Page 63 of The Christmas Star

‘I’m so glad we made this trip. Arles…’ Maeve said, only to fall silent when Roma barked for attention. ‘Where was I?’ she continued. ‘Oh yes. I was just saying how wonderful it is here.’

Realisation dawned. ‘What if that’s it? What if Mum didn’t get chance to finish what she was saying?’ I swapped TikTok for Google Maps. ‘And there’s an Arles something or other?’ My shoulders slumped. ‘Like an Arles-sur-Tech.’ I checked out the town’s information. ‘It even has an abbey. L’abbaye Sainte-Marie.’ I looked to Theo. ‘In the centre of town.’

‘How far away is it?’ Theo asked.

‘According to this, 191 miles and if we leave now, we should be there by 9.45pm.’

‘But what if we’re wrong?’

For all Theo and I knew, Mum and Jackson could be planning to head back to the UK on Boxing Day. They could’ve been setting off to explore more of France. They’d given zero clues as to their agenda or timetable; the only concrete knowledge Theo and I had was that they were attending a carol concert that evening, in the historic centre of a town with Arles in its name.

I pictured Mum with her bandaged left wrist, steering Dad’s old Volvo. Every time she dipped her clutch she nodded, signalling for Jackson to crunch it into gear. If Theo and I didn’t get to them sooner rather than later, goodness knew what trouble they might find themselves in. I glanced around knowing in my gut we were in the wrong place and Arles-sur-Tech was the only potential lead we had. ‘What if we’re right?’ I replied.

Theo gave me a half smile. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s get back on the road.’

CHAPTER 40

Darkness set in on the drive to Arles-sur-Tech and as I counted down the miles, I worried we weren’t going to get to Mum and Jackson in time. Carols at Kings only lasted an hour and fifteen minutes on television so depending on when the service at L’abbaye Sainte-Marie started, there was a good chance we’d miss it.

‘Not far now,’ Theo said.

I pictured Mum and Jackson getting ready for the evening and out of respect for the occasion, Mum insisted they wore the smartest clothes they’d packed. I saw her stand back to admire Jackson in all his boyish glory. She gave him a smile of approval. ‘Very handsome.’

Once at the abbey, I knew Mum would relish every moment. She adored the formality of such events: from the director of music to the choristers in their surplices and cassocks, to the organ and orchestra. Settledown church wasn’t anywhere near as grand as King’s College, Cambridge, but there was no denying Mum’s disappointment when Father Taylor announced he’d no longer be conducting a midnight mass.

Mum had loved being a part of its festive congregation and while those less confident fudged their way through hymns, Mum had readily belted them out. ‘Ding Dong Merrily on High’, ‘Silent Night’, ‘O Come all ye Faithful’, she knew all the classics by heart. Three years later and Father Taylor still wasn’t forgiven.

Even a carol service conducted in French wouldn’t stop Mum. One note of ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ and she’d be off.

At almost ten at night, we, at last, reached our destination and as my anxiety shot up, Theo pulled onto a car park at the entrance to the town. We unbuckled our seatbelts and got out of the vehicle to deathly silence. Without a soul in sight, were it not for the commune Christmas lights traversing from one side of the road to the other, we’d have been forgiven for thinking the place was deserted.

Theo took my hand and although this caught me by surprise, it made my insides warm and fuzzy as we hastily made our way up the narrow, terraced street.

Made up of four- and five-storeyed medieval houses, there was no order to the roof line, which stepped up and down at random. The properties had beautiful ornate Juliet balconies, shutters in blues and greens, and heavy wooden doors, some of which were adorned with old brass door knockers. A few of the ground floors had been converted into shops, but disappointingly, unlike back in Settledown, there were no festive window displays to admire.

‘What’s that?’ I pointed to a stone bell tower nestled between two houses further up on our left. The structure was clearly religious, and picking up my pace, I headed straight for its arched wooden door. I tried to turn its heavy-duty metal handle, but it refused to budge. ‘Surprise, surprise, it’s locked.’

‘Eglise Saint-Sauveur,’ Theo said reading its signage. ‘This is the town church, not its abbey.’

Realising we weren’t going to find where we needed to be without help, I pulled out my phone and signed into Google Maps and typed in L’abbaye Sainte-Marie. ‘Come on.’ I indicated up the street. ‘It’s this way.’

We reached a junction at which there was a bar tabac and a cute little café. Opposite, a street sign confirmed what my phone was saying and that we needed to go left. Following the directions, we hastened along and maintaining the blue line on my screen, turned left again onto a pedestrian street. My spirits lifted. ‘It’s just down here,’ I said taking a right.

The path tapered between buildings, growing increasingly narrow until we finally reached a stone archway that opened out onto a cobbled square. Its perimeter was made up of yet more beautiful old houses, some covered in ivy.

‘There!’ Theo pointed to the far end identifying a huge stone wall and a gate, beyond which sat the abbey. We ran towards it but just like the door of L’eglise Saint-Sauveur the gate was locked shut.

‘There must be another way in,’ I said.

With no choice but to leave the square behind, we turned around and went back the way we came, but instead of taking us all the way up to the main road, my phone instructed us to go in the opposite direction. ‘For all we know, the service finished hours ago,’ I said, frustrated by the maze of medieval streets.

We suddenly found ourselves faced with a second larger town square.

‘Which way now?’ Theo asked.

With their tall French windows and narrow balconies, apartments sat above shops and restaurants and trying to get my bearings, I compared our position to the map on my screen. ‘It should be over there,’ I said.

Sandwiched between buildings, there was a flight of steps, at the top of which sat another gate providing a second abbey entrance. Charging straight up, Theo grabbed the metalwork with both hands and shook. ‘This is locked too,’ he said, turning to make his way back down.