. A vast ruby matched her new red hair.
Penelope laughed. “You seem on terrific form, I must say.”
“Fighting fit!” Frankie tapped the side of her nose and leaned in. “HRT. I’ve been turbocharged.”
“Oh lor’! The only thing that’s turbocharged with me is my appetite. I seem to be permanently hungry.”
Their food arrived.
“Isn’t it funny,” said Frankie from the other side of a melon and jambon cru starter garnished with salad leaves and walnuts. “How food here tastes of what it’s supposed to. This melon is like the most melony melon you can possibly imagine!”
“I know,” cried Penelope. “You wait till you have a tomato!” She couldn’t help but bask in a certain reflected glory at the quality of the Provençal ingredients.
The salmon dish they both chose was indeed served with a herby stuffed tomato, and they duly pronounced it unparalleled.
Perhaps unwisely, a third carafe of rosé was ordered, which Frankie tackled with aplomb and Penelope approached with caution.
“We might have to have a pud,” said Penelope, as if it was a matter of some regret. “Just to soak up all the alcohol.”
The crèmes brûlées were simply divine.
“I’m going to be the size of a house if I go on living here much longer,” sighed Penelope. “But it is all so lovely.”
“You’re still finding your feet, Pen. It’ll be different when you’ve settled in. I mean, you don’t eat fish and chips every day when you live in England, do you?”
“Suppose not. It’s just so hard to lose weight when you turn fifty! You spend weeks eating lettuce to lose a few pounds, then have a few days treating yourself and it’s hello to another spare tyre. It’s quite depressing.”
“You look lovely. And the new hairstyle is a triumph. But what are you going to do with yourself here when all this . . . unfortunate business is over? I mean, you can’t just sit around, can you?”
At that point, nothing seemed more appealing than just sitting around in reestablished normality, but Penelope nodded. “I want to take French lessons, obviously. Do up the house—obviously. And I’m going back to my music.”
Frankie beamed. “That is good news. I’m so pleased. I never really understood why you gave up. It was so much a part of you.”
“There are concerts and little recitals going on all over the place, too. We might go to one if you feel like it.” Penelope sidestepped her friend’s implicit question. It was hard to explain why she had given up her beloved instrument when the children became tricky and she was so unhappy with David. She used to tell herself it was down to lack of space and time as Justin and Lena’s lives expanded, but even when they both went off to university, she had still averted her eyes from the black case in the storage room.
“You’ve brought your cello, then?”
Penelope smiled. “One of the reasons I needed a big car!”
Frankie reached over and squeezed her hand. “Oh, Pen! That’s great.”
“I’ll probably need some music lessons, too, after all this time. So that will be good for getting my French up to scratch as well. And you never know, I might find a group to play with.”
Over coffee, they both decided that a nap would be a good idea. In excellent spirits, Frankie was gracious about the adjacent room Penelope had reserved for her. She was used to travelling in style these days.
They retired to their respective beds for a siesta, having agreed to meet at six o’clock for a drive up to Le Chant d’Eau. Penelope lay down in the coolness of the air-conditioned room and drifted off to sleep, lulled by the rhythmic snoring clearly audible through the wall.
9
SHE WAS RUDELY AWOKEN BY a banging on the hotel room door.
“Pen! Pen! You’re not still asleep, are you? It’s half past five, and I can’t wait any longer to see the new place!”
“Gah!” Penelope blinked. She felt liverish and wearier than before the snooze. “Just coming!”
Penelope drove carefully up to St Merlot. “I hope I’m not over the limit,” she said.
“This is France, darling.”
“You’d be surprised. Things have changed from when no one cared. The drink drive limit is lower here than it is back in the UK.”
“Well, it’s not far, is it?”
“Luckily not.”
Penelope checked the rearview mirror. “There it is again,” she said, almost to herself.
“What again?”
“Red Ferrari. Any minute, it’ll overtake—on these bends! Why are rich people so impatient?”
Penelope pulled over to the right as far as she could and slowed down. An expensive growl filled the air, and the Ferrari went shooting past and belted up the hill towards the village.
But when they came round the last bend before the track to Le Chant d’Eau, it had stopped on the road, idling a few metres short of the turning. Penelope was forced to overtake and then make a right turn. Through the driver’s window she could just make out a man sporting a mop of silvery curls and dark glasses. No sooner had she done so than the Ferrari moved off very slowly, almost as if the driver was making sure he knew where she had gone.
“Plonker,” said Frankie.
Penelope didn’t relax until she had threaded the Range Rover through the archway and switched off the ignition. Frankie took in the mellow stone farmhouse slumbering benignly in the golden hours before sunset. Pine trees cast long shadows up the hillside. “Come through the garden, and we’ll go in the back door,” said Penelope.
Rather unexpectedly, someone else was already there.
A woman was speaking, very fast and furiously, in the kitchen.
“Who?” mouthed Frankie.
“Don’t know.”
Soundlessly, they pushed open the door. Clémence Valencourt was sitting at the table, arguing with someone on her mobile. Penelope suppressed her irritation.
The estate agent stood up, unabashed, and proffered her hand first to Penelope and then to her friend.
“Enchantée, madame . . . ,” she said, taking in the sequin dazzle with the kind of facial expression only a Parisian woman can bestow.
Undeterred, Frankie grasped the woman’s hand and instantly launched into a conversation in fluent French, whilst Penelope looked on, openmouthed. Mme Valencourt joined in enthusiastically. They jabbered away for some minutes.
“I didn’t know you could speak French that well, Frankie!”
