Emma giggled. ‘He’s a terrible flirt. He used to flirt with Mum.’
‘Really? How do you know? Surely you were too young to notice.’
Emma lowered her chin at me. ‘Oh, Alix, of all people I expected better of you. Surely you know children notice everything? Doesn’t your little boy? It’s just the grown-ups who think they don’t.’
I laughed. ‘Yeah, you’re right. But listen, wouldyoulike it?’ With difficulty, I unclasped the necklace andwrenched it off in relief, quelling a little scream of agony as it tried to take a clump of hair in the process.
‘Oh, my gosh.’ Emma looked awed. ‘Are you serious? I mean, I think it’s fantastic, like, really cool, so avant-garde.’
‘It’s yours,’ I said, passing it to her and rubbing my sore neck.
‘Hey, thanks, Alix. That’s lovely of you.’
‘Just don’t wear it when Jules is around. It was very nice of him to give it to me, and I don’t want to seem ungrateful.’
Nicole had now stopped twirling and had slung the pashmina artistically round her shoulders. ‘Do you think I can wear him to the mosque?’ she pondered, smoothing and stroking the pink folds as if it were a cat.
‘Nic,’ Emma declared sternly. ‘You can wearwhatever you likewhenever you like.’
‘Ah, but would the serious ladies of the mosque approve?’ I countered lightly.
Nicole smiled. ‘No, they would not.’ She clapped her hands together in childlike glee. ‘But only because they will be so, so jealous.’
‘You look so gorgeous I’m not sure I’m not so, so jealous too,’ Emma said gloomily, and we all laughed.
Jess arrived around eight. It had struck me that it could not be easy for her to be a guest in what had been for so many years her own home where she had lived with the man she loved. I wondered whether we were about to spend the evening all trying to pretend we were not aware of the incorporeal presence of the late Johnny Mandeville,the spectre at the feast.
Yet if Jess felt this, she certainly wasn’t going to show it. Her composure was total. I wondered how much Luc’s behaviour towards her was playing a part. From the outset, without any fuss or ceremony, he subtly deferred to Jess as if she were the hostess. We were having curry, he told her. Where would she like to eat?
‘Whenever I cooked a curry for your father,’ she said, her eyes roving slowly around the salon, ‘we always ate in here, laid-back in front of the fire.’
‘Then that’s what we shall do.’
‘In our younger days there were some big fat floor cushions we used to recline on, with all the food spread out on a cloth on the floor like something out ofHeat and Dust– one of my favourite films.’ She smiled a little. ‘Heaven knows what happened to the cushions, but it’s a good job they’ve gone. If I reclined on a floor cushion these days you’d need a forklift truck to get me back on my feet.’
Luc smiled and touched her arm.
‘Sounds perfect,’ said Emma. ‘In a bit I’ll help Alix put everything out on the dining table as a sort of buffet, and then we can just help ourselves and flop.’
‘Oh, you two are the best,’ Jess said fondly, her eyes shining.
Alphonse was also helping things along. In less than two days, Jess had evidently formed an unbreakable bond with the dog. Even Emma’s blandishments could not persuade him to leave Jess’s side.
‘Oh, he’s a love,’ Jess declared, stroking the dog’s ears. ‘My little shadow. Thank you so much for letting me keep him.’
‘The gratitude,’ Luc said, ‘is all mine.’
Leaving the three of them to their aperitifs, I retreated to the kitchen to finish off the rice and other bits and bobs. I was to eat with them, Emma had earlier proclaimed. She’d tried very hard to persuade Nicole to do the same, but the French girl was adamant, scrupulously polite but adamant: she had a lot of work she must do on her English course.
‘You shouldn’t press her, Emma,’ Luc had chided once Nicole had disappeared to her room. ‘Let the girl do what she feels comfortable with.’
‘ButIwanted her company.’
‘Yes, well, you can’t always have what you want.’
Emma had grinned at this. ‘Do you want to reconsider that statement, Dad?’
‘Entirely.’ But he too had smiled. ‘I must have been mad even to think it.’
