Page 29 of The Riviera House Swap
Even if she did find Pierre, and he was single, and they fell in love all over again, could there really be a happy ever after? She couldn’t imagine Pierre in St Albans. He belonged here,somehow. In the land where the summer stretched just a little bit further.
Could she live here? Move away from the people and places she knew and loved? Possibly. Could she imagine herself strolling along this promenade with Pierre, arm-in-arm as so many couples seemed to be? Definitely.
Drawing her cardigan more closely around her shoulders, she straightened up and looked at the row of restaurants, in the end selecting a modest-looking pizza place with a red awning and a warm glow from its interior.
She settled into her table for one and ordered a pasta dish and a glass of red wine, then looked through the glass at the town outside. Until recent months, her future had always seemed fairly fixed. She and Rory had had no plans to move or make any changes to their shared life. She had been relatively happy in her job and hadn’t seen a reason to shake things up.
Now everything had changed and her future lay before her, completely uncertain. Not just in a romantic sense but in every sense of the word. The house was being sold, she might not go back to her job, Rory was long gone and suddenly – having put down roots so many years ago – she found herself in freefall. It was terrifying not to be able to see her future properly as she always had, but she tried to remind herself it was quite exciting too. If someone had told her even a month ago she’d be here, about to do what she was about to do, she wouldn’t have believed them.
Yet here she was.
She swirled the red wine in her glass and made a silent toast to the future. Whatever happened next, she was determined to make some more happy memories.
15
THEN
The school looked much like any other she’d been to. Not so far removed from the secondary comp she attended in St Albans. Although, perhaps a little cleaner, a little more orderly, she thought. The children passing in the corridor were dressed in casual clothes – she envied the fact that they weren’t forced into an ugly uniform every day until sixth form. She’d have loved to wear her own stuff to school when she was younger. Occasionally, one would meet her eye and greet her; the rest passed with their eyes down, serious and on their way to class.
The Year 12s, ordeuxièmeyear in Lycée, were gathered together in a parquet-floored hall, where they sat in groups on red, plastic chairs. Bess sat on one side of her, chatting a little with Lili, her French partner. Brigitte was on the other – tight-lipped and facing forwards, her hands in her lap. Nina found Brigitte quite an uncomfortable person to be around. She was nice enough, she supposed. But her parents were strict and she had no siblings, and it had made her a little dull, a little straightlaced, perhaps. She didn’t meet up with the others in the evening even when they were allowed to – and Nina felt she was missing out on the ‘real’ French experience, whatever that was.
A teacher came to the front and began talking in rapid French. Nina strained to listen, trying to understand what was being said. They were going to shadow their partners today through lessons, then join them for lunch before going out on a trip to the beach later – to gather fossils rather than actually enjoy themselves. It was difficult to keep up and after a while, Nina dropped the thread entirely. She saw Brigitte taking copious notes; she’d check back with her later.
She looked around the auditorium and studied the various faces – French and English – that surrounded her. A boy from her maths class, a French boy who looked much older than the rest, a few teachers and… oh. It was him. Pierre looked up just at the moment her eyes rested on him and their gazes locked. ‘Hi,’ he mouthed.
She was tempted to look away, but somehow, she couldn’t. ‘Hi,’ she mouthed back.
16
NOW
Nina’s alarm rang at 7.30a.m. and for a moment she had no idea where she was. Then she remembered, and sat up abruptly in bed. Last night, she’d double-checked the location of Pierre’s office – it was just a fifteen-minute walk from Jean-Luc’s house – and when she’d looked it up it on Google Earth, she’d noted there was a café opposite: perfect for her mission. Assuming he might come in sometime between 8.30a.m. and 9.30a.m. (and even that was a shot in the dark really), if she sat innocently in the café, sipping a black coffee and reading a book, she ought to be able to spot him on his way in. It was Part One of her ‘Meet-Cute Plan.’
She wasn’t about to accost him as he passed on the pavement, though. This was simply a spying mission. To verify that yes, Pierre did manage his business from these offices, to see how she felt when she saw him in the flesh, to double-check for any signs that he might be attached. Then maybe she’d pop back for a spot of spying over lunch.
It was a bit of fun, she told herself.
Flinging back the covers, she made her way to the ensuite with its grey-tiled walk-in shower and adjusted the temperaturebefore stepping under the powerful flow and feeling yesterday wash from her skin. Travelling always made her feel sticky, dirty and far from attractive – not quite the look she was hoping to for today and even after a shower last night, she’d still felt slightly dishevelled.
Duly cleansed, she stepped into a simple pair of linen trousers, teamed with a white T-shirt. She dried her hair, taking a little more care with the ends than usual, curling them under to give herself a sleek appearance. Or at least, comparatively sleek, she thought, noting that her careful efforts were already starting to fail as her hair began to fall into its usual shape. Still, she thought, Pierre had liked her hair when they’d been together, and it wasn’t so different from the way it’d been then. Just a little shorter. And sans butterfly clips and crimp marks – which could only be an improvement. She liked to think that the couple of grey hairs that had appeared over the last few years were fairly well disguised by her highlights – she hadn’t yet opted to fully dye them.
She applied her make-up, adding an extra coat of mascara for good measure, then inspected the result. Not bad, she thought. Not bad at all. She wondered when she’d stopped making quite such an effort when she was with Rory. But that was how things went. At the start of a relationship, you want to be your best self, but as the years wear on, you start to let all the sides of you seep out, and the veneer of perfection is gone. It wasn’t so much that she’d let herself go; she’d just relaxed, confident in the long-term nature of her relationship.
It was daunting, this idea of starting over, but she was trying to calm the nerves that already fizzed in her chest by telling herself that it was actually exciting and thrilling and lots of other positive ‘ing’s instead of downright terrifying.
As a final flourish, she spritzed on some perfume, which likely Pierre would never smell but made her feel fabulousnonetheless, and nodded in the mirror. This was as good as it got. If Pierre was really ‘The One’, he’d love her ‘just as she was’ – at least, if the romantic comedy movies she binged on occasionally were to be believed.
She stuffed some euros into her purse, pulled her handbag onto her shoulder, grabbed the key and opened the door onto the white-skied morning. It was fresh, probably about twelve degrees, but pleasant. The clouds, such as they were, didn’t look threatening, but hung white and light in the air, their edges blushed with golden sunlight.
It wasn’t quite summer on the Med, but it beat October in Hertfordshire hands down, she thought, as she began to walk the route she’d planned to Pierre’s office.
At times as she walked along, it was as if she stepped outside herself, looked at herself as a casual observer. What was she actually doing? But she carried on. Because she was here, she’d made her choice and she had to follow things through now.
Plus, she reminded herself, this was not a major mission. Just a cup of coffee in a café. How nervous did she have to be for that?
As she approached her designated café, she was disappointed to note that all the outside tables were already taken. People in office-wear sat talking earnestly over tiny black coffees. A woman was talking on her phone, tapping the table with her fingers as she spoke. A man in a beret sat on the final of the four outside tables, scrolling the internet on his mobile.
Damn. Without a front-row seat, she didn’t have a hope in hell of spotting Pierre. As it was, the road between the café and the whitewashed office where the headquarters of the bakery chain was based made it a slight challenge – inside, she’d be completely shielded from the view.
