The French House, Helen Fripp [e textbook reader .txt] 📗

floated on their backs, aching, watching the swallows turn pale green as they darted over the water. Iridescent dragonflies clouded amongst the lilies.

The hour was over too soon. The sun dried her before she dressed, but she was still cool from the water and they held hands as far along the path as they dared. As they passed the derelict house, Nicole spotted a well. She delved into her pocket for a coin.

‘Make a wish,’ she said and closed her eyes, ready to throw. Freedom, she thought as she threw the coin. She found another in her pocket and handed it to François. ‘Your turn.’

He recoiled. ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’

She laughed. ‘Then I’ll throw it for you.’

She closed her eyes and smiled. Happiness for François, she thought, and the coin plunked into the water, far below.

When she opened her eyes, François was gone. If this was a joke, she wasn’t going to laugh. She stood for a while, waiting for him to return, scanned the woods while pretending not to in case he was watching her. He didn’t come back. She had forgotten her pocket watch, but at least half an hour must have passed as she waited, and the sun lost a little of its brightness.

Antoine and Claudine arrived, and still no François. Anger and hurt mixed in a confusion of feelings. How dare he? And at the same time she longed for his warm arms around her. She wanted to cry and she wanted to rail at him for his thoughtlessness, if only he’d appear.

‘Where is your young poet-vintner?’ Claudine smiled.

‘I-I don’t know. I closed my eyes to make a wish in that well and he disappeared.’

They waited as long as they could. Antoine scoured the woods and came back shrugging his shoulders. Nothing.

She kept half expecting him to appear, laughing on the side of the road. It was something to do with the coin that she threw. He had the look of a wild animal, oscillating between fight or flight, and he had clearly chosen to fly. She could cry and shout and blast him for his selfishness, while wishing she could throw her arms around him and understand.

Claudine put her arm around her and said nothing, leaving her to her pain.

Nicole ran through the moment over and over again that night. He hadn’t even said goodbye.

A slow week dragged by. She went obsessively every day to the place in the stables where they swapped hidden letters, and each day the empty space was like a kick in the stomach. She had only known him four weeks, but François filled her life with new vitality and, until now, not a day went by when he hadn’t left her a hidden message or poem. Had she just imagined everything that passed between them? Was she just another stupid girl who’d been bowled over by a handsome liar? Was he hurt somewhere, crying out for her help, or was he with another girl, taking her to his vineyards and waxing lyrical about the vines? Still, she was too proud to ask Antoine and Claudine where he was.

After seven days, three hours and thirty minutes, she knew what she had to do. The shop would be closed now, but Natasha would give her an answer. She rushed to the boulangerie and banged on the door.

Nicole told her everything, and Natasha gave her a little bag of salt.

‘You’re sure you want to do this? It doesn’t always tell you what you want to hear, milaya.’

‘I’m sure.’ Nothing could be worse than the torment of not knowing.

Natasha clicked her amber beads, whispering oaths Nicole didn’t understand. ‘Throw!’

Nicole threw the salt. It scattered over the tiles of the boulangerie.

Natasha scrutinised the shapes.

‘Caution.’

‘Anything else?’

Natasha swept the salt into a pile in front of her. ‘That’s it. Caution, my little whirlwind. Take time to measure, to think. You are disappointed?’

‘A little. I thought…’

‘It would tell you that the course of true love never did run smooth, but all would be right in the end?’

Nicole flushed.

‘Caution is all it says. I saw what was going to happen to Daniel using the old ways. It’s never wrong, even when it tells you what you don’t want to hear.’

There were times when Natasha could be so pessimistic.

‘Yes, I’m a dour old woman, but I’m wiser than you. Only you know the answer.’ She opened the door and hugged Nicole tight. ‘Go now, take the night to think. You know your own head.’

Too much time had passed for forgiveness. The moment she got home, Nicole picked up a quill.

Cher Jean-Rémy Moët,

I am delighted to accept…

She sealed the letter and, as an afterthought, sprayed it with a careless squirt of lavender water. She gave the note to Josette to deliver post-haste, made her swear not to tell her parents.

This small town loved nothing more than to gossip, and François would hear of her betrothal to Moët and be sorry and be insanely jealous, understand how it felt to be abandoned without warning. She couldn’t just passively wait, she had to do something.

Five minutes after the letter had left her hands, she knew it was a mistake.

It was already dark outside, but she flew out of the door to try to stop the letter. Josette was nowhere to be seen. At the rue de Vergeur, the blue lantern of the poste was already out and the door bolted. So this is what Natasha had read from the scattered salt, she realised with a horrible foreboding – but too late and goodness knew what she had set in motion with her rash behaviour. Please God, just let François come back.

At the stables, her new foal, Pinot, stamped at her arrival. She nuzzled him.

‘Why did I write to Jean-Rémy?’ she whispered.

Pinot had no answer, but her heart jumped. A letter was poking out in the secret hiding place by his feed. She brushed away the straw with trembling hands.

Forgive me, Babouchette. I only wanted to release you to know your own mind,