Villa of Sun and Secrets Page 4

  ‘But where are you going to live? What are you going to do? You can’t just let him walk all over you. You have certain rights that Dad will have to adhere to legally.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure we’re both old enough to be civilised with each other. I just have to work out the best way to deal with things for me,’ Carla said. ‘I’ll be back soon. I’ll have a clearer idea of what I’m going to do by then.’

  By the time Carla ended the call, she was exhausted with the effort of keeping up the pretence of a cheerful front for Maddy when inside she felt desolate, bereft and close to tears. She hadn’t begun to think about finding the answers to the questions Maddy had asked.

  Downstairs, Josette was sitting in the courtyard, a bottle of rosé on the table in front of her. She held out a glass to Carla.

  ‘Thanks,’ Carla said, swallowing a large mouthful of the chilled wine before sinking onto the spare seat.

  ‘Maddy well?’ Josette asked.

  Carla nodded. ‘Except for being upset for me and angry with her father.’

  Josette regarded her steadily. ‘She’ll get over it. Probably quicker than you.’

  ‘I think she’ll struggle to accept things, she’s always been a daddy’s girl. And the fact we’ll no longer be playing happy families in the eyes of the world will upset her. Instead we’ll be busy trying to live our segregated lives with the family torn apart.’

  ‘Nothing new in that. Families have been dysfunctional throughout history. People survive and get on with their lives as best they can. There is no other choice,’ Josette said. ‘It’s called living. Bien sûr. I know that from experience.’

  Carla looked at her, waiting for her to expand on the remark. Instead, Josette picked up the bottle and topped up her own glass when Carla shook her head and placed her hand over the top of her own still half-full one, wondering about the life this enigmatic aunt of hers had lived. Would she ever tell her about it?

  5

  Carla was sitting in the courtyard eating her breakfast croissant the next morning when Josette returned from her usual start-of-the-day coffee in the market.

  ‘We have a rendezvous with the notaire at the end of the week about Villa Mimosa,’ Josette said, helping herself to a coffee from the cafetière. ‘We’ll go for a walk later along the bord de mer so you can look at the outside at least.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Carla said. ‘I was so young when Nanna died, to be honest, I can’t remember visits to the villa at all. I do vaguely remember being told to stop asking so many questions when we came for the funeral. No idea what I was curious about.’

  An hour later, after dodging the tourists as they made their way along the coastal road, they were standing at the top of the short drive leading to the Villa Mimosa. The tall metal gates were pushed open, giving a clear view of the typical Provençal maison with its olive-green shutters and terracotta roof tiles. A single tall mimosa tree stood on sentinel duty to one side of the drive, seed pods hanging from it now that the blossoms had finished.

  ‘Originally there was a bank of mimosa trees along here, hence the villa’s name,’ Josette said. ‘The smell in spring was wonderful. Sadly, this is the last one.’

  A small van was parked to the side of the front door, but there was no sign of anyone.

  ‘Can we walk up the drive?’ Carla asked. ‘Look around the garden?’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ Josette replied. ‘We do own the place. The van belongs to the gardener whom I pay to keep the place looking presentable. I can always say I needed to speak to him if the tenant appears. Obviously, we can’t go in the house without prior arrangement, but the garden…’ she shrugged. ‘They’ve given notice anyway.’

  Gravel crunched under their feet as they walked up the drive with its low rosemary hedges on either side. A short flight of four curved shallow steps with a mixture of colourful pots, some with trailing white and pink geraniums, others with sweet smelling lavender, stood in front of the door like a welcoming committee. Turning left, Carla followed Josette down the path at the side of the house to the back garden, where the water of a large swimming pool glistened in the sunlight.

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t expecting there to be a pool,’ Carla said. ‘That definitely wasn’t here when I came last time. I would have remembered that. I would have been in it at every opportunity.’

