‘Shouting at his computer, railing against millennials …’
He laughs. ‘And your mum?’
‘She worked as a translator but her passion these days is the garden and orchard. She’s created it from nothing really. It was wildly overgrown when they moved in.’ I pause. ‘What about yours?’
‘They’re long gone, sadly,’ James says.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, wishing I hadn’t asked. I’d guess that he’s around my age so of course there was a high probability that his parents wouldn’t still be alive.
We drive back to the coast, falling back into easy chat about our jobs and lives back home. James’s hotel has come into view now. This, too, could be described as rustic, but charmingly so with its faded green shutters and stone planters filled with lavender on the terrace.
‘I’ve had a really lovely day,’ James says. ‘Thank you.’
‘I’ve really enjoyed it too,’ I say. In fact, showing him some of my favourite places has ranked as one of my happiest days here since, well, I can’t remember. It’s on the tip of my tongue to say,Shall we do this again?But this is his holiday, and maybe he’s one of those people who prefers to do their own thing?
Frank, Charlie’s dad, was always horrified at theprospect of making friends on holiday. ‘Oh my God it’s that couple!’ he’d hiss, virtually dragging me into a souvenir shop in order to avoid them. We’d cower behind a revolving stand of postcards until they were safely out of sight. Because heaven forbid we might meet some nice people!
‘Erm, I was wondering,’ James says as he unclips his seatbelt, ‘if you’d like to meet up again sometime? If you’re not too busy, I mean?’
‘That’d be great,’ I say with a note of surprise, as if the possibility hadn’t crossed my mind.
His smile seems to light up his face. ‘Maybe we could go for dinner? I mean, if there’s somewhere you’d like to go?’
‘There are lots of places,’ I say inanely because of course there are; Corsica is famous for its food which, like my parents’ car, is best described as rustic, but in a delightful – rather than life-endangering – way. I write about it for my column: the fragrant slow-cooked casseroles, the delicious charcuterie, cheeses and lemony cheesecakes that melt in the mouth. The island is dotted with citrus orchards and olive groves, the fat, glossy fruit showing up in hearty pasta and gnocchi dishes. As I wrote in my column yesterday, Corsica blends French and Italian influences and makes them its own.
‘When are you free?’ James asks.
I could say in two or three days’ time, so I don’t seem too eager or as if I have nothing going on. But actually, what I really want is to see this kind, interesting and undeniably handsome man again as soon as possible. ‘How about tomorrow?’ I say.
CHAPTER EIGHT
JAMES
What possessed me to come out with all that canyoning and snorkelling stuff? What kind of blokey bollocks was that? I suppose I didn’t want Lauren thinking I was some sad loser who’d found himself unexpectedly alone on holiday and with no idea how to fill it.
Why it mattered what she thought of me, I have no idea.
I mean, she was just this strikingly beautiful woman with greenish eyes and light brown hair who seemed so friendly and positive, even after the awful scare at the pool. And as soon as Minnie seemed fine it struck me that it’d be nice to run into her again (in less dramatic circumstances, obviously). But what could I say?
Fraser, my longtime friend and the other vet at our practice, would have rattled out some line on the short walk back to the road:Would you like to meet for coffee? Maybe you could tell me the best things to do around here.Or:D’you mind exchanging numbers? I’d really like to know how Minnie’s doing in a day or two …But I’m not Fraser, who’s never settled with anyone long term butis rarely without a girlfriend, whereas I’ve been single for quite some time – three years – since Polly moved to Peru.
‘Not that she was keen to get away from you, James,’ my ex-wife, Rhona, teased me when she found out.
It wasn’t that. Polly, a geologist, had gone there for work. But perhaps it had knocked my confidence a bit, so I was actually surprised, and delighted, when Lauren suggested meeting up again.
‘Such a beautiful night tonight,’ says the restaurant’s owner as she tops up our wine, even though I get the impression it’s not really a topping-up kind of place. I suspect she just wanted to come over and chat. Lauren has already told me that Camille is a longtime friend of her mother’s, and that her parents have been coming to this beachside restaurant for years. The bare wooden tables are wobbly, the plates chipped and mismatched, and the place put together with a rickety selection of furniture. But I don’t think I’ve ever sat in a lovelier restaurant in my life.
‘It really is,’ Lauren says, adding, ‘This is James. He’s on holiday from London.’ She goes on to tell Camille how I ‘saved Minnie’s life’. (Unsure how to react to this, I find myself taking a rapt interest in the plants furling down from the raffia canopy.) Just when I think we’re about to move on from the subject, Camille calls over her husband and the whole episode is described again, all in English – with Camille now claiming, gleefully, that at the sound of Lauren’s screams I’d thrown down my bicycle and charged through the forest, scooping up Minnie and ‘breathing life into her mouth’. Despite our protests, Camille insists that our wine is on the house, and that we must also have tiny glasses of deliciously syrupy liqueur from a dusty bottle.
The pinkish sky has darkened now, and it strikes mehow happy I am that Lauren doesn’t seem to be in a hurry for the night to end. So after dinner we find ourselves strolling along the otherwise deserted beach.
I’ve already heard that she and her son, Charlie, were extremely close until he ‘went off’ recently, which has obviously hurt her a great deal. She asks more about my daughter, and why she decided at the last minute not to come here with me. So I tell her about Esther’s insufferable boyfriend, and how she’d begged for him to come here with us, saying, ‘It’ll be a chance for you and Miles to get to know each other. I promise we won’t go off and leave you on your own.’
‘I said I wasn’t going on holiday with him. She said, “You wouldn’t be goingwithhim. He’d just bethere.”’ Lauren laughs loudly at that and, encouraged by her response, I go on to tell her about Willow Vale, the alternative secondary school Esther attended. ‘The kids only went to lessons if they felt like it,’ I explain. ‘I mean, it was all optional. You can guess how that went,’ I add.
‘I think I can.’ She smiles.
‘There was quite a lot of dicking around.’
