by Claire Allan
But he didn’t. He just pushed her coffee cup back at her.“I’d better tidy up before Cyndi gets here.”
She had wanted to call him back as he left the room. She had wanted to shout, from the top of her lungs “What. The. Fuck?” She had wanted to ask him why she wasn’t good enough. Why hadn’t the night before meant anything? Why hadn’t the night they spent together in Betty’s house meant anything? None of this made sense. She wanted to shout and throw her coffee cup at the door but all that would achieve would be another mess to clean up. Another great big stinking mess of her own making to clean up. And she had enough of those to deal with already.
That was that then, she realised, as she rinsed her (not broken) cup under the sink. Cyndi was still coming. She would still be here. Hope would have to file another experience under W for “What Might Have Been”.
There would be no further mention of what had happened. There was no mention of it later that day. No mention of it when Cyndi had gone upstairs to girlify his bedroom and scatter it with pink cushions and cute lamps. There had been no mention of it when Cyndi went for a long soak in the bath and he faffed around the kitchen trying to cook her a welcome-dinner to which Hope was not invited. She had disappeared up to her own room like the stupid gooseberry she was and had eaten a Chinese takeaway while watching When Harry Met Sally which she cried the entire way through. No, it was very clear that it was all done and dusted – for him anyway – and she was now living in her own very special kind of hell where she listened to bonking at all hours of the day and night interspersed with increasingly random conversations with Cyndi about whatever topic of the day took her fancy.
Just earlier – prior to the bonkfest that was now assaulting Hope’s ears – they had discussed all previous Big Brother winners. Although it wasn’t so much of a discussion as a full-on monologue on what was clearly Cyndi’s “favouritist programme ever”.
She was starting to seriously wonder if she should stay on in France, indefinitely. Anything – anything – to escape this living hell.
She had written an advance draft of her new ‘Single in the City’ feature and had set some timed blog posts to go live while she was away. She had packed just about every item of clothing in her wardrobe and had bought a few new things. She had left her bedroom tidy as she suspected Cyndi was the nosey kind. She would be taking her laptop with her – for no other reason than she would only have a complete panic attack if she didn’t. Some people had a drink or drug addiction – hers was to WiFi broadband, which – she hoped Betty had. Then again with her aunt’s reliance on old-fashioned letters, she doubted it.
Dylan had handed her fifty euro in a pristine white envelope that morning and told her to have a few drinks on him. She had hugged him because it felt like the proper thing to do even though she kind of wanted to slap him, very hard, around the back of the head. Fifty quid, to make up for everything. To make up for him messing with her head. Jesus, she was a cheap date. But since they were playing make-believe that everything was just as it always had been, she said nothing more and focused on the trip ahead of her.
She lifted her bag and closed the door of the house which didn’t really feel like home anymore.
The girls had agreed to meet in the airport bar, through security. It saved anyone standing around like a spare wheel, Ava had said. She had been grateful for her own forethought when she was the first to arrive at the airport feeling a little shaky after a rather traumatic departure from Maisie and a strange departure from Cora.
It had all been going very well. Maisie had been uber-excited to be heading off to Dublin to see her granny and grandpa and delighted to be seeing Granny Cora beforehand who was going to mind her while Connor cleared up the last of his work.
Maisie had bounded up the front path to her granny’s house and had declared loudly, “My am going on my holidays!” in her “best most loudest voice” as Cora answered the door.
“Well, so you are, Miss Maisie. Off to Dublin, you fancy pants. And your mammy is off too. Isn’t it all exciting?”
Cora sounded a little put out and Ava wondered should she have pushed her a little harder to come along on the trip. Of course Betty had meant more to Cora than she ever had to Ava. It was still strange that it was Ava who was tasked with sorting through her things. Cora had insisted, loudly, that she was okay with it all but she looked a little on edge.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Mum?” Ava asked while she tried to sneak one last cuddle from a very wriggly Maisie who was determined to get the box of toys Granny Cora kept in the corner of the kitchen.
