‘I watched it when I was a teenager. At a time when escape seemed like an enviable choice. I—’ Angus cleared his throat as if he’d said too much already. ‘I’ve always liked the car.’
It was no big deal, his curt tone suggested, and he didn’t want to discuss it any further.
As someone who’d loved movies to the point of feeling them absorb her as if she was one of the characters, Tilly knew perfectly well that it wasn’t simply the car he’d liked so much about that movie, and it made her curious. What had Angus McLeod been like as a teenager, she wondered. And what had he wanted to escape from?
‘So the car is not something you want me to cancel?’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘It’s not a car you’d want to travel in?’
Tilly lips curved a little. ‘It’s a sports car. It’s a cabriolet. It’s red.’ She raised both her eyebrows. ‘What’s not to love?’
For the first time since he’d arrived, Tilly could see a tilt to his lips that was – almost – a smile.
She felt like she’d won a prize. This was even better than when she’d made him laugh about preferring steak to fishbecause he hadn’t been heartbroken then. Now she’d almost made him smile when he was probably in the depths of despair.
And that gave her a warm glow that started in her chest but then sank deep into her abdomen, where it curled for just long enough to fire off a few tingles that felt… well… rather pleasant.
Another faint alarm bell rang but Tilly dismissed it.
No. She was over having fantasies about Angus McLeod. He’d proved himself to be like every other man she’d ever sighed over.
Imperfect.
Unromantic.
Definitelynotthe man she’d thought he was.
* * *
The luxury, vintage Italian car was waiting for Angus in the car park behind the hotel.
He had checked in and he was about to walk to the restaurant to meet Tilly for dinner but he couldn’t walk past the Alfa Romeo without getting up close and personal. Without touching that glossy fire-engine red paintwork with a reverent fingertip. This wasn’t on a movie screen. This was real. The sleek lines of this iconic car. The sense of power and performance quietly retrained within those elegant curves. That gently rounded nose. The boat tail. The sheer gracefulness of it.
For some reason, it made him instantly think of his first impression of Tilly being a ballerina. Because there was both performance and ultimate grace in the act of dancing? That utter control was how that skill became an art form?
Aye…
That fitted with the lasting memory he’d carried of this particular movie, even though it was so blurred by time it was more a feeling than a coherent thought. The message he’d takenfrom the storyline and symbolic imagery was that you needed complete control if you were going to win the life you truly wanted. That being seduced by sex or falling in love were the biggest mistakes you could make and you’d end up losing any chance to escape. If only Ben had just stayed behind the steering wheel.
If he hadn’t been blinded by lust and then love he might not have lost his bid for freedom and ended up on a bus. Being driven. Losing control so that he had no way of choosing the direction his life was going to take. For a thirteen-year-old boy just beginning to recognise the strength of yearning for sex and love and a life that meant something, caught up in yet another train-wreck of his father’s search for probably all of those things, the movie had more than resonated with Angus.
It had possibly shaped his life far more than he’d realised, with the warning that taking risks brought consequences that could be disastrous. Not that he hadn’t known that already, of course – the career he’d chosen was proof of that – but the slightly weird story not only explainedhowthings could go wrong, it had given him a blueprint for how to stay safe by staying in control. And the symbol of keeping that control was always going the be the little red car.
When Tilly had sent him the website link for a luxury car hire company in Nice, her suggestion for his self-transport around the South of France was a glamorous Jaguar E-type in a deep British racing green, but it had felt like a sign that a car that had once been so symbolic for him – the very same model and year of manufacture as the one in the movie – was also available for hire, and the opportunity had been impossible to pass up.
Thanks to the recent unexpected developments, the choice of that particular car had been elevated into an – albeit unintentional – absolutely inspired decision.
A very private symbol of his own determination to stay behind the wheel and in control of the direction his life was going in.
5
Aix-en-Provence was known as the city of a thousand fountains and, although the restaurant Tilly was heading for – L’Inoubliable – was not far from her mother’s apartment in the Mazarin quarter, she had passed at least three very beautiful ancient fountains already.
The first was the fountain of the four dolphins, who still managed to look dignified even though they were continuously spitting water into the pool below them. Good King René, holding a bunch of grapes as homage to both the culture and wine production of Provence, was far more formal. Tilly had always thought the king looked a bit miserable as he scowled down at passers-by. This evening, it made her think of Angus McLeod but, oddly, the memory of his ill humour made her increase her pace slightly. Because she didn’t want to be late, Tilly told herself, and make him even less happy. It was not because she was looking forward to seeing him again.
The closest fountain to the restaurant, halfway down the tree-lined boulevard that was the heart of this city’s boutique shopping and café culture, was Tilly’s favourite. Fed by warm spring water and dating back to 1667, the Fontaine Moussuewas so covered by moss it looked as if it had been transported straight from a fairy-tale forest. As always, when she walked here, she paused for a moment. Long enough to reach over the basin of the fountain and gently touch the moss. She loved the sensation of being a living thing that the warmth and the sponginess of the moss imparted.
Tilly had only had time for a very quick shower when she returned her mother’s car, having been frantically busy making phone calls including letting her photographer know that his next gig wasn’t happening and cancelling reservations for things like the romantic after-proposal dinner in an exclusive restaurant with possibly the best view available of the French Riviera.
