Page 77 of The Little Provence Book Shop
‘Yes. Yes, I hope so,’ Sophia said.
‘Me too.’
They smiled at each other. There was a pause in which Sophia looked as if she were wrestling with something.
‘In fact, I know I will,’ Sophia added.
‘You’ve found her?’
‘Not yet. But I know I will because I feel it. I feel it in here,’ she said tapping her chest emphatically so that the crystal on her necklace wobbled. ‘Do you believe in this? This… intuition.’
‘I—’ Adeline began.
Then two things happened almost simultaneously.
A small, whirlwind of energy and animation slammed into Sophia’s legs with a ‘Granny!’ of delight. And behind Adeline, someone gasped loudly.
‘Come here, Lili,’ Adeline said. ‘You’ll knock her over! Are you all right, Sophia?’
But Sophia didn’t react. Her features were fixed as she looked over Adeline’s shoulder. Adeline followed her gaze and saw Monique standing, frozen in just the same way.
‘Mon dieu,’ said Sophia. ‘My God.’ As both women raised a hand to their chests, both touched the crystal at their neck.
Adeline looked from one to the other. And she could feel it; an energy. The sense that something momentous was happening.
And she felt suddenly that everything was going to be all right. That everything was going just as it was meant to.
37
Adeline felt a wave of exhaustion wash over her as she finally sat back into her allocated seat early the following morning. Moments later, the train began to pull out of the station and along the almost invisible track that snaked away in the grey light of the early morning. Lights, people, the platform and the scenery appeared to move away from them as they began their journey back; it had all happened in less than forty-eight hours, yet all of their lives had changed in ways they could barely have imagined.
After the two women had met, Adeline had taken herself off with Lili to give them time to talk.
When she’d finally seen Monique emerge through the doors, she’d stood up and almost called across the wide reception area. But Monique had seen her and walked quickly to her, taking both her hands. Lili had looked up interestedly before returning to the picture of a school she was colouring in on a low table.
‘Are you OK? Did it…? Was it…?’ Adeline asked.
Monique nodded. ‘We have said many things, and we have many more things to say. But things are good. We are happy.’
They’d all said goodbye shortly afterwards, as Sophia – the person who bound them together – left to return home. But it wouldn’t be forever. In fact, plans had already been mooted. They’d come to her here, she’d go to them there.
As soon as Sophia had gone, Adeline had finally felt how much her legs ached, how tired her body was, how heavy her eyelids had become. She’d lived several years in those two days, but the excitement and fear and turmoil of it all had kept her mind buzzing. Then it was as if a rug had been pulled from under her and all she wanted to do was sleep. Yet they were four hours from home, and hadn’t even booked their journey.
She’d slept fitfully, getting up earlier even than her alarm. Then after a hurried breakfast, they’d taken the short walk to the station, and were en route to Avignon, after which a taxi would pick them up. Adeline stared at her reflection in the glass of the train window – a rough outline of her face, a ghost floating over the scenery. But there was a lightness there too, and she felt it – a kind of release that perhaps she’d been waiting for all her life.
She turned to Monique suddenly; her grandmother – and it was going to take a long while to think of her this way – looked equally tired, her expression distant, her eyelids heavy. ‘Monique,’ she said. ‘Do you mind if I ask you something?’
‘Mais oui, of course.’
‘What I don’t understand is how… how I ended up working at your shop in the first place? I applied for one job in France, on a whim, and it happened to be in my grandmother’s shop. It’s just too…’ she tried to find a word to fit, ‘unlikely.’
Monique smiled, kindly, as if to someone much younger. ‘Ahmon coeur, I have wondered this too, many times. I posted the advert many months before, but couldn’t find anyone suitable. But I felt it – that someone important was coming. That I had to wait. And perhaps there was a little magic too, a little manifestation. I knew I wanted to find family, to make connections, but I did not know how. I know you do not like this – but I tied a knot of finding in cloth and buried it, and asked the universe to answer my prayers. Then you came.’
‘I’m sorry, I just can’t…’ Adeline shook her head. ‘It makes me feel strange, uncomfortable.’
‘Then don’t think of it. Think of it as a wish, a prayer that was answered.’
‘But what were the chances of me even seeing that advert? Of it being that particular week when I decided to google the area, just to see what it was like?’
