‘Pah! I feel. That I am in love with him, yes?’
‘Well, sort of…’
‘That I cannot ’elp myself to feel amour for ’im,’ Chloé said, shaking her head. ‘Bah.’
‘So you don’t…?’
‘Not for many, many year. But I watch him, huh? He did not treat me well, he – ‘ow you say – three-time me.’
‘Oh.’
‘And he say he love me, and want to marry. And then, pouf!’
‘Oh, that’s horrible.’
‘So, he is a friendly man. Kind. But not a nice man for boyfriend, I think,’ Chloé concluded.
‘So you don’t mind if we… if I…?’ Lily took a sip of her coffee and looked at Chloé intently.
‘But you wish to date him still? If he is not a good man?’
‘Well…’ Lily shrugged. It was hard to know how to reply without causing offence. It wasn’t great that Frédérique had form – perhaps this was what Claude had been referring to too? But she didn’t want to judge him on past misdemeanours. ‘Maybe not. But we’re just getting to know each other.’
‘As you want.’ Chloé took a bite of her strawberry tart, a little custard escaping over the side of the generously filled pastry, and wiped her mouth delicately with the serviette from the p?tisserie box.
‘You don’t mind?’
Chloé smiled. ‘I don’t mind for me. But maybe a little I mind for you, huh?’
‘Well, thank you. It’s nice, that you care.’
‘Well, we are friends, I think?’
‘Yes. Yes, we are friends.’
An hour later, after Chloé had disappeared into her car and driven off into the early evening air, Lily sat on her front step, head spinning.
She’d woken up with a headache dampening her mood. Now the headache had lifted, but her mood remained sombre. Because although it was nice that everyone seemed to care so much about her, there was a big part of her that wanted to tell them all to mind their own business. She was an adult, she was alone for the first time in two decades. And while it was kind of them to try to spare her from hurt, surely taking a risk was part of actually living?
The phone beeped, interrupting her thoughts. Frédérique.
Vendredi soir? You are free to come to a restaurant?
She typed:
Oui, bien s?r.
You bet I am.
25
The second-hand furniture store wasn’t quite what Lily had expected. When she turned left, as instructed by the GPS on her phone and bumped down a potholed lane she was certain she’d made a mistake. Passing a wood yard stacked high with cordes of wood for winter burning, and some sort of industrial unit, she was just about to turn around when she saw a ramshackle barn, the space around it filled with old garden ornaments and toys, a leaning stack of metal gates and a few rusty bikes.
She parked up at the side of the road and got out of the car, feeling the kind of sinking sensation you get when reality doesn’t quite meet with your expectations. Still, the interior of the barn might be well stocked and organised for all she knew, she told herself, as she made her way across the outdoor area, careful to avoid the piles of rusty garden tools, makeshift planters and decomposing garden furniture that littered the yard.
Inside, she was met with the smell of mustiness that you get in a charity shop or National Trust property – a sort of polish meets dust meets benign neglect. A memory popped into her head of walking around Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire with a then five-year-old Ty. ‘Mummy,’ he’d said, ‘this place smells of old.’
She exchanged bonjours with a bored-looking man at a trestle table who was clearly overseeing the enterprise while scrolling through his phone, then began to inspect some of the second-hand bargains she’d been promised by Sam would help her to plug her furniture gaps for the time being.
She’d been thinking about having some sort of house-warming party once the ink was dry on the contract. Partly to mark the occasion, partly to thank those who’d been around to help – Sam and Claude and Chloé, as well as Dawn and Clive and anyone else they wanted to invite along. It wasn’t as if the renovations were finished – they’d barely started. But she’d slapped a bit of paint around and gradually the house had started to seem more like it was ‘hers’.
She’d need to do a lot more work before she could welcome visitors to any sort of relaxation retreat – at the moment the would-be studio remained untouched. She’d barely ventured into the outbuilding, which was in dire need of some proper attention from an artisan builder to plug the gaps in the pointing and make sure nothing was about to fall down. And she’d have to do something about heating it if she wanted to run retreats in the autumn or winter – perhaps a wood-burner would need to be installed, and electric points, and probably a toilet.