When she’d finished laughing, Claire spoke the words Laura was thinking. ‘I can’t understand how no one has snapped you up, Ava. You’re lovely, smart and funny. Any bloke would be lucky to have you.’
‘So what happened on the second date?’ Sarah prompted before Ava could respond.
‘That one didn’t get off to a great start,’ Ava said. ‘As soon as Liam walked into the restaurant, he said, “From your photo I was afraid you’d be out of my league, but now I’ve seen you in the flesh, I feel more confident.” I almost walked out, but I thought I’d give him a chance.’
‘Not the best chat-up line,’ Laura agreed, giggling.
‘No, indeed. Anyway, when I went to the ladies’, the waitress was in there. She told me I was his third date that week. It was only Wednesday! I climbed out the toilet window and called a cab.’
It was one o’clock in the morning when Laura’s cab dropped her home. She’d had a wonderful evening and knew she would have a hangover.
‘I’ll do some exercise tomorrow,’ she said to Harry. She could go for a walk, a swim or even a bike ride. Tonight had been a temporary blip, but she’d get back on her diet tomorrow. She didn’t need to lose that much weight and she still had a whole month before the trip to France.
Yeah, right. Who are you kidding?
The little voice in her head – the one that sounded like her mother, the one that had made her feel worthless all her life – was clearly a lot less optimistic about her chances of success. She ignored it.
‘And I’ll carry on brushing up on my French,’ she added. Laura had studied French at Queen’s University but she hadn’t finished her degree. She’d had glandular fever and a sizeable student loan that needed to be repaid, so in the end she’d got a job at Belfast Central Library and dropped out of her course before the obligatory year abroad. She’d kept up her French over the years, though, and had been studying every spare minute since she’d bought her plane ticket to Lyon.
She found she was looking forward to this trip now. She’d never been adventurous or gregarious. A week’s holiday with some friends was exactly what she needed.
Chapter 6
1 MONTH BEFORE
Sandrine
Sandrine was convinced this would be their last holiday as a family. She intended to make the most of their week here at her parents’ house in Brittany and spend some quality time with her sons. She was surprised the boys had agreed to come this year. For a few summers now, they’d been asking if they could go somewhere else for a change. They’d certainly prefer to go on holiday with their mates from now on rather than with her and Sam anyway. As it was, Maxime had plans to go camping somewhere in Provence for a few days with his friend Benoît when they got back.
It was good to see Antoine smiling again. He seemed to finally be over his break-up with Océane and to have found a sense of purpose in life again. Sandrine had seen him typing on his mobile a couple of times. He’d hastily put his phone away each time she’d caught him, which made her wonder if he had a new girlfriend. But when she asked who he was writing to, he told her it was one of his mates. He hadn’t shown much interest in socializing for a while, so she took that as a good sign.
On their fourth day there, Sandrine and her mother went to Douarnenez, the nearest town to her parents’ house, which Sandrine considered to be her hometown. Their only mission was to buy vegetables at the street market to make a ratatouille for dinner, so they took their time and wandered around the cobbled streets, then sat on the terrasse of a street café and drank citrons pressés – squash made from freshly squeezed lemons. When they got back to the house, it was calm – almost too quiet – without the others.
Sandrine’s father, Sam and the boys had gone fishing for the day. Her father used to spend long afternoons fishing trout from a large pond in his own garden, but it had been replaced by a little fishing boat and a permit years ago. He’d bought his boat when Sandrine’s mother had made him drain the pond to avoid any accidents after an incident involving Maxime.
Sandrine winced as she thought about that day. She’d had the fright of her life. She remembered it clearly despite the sedative she’d been given by her mother’s GP. Sam and her father had been in the front garden, mending the fence. When she’d called everyone for lunch, Maxime hadn’t come. According to Antoine, Max had wanted to feed the ducks. Maxime was only five at the time and he couldn’t swim. Sandrine had raced out the back door and down the grassy slope to the pond.
Sandrine’s father kept repeating that the pond was neither big nor deep. It was both, and Sandrine was aware that a child could drown in just a few centimetres of water, but her father was trying to convince himself and everyone else there was no way Maxime could have drowned.
Sam had always been Sandrine’s rock and she’d clung to him like a limpet. He remained calm even though she could see panic in his eyes. He held her up when her legs threatened to give way. If it had been the other way round, if one of the boys had gone missing on his watch, she wouldn’t have been so forgiving.
Sam had called the emergency services, and Sandrine’s mother had called the doctor for Sandrine. There had been one awful moment when one of the divers from the fire brigade had held up what looked to be a small item of clothing he’d found in the middle of the pond. But it turned out to be an old towel.
It wasn’t until two police officers and the doctor took Sandrine back inside the house that they’d heard it. A thudding. A fist on wood. At first, Sandrine thought there was someone at the front door and immediately assumed it was bad news. But the knocking was coming from along the hallway. Then there were shouts and people came running in from the garden. One of the firefighters used a crowbar to prise open the door to the cupboard in which Sandrine’s mother kept her cleaning stuff. It appeared to have been locked from the inside.
Sandrine couldn’t understand what Maxime had been doing in the cupboard all that time. He’d been missing for over three hours. But he hadn’t seemed at all disturbed by the experience. Much to everyone else’s amusement he said he’d fallen asleep while playing hide-and-seek.
‘That was a great hiding place,’ Sandrine said through tears of relief as she scooped Maxime into her arms. ‘It took a lot of people a long time to find you.’
That caused a ripple of laughter to sweep through the hallway.
But even now, all these years later, Sandrine couldn’t raise a smile as she replayed the incident in her head. Standing in the kitchen next to her mother, prepping the vegetables for the evening meal, she didn’t know if it was the onions or the memory that brought tears to her eyes. It was definitely the memory that put the same sour taste of fear in her mouth, a taste of what it would feel like to lose one of her sons. Distressing. Disturbing. Devastating. It was any mother’s worst nightmare. She fervently hoped she’d never feel sheer terror like that again.
Sandrine didn’t realize she was shaking until she cut the tip of her finger with the knife. It wasn’t a deep cut, and although it stung only slightly, it was enough to dissolve the past and carry Sandrine firmly back to the present.