A waiter arrived with their wine and a plate of cantucci almond biscuits at that moment and placed them on the table.
‘Oh, my favourite biscuits to have with wine,’ Liz said, smiling.
Guy thanked the waiter before pouring them both a glass. ‘Santé.’
‘Santé,’ Liz echoed as they clinked glasses. She didn’t want to offer useless platitudes, but she did want Guy to know she could sympathise with his need to shut himself away. She looked at him and chose her words carefully. ‘Sometimes the thought of socialising is pure anathema. As the saying goes, one would rather stick pins in one’s eyes than to have any sort of contact with other people. To have to respond to their well-meaning clichés.’ She paused. ‘My husband didn’t die, he left me for a younger woman, but, like you, my way of coping with the death of my marriage was to shut myself away and shun contact with friends.’ Liz paused. ‘Life was easier that way. No explanations. No sympathy which I definitely didn’t want. All I can truly tell you is that grieving any traumatic loss takes as long as it takes, everyone needs a different timescale. Coming on this retreat is a first step for me to getting out in the real world again,’ she admitted. ‘And hopefully kick-starting a new book,’ she added, in an effort to lighten the mood a little.
‘Thank you,’ Guy said. ‘I’m glad you are coming out of your self-imposed isolation, beginning to live a little. Gives me hope. Please tell me a little more about you? I obviously know you’re a writer, but where do you live in the UK? Do you have family?’ Guy asked, smiling at her.
‘I recently moved to live full-time in the cottage we had as a holiday home in Devon and I love it,’ Liz said, accepting that Guy wanted to move on from talking about his grief. ‘My parents died a few years ago and I’ve never had a family. My ex-husband didn’t want children, so they never happened, even though I longed to have a family.’ She glanced at him, anxious not to personally open a subject that could still bring her to tears. ‘How about you? I’m guessing you don’t have children either – how about siblings?’
‘My father lives in Dorset in the family home, my mum died several years ago.’ A cloud passed over Guy’s face before he continued. ‘My only brother, Jake, died in a jet-ski accident thirty-five years ago. I still miss him.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Liz said. ‘That must have been hard on you.’ Losing his wife must have brought the memories of losing his brother to the surface again for Guy. No wonder he’d shut the world out for months. Liz desperately tried to think of something else to say that would keep the conversation light-hearted, bring it back to the way it was when they were first in this lovely garden. Gardening. Surely that would be a safe topic. She glanced around. ‘This is a lovely garden and yours at the villa has been inspiring me too. I particularly love the fountain in yours. My cottage has a largish garden and I’m going to see if I can add a fountain, or maybe a pond when I get home. Do you do the gardening at the villa?’
Guy shook his head. ‘I confess I had to get the professionals in to sort the villa garden out days before you all arrived. No, my creativity has always gone into cooking, I’ve never been into gardening. I do have a roof terrace with some pots – bougainvillea, agapanthus – that Jacqueline planted which I’m doing my best to keep alive. You must come up and see it before the retreat ends. The view along the coast is pretty spectacular, especially at night.’
Liz, surprised by the invitation, smiled at him. ‘I’d like that.’
‘I know – come up for a nightcap after dinner on Saturday, there are sure to be fireworks somewhere along the coast to add to the spectacle of lights.’
‘Thank you,’ Liz said. ‘That is so lovely of you to invite me.’
‘It will be my pleasure,’ Guy said. ‘I’m already looking forward to it.’
18
Prepping dinner later that afternoon with Zoe, Guy found himself humming, something he’d always done unconsciously when he was peeling vegetables, making pastry or just experimenting with a dish in the kitchen. He never hummed in those tense moments of service when customers were waiting for their perfectly cooked meals to be presented to them. He gave a small smile. His humming had irritated more sous-chefs than he could count. But here in his own kitchen there was a more relaxed atmosphere than in most professional kitchens, and sous-chefs and kitchen assistants had been known to hum alongside him.
He’d always loved preparing food ready to create dishes that would not only look good on the plate but also taste wonderful and bring joy to people. Cooking for the retreat was an unexpected pleasure and nowhere near as stressful as a full-blown restaurant was. Now, back working in his happy place again after months of not cooking, his humming had spontaneously ignited.
He sensed Zoe glancing at him and he raised his eyebrows at her. ‘Feel free to hum along.’
Zoe shook her head at him in mock despair.
He was thankful that Jacqueline hadn’t been invading his thoughts quite so much since the retreat began. Keeping busy was the obvious answer to why that wasn’t happening. He was happy being back in his kitchen and enjoying cooking the simple dishes he’d decided on.
Enjoying a glass of rosé with Liz this morning Guy had felt more like his old self, more alive than he had in months. Listening to Liz telling him how she’d coped with her divorce had helped him believe a little more that the saying ‘time is a great healer’ wasn’t simply a cliché uttered by well-meaning people. He’d taken a long time to recover from Jake’s death, but he had eventually. The thought gave him encouragement that given time he would recover from Jacqueline’s death and become his old self again – possibly a more empathetic version, but his life would return to normal eventually.
Was it just Liz’s company that made him feel like that? Or something else as well? Maybe a sign that he was possibly coming out of the fug he’d been existing in for months? He could only hope. Not that he was ready yet to leap back into life full on – face the decisions he knew he would inevitably have to make. But it was a start.
And this Saturday Liz was joining him for a drink on the roof terrace to watch the fireworks. It had been an impulsive invite as he enjoyed her company. He could barely believe he’d actually invited another woman up to the terrace. It had always been Jacqueline’s domain.
He shook his head. Jacqueline was no longer here. It was his personal domain now and he could invite who he liked, and he did like Liz.
* * *
Liz put on her new kaftan that afternoon and wandered down the garden to sit in the shaded spot she’d found the other day to write. Her thoughts though were all over the place and kept returning to her morning in Antibes, and Guy Lyon. She’d enjoyed his company and the drink they had shared in the hidden-away cafe garden. Walking back to the villa together along the ramparts, they’d chatted away almost like old friends. Remembering the suggestion not to tell anyone about the place, that it could be their secret, made her smile. She hoped her words had helped Guy a little and not sounded like well-meaning platitudes. She did understand a little of why he had shut himself off from the world.
In the weeks and months after Ralph had left her for his new woman and filed for divorce, she’d walked around like a zombie, shunning friends, lost in her own mixed-up world. Guiltily thoughts had flooded her mind for not feeling upset about the failure of a marriage which in truth she was relieved to be out of but upset and hurt at the way it had ended. How could she talk to people who had no idea about how Ralph behaved behind closed doors? His mood swings. Or tell them about his mistresses. So she shut herself away, went for long walks alone, drank more than usual and found writing, normally her solace, to be impossible. The only place she found she could relax a little was at Sunshine Cottage. Even before she’d started divorce proceedings, she’d begun to drive down there for more and more short breaks on her own, simply to get away from him and his demands.
She was staying in the cottage when her solicitor had rung to say Ralph had put the cottage on the market and the estate agent already had a buyer lined up. It was this news that had snapped Liz out of her lethargy and started to pull her back to life. She would not let Ralph sell Sunshine Cottage.
‘The cottage is not for sale,’ Liz had said. ‘I’m going to live here.’ And she’d never returned to the marital home.
Thinking about it all now, she gave a rueful smile. The last year had been hard, but it was over and she was free now to live life on her own terms. Write her books, earn her own money, live where she was happy, enjoy life again – and have a secret with an attractive man like Guy Lyon if she wanted to. Even go on dates.
Not that Saturday evening was a date, more of a casual invitation to see the lights along the coast and watch some fireworks with a new friend. Nothing more than that.
