‘Oh, ignore Henri! If he’s the reason you turned me down…’
‘Mother,’ Henri said, coming to stand closer and thereby forcing Blake to look at him.
He was wearing a simple white t-shirt and denim jeans, with worn leather boots and his hair thick and unruly, and yet somehow he was the most handsome man she’d ever seen, even though she hated to admit it. He could simply roll out of bed and look incredible, complete with day-old stubble and bed hair.
‘There he goes, trying to tell me what to do again,’ Céline said. ‘But Blake, his role is to advise me, you understand? And it’s up to me whether or not I choose to listen to that advice, because it is my name on the door, not his.’
‘Thank you, for your belief in me and the job offer, but I simply cannot accept. I have my family to think of and a job in London that I love, and as much as I would like to work in fashion, it’s just not the right timing,’ Blake said, feeling as though she was telling the truth and lying at the same time.
Céline looked at her as if she wasn’t fooled for a second, whereas Henri’s expression was harder to read. She wasn’t sure if he looked a touch regretful, or whether that was her just being hopeful. Either way, she had no intention of staying to find out.
After giving her another hug and thanking her again, Blake turned and stood in front of Henri. Her car was already there, waiting at the foot of the steps leading up to the chateau, so she knew she didn’t have long. And she didn’t want long; she wanted to get their goodbyes over and done with.
‘Thank you, Henri, for inviting me here and…’ she paused, not sure how to say what she was trying to say, ‘for assisting me on my journey.’
She cringed; she couldn’t not. But it was never going to be easy saying goodbye to Henri. What did you say to a man you’d fallen head over heels for? She certainly didn’t have much experience at this kind of heartbreaking goodbye.
‘Au revoir, Blake,’ he said, stepping forward, his hands placed gently on her shoulders as he leaned in and kissed first one cheek and then the other. She knew she wasn’t imagining that he’d lingered over each one. ‘But you don’t have to go. I?—’
‘Goodbye, Henri,’ she said quickly, inhaling the smell of his cologne and resisting the urge to wrap her arms around him one last time or hear what he was about to say. It was time to go.
She stood, looking up at him, but he didn’t say another word, and so neither did she. What was there left to say that hadn’t already been said, after all? He still believed that she had an ulterior motive for seeking him out, and no amount of trying to convince him otherwise was going to work. They were his issues, not hers, but it didn’t make it any easier.
Blake lifted her hand in a wave and looked to his mother and stepfather again. ‘Au revoir!’ she called, before walking down the steps and getting into the back seat of the car, the door to which was being held open for her by the driver.
‘Au revoir!’ Céline called back, standing with her husband now, his arm around her waist as she leaned into him, the way that Henri might have stood with her only a few days before.
Au revoir, she whispered in her mind.Au revoir, Henri.
Her only regret was not stealing one last kiss to remember him by.
Blake opened the door to her flat and dropped her bags at her feet before kicking the door shut behind her. The silence wasdeafening, and she’d never felt so alone. She sank to the floor, not caring about the hard floorboards beneath her body, and began to cry. She slumped forward as the reality of being home, of what could have been, of the way things had ended with Henri, all came crashing around her. She wished things could’ve been different, but the truth was, it was only ever supposed to be a holiday. She was never supposed to stay in Paris, she was never supposed to stay with Henri, and she was never supposed to fall in love. Before standing to her feet, she left her bags where she’d dropped them, and walked through to her bedroom. After changing, she went to the bathroom and scrubbed her face clean, before retrieving her laptop and sitting down to work. She might be heartbroken, but she could still work, and that was exactly what she intended on doing.
Her phone beeped, and she glanced at the screen. It was Abby. Abby, wanting to know how her holiday was, whether she was still in love with the dashing Frenchman, Henri, whom she’d made the mistake of telling her sister about. She decided to send her a quick reply and told her that Paris had been wonderful, but that she was home now, and crawling into bed after a tiring few days. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the truth either.
What scared Blake was that now she knew what it was like to leave home and explore somewhere new, it made her yearn to travel to other countries, or even just to return to Paris; she would have done anything for one more night there, one more day, one more week. How could she ever go back to normal life after this? But it wasn’t to be.
She opened her laptop and began to type, shutting her eyes for a moment and pretending she was still there, remembering the sights and smells of Paris; what it felt like to be in such a beautiful city as she discovered Evelina’s secrets. She owed it to her readers, those who’d been invested in her journey from the very beginning, to give them the best of her, and she wasdetermined to deliver a final instalment that would bring them closure.
The trouble was that when she shut her eyes, it wasn’t the trip to Provins and Evelina’s rose gardens that she could see, it was the way Henri had looked at her as she’d walked away from him. He’d stood there, not saying anything, his jaw set in a hard line but his eyes never leaving hers, and right up until the moment her car had driven away from the chateau, she’d expected him to call out and come after her. She’d even looked back, hoping that he would change his mind, but all she saw was the man she’d thought she loved standing there, unmoving, as she disappeared from sight.
The saddest thing was, if he’d asked her to, she would have stayed.
27
LONDON, 1940
Evelina had always known that saying goodbye to her baby was going to devastate her, but she hadn’t anticipated just how heartbreaking it would also be to say hello for the first time. As Hope passed Evelina her daughter, wrapped in a knitted blanket the colour of buttercups, her breath hiccuped in her throat, tears welling as she stared into her baby’s eyes.
She was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
‘Evelina, it’s time to meet your daughter,’ Hope said, settling the infant into her arms. ‘It seems your intuition was right about having a girl.’
A little voice in Evelina’s head told her not to take the baby in her arms, to refuse to hold her, to forego the pain that she was destined to feel when they were parted. But another voice, the louder, more dominant one, was the one she listened to as she nestled her daughter against her chest. It was the very same voice that had told her to cross the road and knock on the door of Hope’s House a month earlier, and that had been one of the best decisions she’d ever made.
‘I can’t believe she’s here,’ Evelina whispered, opening the blanket to look at her. She carefully counted her fingers, her ownfingertips skimming each one. ‘All these months knowing she was coming, but still…’
‘There are five toes on each foot, too,’ Hope said, her tone telling Evelina she was teasing. ‘She’s absolutely perfect, if you ask me.’