“I’m fine,” Cora said, but Ava knew from the tone of her voice and the way she was wringing the life out of the teatowel she was holding that she was far from fine.
“Mum?”
Cora turned her back and started washing the dishes with such ferocity that Ava was sure she would break them to smithereens.
“Ava,” she said, between the clatters of cups and saucers and silver spoons, “you’d better be off or you’ll miss your flight and we couldn’t have that.”
Ava walked up behind her mother and wrapped her arms around her, hugging her in the way she had done as a child and she felt her mother’s soapy hands on hers and the shake of her crying.
“Mum! I’m worried about you,” Ava said. “I don’t like leaving you like this.”
“Look, Ava,” Cora said, turning to face her. “It’s just strange, you going off to sort through Betty’s things. It just . . . well . . . it’s just strange.” She seemed to be struggling to find the right words to express what she wanted to say.
“It’s okay, Mum. It is strange for sure, but I’ll raise a glass to her from you while I’m there. I promise.” She felt herself choke up and her mother pulled her into a hug.
“I love you so very much,” Cora said softly. “I love you so, so much.”
“Mum, I’m only going to France for a week. I’ll be back, you know.”
Cora sniffed. “I know,” she said, plastering a smile on her face which didn’t convince Ava one bit.
The trauma of the whole departure had continued half an hour later when she made to leave.
Somewhere in Maisie’s almost-three-year-old brain, despite having been told, this hadn’t translated into “Mammy is going away for a wee bit” but once Ava had lifted her suitcase to head to the door there had been a toddler catastrophe. Pudgy limbs flailed. High-pitched screams echoed in her ears – and in the ears of everyone within a three-mile radius. Cora had had to literally peel her granddaughter from Ava to allow her to run to the car, lock herself in and drive to the bottom of the road before pulling over and bursting into tears. She had pulled herself together and had driven, probably a little too fast, until she’d arrived early, perhaps too early, at the airport.
At least this meant she was able to walk straight to the top of the queue at check-ins. She didn’t have much patience for queues at the best of times but today she was feeling light-headed and more than a little queasy. She put it down to being too nervous to eat breakfast and her crying fit which had left her feeling wrung out. If she could just get through check-in and security she would grab a coffee and Danish – although the very thought of this made her stomach turn and she wondered if this not-so-perfect morning would end up with an even less perfect boking incident just as the security guard patted her up and down.
She was angry with herself – for leaving her mother’s in a bad mood and for arriving in the airport feeling flustered and sick. She just wanted to go and do what she needed to do for Betty and maybe, just maybe, enjoy herself a teeny tiny bit – and here she was, slightly grey in colour, fighting with a blasted manila folder to find the right bloody documents to check in.
The woman at the desk tapped her fingers impatiently on the desk as if there was a queue a mile long waiting and, as Ava found herself glancing behind and then back at the desk, she felt the last of her patience slip.
“Can you just check me in and can you just be
pleasant about it?” she said. “It won’t kill you.”
The tapping of the fingers stopped and the perma-tanned woman behind the desk looked at her, slack-jawed, and Ava swore she could almost hear the cogs turning as she tried to come up with a smart retort.
“No need to give me lip, love,” she stuttered.
Ava felt herself blush. She never was good with confrontation, as her run-in with Karen had so wonderfully shown, and she felt her heart start to race a little.
“I wasn’t . . . I didn’t mean . . . I just . . .” she stuttered back, feeling her palms start to sweat. There was no way she was getting anything out of aPoly Pocket the way her hands were sliding all over the place.
“Ticket and passport, love,” Perma-tan growled.
“I’m trying!” she bit back.
“And watch your tone.”
“My tone is fine,” she said, feeling her stomach start to turn even more. Please God, just let me get the damn ticket out of the damn envelope and let me get the hell out of here. She felt tears prick in her eyes and felt herself sag with relief when she found the right form and handed it to the assistant who by now seemed to be enjoying watching Ava disintegrate before her eyes.
