‘I’m sureyouare. We didn’t even get to finish our lunch today.’
‘It’s still in the car, isn’t it? That delicious pizza with the mushrooms and the goat’s cheese?’
Had that only been a matter of hours ago? It felt far longer. Long enough for his life to have undergone what felt like a significant change. A rollercoaster of fear, potential grief and relief. A reminder of how short life was and how every moment should be treasured.
An even more powerful reminder that family was everything?
And friends were chosen family, weren’t they? He needed to let Fiona know how much he appreciated what she’d done for him today, and the best way to start doing that was to provide a delicious meal. He could take her to one of the local restaurants that he knew she would enjoy. Or he could take that pizza home to his mother’s apartment and heat it up and it would taste even better than it had when it was cold, but Christophe looked at his watch. ‘I promised I would get you home tonight,’ he said. ‘Will it be too late if we have a meal first?’
Fi shook her head. ‘You can’t take me home,’ she said. ‘You’re exhausted. It wouldn’t be safe to be driving there and back again and I know you don’t want to be that far away from your family.Idon’t want you to be that far away.’
She didn’t need to remind him how distressing it would be if he was an hour away and received a call to say that time really was running out and his grandmother needed him to be by her side.
‘You don’t mind staying here?’ This was perfect. He could get back to the hospital within minutes if necessary. ‘There’s plenty of room at my mother’s house. You can sleep in my bed.’
Oh… the sudden beat of silence made Christophe aware of the potential misinterpretation. He should add that Nonna’s bedroom had two single beds, one of which he could use on the rare occasions he didn’t make the drive back to Vence after a visit. He could have excused himself by the fact that it was harder to grasp the nuances of a language that wasn’t his from birth, but reassuring her was more important than any explanation or excuse. He thought she was attractive – of course he did, who wouldn’t? – but he’d never considered hitting on her. Not for a second!
Okay… maybe he had, for a heartbeat, when he’d first met her, but that had evaporated the instant he’d sensed that aura she had of something dark, like fear. They had become closer by working together but this was nothing more than a friendship developing between himself and his best friend’s sister-in-law. A friendship that was now solid enough to have allowed them to pretend it was something more, for the sake of his family, and that meant that he would always be grateful to her. That if she ever needed a friend, he would be there forherand that he would always protect her from anything she was afraid of.
‘Iwill sleep in my mother’s bed,’ he added firmly. ‘Inherroom. You are absolutely safe with me, Fiona.’
Oddly, the silence still felt the same. Loaded. Full of something that could shatter if you didn’t tread very carefully. Not that her tone, when she spoke, gave him any clue as to why that might be.
Just quietly, she said, ‘I knew that.’
* * *
Christophe inched his big car into a small parking space that had been hard to find and was, apparently, as close to the apartment as they were likely to get this late in the day.
The streets in this central part of Menton were narrow and steep and Fi’s first impression was that of endless stairs. Stairs for pedestrians on the sides of streets that were crammed with tall apartment buildings, and alleyways between the buildings that were simply stone staircases with treads wide enough for a step or two. Heidi knew where she was going and led the way uphill until they reached their destination. The main entrance to the building that led into a beautifully tiled foyer was open but Heidi ignored the staircase to the upper levels and went beneath it to wait beside a dark wooden door that looked rather forbidding.
Inside, the space was anything but. The apartment was small – only two bedrooms, Christophe said, as he flicked on some lights – but it didn’t feel either cramped or dark. It was, in fact, one of the most homely spaces Fi had ever stepped into.
The floor reminded her of thetomettesthat tiled the living areas of La Maisonette, but these were big terracotta squares with a charming quirkiness to levels that almost made the floor look like the slow, subtle waves of a very calm sea. The front door opened straight into a lounge area that had two sofas draped with throws of coloured fabric with the rich colours of Persian rugs. Further in was a small dining table to one side but it was the kitchen space on the other side that dominated this whole apartment. A row of shining copper pans hung above a surprisingly modern-looking cooktop and oven. Shelves were crowded with racks of plates, stacks of bowls and jugs full of cutlery and cooking utensils. There were jars of ingredients neatly lined up along the back of the bench space, baskets full of vegetables, like potatoes and onions and braids of garlic, and a fridge that was big enough to hold supplies for a family of six.
This was the heart of a home that was all about cooking and baking. Feeding people and making them welcome, or a family gathering to spend time together. Fi could imagine huge pots of pasta on the boil and pans of sauce splashing droplets of tomatoey lava. She could actually catch a whiff of oregano and garlic and basil. Or maybe it was the rosemary from their picnic pizza that Christophe was unwrapping on the bench after turning on the oven.
‘If you open the doors there’ – Christophe gestured towards the end of the L-shaped bench – ‘Heidi can go outside. Being at the back on the ground floor is one of the best things about this apartment. Go and see Nonna’s garden. She grows every herb we could possibly need. And tomatoes.’
* * *
The small courtyard garden was exactly where Fi needed to be right now.
If it hadn’t been so obviously the worst thing she could have even thought of doing, she would have let Christophe drive an hour away from his adored nonna to take her back to Tourrettes-sur-Loup where she could have slipped quietly into the little stone cottage and had the peace of complete solitude to lick what felt like an uncomfortably deep wound.
‘You are absolutely safe with me, Fiona.’
Funny how it sounded like an echo of the most haunting thing that had ever been said to her.
‘Look at yourself in the mirror, Fiona… Who’d want you…?’
It was her own fault that it had stung so much.
When she’d first met Christophe at Lili’s birthday party, being told how safe she was with him would have been precisely what she would have very much wanted to hear. It would have also helped when she’d been wondering if she was brave enough to spend a day alone in the forest with him. He’d told her she was safe then, too – from anysanglierthey might encounter – but that hadn’t felt like this.
If anything, the idea of Christophe physically protecting her nudged her closer to what had happened in that room in the cardiology ward this evening. When she’d found herself buying into what she knew perfectly well was no more than a fantasy. She’d offered to pretend to be Christophe’s lover, that was all.
The last thing she’d expected to happen was that the idea could plant tendrils that might prove hard to control. That they might even start to wind themselves around discarded thoughts somewhere in the back of her mind. Around her heart, even. That their movement created seductive whispers that could make her want to believe that fantasy could be real.
