‘Well, she thought she had another two days!’ Alexandra was suddenly worried. ‘Will Véronique be OK in here?’
‘Yes, she will,’ said David firmly. ‘You need to be near the children and the animals. Our bathroom is bigger and tidier. Go and get her sheets. We’ll find a nice big jar and fill it with scented foliage and everything will be lovely.’
Alexandra squeezed his arm. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you, David.’
‘You’d manage just fine,’ he said comfortingly.
Alexandra and David spent an hour making Véronique’s room as lovely as possible. Alexandra found some lace-edged pillowcases, and a cloth (which they suspected was really designed for altars) for the chest of drawers they’d turned into a dressing table. There was a china dressing-table set: little bowls, a tray for hair pins; they found candlesticks in a cupboard, washed and set them out too. They stayed there, ‘set dressing’ as David called it, until they started to get hungry.
‘Lunchtime,’ declared Alexandra and they set off back to the main part of the house.
Jack was in the hall. He was holding an envelope. ‘The postman has just been.’ He looked shocked, although he seemed to be holding an ordinary-looking Christmas card.
‘Bad news, old chap?’ asked David.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Jack. ‘Very unexpected news, that’s for sure.’
‘Let’s have lunch and you can tell us about it,’ said Alexandra, who didn’t want to be insensitive but didn’t want to stay in the hall forever. Antoine and the children might be back at any moment, not to mention Véronique.
She passed the two men and had soup heating up and bread and cheese on the table by the time they joined her. David loved making soup and there was always some on the go.
‘So what’s your news?’ Alexandra said gently after everyone had eaten a few mouthfuls, and had had a couple of sips of wine. ‘Unless you don’t want to tell me.’
‘No, it’s fine,’ said Jack. ‘The card is from my brother. He and his family are going to emigrate to Australia. They think I should go with them. We’ve always been very close – they’re the only family I’ve got really.’
Alexandra couldn’t help thinking of Penelope. How would she feel if Jack emigrated? Devastated, she was sure.
‘Will you go?’ she asked gently. ‘Although you probably need to think about it,’ she added, aware Jack hadn’t had time to make up his mind.
‘I don’t know,’ said Jack. He took a breath. ‘I don’t think I can. You both know how I feel about Penelope. Now I’ve found her again after losing her for all those years, I’m not going to risk losing her again.’
Alexandra put her hand on his arm. ‘Then talk to Penelope about it. I think you should ask—’ She stopped. ‘This is nothing to do with me.’
‘Ask Penelope what?’ said Jack.
‘To marry you!’ said Alexandra.
There was a shocked silence. It wasn’t what she’d intended to say. She was just going to say something vague like “see how she’d feel” but suddenly she felt it was time that Jack and Penelope stopped pussyfooting around. ‘Unless you don’t want to marry her, of course.’
Jack looked at her earnestly. ‘I do! I do want to marry her. But what can I offer her? I have a flat in London, but not in the best part. I could support us, but …’ He made a gesture that brushed against a vase of greenery and threatened to knock it over.
‘Just ask her!’ said Alexandra. One thing she was fairly sure of was that Penelope had her own money and wouldn’t refuse Jack because he didn’t have much of it. ‘If she loves you, she’ll say yes. And if she doesn’t, she’ll say no.’
‘Can I borrow your car, David?’ said Jack.
‘Won’t you finish lunch before you go?’ asked Alexandra as Jack took the keys David offered.
Jack shook his head. ‘I’ve wasted enough of my life being without her. Not a second more!’
‘So where are you going?’ asked David.
‘To propose, of course!’ Then Jack opened the front door and swung himself through it with great alacrity.
A few minutes after he’d gone, when Alexandra and David had gone back to their lunch, Alexandra said, ‘I meant when the time was right, not that he had to rush off immediately.’
David laughed. ‘You gave him the push he needed. He and Penelope could have a good life here, I think. It’s a nice town, lots going on.’
After they’d finished their soup and gone on to the cheese, Alexandra asked, ‘Could you have a good life here, David?’
