by Jody Klaire
“In fact, she’s gorgeous . . . I mean look at those arms.”
The prompt did not help. Berne had spent her life lifting stone and spent her summers on the Ardèche kayaking. Needless to say, the term buff should have her as the description in the dictionary.
“Not to mention her as—”
“You’re not helping!” I glared at Rebecca.
She chuckled. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this flustered. There is a woman beneath the lady after all.”
“It’s not funny.” Now I sounded like I was begging. “I can’t do this . . .”
“Hey.” Rebecca rubbed soothing circles on my back. “You’ll do great. It’s just the shock of seeing her, that’s all.”
“Right.” I could work with that. “A shock.”
“Besides, Doug is rich and handsome.”
I nodded, puppet-like. “Rich and handsome.”
“And a man,” Rebecca added with a sly smile. “Important for you being straight and all.”
“Quite.” I turned to walk the rest of the way, ignoring the teasing in Rebecca’s voice.
“Really, really straight. Not staring at those lips, nuh, uh.”
Was I?
Balls.
I was trying to read what Berne was saying, that was all. I took a deep breath. I had absolutely no feelings for her what-so-ever, nope. Not one.
TORTURE WAS A strong word to use but it was the only one that could describe our little business meeting. Doug and Berne’s father made hard work of communicating through Doug’s terrible French and Berne’s father’s broken English.
Rebecca could speak the language as fluently as I could but acted ignorant, enjoying Doug’s attempts, while I stared straight down at the floor, trying to avoid Berne’s gaze.
My heart happily pounded away as if I was swimming lengths in the pool, my brain joining in the torment by replaying every clandestine memory it could find.
I knew there was talk of me working closely with my old friend, as Doug kept calling her. I knew the plan was that Rebecca would project manage. I was sure that Monsieur Chamonix was quite confident that we could have the project finished by Christmas and from Rebecca’s laughter I knew she thought that was crazy talk.
Snippets, moments of the afternoon flittered by but what was noticeable by its absence, was Berne’s voice. Like me, she had not uttered a word.
As the sun started its evening descent, Doug made the suggestion to leave us alone while he, Rebecca, and Monsieur Chamonix headed to see a problem section. Neither of us could really refuse. What possible reason could there be for two old chums, as Rebecca was calling us, not to catch up?
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Rebecca left hanging in the air as the three of them abandoned us.
Traitor. That’s what she was. A traitor.
“Pippa?”
I closed my eyes, wondering if I tried really hard like in The Wizard of Oz, I’d wake up in Kansas or even better, somewhere they didn’t have rattlesnakes.
“Pippa, you cannot bury your head. I am right here.” The purring sound of her dropped h’s made my stomach gurgle. I rubbed it.
“Must be hungry.” I didn’t believe my own words for a minute.
“That is because you did not eat.”
The feel of her hand on my arm sent a shivery ripple up my skin.
“Doug,” I said, clearing my throat. “Doug is always hungry.”
Oh nice one, Saunders. Start off by shoving your fiancé in her face. Bravo, you numbskull.
“He seems like a nice man.” Her tone didn’t seem to agree with her.
“Wonderful. And rich and handsome.” That was what Rebecca said, right? Rich, handsome, wonderful, yes.
“He cares for you deeply.”
I nodded and slid my left hand in my pocket as though I’d committed a crime.
“Pippa, he said you talk of me?”
Well done, Doug, tell her that why don’t you. What kind of a thing was that to say anyway? “Yes, well . . . Why not?”
She grunted and I tensed for it. I couldn’t even look at her. I just kept my gaze on the bridge as if it could save me.
“Perhaps because we were lovers, non?” She teased out the word lovers in a way that made me want to run to the car, smash the windows, and crawl inside. I couldn’t do this, she was too Berne . . . too her . . . too . . . French.
“He doesn’t know.” I shrugged, feeling her gaze on my face. Was she looking at my lips? “He can’t. I can’t . . .”