  ‘Down here it’s de rigueur for a villa of this size to have a pool. We had it put in about thirty years ago. Amelia was dead against it but…’ Josette tailed off. ‘People looking to rent for a year or two always demand a pool. Joel here is the pool boy as well as the gardener. Bonjour, Joel,’ she called out to a man busy scooping leaves and other debris out of the pool. ‘Je montre juste ma niece Carla la villa,’ she added.

  Joel, a tanned, fit, fiftyish man with close-cropped grey hair and stubble, acknowledged their presence with a short look in their direction and a brief ‘Bonjour’ but carried on concentrating on what he was doing. Carla watched as he carefully manoeuvred himself and the cleaning hose around one of the painted stone elephants that stood either side of the far end of the pool.

  While Josette walked around the pool to speak to Joel, Carla stayed where she was, drinking in the garden’s details. The small cane couch with its colourful cushions under the shelter of a large cherry tree in the far corner, an ideal place for relaxing and curling up with a book after a swim. Neat flower beds down the left-hand side of the garden in front of the oleander hedge dividing Villa Mimosa from its neighbour, lemon trees in pots, roses climbing an old metal arch, a tall pagoda, a bird feeder. Four pairs of French doors along the width of the house opened onto the terrace, where a long teak table and chairs were positioned under the loggia, perfect for lunches al fresco and romantic starlit suppers.

  Carla stood there trying to match this garden to the one that should be somewhere deep in her memory from her childhood visit. Her head began to hurt with the effort of trying to force her brain to give up its memories of the garden from that visit. She had only been young after all, how could she expect her mind to throw up any pictures of the past. It had been a short visit. Two days at the most. Nothing here was familiar. What had been where the pool was? Overgrown shrubs? A lawn? A large tree? A tumbledown shed? A swing? Something she couldn’t grasp began to niggle in her brain. She jumped as Josette returned to her side.

  ‘What was where the pool is now?’ Carla asked.

  ‘An apology of a lawn and a large oak tree. And didn’t that give us a problem, getting the roots out. Took days. I was désolé to see it go if I’m honest. Amelia and I loved that tree. We used to climb it and hide from Papa,’ Josette said. ‘Amelia fell out of it once, broke her wrist. We didn’t climb it much after that.’ She sighed and took a quick look at Carla. ‘I remember you getting into trouble because of the tyre swing that was fixed to one of its lower branches when you came.’

  A picture of a chunky rope and a large tyre with herself swinging to and fro floated into Carla’s mind. She smiled. A memory at last. ‘I remember that tyre. I got black from it. Mum was furious with me. Wouldn’t let me near it again for the rest of the time we were here.’

  ‘I remember your tears,’ Josette said. ‘You were inconsolable. Seen enough for now?’

  Turning to walk back up the drive, Carla glanced at Josette. ‘Do you have good memories of growing up here?’

  They had almost reached the gates at the end of the drive before Josette sighed and answered. ‘Growing up, yes, but in the end I couldn’t wait to get away. Everything had become so tainted, I couldn’t bear to stay.’

  ‘I remember the occasional postcard arriving from different places down the years. I learnt to tread gently around Mum when a new one arrived. They always upset her.’

  ‘I didn’t realise that,’ Josette said.

  Carla nodded. ‘As I grew older, I realised it was probably because she was jealous of your life. D’you remember that year I met you in Paris? We talked and talked. I’d hoped you and I would keep in to
uch more afterwards but…’ Carla shrugged. ‘Mum was furious with me when she found out I’d met up with you.’

  When Josette didn’t say anything, Carla continued.

  ‘When you left here the first time where did you go?’

  Josette smiled. ‘Paris – a place I returned to again and again. Initially, I thought about going to Italy, but Paris was the obvious choice for losing myself in and finding work.’

  ‘You never married. Did you ever want to? Maybe have a family of your own?’ Carla asked, knowing she was probably pushing her luck with the question.

  There was a brief silence before Josette laughed. ‘I enjoyed the era of the late sixties far too much to tie myself down. I was a bit of a hippy in those days.’

