‘Yes.’
There were already suitcases in the back seat of the taxi, the same expensive cases that I’d seen the round and red-faced man struggling with at St-Pierre-des-Corps.
‘But you already have a fare, Monsieur,’ I said, looking at the suitcases. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise …’
‘It is no problem,’ he assured me. He shoved the costly luggage aside, unconcerned, to make room for my less impressive bag. ‘The gentleman has business to attend to. I will return for him. He will not miss me; your hotel is not so far.’
It was, in truth, the shortest ride I’d ever taken in a taxi. A few moments along the river, back the way I’d just come, then up a narrow square wedged tight with plane trees to a still smaller square shaded by leaning acacias.
‘The Hotel de France,’ my driver announced, with a smile that was wholly understandable. I could probably have walked the same distance myself in less than five minutes, and for free. I looked at the metre on the dashboard, and his smile deepened. The metre was blank.
‘There is no charge, Madame,’ he told me.
‘Of course there is.’ I reached for my wallet. I didn’t like to be in debt.
‘But I insist. The taxi, it has hardly moved at all.’
‘How much do I owe you?’
He looked at me a long moment, silently weighing my will against his, and then he tipped his head, considering. ‘Ten francs.’
‘A cup of coffee costs ten francs,’ I reminded him.
‘Fifteen francs, then.’
I handed him twenty-five, and he took it with a thoughtful glance at my face. ‘I hope that you enjoy your stay in Chinon, Madame.’
I’d have no problem doing that, I thought a moment later, as I looked around the quiet hotel lobby. For all my cousin’s failings, he did have his brilliant moments, and he’d chosen the Hotel de France in one of them.
It was an older hotel, lovingly restored and decorated in rich classic tones of rose and cream, with an elegant hardwood staircase spiralling upwards from the entrance hall. To my left a few steps led up to the sunlit breakfast room, while on my right a door stood open to the bar. Both rooms were empty.
The young woman at the front desk was amiable and pretty, if a little dim. No, Monsieur Braden had not yet arrived, but our rooms were all prepared … two rooms … I was sure that we wanted two rooms? Very sure, I told her, and with a small, perplexed shrug she handed me the key. ‘Your room is on the second floor, Madame. Room 215.’
And so my holiday begins, I thought drily, with Harry, as I’d half expected, nowhere to be seen. I could almost hear Aunt Jane’s mild voice saying, Didn’t I tell you, dear? as I climbed the two flights of curving stairs to the second floor.
My room, at least, was all that I’d been promised – bright and fresh-smelling, with a soaring, white-painted ceiling and walls papered in a soft, restful gold. And best of all I had a window, a huge casement window that looked out over the square and the clustered rooftops of the old medieval village.
Swinging one half of the window inward on its hinges, I leaned out as far as I dared and inspected my view. There was a fountain nestled among the acacia trees in the square below me. I hadn’t noticed it on my arrival, but there it was, a large bronze fountain ringed by sculpted figures. Even above the confused noise of the street and square I could hear the steady dancing splash of water cascading from the two-tiered basin into the gathering pool below. The sound set off a rush of memory, and for a fleeting moment I was five years old again, my fingers trailing in another fountain while my father urged me, ‘Make a wish …’
I pressed the memory firmly back, and focused. A man was sitting on the rim of the fountain’s pool with a spotted dog sleeping at his feet, and beside them a flower-seller was starting to dismantle his display of drooping marigolds and roses. I was drooping a little myself. Another wave of weariness swept over me, and I pulled myself away from the open window, turning my wrist to see the time. Three o’clock, nearly. Fifteen hours, I corrected myself with a faint smile. Time all travellers were at rest.
It was sheer heaven to crawl between the sheets of the sprawling bed and draw the blanket to my chin. I was so completely and utterly exhausted that I would not have expected to dream. But I did dream, all the same. I dreamed that an angel was playing the violin outside my open window. It should have been a lovely dream, but it wasn’t.
The angel wore my cousin’s smiling face.
CHAPTER THREE
We were seven …
I awoke refreshed, completing my revival with a half-hour in my private bathroom. The small tiled room was thick with steam when I finally switched off the shower spray and emerged, my skin the colour of a boiled lobster above the plush white hotel towel. The steam followed me in a swirling great cloud as I dripped my way across the carpet and round the corner of the rumpled bed to push the window open wider.
I had only slept an hour or so, but it might have been a different day. The grey sky had broken to reveal a clear, unblemished field of blue, through which the sun blazed its determined way towards the west. Bright sunlight touched the feathered tops of the acacia trees in the square below and glittered in the pools of the fountain. In the place where earlier I’d seen the flower- seller, a weary trio of tourists now sipped demis of beer at a little white table with red plastic chairs, one of a dozen or more such tables that seemed to have sprouted from nowhere in the square.
I drew back again from the window, combing my fingers through my drying hair. The air was biting still, despite the sun – too cool, perhaps, for an outdoor table, but the idea of a drink appealed to me.