“You wish to marry him yet you conceal your deepest truths?”
That made me glare at her. I was face to face with the beauty I had spent a decade trying to erase from my mind. She’d aged to perfection—the sun had highlighted her hair in touches only nature could pull off. Her hazel eyes deep and as big as ever and those—
“He doesn’t need to know everything,” I squeaked, stepping backwards. Desperation pounded in my neck. Could you have a neck attack? “I . . . he . . .”
“You run away from me,” she said, her hand on my elbow, those eyes searching. “I wake to find you gone. No trace . . . nothing.” The hurt flashed across those gorgeous eyes. “You turn up now, here, with him. You think I stay quiet?”
“No.” My heart felt so constricted by her pain that tears filled my eyes. “I didn’t know anything about it, I swear.” Touching her hand, I felt the familiar calluses from her work, knowing how hard those hands worked, how strong. “I would never have done that to you.”
“Yet you wish me to remain some sordid secret?” Berne stepped away. “You wish to play pretend, very well.” She looked at the house. “I would not want Vivienne thinking that I would be unfaithful to her anyway.”
Didn’t that one land like a prize punch? “Vivienne?” I knew that I’d disliked that name all along. What kind of a person was called such a name, huh?
“Oui, my lover.” Again, that longer than necessary emphasis which gave me another shudder. “We have been together many years.”
Ouch again. It didn’t matter that I deserved it.
“Yes, well. You were always too good for me,” I snapped.
My words sounded so angry that I almost took them back but I heard Rebecca’s voice. I turned from Berne and stomped towards the doorway.
“Do we have a place to stay or do you expect us to live in a ruin?” My tone was even icier to Doug who seemed not to notice.
“Sure, I hired the place down the road. Rebecca’s got one all to herself for once.”
“Maybe she doesn’t want that?”
Poor Doug twigged that I was beyond PMS and held up his hands. “Now, Pip, Rebecca isn’t that far away—”
“Her place have two rooms?”
Now Rebecca was staring at me along with Berne who cast a suspicious glance in her direction.
“Does it?”
Doug nodded. Poor man must have wondered if I was crazy. “Yes . . . but—”
“Then you can find me there.”
Doug sucked in his chin. He wanted his own way. “Now, Pip—”
“Key.” I was sure that if he didn’t hand it over, I may drop to the floor and kick and scream. Toddlers had it pegged, there was nothing like a good temper tantrum.
I’d never even had a heated word with Doug before but why not start now. I could be one of those neurotic wives that had him followed and changed his diet on a whim.
He handed it over and I didn’t miss the look of “help me” shot Rebecca’s way. Rebecca shot him one back that said, “Don’t look at me, she’s a lunatic.”
Berne studied the whole situation, sussing out where the lay of the land was, who Rebecca was, and reading my every emotion like I’d been written just for her. How did she do that? It was unfair. Spectacularly unfair.
“I will help her to unpack. I am delighted to catch up with my old friend, non?” Berne could barely keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “You can drive.”
She threw the keys at me and I caught them
dumbstruck. I knew I wasn’t the only one staring at her. Doug sprang to life first and piled my things into her van like he’d get on the next plane to England. Wow, this was going well.
ONCE MY THINGS were in the Chamonix van, I drove us in awkward silence. The roads were so tight that I wanted to breathe in as we squeezed through lanes. To the left, up the hill, was a huge ruined Benedictine abbey. We’d had picnics in the grass expanses between the old buildings dotted around. To our right, the hill sloped down. The village plonked in a smooth plateau. The sun beat down through the windscreen as I slowed the van to look. Every single inch of the square was etched in my memory. The cragged steps of the houses, shutters painted green or blue, the flowerbeds spewing vibrant reds, yellows, and whites.
I swore it was even the same group of elderly men playing boules on a patch of muddy stone. France in the summer, how I loved it. I could almost hear the clink of coffee cups. The scent of rich café mixed with freshly baked bread. Humming chatter of locals, their accents so different from the North. The relaxed soul-soothing beauty of a small country square centred around a tree that had white blossoms during the summer months.