  ‘Mum always said you were a rebel. That you mixed with the wrong sort. Was that true?’

  ‘A rebel? I’ve never thought of myself like that. We just reacted to circumstances differently. As for the wrong sort – who’s to be the judge of that?’

  Back in town, Josette declined to join Carla on a visit to the Picasso museum, instead she wandered along to the square by the post office and ordered a coffee at a pavement cafe. Watching the children play in the little park alongside the square, Josette smothered a sigh. Yesterday, after she’d refused to elaborate on her remark about life giving you no choice but to get on with it, she’d found herself trying to ignore the guilty feelings that swamped her. Had she been undiplomatic, harsh even, when she’d dismissed Carla’s worries about Maddy? Today, as she and Carla walked back along the bord de mer, their conversation had stirred up more guilty feelings. Making her think about things she’d hidden deep in the recess of her mind for years.

  Having given her word all those years ago that she would never talk about the rift in the family, she’d made a life for herself that had turned out happier in the end than she’d ever hoped after the devastation of being cut adrift and having to find a different path to the one she’d expected.

  Carla’s physical presence in her life for only a matter of days had shown her it would be all too easy for ripples to begin to disturb her hidden past. A past that could fragment into a thousand pieces if the ripples ever grew in size, pushing sorrow, resentment and recriminations into the present. A present that she had allowed herself to be content with, not permitting even the tiniest suspicion to grow in her mind that the life she’d been denied would have been the one to have made her truly happy. The bad family stuff had lain dormant for so long, she’d made the mistake of thinking it would stay that way for ever. She should have realised it would resurface one day and taken steps to… what? Minimise its effect? Deny it happened?

  One thing was becoming clearer. It was time to take a step back. Reinstate that ‘only in an emergency contact me’ rule she’d put in place with Carla years ago. Aunt–niece intimacy or bonding was too dangerous a path to follow. She had to curtail the relationship before it destroyed the pretence her life had been based on.

  6

  After her tour of the Picasso museum, Carla wandered down to the quay and stood watching the boats for a while. When her phone rang and she saw the caller ID, David, she hesitated before answering. She knew she couldn’t put off talking to him for ever but hadn’t planned on being in a public place for their conversation. She moved to one side of the pavement, trying to stay out of the way of other people heading towards the International Quay where the superyachts were moored.

  ‘Thought you were going to ignore me,’ David said. ‘I was about to hang up.’

  ‘What d’you want?’

  ‘Answers to a few things, like: where the hell are you? When d’you plan on coming home? The estate agent wants to know if probate has been completed yet as he has a couple of people who could be interested in Amelia’s house. And I’d like that diamond pendant you stole back.’

  Carla took a deep breath. No conciliatory words then. No heartfelt apology for cheating on her. She took a deep breath.

  ‘I do not have to tell you where I am. I’ll be back when it suits me. I’ll ring the solicitor and check on the probate and let the estate agent know. As for the pendant, I think I’ll hang on to it – at least for a while.’ She ended the call with a shaking finger and switched the phone off. No way was she going to listen to a furious David ranting and raving at her.

  And had she really ‘stolen’ the pendant? She was pretty certain the money to buy it would have come out of their joint account, which technically meant, maybe, the jewellery could be construed as being half hers? Not that she wanted the damn thing anyway, but it was the principle behind it.

  As for his question, when was she going home, she didn’t have an answer. Inevitable as seeing him was, she didn’t feel strong enough yet to stand up to him and face down his bullying tactics. She’d planned on staying with Josette for maybe three days but the unexpected meeting with the notaire about Villa Mimosa had delayed things, so it would be a couple more days at the earliest before she was free to go back to the UK. And then where did she plan to go? Back to the marital home? Maddy’s? Her mother’s now empty house? Could she live there rather than sell? No, if she was going to start a new single life it couldn’t be in that house where Amelia’s presence would hang over her forever. It could never be more than a stopgap whilst she decided what, where and the kind of life her future would hold. She could even use the money to buy a simple bolthole and spend the rest on travelling if she wanted to.

