Escape to the Riviera Page 2

  She came round to the driver’s seat and Alan climbed out of the car to face her. She was lucky to have him. Good looking in a forty-watt sort of way. Every feature created a harmonious symmetry that fell a touch short of dazzling. Nice brown eyes, with thick dark lashes that begged the question was he wearing make-up, good skin, hair mid-brown but slightly limp and a nice neat nose. He was the same height as her and quite possibly the kindest man she knew.

  ‘Okay. Thanks for coming with us. Sorry about the film choice. I’m sure it wasn’t your cup of tea.’

  ‘What? And Breakfast at Tiffany’s was?’ He tilted his head to one side.

  With a gentle laugh she tugged at his jacket. ‘Yeah, but it’s iconic and you said you’d never seen it. And everyone should see it at least once.’

  He put his arms around her, pulling her into an embrace.

  ‘Well, the other one wasn’t so bad. Though who knew you were such a closet romantic? Tears, Miss Hayes? I always thought for a drama teacher you were incredibly emotionally stable.’

  ‘Thanks, I think. That was supposed to be a compli-ment?’

  He grinned at her. ‘Of course it was. Not that you need them.’

  He leaned in and brushed his lips over hers. For a minute she clung to him, her heart lifting in anticipation. She wanted him to kiss her. Properly. Chase the demons of fantasy away. This was real.

  She deepened the kiss, needing that connection with him, but he pulled back.

  ‘I need to go. Those books won’t get marked by themselves. Sleep tight. See you at work in the morning. Only three more Mondays and we’re home free.’

  She bit back disappointment. Alan was being sensible. In a few weeks’ time they’d have a whole summer off, although they’d yet to decide what to do. He’d got a cycling holiday in the Swiss Alps booked and, despite the invitation, it didn’t appeal. She could’ve gone along but Angela and Jade still hadn’t sorted out a holiday and it felt wrong to abandon them.

  ‘Thank the Lord.’ She hugged him. ‘This summer term is always a killer. There’s so much going on. Exams. The leavers getting too big for their boots. I can’t wait until we break up.’

  Jade had already gone up to bed when Carrie sank down at the kitchen table opposite her sister. She let out a weary sigh and reached for the cup of tea Angela had made for her.

  ‘You okay?’

  Carrie rubbed her hand over her face, trying to summon up the right words. She didn’t want to worry Angela but no she wasn’t okay. Nothing like okay.

  ‘I’m fine. That last bit got to me. But I’m fine.’

  She should be fine. After all, she’d worked in the business. Written her own scenes designed to engineer an audience’s response. Should be impervious to a scene where the director had brought every cinematic trick in the book into play, expressly to create a total heart-stopping, heart-fluttering scene.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Angela’s soft voice penetrated her thoughts, her gentle grey eyes glistening with sympathy.

  ‘Am I fuck?’ Carrie laid her head on the table and bashed it a couple of times. It hurt.

  ‘Carrie!’

  She lifted her head and said with a weary sigh, ‘I’m not fine at all. I feel pants.’

  Seeing Richard had knocked her sideways, out through a glass window seventy-five stories up, and she was still hurtling through the air.

  Her response was ten times worse than she could have imagined. Out of sight, out of mind had worked pretty well for her to date. Whoever talked about opening cans of worms had known their onions. She wished she’d walked out of the cinema as soon as she’d heard the name Richard Maddox.

  ‘Probably the shock of seeing him again, as it were.’ Angela lifted her shoulders in a helpless shrug, her brave attempt at reassurance at odds with her bewildered expression.

  She and Carrie were so different. Angela’s mild disposition and gentle approach meant that she sailed rather serenely through life on a gentle swell, never plunging into the lows or cresting the highs, despite the constant pain and difficulties she suffered with her rheumatoid arthritis.

  Her affair with a married man that resulted in Jade was the most out-of-character thing that Angela had ever done and even now Carrie had difficulty in believing that her sister had been swept away enough to commit adultery. ‘Maybe it’s because you never had proper closure. When I got pregnant with Jade, I knew that it would be over with Clive. With you and Richard, it never ended properly. Just drifted to a halt.

  ‘I’m sure that’s what it is. How long ago was it since you last saw him? Seven, eight years? You can’t possibly be in love with him, not after all this time.’