Berne’s parents lived on the edge of the square in a large stone house with green shuttered windows. Monsieur Chamonix’s furniture and masonry shop sat to the side of it, hand-painted letters on the peeling wooden sign. The furniture and sculptures were Berne’s. It was why I’d been sent to study under her by a friend of my father. She could work any surface, any material with ease, but stone was her forte.
The cottage Doug had rented for Rebecca was straight over the crossroads towards the gite holiday park. I knew it the second I saw the key. It was where my father’s friend had stayed and why he’d known of Berne in the first place.
My father had been supportive. More so because he’d wanted his youngest daughter to explore her love of language other than wood. He had a view that after that year, I would have endured all the culture I could stand and come home. I would then have been ready to marry a doctor, or even better a man with an estate, and live some weird Jane Austen parody.
Unfortunately, I’d returned back from France a gibbering wreck who’d spent the first two years secretly spending my money on counsellors. Then, Rebecca’s father had found out about her and we’d headed off to London.
Again, my father had been gracious. He’d bought our house so we could rent a flat in it cheaper. He did love Doug. That was my soul redeeming feature. I’d bagged the rich man and so to my father all was well.
I didn’t quite feel that way. What I felt was akin to a kept woman. I had gone from parental allowance to a pathetic excuse for a job and would probably have a credit card and allowance from Doug. My older sister was happy living like it. She completed the collection with two kids, a dog, and a Land Rover. I’d never wanted that and yet, here I was on the very same path.
Only, I was in a dinky van with a woman who had meant freedom once. Now, she just reminded me of how empty everything seemed to have become.
The little cottage was in a row of holiday conversions. Ample parking space, two floors, a nice veranda on which to enjoy the spectacular views and shutters painted in different colours. What was France without painted shutters?
I shut off the engine and stared out over the steering wheel.
“Answer me some questions, s’il te plaît.”
Sighing, I rolled my head to look at her. “I’ll try.”
“Why did you leave?” Her eyes tracked over the painted front door.
“I got scared.”
We both knew that. Why was she bothering to ask?
“Who is Rebecca, a lover?”
“Oh goodness no.” Berne smiled at the force of my denial. “She’s my best friend in all the world, like I told you.”
She held my gaze. “Do you love him?”
“I’m marrying him.”
“That is not what I asked.”
I picked at the steering wheel, which was faded from the years of sunshine baking it. “I know.”
Her smile crinkled the corners of her eyes. That seemed to satisfy some train of thought and she squeezed my knee. “Let me help you unpack and we will start again . . . as new friends.”
Those words hurt even more than her confession about Vivienne but that’s what I wanted, wasn’t it? The fact she was talking to me was enough after all I’d done.
“Friends it is.”
THE AFTERNOON WAS a mix of joy and angst as Berne helped me to unpack in silence. Doug, it seemed, had been preparing and had brought a million essentials. I swore the man had packed half of England. Some of it would have to go to his bachelor pad up the road. I had no intention of turning on the whisking machine thingy, let alone deciphering what I needed to whisk in it. The more stuff we unpacked the more Berne found it funny. She’d only been with me a year and she knew I couldn’t cook a sandwich let alone anything else. I was no baker and certainly no Mary Berry.
It scared me just how easy it was for Berne and I to fall into a comfortable peace. It was almost as though I had never left and our lives were not separate. It had always felt so effortless with her. We made the perfect team. Working side by side, it felt . . . it felt . . . a relief to be next to her.
Balls.
The thought dawned on me as we unloaded the last of the boxes and panic raced around my body. There was no way I could do this. No way I could be around her for any extended period of time and not feel, not want—
“It will take some adjusting,” Berne whispered, her strong hand on my elbow. “We will find a way. Do not worry.”
Did I even want to adjust?
I shook my head free of the thought. Doug, I was marrying Doug. He was going to be my husband. We were going to make a rugby team. The sudden nausea of that made me drop the box I’d been carrying.
