I blushed. ‘No, I only meant you’re a big man and big people need more regular sustenance than, well, than less big people. I do myself.’
He looked at me. ‘You’re not big, Alix, not big as inbig.’
I laughed. ‘Well, thanks, but let’s say I’m not exactly a fairy in a frilly frock either.’
He laughed too.
‘Besides, didn’t you know that men are actually more prone to fainting than women? It’s a medical fact.’
‘I did find that out eventually but too late in the day for it to be any comfort.’
‘Did you get teased about it?’
He screwed up his panini wrapper and chucked it onto the dashboard. ‘I think you’d call it bullying now.’ He took a swig of coffee. ‘But that’s boys’ public schools for you – that is, it was back then. I believe it’s all changed forthe better now, but when I was a kid, or more likely it was just the school I went to, bullying was almost an accepted part of the system.’ Luc gave a bark of unamused laughter. ‘Designed to toughen you up, to turn you into aman.’
And then he told me something else.
‘You were mocked at school because you spoke English with a French accent?’ I asked, shocked at what he’d said. ‘That’s appalling.’
‘I suppose so.’ But he shrugged. ‘Though it was a pretty appalling accent. Inspector Clouseau with knobs on.’
‘But you’re half French, you were brought up in France, you just told me French was your first language. Of course you’d have an accent.’
‘Yep.’
‘Didn’t anyone help you?’
‘Like who? You don’t mean my mother, by any chance?’
I hesitated a second. ‘Well – yes, if you like.’
‘I didn’t see my mother until I was eleven years old and then not often. I hardly knew her, so I couldn’t possibly have enlisted her support.’ He made a little scoffing sound. ‘She wouldn’t have understood anyway. Jess did her very best to help me when I came home for the school holidays. However, eventually someone else did unexpectedly come to my aid.’
All at once he raised his hands in exasperation and let them fall with a thump back onto the steering wheel.
‘Alix, why the devil am I boring you with all this shit?’
‘It’s not shit. Go on, please. Go on with what you were saying. Who came to your aid?’
Watching me, Luc stroked his chin and sighed. ‘She was the wife of my house master and a speech therapist. She didn’t have anything to do with the school as a rule, but by chance she came across me one day when she was walking her dog in the school grounds, chatted in a friendly way to me and immediately noticed I was talking in an odd fashion – by that I don’t mean my accent. By then I had constructed a weird way of speaking to disguise my accent and she noticed it straightaway. End of story.’ He smiled at me. ‘One term of pronunciation exercises with her and I was chattering away like a regular little English gentleman, which, of course,’ he continued with irony, ‘is precisely what my father, for reasons utterly unknown, had intended me to become all along.’
‘What a sad story, though.’
‘It’s all a long time ago.’ Then he chuckled. ‘I’ll tell you something funny, though. When I got to university and met Jules, I teamed up with him not simply because we could speak French together but because the other undergraduates were taking the piss out of him forhisaccent.’ He laughed out loud. ‘And do you know, Jules didn’t give a monkey’s. It was only the boys who did it and Jules said they were just jealous because all the girls found his accent sexy. He was right, too,’ Luc finished in admiration. ‘He had every blessed woman in our year chasing after him – not to mention a few hopeful gays.’
I looked away. I could well believe it.
‘Oh, sorry!’ he exclaimed. ‘That wasn’t very tactful of me. I forgot you were going out with him.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Aren’t you?’ He did one of his yawns as if suddenlybored with the subject. ‘Come on,’ he said, opening the car door and gathering together the rubbish from our lunch. ‘I’ll dump this stuff, then let’s get back on the road. You need to be with your son. You need to be with Carl.’
***
‘Carl, this is Mr Mandeville, who I am working for and who has extremely kindly driven me all the way from Nice to see you.’
Pushing himself upright in bed, Carl shook hands in a very adult way. ‘Hey, thanks, that’s really nice of you,’ he said, looking interestedly at Luc. ‘But then Mum said you were cool.’