  Carrie swallowed a protest. What if she could? She’d never tested the theory before today. ‘Yes, you’re right. It’s the shock of seeing him in all his twelve-foot celluloid handsome glory.’ That’s what had made her heart beat a thousand times faster and deepened the hollow feeling in her stomach all the way to Australia.

  ‘No one’s that good looking. Do you think he was wearing loads of make-up?’ Angela said knowledgeably, as if she spent hours on a film set.

  ‘Probably,’ agreed Carrie, nodding as if her life depended on it.

  ‘And I bet he had a body double.’ Angela leaned back in her chair, waving her cup about in her usual feeble grip, sloshing tea over the sides. ‘His body can’t be that good.’

  Carrie nodded again. If she wasn’t careful someone would stuff her in the back window of a car.

  Angela had a point, though. It certainly hadn’t been when he was in his twenties but then he wasn’t leading a superstar lifestyle then. You don’t exactly fill out a scrawny frame when you’re existing on baked beans and fish-finger sandwiches, living in an unheated, mould-ridden flat off Cold Harbour Lane in Brixton, shivering off any muscle tone to keep warm.

  ‘Alternatively,’ Angela was her in stride now. ‘he could have a Rottweiler of a personal trainer who dogs his every step-making sure he lives on horrible Hollywood-healthy milkshake things, like wheatgrass and alfalfa sproutings or that keen squaw stuff.’

  Carrie smiled as Angela pulled a bleurgh face.

  ‘And he must wear contacts. No one’s eyes are that blue.’

  Richard’s were. To hide the ping of protest her heart made, Carrie let out a mirthless laugh, cupping the mug of tea to take a sip.

  ‘Sweet of Alan to come with us.’ Angela’s eyes were guileless and her smile kind.

  ‘Subtle.’

  Angela shrugged. ‘He’s lovely. You’ve been seeing each other for a while.’

  Carrie didn’t say anything.

  ‘Do you think something might happen there one day?’

  ‘One day. I guess.’ Carrie had been giving it more thought recently. He made her happy. So happy. They were good together. She loved him. Not in the crazy, helter-skelter being-at-a-fairground way she’d loved Richard but in a stronger, more enduring fashion.

  ‘What if one day is soon?’

  Carrie was missing something. Angela’s eyes were bird- bright, beady with expectation.

  ‘What do you know?’

  ‘Oh.’ Worry crept across her face. ‘Shoot, I’ve given the game away.’

  ‘Well you hadn’t but you have now.’

  ‘If he did ask you, you know, to marry him, you’d say yes, wouldn’t you?’ The lines in her forehead deepened as she realised she’d dug herself into an even deeper hole.

  ‘Angela. What do you know?’

  ‘You mustn’t tell him I told you.’

  ‘Like I’m going to do that.’

  ‘He asked to borrow one of your rings, to get the size right.’ She sighed. ‘And he showed me lots of pictures, to check he’d get something you’d like.’ She brightened. ‘But he didn’t say when. Although, now I’ve spoilt the surprise. You’re going to have to act surprised when he asks you.’

  ‘You muppet. How could he not know you are the worst person at keeping secrets?’

  ‘I kept one.’

  Car
rie sighed. ‘You did.’

  ‘If he asks, what are you going to do, about, you know? You’ll have to do something.’

  ‘Yeah, I will and I should have done it years ago, instead …’ she paused. Instead of deliberately ducking the issue. ‘I need to do something about Richard Maddox.’ See, if she said his surname, it made it less personal, as if he wasn’t her Richard. As if she wasn’t entitled to call herself Carrie Maddox. ‘It’s time we got a divorce.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  Carrie dragged herself up the stairs to the staff room, consigning whoever had timetabled double drama for Year 7’s last periods on a Friday to the very far reaches of hell. As usual the staff room looked as if a cyclone had torn through, followed by marauding Vikings, hotly pursued by random burglars. The cupboard was bare of a single clean coffee cup and the biscuit barrel offered nothing more than crumbs.

  Glad it was the end of the day, Carrie retrieved her bag and phone from her locker and a yellow post-it note fell out. With a smile she scooped it up from the floor. Alan had a habit of slipping them through the crack in the door.

