‘Have they arrested anyone?’
He shakes his head. ‘To them it’s a small thing. They couldn’t find any signs of forced entry. I’m sorry, Mada– Sylvie, but they weren’t very interested. One of them said it was probably the Gattaz boys.’
I nod. It’s a name I haven’t thought of since childhood. That and the French that comes so effortlessly is both liberating and rooting. No, confining. I wonder if this is how it’s going to be: the inexorable descent into the past; the years in England flickering and fading at the horizon.
I take a sip of my coffee: tiny, bitter and delicious. ‘I don’t remember you. From growing up round here, I mean.’
‘No, I went to school in Avignon. Stayed with my aunt during the week. My father insisted, but look how it turned out.’ He smiles wryly. ‘I ended up here anyway.’
‘Monsieur Lagarde,’ I begin.
‘Please, if I’m to call you Sylvie, you must call me Olivier.’ He smiles again, as though we’ve shared something intimate. It occurs to me that he might be flirting but I’m so rusty I can’t be sure.
‘D’accord,’ I say, inclining my head. ‘Olivier. I said to you on the phone that it might be time we sold La Rêverie. We’ve been putting it off, my sister and I, and I’m not sure why any more. Maybe what happened is a sign that we should get on with it.’
‘I can help you sell, if that’s what you want. I can put you in touch with someone at Century 21. Martine. She’s good. But you should know that it’s a sluggish market. The old Pelletier farm has been empty for two years now.’
He catches the waiter’s eye, then looks back at me. ‘Stay for another?’
I find myself nodding and he holds up two fingers.
‘It’s the best time of year for the tourists, at least,’ he continues easily. ‘There’s a chance someone like them’ – he nods at the couple in walking gear – ‘might decide they want their own piece of France. Five good-sized bedrooms, a big garden with a pool: it would make an excellent holiday home for a family. Though we’re slightly off the beaten track here, of course. Now, if it was an hour closer to the coast things would be easier … I said the same thing to your sister when we spoke.’
The sun has moved so it’s beating down on my head. I shift slightly towards Olivier to escape its glare and knock against the table. He puts out a hand to steady it.
‘Désolée,’ I murmur, aware of the heat rising in my cheeks.
Absurdly, I find myself wondering whom he would judge to be the more attractive of Camille and me. Your aunt was the archetypal Parisienne even before she was one. She always looked down on the ageing housewives in the village for their thickened waists and badly dyed hair. I hadn’t seen her without an immaculately made-up face since she was eighteen. I run my hand through my own unbrushed hair, then make myself stop.
Across the square, you sidle out of the tabac and stop to turn a carousel of postcards.
‘May I say, Sylvie?’
I wait, hoping he isn’t going to say what I think he is.
He looks uncertain for the first time. ‘I just wanted to say how sorry I was for your … loss. I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but after what’s happened at the house, I felt it would be strange not to.’
This is why I hadn’t wanted to see anyone who knew me from before. Though it feels like Olivier is coming from a place of genuine concern, I know what people in this village are like. Always hungry for more gossip, they’re perfectly capable of filling in any gaps with speculation and guesswork. I wonder what they came up with about us, which rumours persisted, and firmed up over time into hard truth.
‘Thank you, it’s kind of you to say so,’ I say. ‘Though …’ I pause ‘… I would prefer you not to mention anything about it in front of my daughter. In front of Emma. She doesn’t know everything about … what happened here. About the fire – the old fire.’
He nods and we finish our coffee in silence. I’m glad when you come sauntering over, hair shining in the sun, a paper bag in one hand and a chocolate ice-cream in the other.
‘It’s not even midday,’ I exclaim in English. Olivier laughs, probably grateful the tension has been broken. I smile at him and, just like that, the awkwardness melts away. I can’t help it, I like him.
‘I love it here,’ you say, eyes bright and imploring. ‘I hope the house stuff takes ages.’
Olivier grins at you. ‘Pas de problème, Mademoiselle.’ He switches to heavily accented English. ‘In France, these things always do.’
*
Drained by the sheer size of the hypermarché, the two of us are lying prone next to the pool by two o’clock. The sun is fierce, like a physical weight pressing down, its effect almost like a sickness. I know I need to get on with things but my limbs have turned watery. I feel as if my hope to leave by the end of the week is spooling away, out of reach.
I drag over the only working parasol so it covers you and pull my own lounger into the dappled shade of the oleander tree. When I shut my eyes, patches of brightness bloom pale red through the lids. I’m just drifting into sleep when I hear screaming. I leap up and towards you without conscious thought, heart galloping, but you haven’t moved. You’re still sleeping, the headphones clamped over your head continuing to buzz.
I must have imagined it, teetering on the brink of dreams. I lie down again but can’t settle, the echo of that phantom noise still reverberating in the heavy air. I recognize that scream. It’s the same voice that murmured in my ear as I drove south. A girlish voice, melodic but threaded through with steel.
I go back to the house and find my eyes drawn to the souillarde door. Behind it, the cold tiles under my bare feet are a shock after the sultry garden. The air is like wading through river water, my arms goose-pimpling as I inspect the mould again, as if I might find clues written in its patterns.
I’m sure it’s got worse overnight, the black marks beginning to spread around the small window like a dark, blurred-leaf creeper. I bought a spray that should bleach it away but I don’t want to be in here. There’s a prickling at the back of my neck, the kind that says you’re no longer alone, though I know I am.
I’m just pulling the door shut behind me when I catch movement through the window. It’s so brief that it’s not even a shape, more a shift in the pattern of light out there by the barn.
An old gate is tucked into the overgrown hedge at the side of the lawn. It’s rusted shut when I get to it, white paint blistered, and it screeches as I wrench it open. It doesn’t look like anyone’s used it since we left, which should be reassuring but isn’t. It only adds to the dream-like strangeness I can’t shake, of a place simultaneously abandoned and alive, like pockets of heat and cold in the sea.
The patch of earth between the house and the barn is palpably hotter and drier than the garden. I don’t go into the barn. I already know what the damage looks like in there.
I shade my eyes to check the path snaking away towards the drive. There are no footprints but, further away, something has raised a cloud of ochre dust. Out on the main road, the wasp drone of a moped engine fades out of hearing. Once the air clears, everything is still, baking in the afternoon glare. The only movement is the heat shimmer that warps the distant blue hills.