‘Well, he was, as I say, first, like, wary about it. But two things, Alix.’ She gathered herself together. ‘Firstly, I’m grown-up now, obviously; I’m eighteen and I have to do whatIthink is right forme. Dad is adamant I must not ever do stuff just to please him.’
‘I’m so relieved to hear that.’
‘And secondly, not only will I be able to earn a bit of money, but there’s no reason why I can’t continue with my educationanddo this. I mean, look at Lily Cole. She did the same thing and that’s when she’s much cleverer and far more academic than me.’
Wow. The girl had really thought it all out. ‘I think it’s fantastic,’ I said aloud. ‘And I very much hope it works out for you. Just one word of advice if you can bear it.’
‘What?’ Emma held her breath.
‘The second you hear even the faintest whisper of the word “diet”, run for the hills.’
Emma exhaled in relief. ‘You bet I will.’ Grabbing another slice of salami, she waved it in the air. ‘Me – diet?’ She laughed. ‘The very idea.’
By one forty-five they’d gone, two steaksà pointdisposed of with relish alongside generous helpings of peas and potatoes. When it came to food, Luc Mandeville and his daughter were the easiest people I’d ever cooked for, including Carl, who, though in general the original human dustbin, is possessed of a peculiar but deeply rooted objection to anything pink, which rules out a surprising amount when you come to think of it.
Despite my success with the ad hoc lunch, however, I felt curiously flat. Nicole still being out, the silence of the Villa Matisse with only me in situ seemed palpable. Odd as it is to say, I knew even if Nicole had been quietly studying in her room, the stillness would have felt less disturbing. Notwithstanding this, I very much hoped Tom did not see fit to reappear once he’d droppedeveryone off. Weird silence was infinitely preferable to his company any day. I could see he’d driven Luc to distraction earlier, farting around with Emma’s empty suitcase and raising pointless questions and quibbles when they were simply trying to get on the road. Luc had kept his temper admirably. It was Emma who’d eventually told Tom to stop wittering and get driving. You didn’t need a crystal ball to predict Tom’s days at the Villa Matisse would very shortly be at an end.
Alone, I got myself something scrappy to eat from the meagre remains of the potatoes and a bit more charcuterie followed by a tranche of by now very runny but entirely delicious camembert. Thinking about Nicole’s and my dinner this evening, I took two more steaks out of the freezer to defrost, although we’d have to have them with rice or pasta, which would be on the strange side. The hard cheese had been finished, which meant Nic would not be able to indulge her Welsh rarebit passion. I would have gone shopping, except Luc had not been able to give me any money because he had claimed to be short of cash. It occurred to me, however, that despite various inroads there was still quite a lot left from the funds he’d passed me for the Christmas dinner food, as well as what I’d already had unused from the first disastrous dinner party, more than enough to buy what we needed for a day or two at least, but I would check that. Tidying up the kitchen and making my way up to my room, I decided therefore to go down into town and raid the market. In any event, it would be good to get out of the Villa Matisse and leave the pervading silence to its own devices.
And it was then that I got a shock.
My system of submitting a client’s account is highly structured. Because I work through an agency, if I am shopping for clients – they occasionally prefer to buy the food themselves for me to prepare, almost always getting it wrong, which means a frustrating amount of extemporising on my part – I keep a rigorous record of precisely what I have spent, backed up by receipts. That is then submitted to the agency. The client pays the agency direct, and they then pay me my fee, reimbursing any expense for food I have bought. I am totally vigilant about this. You have to be in my line, particularly as from time to time clients seem to be bafflingly ignorant of what certain food items cost, despite demanding to be served them. A memorable instance of this, causing considerable unpleasantness on both sides, was a woman who ordered turbot for a dinner for eight guests. Despite my respectfully cautioning her that turbot was extremely expensive, she poo-poohed my warning, indeed accusing me of insulting her by suggesting she could not afford turbot. She then threw an absolute fit when the eventual bill was presented, claiming I was trying to defraud her.
Enough said. You learn, as they say, you learn.
Now, however, as I sat down on my bed sorting through the money left from Luc had already given me alongside all the receipts for everything I had bought with it, I made a worrying discovery. I was three hundred euros out, or rather, three hundred euros was missing.
Keeping as calm as possible – my heart was thumping like crazy – for the following half hour I checked and counted and checked and counted again. Luc had givenme the money for the Christmas shop in an envelope, unsealed but with the flap tucked in. It had been a wad of crisp, new, twenty euro notes, one thousand euros he had said, although I hadn’t counted it because it was obviously straight out of an ATM. The one thousand euros had then stayed in the said envelope and been put alongside the remains of the first money he’d given me, both being kept zipped in their own exclusive compartment of my crossbody bag, any small change going in another smaller but also separate pocket of the bag. My own supply of cash, of which I was not carrying very much – who does these days? – were in my wallet with my credit cards. According to my reckoning of the receipts, there should have been a total of four hundred and twenty-eight euros remaining out of the one thousand euros that had been in the envelope, made up of notes and then, separately, some coinage including a few centimes, which everyone wishes the French would abolish because they’re so irritating. However, no matter how many times I counted, three hundred euros had gone, was missing, or had vanished into thin air.