  Dinner tomorrow night? Prezzo or Pizza Express. Both have offers on. Lots of love Ax

  He was out at a quiz night this evening with his cycling buddies and she’d promised herself a curry, a glass of wine and an hour with her laptop. Since she’d won a playwriting competition a few months ago, she’d been tasked with making a few changes so that it could be considered for a West End run. She had until September to get it sorted. So far, good ideas had been elusive. Thank goodness for the long summer holidays.

  She tucked the note in her bag and checked her phone to find a text message from her sister, assuming it would be the usual can you pop to Tesco and pick up … she scanned it quickly.

  Exciting news. Grab a bottle of something French!!!!!

  ‘Why French?’ she asked walking through the front door and into the living room holding out the bottle of Macon Villages, currently being feted on the supermarket shelf as reduced from £9.99 to £5.99. A bargain, no less, although she was sceptical that this bottle had ever been sold at £9.99.

  ‘We need to start getting in the mood,’ said Angela, bouncing out of the chair beside the fireplace.

  ‘The mood for what?’ Carrie flopped gratefully into the small two-seater sofa piled high with mismatched cushions. Friday night was batten-down-the-hatches night. Once her shoes were kicked off, she wasn’t going anywhere, although in her head she fondly imagined she still went out dancing. With a sigh she nestled into the comforting embrace of the cushions. This was her favourite room in the house. The only one not co-ordinated to within an inch of a paint chart.

  ‘A holiday. I’ve found us a free cottage, villa, house thing in France.’ Angela sat back down, clasping her gnarled hands, the joints ravaged by arthritis, on her lap.

  Carrie’s ears pricked up at the magical word. ‘How free?’

  ‘Proper, real free,’ Angela giggled. ‘Oh, Lord, I sound like Jade. Marguerite, at Winthorpe Hall, offered me the use of her house in France for the whole summer.’

  Angela worked at a rather swanky residence for distressed gentlefolk of advancing years. Basically it was an extremely posh old people’s home with an army of carers, an à la carte menu for dinner each evening with wine and its very own private cinema with screenings every night.

  Her duties, as far as Carrie could work out, involved making up a fourth at bridge, completing shopping runs to the Clinique counter at the local Boots for age-defying potions, managing library visits and accompanying the residents on cultural excursions to the Royal Opera House or the Victoria and Albert Museum. It was a tough job but someone had to do it. Although, to be fair, Angela’s work opportunities were fairly limited.

  ‘And does Marguerite have all her mental faculties? Actually own the house? Or did she sell it years ago and she’s forgotten that minor fact?’

  ‘Marguerite most definitely has every last marble intact.’ Angela nodded her head to emphasise the point. ‘She’s so sharp she could slice slivers from a block of ice for her six o’clock G and T. With all her airs and graces, she’s like one of those old Hollywood stars. You should see her slippers, I swear they’re trimmed with marabou, or whatever that fluffy stuff is called. She has a different pair every day, to match her outfit.’

  ‘She sounds quite a character.’ Carrie could imagine her quite well tripping down the corridors of the very grand Winthorpe Hall. It was more like a luxury hotel than a home for the elderly.

  ‘She is.’

  ‘This place she has in France, I’m sorry, but why would she have a place out there and not live there? Or not sell it?’

  ‘She keeps it for her family. And she does go out there, when they visit, but she likes company. That’s why she moved into Winthorpe. Anyway the whole family are going to America this summer. The house will be empty and she said we can have it. What do you reckon?’

  Carrie reckoned that it sounded far too good to be true, but in the absence of anything better coming along in the next few weeks before the end of term it was definitely worth considering. Blimey, once upon a time, she’d have happily leapt on the back of a scooter with a tent and a sleeping bag on her back and gone. Being cautious had crept up on her. Maybe it was all those risk assessments they were so fond of at school. You couldn’t take a trip anywhere without seven levels of form filling-in. OV8s, SF9s and a triplicate V13a.

  ‘Whereabouts is it?’

  ‘South of France. Provence sort of way,’ Angela paused, wrinkling her nose in thought, ‘Or around there. It’s in a village.’

  ‘And what sort of accommodation?’

