Juliet snorted with laughter at Léo’s bemused face.
‘It wouldn’thaveto be an owl, but I thought it might be fun if it was. I mean, if you don’t think you’re up to it, then that’s fine, I’m sure I can do it on my own.’
Juliet wasn’t sure of anything of the sort and would really rather not present the vicar with a burnt lump of rock-hard bread on Lammas, which was all she was confident of producing by herself. But she suspected that needling Léo with a challenge might be her quickest path to getting some help. She was right.
‘Non, Juliet, of course I will help you. An owl it will be! Your vicar will be delighted, andyouwill learn to bake bread.’
‘Steady on, I wasn’t really thinking about a lesson.’
‘Ah, non?Perhaps you thought you would sit and celebrate the grape harvest with a nice glass of something while I knead, and shape, and bake, hmm?’
‘It’s like the story of the Little Red Hen!’ said Juliet in delight.
‘Hen?’
‘Yes! You know – the hen keeps asking everyone to help her make the bread, but no one will, so she does everything herself and then she eats it herself too.’
‘Okay, so you see the benefit of working together then.’
Juliet screwed up her face.
‘Well, not really, because this bread is going to the church…but I will help you,’ she added graciously.
Léo looked at her as if he wasn’t sure whether to feel amused or appalled. She smirked at him, for once enjoying playing up toher image as a spoilt princess. His confusion just added to her merriment, but she decided to put him out of his misery.
‘Oh, come on, I’m joking. I’m very grateful for your help, I’d be absolutely hopeless doing it on my own.’
Léo threw his hands to his face.
‘Merde!Caught out again by the English straight face. I never know when you are joking. Okay, okay, we will make your owl bread together. It will be magnificent.’
‘I hope so, the vicar has terrifyingly high standards. We don’t want a repeat of what happened in 2009.’
Juliet shook her head sorrowfully and gazed at the ground.
‘What did happen in…Oh, wait, I am being joked with again, right?’
She let a naughty smile creep across her face.
‘I’m afraid so.’
The next few weeks passed uneventfully for Juliet. She finished the photos for the cookery school website, including the difficult kitchen garden shots of Léo and a terrific daylong session with Sylvia. She had become concerned by her aunt’s repeated absences, and thought she had been looking pale and tired, but as the shoot went so well and Sylvia seemed upbeat and chatty, Juliet decided not to ask any questions. After all, she hated being grilled about her private life and was sure that her aunt would open up to her in good time if, indeed, she needed to. She had also decided to take some pictures of the house itself, but each time she examined them in high resolution on the screen, she felt more depressed.
‘Poor old Feywood,’ she murmured, looking at them. ‘It’d take more than some Vaseline on the lens to cast you in a flattering light.’
She wondered if Rousseau had noticed half of what her camera showed up, or if he was just focused on fixing the roof and windows. The photos showed brickwork that urgently needed repointing, floorboards riddled with woodworm, damp creeping through the ceilings and ivy taking over the ancient guttering. Juliet had tried to draw a heavy velvet curtain that was pulled over a little-used window behind the stairs, and it had fallen to dust in her hands. The electrics and heating were unpredictable, and they often resorted to expensive plug-in heaters in the winter. The only thing that worked properly was the upstairs plumbing, which had been fixed as an emergency about five years ago. You could always be guaranteed a good, hot shower, but never knew if you’d be washing up downstairs in cold water. It was amazing to call a house of such history and character home, but Juliet knew that they all had to be a lot less romantic and a lot more pragmatic about it if they wanted to keep it, let alone have paying guests staying. It was all very well giggling together when you got showered with plaster at the dinner table if someone walked across the room overhead, but people would expect luxury – and working radiators – when they had finished a day in the cookery school.
Juliet had finished several commissions for editors in London, one of which, in particular, had paid handsomely, so she felt justified in taking some time to work on her floral art. Her sisters were also busy. Frankie seemed obsessed with the new boyfriend, but nobody had met him yet; rather, she would go away for several days at a time looking gorgeous and bouncing with excitement on her departures but returning more withdrawn and with dark circles etched under her eyes. Only once had Juliet commented:
‘Frank, you look like you’ve been up for three nights in a row. Glad to see the new man has some stamina.’
‘Shut up, I’ve got work to do.’
It was an uncharacteristically brusque reply from the normally expansive Frankie, and Juliet hadn’t commented again but noted that Frankie wasn’t doing much work and was more likely to be found in bed until lunchtime and mooching around aimlessly in the afternoons. Martha was too distracted by organising their mother’s memorial event to be much help, so Juliet filed Frankie away with Sylvia, resolving to keep an eye on her but not pry where it wouldn’t be welcome.Who would have thought it?I’m becoming quite the family woman. I’ll be checking to make sure Dad’s taking his vitamins next.But with Lammas on the horizon, her attention was soon stretched even further.
‘Juliet, what do you think about adding olives to the bread? An olive branch is a Bible symbol after all.’
‘Juliet, do you think the vicar would mind if we usedFrenchflour? I know it’s not quite in keeping, but it makes a superior loaf.’