Sloping off from the desk, she made it through security and found herself a quiet corner in the café. Sipping from a bottle of water, she tried to settle herself. Hope would be arriving soon and the last thing she wanted was for her cousin to see her as a quivering, pale-faced wreck who was clearly out of her comfort zone doing anything out of the ordinary. No. She would put her best foot forward. She would show Hope that she wasn’t some fuddy-duddy stick-in-the-mud who came over weak at leaving her family and who burst into tears if someone so much as looked at her the wrong way.
Hope arrived ten minutes later, smiling brightly and wearing a pair of oversized sunglasses on the top of her head. She waved at Ava, walked over and put her carry-on case down.
“Oh, it’s so nice to see you!” she said, grabbing her cousin into a hug.
Ava let herself be hugged and once again felt herself start to well up. Jesus H Christ, she thought. This was getting ridiculous. She was welling up at seeing someone she barely knew in an airport. If it wouldn’t have made her look like such a fecking mentalist she would have slapped herself square around the face and told herself, loudly, to wise up.
“You got away okay then?” Hope asked, sitting down and reaching for the drinks menu in front of her.
“It was a bit hairy in places, but I’m here. No problems for you?”
“Apart from the Long Sad Story stepping up a notch, no. It was grand. But you know what, even though it is only half eleven in the morning I’m going to have a very large glass of red wine.”
Feeling a little more settled in herself, Ava decided that a glass of wine would be exactly what the doctor –or she herself – ordered.
She watched her cousin head to the bar and smiled. There was nothing to worry about. Nothing at all –this would be grand. Absolutely grand.
Ava breathed out and glanced at the time on her Blackberry –in just forty minutes they would be boarding for Nice.
Chapter 12
“I’m never, ever going to be able to feel even an ounce of fondness for my own house again,” Ava said as she stepped out of the car onto the crunchy gravel at Betty’s house, nestled on a hill, on the outskirts of what was perhaps the quaintest village in the world ever. Hope’s descriptions just hadn’t done it justice. It looked as if the French Tourist Board had ticked off a giant big checklist of everything you could ever want to give you a cracking impression of their country and put it all right there on this gorgeous hill in the brightest sunshine she had ever seen. Yes, the house could be described as rustic, but not rustic in a tatty way, she thought, as she lifted her case from the boot of the car and waited for Hope to follow. This was as far from tatty as it came – rustic and stunningly gorgeous, yes, but no one could describe it as tatty.
“It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?” Hope said.
“Damn right, it is! No wonder Betty was so happy here. If I moved here I’d never leave either,” Ava said, momentarily allowing a pleasant little daydream where she did indeed live here – away from the rat race and the main road to Belfast and the weekly shopping ordeal in Tesco.She looked for the key under the third terracotta pot from the left-hand side of the door.
“I’m sure Connor will be dying to see you back – so you may just need to go home at some stage.”
“Really?” Ava said with a laugh, turningto waggle the key at her cousin.
“’Fraid so. But let’s go in. I take it that is the key to the kingdom, so to speak?”
Ava nodded. “Yeah. Right there, where Jean-Luc said it would be.”
“Ah, oui, Jean-Luc!” Hope said in a French accent which owed more to ’Allo ’Allo than her years of French lessons at school. “Isn’t that a lovely name? Very masculine and sexy, like that bloke from Star Trek?”
“Captain Kirk?”
“No, Picard. Captain Jean-Luc. From the newer ones. Dylan is a bit of trekkie.”
“Dylan. The man you came here with before?”
“That’s the very one,” Hope said, with that familiar nervous feeling rise from her stomach. Coming back here was always going to be difficult. She was just starting to realise how difficult.
“Well, you have all week to tell me,” Ava said, pushing open the heavy oak door into an open living space which she could instantly imagine her aunt living in.
