He seemed in a better mood, courteous if distant with me and warmly affectionate towards Jess. Although Jess and his father had never married, she was of course what was effectively his stepmother, the woman who had brought him up. And it was clear he loved and liked her. But then Jess was someone who was difficult for anyone to dislike. She was certainly being lovely to me.
‘Hey, wow, Alix, you look terrific!’ she exclaimed when I came into the salon wearing the blouse Nicole had given me teamed with a pair of wide-legged jeans which actually I didn’t much like because they make my legs look like the trunks of one of those frighteningly tall trees you get in Canada.
‘It’s the Sienna Miller look,’ Emma had informedJess.
‘Is it? That’s a bit beyond me, darling. However, whatever look it is, it certainly works on Alix.’
‘I think Caroline was trying something similar on Christmas Day, but it didn’t quite come off on her, did it, Dad?’
Luc looked blank. ‘If you say so, dearest.’
‘I half expected Caroline to be here,’ Jess remarked to Luc. ‘Is she coming later?’
‘No. She’s popped up to Paris for a dinner this evening.’
‘Wow,’ Emma whistled, voicing my own thoughts, ‘how the other half live.’
I sat down next to Jess on the sofa, along with a mental vision of Caroline boarding a private jet, sitting back to chilled champagne and caviar while a steward licked her doubtless Louboutin boots. It brought me back down to earth with a bump. Who was I trying to kid? No matter how much Emma tried kindly to include me in the Mandeville family circle, this wasn’t my milieu. It was her father’s and that of his super-rich fiancée who had popped nearly six hundred miles up to Paris just for dinner.
Presently, however, we ate, and it was surprisingly relaxed, like the type of evening I’d have at home when friends come round to eat. There was some desultory conversation about President Trump – ‘He’s the rudest man ever,’ said Jess – and President Macron – ‘Why is everyone so bitchy about his wife?’
She was lightly amusing about Alphonse. ‘He absolutely refuses to sleep anywhere but with me,’ she complained in mock despair. ‘So, keep it quiet, but I nowhave a young man sharing my bed.’
Everyone laughed.
‘However, he certainly gets me out of the house. I’ve done more walking in the last couple of days than I have in years, which is not only very good for my aging bones but at this rate I shall soon be as slim as Brigitte Macron. Yesterday we walked all the way up to the Château to put some flowers on your father’s grave, Luc. Have you been up there this trip?’
He shook his head. ‘Not yet. Emma and I thought we’d go tomorrow morning, early, because of her catching her flight after lunch.’
‘Your dad would have been so proud of you writing another book, you know. When does it come out?’
‘Easter, but don’t get excited because it won’t be anything like a bestseller. Unless you’re Simon Schama, academic texts never are.’
‘Yours should be,’ Emma declared stoutly. ‘They read like a good novel. In fact, yours is the only history book I’ve ever enjoyed.’
Luc cast his daughter a gently ironic smile. ‘Have you read any others?’
Emma blushed. ‘Perhaps not, but only because they’re so boring.’ She turned to me. ‘Have you read it, Alix – Dad’s first book?’
I replied I hadn’t but would like to, at which Luc frowned.
‘Don’t bore Alix with that, Emma.’
‘No, I’d like to read it,’ I repeated.
Emma promptly jumped to her feet. ‘Great. There’s a copy up in the gallery. I’ll find it for you and putit on your bed, Alix. It’s brilliant. It starts off with the story of a perfectly ordinary young woman during the French Revolution who suddenly does something so uncharacteristically reckless it ends in her death.’
‘Charlotte Corday, presumably?’
‘Charlotte Corday,’ echoed Luc, looking at me in surprise. ‘How did you guess?’
I explained I had seen a play based on her life a few years ago. ‘She fascinated me after that, although I found her very sad.’
‘Sad? She was a murderer.’
‘But she murdered a creep,’ put in Jess. ‘Marat was disgusting. She did everyone a favour.’
Luc looked thoughtful but said nothing.