“You over think this, oui?” she said, picking up the box and heading to a pantry-like cupboard. “One thing at a time. We are taking boxes up the stairs, cleaning the kitchen, nothing more.”
Out she came with a mop and bucket and proceeded to fill it with soapy water. It was something she had done as routine. Her mother had drilled it into her that a clean kitchen floor was essential. I’d missed that little quirk.
“Then why does it feel like . . . ?” I clamped my hands over my mouth. How dare I even think such a thing?
“Because we once did it before.” Berne’s smile twinkled through her eyes. “As I recall, it took a long time, non?”
The fact that one, she knew what I was thinking and two, she had brought up our moving-in day made heat, embarrassment, and a very unwelcome tingle burst through my system. My brain turned to mush with the memory. I was in awe, still, of my own reckless behaviour. Whatever had come over me, I didn’t know.
“I see that you do not forget so easily,” she said. “Mais, I am sure you have many more memories with him.”
I snorted. “Are you joking?” Closing my eyes at my own emphatic confession, I tried to ignore Berne’s soft chuckle. Something told me that she was enjoying the torment she was inflicting. “I mean, of course. Why wouldn’t we?”
Berne looked as convinced as I felt, a strange “uh oh” sounded in my head as everything around us seemed to take a breath. Her eyes fixed on mine. I was too close to her. Had I moved or did she? Either way we were getting closer. Each breath harder to take, each beat heavier and louder. Her full, moist lips—
“Pip?”
In my haste to put as much distance between us as possible, I clattered over the mop bucket. The soap suds gushed all over the floor. I felt my feet slip and flung my hands out to stop myself.
I couldn’t.
I smashed nose first into the pantry door.
“Pip?” Rebecca’s voice grew more urgent and I heard her barge in through the doorway as if she were riding to the rescue. “Pip, what—?”
“This is why I don’t do housework.” I reached up to touch my nose only for Rebecca to bat my hand away.
“I
ce compress,” she muttered.
“I have it here.” Berne’s voice. Such a wonderful sound.
The cooling vapours of freeze-dried peas made my throbbing nose calm, if only a little. I looked up at her trying not to show I was in pain. “Id it brogen?”
“Pardon?”
“She said is it broken,” Rebecca translated. “Should hear her when she gets a cold.”
I loved Berne’s gentle smile. She looked as though she wanted nothing more than to ask Rebecca to fill her in on every gap she’d missed. I wanted to tell her every detail but then I’d have to explain why . . . no, no, bad idea.
“Imb fine,” I managed, reaching for the pantry door to pull myself up but it was remarkably difficult bearing pea compress. “Jub neeb to get up.”
They hoisted me to my feet and carried me to a leather and delightfully squishy sofa.
“Doub?”
“Monsieur Chamonix has taken him to the local old pub, I think, something about football?”
Berne beamed. “Marseille play Lyon tonight. It will be fierce.”
“Doub won hab a clue.”
Berne raised her eyebrows and Rebecca stepped in. “Doug isn’t a sport kind of guy unless you count golf, which I don’t.”
“It is more a hobby than a professional sport you feel?”
Rebecca nodded. “Sport should make you exert and sweat, and you shouldn’t have people carrying your equipment for you.”
I looked at Berne who perched on the edge of the kitchen table as Rebecca sat next to me. “I prefer more active sports also.” Ever the diplomat, the woman should have been running the country by now.
“You want to stay, eat?” Rebecca asked, getting to her feet as though she had mischief on her mind.
“Imb sure Berne wan to go homb.”
Berne raised her eyebrows once more.
“She said make yourself at home.”
I scowled at Rebecca but she was too busy luring Berne into the kitchen where the two of them cleaned up my mess. “So you’re a stonemason by trade?”
“Oui. I was going to join the gendarmerie mais I decided that I prefer it here.” Berne took the mop bucket that Rebecca had refilled and started to sweep across the floor.