Page 56 of The Little Provence Book Shop
Hi,she’d said.I’m Adeline. Your daughter. Can we talk?
She’d spent at least half an hour deliberating whether to end the message with a kiss. It was ridiculous, really, as she sprinkled them liberally in all her other messages and social media posts – so much so that once a colleague had become convinced she had a crush on him and politely reminded her that he was married. To her, a kiss just took the sting out of a difficult conversation, or simply softened the words above. It wasn’t a literalkiss.If she actually kissed everyone she sent a virtual kiss to, she’d probably have perpetual cold sores.
But she’d left one off this particular missive, not wanting to be overly familiar.
It was horrible, this second-guessing.
The moment she’d sent the email, she’d refreshed her inbox, as if somewhere out there her mum would be sitting and waiting for her and would respond immediately. Then she refreshed ten minutes later, then half an hour.
After this, as she’d left the shop to pick up Lili, she’d told herself she wouldn’t look at her emails until the next day – after which she’d proceeded to break the promise she’d made and had kept glancing and refreshing throughout the evening. Even when she’d woken up at 3a.m. for a wee, she’d quickly touched her phone screen to see if there were any updates.
At this rate, she was going to make herself ill.
Now, at work, she found herself thinking of her phone almost constantly – like a teenager waiting for a text from her crush. It was now sixteen hours since she’d sent the message and nothing had yet arrived, except a special offer from the DNA site she’d used that had almost caused her to hyperventilate when it had pinged in her inbox.
Monique, knowing what was going on, kept giving her sideways glances – the question written on her face. Each time, she’d give a slight shake of the head and they’d both resume whatever they’d been doing before.
In the end, she knew she had to get away from her desk, the computer, her phone. ‘Monique,’ she said. ‘Do you mind if I go for a walk?’
Her boss nodded. ‘Of course.’
Exiting into the open, Adeline breathed as if she’d been released from a dungeon, filling her lungs with fresh air and letting the sunlight play on her face. She’d left her phone under the counter, and already her fingers itched to go and pick it up.But she had to be strong. It could be days. Weeks. The message might never come at all.
This was almost worse than when she’d known nothing, expected nothing.
She began to walk in the bright morning air, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, trying to remember advice from her mindfulness classes – about keeping her head in the moment and not letting thoughts draw her away. It helped a bit. She concentrated on the feeling of her shoe hitting the stone underfoot, the sensation of warmth on her skin from the sun and the slight breeze, the sights, sounds and smells of St Vianne on a sunny, May morning.
She’d walk for twenty minutes, as fast as she could in her sundress and sandals, then turn and march back. And if she could help it (and she wasn’t entirely confident about this), she’d try not to check her messages until after lunch. Or perhaps just before lunch. Or maybe a quick check when she first returned to the shop, then not until after lunch.
Or maybe… But her thoughts were interrupted as she accidentally stepped on an uneven stone on the kerbside. Her ankle twisted beneath her and she found herself sitting awkwardly on the pavement, her ankle giving a sharp twinge of pain and her hip and leg stinging as if slapped.
Instantly, despite the pain, she felt embarrassed and tried to get to her feet. The one or two people close by began to cross the road towards her as she heaved herself up and tried to smile. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, ‘honestly.’
‘Are you sure?’ came a familiar voice. ‘You took quite a tumble there.’
She looked up and realised that one of the hovering spectators was Michel. Seeing his kind, sympathetic face almost made her burst into tears – she wasn’t sure whether this was becauseof the fall or her state of agonising uncertainty – but she managed to hold it together. Just.
‘Yes, it’s my own fault. Not concentrating.’
Michel nodded at the other man who’d come over to help as if to say, ‘I’ll take it from here,’ and reached out to hold her arm. ‘Allow me?’ he said, dropping into English and putting on an upper-class accent.
She laughed – something that surprised her given the circumstances – and let him. ‘If you insist, sir,’ she returned in her own clipped tones.
They hobbled to a set of steps leading to a house that was clearly locked up and empty – its shutters newly painted, but fastened tightly against the light. She sank onto one of the steps gratefully, rubbing her ankle and her leg with her hand. She longed to rub her bottom too, but seeing as she was in the middle of town, judged that it wouldn’t be the seemliest thing to do.
‘I’m such an idiot,’ she said.
‘Not at all. It is the pavement that is the idiot. It has one job – to be smooth and enable us to walk. And it failed.’
She laughed again; Michel seemed to have a natural talent for cheering her up and she was grateful for it. ‘I’ll be OK,’ she told him. ‘You can get on if you like.’
‘Perhaps in a moment. I’m not in a rush. I am avoiding my desk – I have to mark exams. In fact I was going to the shop – Monique called and asked.’
‘Oh,’ she said.
Their eyes locked.
‘So you just happened to bump into me on the street…’