Two large, chintzy squashy sofas and a green tweed armchair sat in a semi-circle formation around a large white-washed fireplace with a log burner nestled in the nook. A large, square coffee table – perfect for balancing glasses of wine, or tired feet or bars of chocolate – rested in the centre of the circle and light flooded from the wooden-framed French doors which, Ava could see, led out to a sun terrace which made her want to weep with joy. A small dining table, covered in a fresh white linen tablecloth with four mismatched chairs sat in the corner of the room. A motley bunch of wildflowers was displayed in an old jug in the centre of the table and the smell from the stunning yellow, purple and white flowers scented the room.
“This must be the kitchen,” Ava said, walking through an archway to her right and Hope followed.
An old-fashioned Aga stood at the back wall while a freestanding butcher’s block made for an impressive kitchen island. Scores of wooden cupboards, painted cream with oodles of glass panels stood at every wall while under the window was a large copper sink. It was clear this had been the hub of Betty’s home.
On the butcher’s block rested a wicker basket, abottle of deep-red wine, two glasses and a crisp, white envelope. “It’s another letter from Betty,” Ava said, picking it up and noticing a small note scrawled on the front.
Take the wine, it said, and the glasses and some of the lovely chocolate and croissants from the basket and go to the terrace. Pour the wine, sit down, and read this together.
“What a woman!” Ava said. “Was there nothing she didn’t have organised?”
“Apart from sorting out her knicker drawers?” Hope winked.
“Well, apart from that. But then again, if she had done that we wouldn’t be here – about to sit out on the gorgeous terrace. So it’s not all bad, is it?”
“You have a very good point indeed. I’ll lead the way, shall I?”
Ava nodded and picked up the wine while Hope lifted the glasses and the basket. Hope led the way and Ava went to follow her but stopped for just one second first to feel a sense of something she just couldn’t quite put her finger on wash over her. Peace, she whispered, there was definitely a sense of peace about this house and she allowed it to seep into her very bones.
The terrace exceeded all expectations. The flagstones, bathed in early evening sunlight, were scattered with mismatched pots of all sizes filled with deliciously fragrant flowers and herbs, jasmine and lavender, mint and rosemary. Ava looked to see a wooden swing-seat looking out over the gard
ens – gardens which looked like they belonged in a lifestyle magazine. It was a far cry from the patch of grass at the rear of her house, the small decking she adored but which housed little more than a small garden table and chairs and Maisie’s much-loved sandpit.
A small pathway wound down a slight hill to where the calm waters of a rectangular-shaped pool – complete with a terrace all of its own – glinted back at Ava. However she played it in her mind, it was definitely more impressive than the three, ringed, inflatable paddling pools currently filled with rainwater in her backgarden.
“Look at this,” Hope said, breaking into her thoughts.
Ava turned to where a large wooden table stood surrounded by chairs, a fire pit smouldering beside them.
“I’m assuming she arranged the welcome fire too,” Hope said. “Betty sat here most evenings, when the weather was good enough. Come to think of it, even when the weather wasn’t good enough she’d beout here, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, fire blazing, glass of wine in one hand.”
“I can’t say I blame her,” Ava said. This really was a piece of heaven. Instantly she chided herself. She must stop thinking about heaven when she was, after all, in a dead woman’s house. It seemed a little weird. Or wrong. Or both.
“Sit down,” Hope said, sitting and patting a chair beside her.
Ava sat down, putting the wine on the table while Hope fished in the basket for a corkscrew. “No screw-top bottles in this house,” Hope laughed. “Betty was death on screw-tops. Cheap and nasty, she called them.”
“I’m kind of jealous,” Ava said, watching her cousin deftly uncork the bottle and pour the ruby-red liquid into the glasses. “That you were here before. That you spent time with her. All I had was a couple of hours at a funeral. I’m surprised she even remembered me.”
“You must be unforgettable, toots,” Hope smiled, lifting her glass and clinking it against Ava’s. “Look, I spent a month here when I was twenty-two and a stupid, young irresponsible girl who didn’t know her arse from her elbow nor had a notion what she wanted to do with her life. I didn’t appreciate Betty – or what she did for us – half enough. You’ve probably more right to be here than I do.”