“Yes, it is impeccable,” agreed Clémence Valencourt. Any lingering sequin-based prejudice seemed to have vanished. She beamed with friendliness as she nodded towards Frankie.
Frankie waved away the compliment. “Don’t you remember when I had just left school and I was supposed to be at that secretarial college in London? Well, I got bored with it and went to Paris. I didn’t tell my old mum and dad. They thought I was in Kensington bashing out the old quick something fox jumped over the lazy brown whatever-it-was at the typewriter. But I’d always wanted to have a go at dancing, and I was too tall for the ballet, so I blagged my way into working at the Moulin Rouge.”
“What, in the box office?”
“No, silly. On the stage. There were lots of us tall English girls.”
“Frankie—you never told me that!”
“You never asked. I didn’t tell anyone. Johnny doesn’t like me mentioning it, now we move in higher circles. But anyway, I did get to meet all sorts of people, and my French came on a treat!”
Frankie had clearly won over Mme Valencourt. She was nodding and smiling with something curiously close to admiration, and they exchanged rapid observations in French. Penelope caught “Paris” and “Champs Élysées” and not much more. That’ll teach her to judge by first impressions, thought Penelope. And what was the woman doing at her house, yet again?
“Hang on a minute,” said Penelope, racing after them as they set off in the direction of the spacious but uninhabitable sitting room, still chatting away in French.
There was no stopping Frankie. She was in her element. Throughout the tour, as they progressed upstairs, Frankie kept up a constant stream of conversation in English and French, laced liberally with bawdy humour. Mme Valencourt, rather unexpectedly, found it hilarious.
“Your friend Penelope, she is so funny! She is always talking about the sex!”
“Yes, Clémence is right, you’re desperately in need of a man!” Frankie laughed. So it was Clémence already, was it?
They emerged into the courtyard to find that M. Charpet had also arrived uninvited. Another round of hand shaking and French jokes ensued. With exaggerated courtesy, he solemnly kissed Frankie’s hand, setting off another shriek of glee.
“That takes me back. Old-fashioned moustache-tickle! A real French farmer! I wonder if he’s organised any good strikes lately.”
It was all getting out of hand, like a merry-go-round that was impossible to stop because everyone else on board was enjoying it so much. There wasn’t a chance to ask them what the hell they were doing here. Penelope began to feel left out.
“Do behave, Frankie. M. Charpet is my new gardener, and I want to stay on the right side of him!”
“Okeydokey, Pen. From now on, the soul of discretion.”
Unlikely, thought Penelope. “What I don’t understand,” she said, rather too loudly, “is why you are both here today. Again. It’s a Sunday evening, and I didn’t think gardeners or estate agents worked on Sunday evenings in France.” It came out more rudely than she intended.
M. Charpet clutched his hat to his stomach, looking worried.
“Excuse me. I should have explained,” said Clémence. “You have had a difficult start to your new life here. We want to do what we can to help, to make everything right for you. M. Charpet has commenced to cut the grass by the orchard, and I needed to check the number on the water meter. As your immobilière, it is my responsibility to arrange the documents for the water company. I am too busy tomorrow, so I came this evening.”
“Oh.” Penelope felt ashamed of her outburst. “I’m sorry. That’s very kind of you.”
She did wonder, though, why the estate agent had not done that when M. Charpet uncovered the meter the day before.
* * *
UNSURPRISINGLY, FRANKIE wanted to see the scene of the crime. They trooped off to the swimming pool. M. Charpet had already cut the grass beyond the stone surround of the pool. The space looked wider, and the pool had been drained.
“Vous avez connu le décédé?” Frankie asked, and turned to Penelope. “I asked if he knew the dead man.”
“Thank you, I do understand, even if I can’t speak French as well as you yet.”
M. Charpet nodded. With his hands he mimed the universally understood drinking sign. “C’était le pastis, madame.”
Suddenly Charpet did a little dance on the spot. Then he wove his way around the pool area, gesticulating and shouting. He picked up an old broom that was propped against the wall and began to swing it alarmingly.
Frankie looked at Penelope. Mme Valencourt widened her eyes.
“What the hell was that?” said Penelope under her breath as M. Charpet recovered himself.
“Your late neighbour, M. Avore,” replied Frankie. “Apparently he was a tad unpredictable.”
“Unpredictable as in axe-wielding maniac?”
“He was a hopeless drunkard. He was well known in the village. People here used to say that if you sat in the middle of the village for a few hours, sooner or later you would see him fall over.”
“But they thought he was harmless, didn’t they? Even when he proved them wrong and was sent to prison. By the way, you didn’t say—why exactly was he in prison?”
“He attacked two people,” admitted Mme Valencourt.
“What was his problem?” Frankie asked her in English.
“Bof! Wine at breakfast, wine in the morning, wine at lunch, and wine afterwards. Gambling, no money, a bad marriage—they said that he was beating his wife—and the unfortunate fantasy that Le Chant d’Eau belonged to him.”
“Wait, he had a wife?” said Penelope.
“Ah, yes. Unfortunate woman.”
“Hell’s bells. How awful for her. What’s—I mean, is she all right? How is she coping?” Penelope had not factored in a beaten wife. Why on earth would she have stayed with a drunken fantasist?
“I believe that she is unusually happy for a woman who has recently been widowed,” said Mme Valencourt.
“Quite bloody right,” said Frankie. “Why did Avore think he was the rightful owner here?”
“It is a very long story, but some years ago, when the previous owners, the Girards, purchased the property, there was an argument over some of the land, which he claimed was his.”
“And was it?” said Penelope.