During the next thirty minutes, anybody watching me would have concluded this was a woman who’d lost it, the problem being this was precisely what she had done. She had lost three hundred freaking euros. This may not seem a vast amount to you, dear reader; depending on the rate of exchange it’s around two hundred and fifty quid. But to me it’s a lot and, besides, it was the principle of the thing; I must either have mislaid it, or my calculations were up the creek, neither of which I could believe. I therefore started ransacking my quarter, theboudoiras Emma Mandevillehad so unappetisingly dubbed it, or more familiar to me as the Red Room courtesy ofJane Eyre. Come to that, could there indeed be a ghost in the machine – a light-fingered phantom?
Whatever, it was a big room, with big furniture and plenty of it. In addition to the canopied bed and a balding crimson velvet chaise longue, there was a large chest of drawers, a wardrobe that could have done business as a stable for a medium-sized horse and a massively ornate dressing table with a million drawers, not to mention two bedside cabinets, a huge carved oak coffer and four upright matching chairs, one with a leg that fell off on my foot when I picked it up to see if there could possibly be three hundred euros lurking underneath it. Aware I was embarking on a totally pointless exercise in that I hadn’t actually put away my clothes when I moved rooms, preferring to leave them folded in piles on the said chaise longue, nonetheless, I started with the wardrobe, flinging the doors wide to release a musty odour of moth balls, dust and, yes, stale clothes, because the rails were already packed.
Shabby silk bathrobes – male and female – a couple of dinner suits – male only – shirts ancient and modern for both and at least a dozen women’s dresses of the cocktail variety, all of which seemed to date from circa 1960 including one, judging by its label, that was an original Christian Dior. This last, despite the circumstances, struck me as being worth considerably more than the three hundred euros that of course were not there. I moved to the chest of drawers and got another eye-opener. It was crammed with corsets, garters, suspender belts, fishnetstockings and pairs of elbow-length gloves, all in black or red, or both in some cases, with all the expected frills and flounces attached. No whips, though, although I half expected to find one. The late Johnny Mandeville had clearly been a man of some imagination, if limited, when it came to sex. What I could not credit, however, was that anything in this Parisian working girl collection could ever have belonged to or been worn by Jess. But then, people are ceaselessly amazing. You think you know them and they can still knock you for six.
The dressing table with my personal toiletries on top proved mercifully empty except for a pair of bondage handcuffs and a couple of splitting boxes of diamante chokers and bracelets, all worthless unless I’d got them wrong and, like the Dior frock, I’d unearthed another small fortune.
A thorough check of the bedside cabinets revealed nothing more than screwed-up paper handkerchiefs – don’t go there – although on the floor underneath one was a dog-eared copy ofThe Story of O– in French. Actually, that is quite titillating, in English, if soft porn is your bag.
I sat down on the bed, resentfully eyeing the carved coffer. Absolutely nothing would be gained by opening the lid because I never had and, more discouragingly, God only knows what I’d find in there. Wearily, I got to my feet and sat down again with my crossbody bag, emptying its entire contents out on top of the duvet, feeling inside for any sneaky holes in the lining through which three hundred euros could somehow have secreted themselves. Except I knew full well there wouldn’t be any sneaky holes in the lining because the bag was brand new, a Christmaspresent from my parents. It contained my passport and driving licence, a small hairbrush, a mirror, a pocket pack of paper hankies, one lipstick, a biro, half a blister strip of paracetamol, a mini notebook and, last but by no means least, a photo in a tiny leather folder of Carl as a baby that I have always carried with me because I love it. My mobile phone was sitting on the dressing table, alongside my wallet, which I’d also emptied out, and the envelope that had contained Luc Mandeville’s euros. This was the sum total of my possessions. I’d searched everything. I had everything I needed except the one thing I wanted – the three hundred fecking euros.
And then I had a brainwave…
‘Alix, I am thinking you are needing adocteur.’
‘No, no, I’m fine.’
I was holding the ice pack Nicole had prepared against the burgeoning lump on the top of my skull. Unbeknownst to me, she had arrived home to find me on my hands and knees squashed under the considerably smaller dressing table in the downstairs bedroom I had initially occupied. My brainwave had been me thinking I must have dropped the money there. I hadn’t. I nearly had brain damage instead. Of course, discovering me under the dressing table must have surprised Nicole, but I so wish she hadn’t shrieked my name. The absolutely classic had happened. I had started so violently I had cracked my head. They say you see stars. Well, I can now assure you it’s true. A positive galaxy had spun before my eyes.
‘You are looking for something?’ queried Nicole, fetching me a glass of water.
‘I was,’ I replied shortly, gingerly feeling the egg on my head at the same time as thinking hard. It had just occurred to me that the money might have somehow been stolen. Not while I was out shopping, but when my bag had been here in my room at the Villa Matisse. But stolen by whom? Luc would not thieve his own money. Emma was unthinkable. But then so too were Nicole and Billy. It was obscene to suspect either of them. That left the cleaner or… Tom. Madam Mop had always been far too involved with her dustpans to ransack my handbag. But Tom? All at once I remembered I had left the thousand-euro envelope on the kitchen table overnight and the next morning when I left the room to find a spot for the Christmas tree in the salon. Tom had been in the kitchen all the time, sitting morosely at the table, alone there with his pot of tea.
Yet, even though the man was a total plonker, the idea that he was a thief made my face contort with a rictus of revulsion.
Watching me, Nicole asked carefully, ‘You are losing something?’
Yeah, too right, I thought. But as she looked interrogatively at me, I knew there was no way I could tell her the truth. I couldn’t tell anybody. I had absolutely no proof.
