‘Who is this one? Do you know anything about her?’
‘Nope and I’m not interested. Carl said she’s nice and that’s good enough for me.’
‘Well, if you’re sure…’
Back in the kitchen, now mercifully empty of Tom, I dithered about, wondering what to do with myself. There was no cooking to do, no preparation I could start on yet for Susan Mandeville’s big family Christmas. Even mince pies, assuming mincemeat could be obtained in Nice, which was highly unlikely, would go stale before they could be eaten. It was, however, too late in the day to make either a Christmas pudding or a cake. They wouldn’t have time to mature. I’d have to fudge them. I supposed I could always hike down to the market and check out turkeys. But the prospect was not enlivening. Alternatively, I could simply enjoy myself; go to a museum or a gallery or the beach or sit in a street café and wait for another Jules Croisset to appear. Again, the idea did not fill me with rapture. Feeling flat and dispirited and very much surplus to requirements, I wandered back into the salon.
‘Can I do anything to help?’
Nicole and Billy were still unloading the box of decorations, pausing to exclaim in delight over each one like a pair of kids. Actually, the decorations were rather lovely, looking like the product of many years of collecting and not a scrap of tinsel in sight. Chipped wooden Santas,strung in a row with faded red velvet ribbon; delicate glass reindeers with truncated antlers; flowered china globes with their clips missing; and a huge angel like a rag doll with gossamer lace wings that threatened to overwhelm the entire tree.
‘We’re fine, thanks, Alix,’ Billy said politely, backed up by an agreeable murmur from Nicole. ‘You get on with your work.’
‘What work?’ I muttered as I trailed back to my room where my phone rang. Seizing it like a drowning man grabbing a lifebelt – even a further unsatisfactory conversation with Ros was welcome – I said, ‘Did you forget something?’
There followed a tiny silence. Then, ‘Forget something?’ came a female voice I didn’t recognise. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Oh, sorry. I thought you were someone else.’ Another pause ensued during which I thought furiously how to ask who it was without sounding rude.
‘Jess.’ The unknown voice saved me the bother. ‘It’s Jess.’
‘Jess!’ I cried as though I’d encountered my saviour. ‘How lovely to hear from you!’
A light chuckle of amusement came down the line. ‘Well, I said I’d call. Listen, are you frantically busy today?’
‘Snowed under,’ I said with irony.
‘Oh, really?’ She sounded genuinely disappointed.
‘No, I’m joking.’ I hesitated. ‘Look, this isn’t for public consumption, but this job isn’t one, if you know what I mean.’ Even though she could not see me, I felt myselfgiving a helpless shrug. ‘There’s absolutely nothing for me to do.’
‘Yeah,’ came the slow reply. ‘I suspected this might happen.’ Then she became brisk. ‘Come and have lunch with me, then.’ She started giving me directions. Her bistro was in the old town. Today it would be quiet before the influx of Christmas merry-makers. We could gossip together.
You know, as a general rule, I’m not really a lady who lunches. And girlie gossip always strikes me as a singularly dreary pastime. But given the prospect of a long, dull, lonely day feeling sorry for myself, I’d have snatched the hand off Myra Hindley.
Chapter Ten
‘It is all down to Susan, you know,’ Jess said in the forthright way that was her modus operandi. ‘You mustn’t blame Luc.’
I said I’d got that and I didn’t. ‘But why does he let her get away with it? He’s not a child and the Villa Matisse ishis house – presumably,’ I added given I was still unsure about this.
‘Oh, the house is his, all right,’ confirmed Jess, but then added intriguingly, ‘for all that it’s worth.’
I risked another question about something else that had baffled me. ‘Tell me, why does Susan foam at the mouth when he calls her “mother”? Sheishis mother, isn’t she?’
‘Yes, she’s his mother all right, at least in the biological sense. But on the basis of what you’ve seen of her so far, can’t you guess the answer to your question?’
I shook my head. ‘Afraid not.’
Jess gave a little grunt of contempt. ‘Okay. Susan thinks the term “mother” is common. She expects Luc to call her “mummy”.’
‘Blimey.’ I couldn’t help grinning. ‘I wonder what she’d make of “mum”.’
Jess laughed. ‘Don’t suggest it unless you want to be crossed off her Christmas card list.’ She turned to a waiter who had rushed up to our table at this point, discretely if audibly explaining in Jess’s ear that there was a crisis in the kitchen. At least, that’s what I think he was explaining, my French not really being up to discrete mutterings. But it was clearly some sort of emergency as Jess promptly jumped to her feet and, with excuses, disappeared in the direction of the kitchen, giving me a chance to examine my surroundings.
I hadn’t known quite what to expect from Jess’s restaurant other than that if you went by her personal appearance, it was certain to have style. Today, clad in an unstructured black jersey top tucked into a full maxiskirt vibrantly patterned in deep blues and greens, the outfit set off by some striking jewellery, Jess suited the surroundings she had created. With its gilt-framed slightly muddy seascapes, faded sepia photographs of fishermen and their wives, and stuffed animal heads on the walls, and then the old pine tables scattered with careful abandon, a casual observer might have immediately categorised it as the ubiquitous shabby-chic look. Yet they’d be wrong. It was too uncontrived for that. Instead, there was something genuinely Bohemian in the atmosphere, a pervasive sense of the smoky Parisian brasseries of yesteryear with Édith Piaf on the sound system throatily telling us she regretted nothing. A lot of the stuff had certainly seen better days; the rickety wooden chair on which I was sitting threatened to collapse under enthusiastic usage and the table which wobbled when you leant an elbow on it. But I suspected Jess had simply let the décor grow… well, organically, for want of a better word, choosing what she liked to add when she liked to add it but always with an eye to honesty.
Adjacent to our table, a log fire smouldered desultorily in a huge open fireplace on the chimney piece of which were ranked cracked old pottery candlesticks coated in wax drippings. Bunches of dried herbs hung from the ceiling beams beneath which each table was set with a small jug of eucalyptus sprigs enlivened by a single, slightly pinched-looking rose. The cutlery was old, tarnished, wooden-handled, the glasses for wine squat and chunky tumblers and the plates mismatched. Yet it worked. After the clinical cabins that so many of the smaller eateries seem to favour these days, there was a vitality, a pulse, a sense of uncrushable personality. It gotto you, in my case allowing me to relax for the first time that day.