  Time to start formulating some plans. Make a list of things to do to move her life on. Before she could change her mind, she turned her phone back on and opened the note page and, standing there on the quay, she began to organise her immediate future.

  Desperate to get away, she’d not given a thought to buying a return ticket so she’d need to book a flight for after the notaire’s appointment. Once back in the UK, she would need to:

  (a) see the solicitor about probate progress

  (b) pass the information onto the estate agent

  (c) make sure the agent contacted her in future and not David, and

  (d) enquire about the cost and initiate divorce proceedings whilst at the solicitors

  That last note to herself scared her rigid if she were honest and she quickly closed the phone down rather than think about the consequences of setting that particular item into motion. She couldn’t believe she was finally thinking along those lines after all these years.

  Walking back through town, a scarlet leather tote in the window of one of the designer dress shops caught her eye. Carla wanted it the moment she saw it on the arm of the mannequin. It was a statement bag that screamed: the owner of this bag means business, don’t mess with me. David would say it was over the top and ostentatious. She hesitated for a nanosecond before going into the shop and buying it.

  Back at the house, Carla hummed to herself as she sat at the table in the courtyard, emptying the contents of her nondescript functional bag into the new one that in no way could be described as ordinary. The scarlet leather was lovely to look at and so soft and supple to the touch.

  ‘Glass of rosé?’ Josette said from the kitchen. ‘C’est un beau sac,’ she added, joining Carla in the courtyard.

  ‘Thanks. I’m not usually an impulsive shopper,’ Carla admitted. ‘But I had to buy this. I’m hoping that it will be my lucky talisman for the future,’ she added quietly.

  Josette handed her a glass of wine, held her own aloft and said, ‘Santé – and here’s to the powers of the red bag.’

  Carla tapped her own glass against Josette’s. ‘To the red bag,’ she said, wondering whether her aunt was poking gentle fun at her. ‘I do know it’s not going to make an iota of difference in reality to what happens to me in the next few months, but it does make me feel that by simply deciding to buy it for no reason other than I love it, I’m the one in charge of things. Plus, the fact I know David will hate it is a bonus.’ She smiled at Josette. ‘Shall we eat out tonight? My treat? A thank you for having me to stay.’

&nbs
p; ‘If you like,’ Josette shrugged indifferently. ‘Couldn’t turn you away, could I?’ She went back into the house, leaving an unsettled Carla staring after her.

  Carla deliberated between two restaurants for treating Josette that evening. Both had good reputations. Both had a table for two free. In the end she went for the one with a sea view, reasoning that if Josette was still grumpy with her at least she’d be able to watch the yachts out at sea rather than sit staring aimlessly around at other diners.

  But Josette was in surprisingly good spirits, happily agreeing to a Kir Royale aperitif while they chose their meal.

  ‘Santé – and thank you for letting me stay,’ Carla said, raising her glass at Josette. ‘I’ve booked a late-afternoon flight home the day of our appointment with the notaire. I can’t run away forever. I have to make a start on sorting things out. I expect you’ll be glad to have your cottage to yourself again.’

  Josette shrugged. ‘An emergency is an emergency.’

  ‘May I come back and stay later in the summer – by then I hope to have everything at home under control? I’d ring you first this time.’ Even as she spoke, Carla sensed a certain tension in Josette and was cross with herself for asking to return. Tonight was meant to be a happy occasion. She didn’t want to upset her aunt.

  ‘I’d appreciate a call first,’ Josette said. ‘In case it’s inconvenient.’

  ‘Sure.’ Carla took a sip of her drink, forcing herself to stay calm and not make a sarcastic retort. Despite trying to be a good house guest, she’d clearly been in the way more than she’d realised.

  To her relief, the waiter arrived at their table, pencil poised to take their order, and by the time he’d written it down, Josette seemed to have relaxed again and the two of them sat there discreetly people-watching as the restaurant began to fill up.