‘Now there’s an offer.’ I smiled at him, deliberately provocative.
We both laughed and the rest of the lunch passed calmly, the conversation casual but interesting and, to my relief, focusing on anything but the aggravating behaviour of Luc Mandeville.
We didn’t talk much in the car on the way back to the Villa Matisse. A couple of desultory comments along the lines of ‘Wasn’t that wonderful?’ and ‘The Fernand Léger museum is incredible, isn’t it?’ and suchlike, when we both instantly agreed with whatever the other had said. However, the conversational ball had lost its bounce. It was now around six o’clock, almost dark, a pale moon rising. Feeling tired and sleepy after the wine at lunch,the museum and the fresh air, I found myself reflecting on the conversation at lunch about Luc Mandeville. For his part, Jules seemed equally preoccupied with thoughts of his own.
I found myself puzzling about why had I been so thorny on the subject of Luc Mandeville. I had been brusque with Jules almost to the point of downright rudeness. Okay, so Luc Mandeville had been blessed with a mother who was a headcase, but what did that matter to me? She was his cross to bear. It was stupid to let the man get under my skin. Moreover, whatever further unpleasantness lay in store for me at the Villa Matisse, in this one day I had made two potential friends; I’d had a good time. Jess I had liked immediately and Jules equally so. In fact, I knew my liking for Jules Croisset sprang from something rather poignant: he reminded me of Giancarlo. It wasn’t simply that where women were concerned they had all the practised chat; the two men shared the same ability to charm without effort. Both were men who, unless you were somehow charm-resistant, you could not help but be charmed by.
When I met Giancarlo twelve years ago, I believed I had found love. I was only in my mid-twenties, but nevertheless I was at that stage finding myself increasingly baffled as to why relationships never seemed to go the full mile. It wasn’t in any way that I was desperate to get married or ‘commit’ as we rather irritatingly called it in back in the day, there was time enough for all that. Throughout my three years at university and afterwards, I’d dated guys, I could say I’d had my fair share of boyfriends. Some were great, some absolute no-goes,some just… neither here nor there. But even with the great ones nothing happened. It was like a game of snakes and ladders. The ladder would be there and I’d climb it energetically, only to land on a snake two squares later and slide back down with a bump. Until I met Giancarlo. And then there seemed to be no snakes on the board. Only ladders.
It was only long after we broke up that I understood what had actually happened. I’d been charmed, charmed as effectively as if I had been a snake myself and Giancarlo sitting before me cross-legged, wearing a turban and loincloth, tootling sweet airs on a pipe. Charm, it takes you in. And, more dangerously, charm disguises. It disguises a lack of substance.
Oh, I’m not engaging in a character assassination of Jules Croisset. Perhaps the charm was simply part of his pleasing manner. But I didn’t intend to be taken in. Once was quite enough.
‘I’ve got a proposition for you,’ Jules said, jerking me out of my reverie as we drew up outside the Villa Matisse.
Here we go, I thought, but said, ‘Go on.’
‘This company I run. I’m always on the lookout for temporary chefs.’
Taken aback, I played for time. ‘Surely if your clients are wealthy, they stay in five-star hotels with five-star chefs at their beck and call to satisfy their every five-star prandial whim?’
He chuckled. ‘Well, yes, the majority of them do. But there’s also a significant section of my clientele who prefer to rent villas or apartments. They prefer the privacy and the freedom that confers, especially if they’reholidaying in a group or a family party. They want self-catering but…’ He hesitated.
‘They don’t want to cater for themselves.’
Jules turned to me. ‘Precisely,’ he said.
‘Golly.’ Twisting round in my seat to face him, I said, ‘This sounds like you’re offering me a job.’
‘I am, if you’re interested. It would be temporary positions, two or three weeks at a time, your travel fully paid and seriously good remuneration. It would be almost exclusively in the spring, autumn and winter months. Because my clients are older, they almost always prefer not to visit the Côte d’Azur during the summer when it’s hot and crowded. Of course,’ he waved a hand, ‘a century ago that is precisely what happened. Nobody worth their salt holidayed here in the summer. It was always the cooler times of the year when the rich and privileged arriveden bloc.’
‘But you know so little about me,’ I said slowly. ‘You don’t even know whether I can cook.’
‘Yes, I do, and not just on the strength of two spoonfuls ofsoupe au pistou.’ He touched his head. ‘Apart from looking up your profile online, I have a mind for these things.’
‘Like Hercule Poirot?’
We both laughed. Then I thought of Carl and, inevitably, my experience so far the Villa Matisse. The latter was not encouraging.
But as if he could read my thoughts, Jules said quickly, ‘My clients are never difficult. They tell me exactly what they want, and I ensure they get exactly that.’
‘I can imagine you do,’ I murmured. I simply did notknow what to say. He’d put me in a complete quandary.
‘Listen, don’t give me your answer now. I’m flying home to Brussels tomorrow to see my mother before Christmas. She’s going to my sister for the day itself. I’ll be back here on Christmas Eve. We can discuss it further when we meet again.’
I nodded at him. ‘Okay, thank you. And thank you for a lovely day.’
‘The pleasure,’ he said, rather pedantically, ‘was all mine.’ And leaning towards me, he cupped his hand under my chin and kissed me very firmly full on the lips.
‘I’ll see you soon. Until then, keep smiling, Alix.’
‘You’re back, then.’
Closing the front door behind me ultra-carefully as per strict security instructions, I stepped further into the hall, craning my neck upwards in the direction of the disembodied voice to see Luc Mandeville leaning on his elbows over the balustrade of the mezzanine gallery above me. The television was squawking away in English behind him. From the shrieks and screams that seem indispensable to any ‘family’ viewing these days, it sounded like one of those game shows where the main aim seems to be for all the contestants to make complete idiots of themselves.
‘I am,’ I replied, resisting the temptation to add ‘obviously’.
‘Where have you been?’