  ‘I think, from what she said, it’s all on one level, a bungalow. She said it’s got fabulous views.’

  Estate-agent speak for ‘it hasn’t got much else going for it’.

  ‘And the market in the village is wonderful and there are plenty of lovely places nearby to eat.’

  ‘The kitchen is dire you have to eat out.’ Carrie could see it now. No wonder Marguerite’s family weren’t keen on going.

  ‘What do you think? Do you want to come with us?’

  ‘In principle, yes’ Carrie said slowly, not wanting to let practical considerations dim Angela’s enthusiasm, ‘it sounds wonderful. Can I let you know? Perhaps you need to find out more.’

  Angela’s face fell and her mouth crumpled into a mutinous line that was horribly reminiscent of Jade when she didn’t get her way. Except, unlike Jade, Angela wouldn’t voice her emotion, she’d button it up in disappointed, accepting silence. Angela didn’t complain about much and she had plenty to complain about.

  ‘Nearest airport. Train station. Things like that, so that you can work out the best way to get there and how much it will cost.’

  ‘Marguerite says you can fly EasyJet,’ Angela beamed. ‘And then it’s not far from there.’ With Angela’s smile restored, Carrie felt slightly less of a killjoy. Her sister and niece depended on her. They needed her and it was important to remind herself of that occasionally. Especially when thoughts of Richard intruded. Swanning off to Hollywood had never been a realistic option for her and she didn’t begrudge staying for her family. They’d needed her far more than he did, as all the pictures of him with his leading ladies had soon proved.

  ‘I can’t wait to tell Jade,’ said Angela. ‘She worked hard for her exams. She deserves a proper break.

  ‘Now, what time shall I order the curry. What do you fancy? Your usual.’

  Carrie stretched, luxuriating in the fact she didn’t have to leave the house again today. She might even go and put her pyjamas on.

  ‘Chicken Biryani? Sag Aloo? Basmati rice?’ Angela had already picked up the phone. God, they were predictable. She sat up quickly, or as quickly as she could. It wasn’t that easy to gain purchase on a mountain of cushions.

  ‘No, let’s have something different for a change. Where’s the menu for the Tandoori Cottage?’

  ‘But we always ring the Banani
on the High Street.’

  ‘I fancy a change.’ Carrie cringed inside. A different curry house constituted a radical change? She really needed to get out more.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘Blimey, you’re up bright and early.’ Carrie rubbed her eyes, as if trying to clear the mirage that was Jade in the kitchen before nine o’clock on a Saturday morning.

  ‘I’m on a mission.’ Jade flicked her head up from her laptop. ‘Sort out flights to this place in France before Mum gets all uber-twitchy and comes up with a gazillion reasons why we can’t go. She’s finally got the deets of the village where this place is. And I’ve got an early shift at the café today. Babysitting tonight. And working at the hotel tomorrow. I’ll be rolling in the Benjamins when I get paid. Primani here I come.’

  ‘Not paying for your flight?’ asked Carrie and immediately regretted it when she saw her niece’s crestfallen face. She shouldn’t tease her; she was a good kid who most of the time pulled her weight. Her positive work ethic couldn’t be denied. If you asked her to do a job, and she wanted to do it, or acknowledged she had time to do it, you could rely on her. The trick was finding the right job and mentioning it at precisely the right moment.

  ‘I should, shouldn’t I?’ She turned to Carrie with a worried frown.

  ‘No, honey.’ Carrie laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘I was teasing you. I’m sure flights to France won’t be that expensive and you can be completely flexible about dates. Means we can get the cheapest flights.’ She winked at her niece. ‘And still be able to afford a pair of new jeans.’

  Jade pushed her hand off, laughing up at her. ‘You’re mean.’

  ‘What’s this about a new pair of jeans?’ Angela wandered in carrying a mountain of washing. ‘You’ve got enough clothes to sink a fleet of cruise ships.’

  ‘Actually,’ Jade tilted her nose in the air and said with a smug tone, ‘I told Auntie Carrie that I’d pay for my flight to France instead of buying a new pair of jeans.’

  ‘Really, darling, that’s sweet of you but you don’t have to.’ Angela put an arm around her daughter. ‘You’re saving up for your own car. That’s more important.’