The wind moaned.
Perdu waited to feel something. To feel her. But all his senses could discern was the sweat running down his back, the blood beating painfully in his ears, and the sharp gravel under his knees.
He opened his eyes again and stared at her name – Manon Basset (née Morello) – at the dates – 1967–1992 – and at her framed black-and-white photo.
But nothing happened.
She isn’t here.
A gust of wind ruffled a cypress.
She isn’t here!
He got to his feet, baffled and disappointed.
‘Where are you?’ he whispered into the wind.
The family grave was piled high with porcelain flowers, cat figurines and a sculpture of an open book. Some of the sculptures held photos, lots of pictures of Manon that Perdu had never seen before.
Her wedding photos, with writing below: ‘With love and no regrets, Luc.’
Another, showing Manon holding her cat, read: ‘The door out onto the terrace is always open – Maman.’
A third: ‘I came because you went – Victoria.’
Jean reached out carefully to touch the sculpture that looked like an open book, and read the inscription. ‘Death doesn’t matter. We will always remain what we were to one another.’
Jean read the lines again, this time out loud. They were the words Manon had spoken in Buoux as they searched for their star among the dark mountains.
He ran his hand over the grave.
But she isn’t here.
Manon wasn’t in there, shut away in stone, surrounded by earth and dismal solitude. Not for one instant had she descended into the crypt to her abandoned body.
‘Where are you?’ he asked once more.
He went over to the stone parapet and looked out at the broad, sumptuous Calavon valley below. Everything was so tiny. It was as though he were one of the circling buzzards. He sniffed the air. Breathed in every molecule, then out again. He felt the warmth and heard the wind playing in the Atlas cedars. He could even make out Manon’s vineyard.
Next to one of the cypresses, near the hoses for watering the flowers, a broad flight of steps led to the upper terrace. Jean sat down on them, removed the cork from the bottle of Manon XV white wine, and poured some into the glass he had brought. He took a tentative sip. He smelled the wine; it had a cheering aroma. The Manon tasted of honey and pale fruit, of a tender sigh before sliding into sleep. A vibrant, contradictory wine, a wine brimming with love.
Fantastic work, Luc.
He set the glass down beside him on the stone steps and opened Manon’s diary. He had dipped into it repeatedly over the previous days and nights while Max, Catherine and Victoria had been working in the vines. Some passages he knew by heart; others had surprised him. Some things had hurt him, and much of what was written had filled him with gratitude. He had had no idea of how much he had meant to Manon. He used to long for it to be so, but only now that he had made peace with himself and was newly in love did he learn the truth. And it healed old wounds.
Now, though, he searched for an entry she had written during her wait.
I have already lived long enough, Manon had written in late autumn, on an autumn day like today. I have lived and loved, I have had the best of this world. Why cry over the ending? Why cling to what remains? The advantage of dying is that you stop being afraid of it. There is a sense of peacefulness too.
He leafed forward through the pages. Now came the entries that broke his heart with compassion. The ones where she spoke of the fear that flooded through her body in waves, the nights when Manon would wake up in the silent darkness and hear death creeping closer. The night too, when she was heavily pregnant and had run into Luc’s room, where he held her until morning, forcing himself not to cry.
And then did, in the shower, where he thought she couldn’t hear him.
She had heard, of course.
Again and again, Manon expressed her disbelief at Luc’s strength. He had fed and washed her, had watched her dwindling away, with the exception of her pregnant tummy.
Perdu drank another glass before he went on reading.
My child is feeding on me. It takes my healthy flesh. My tummy is rosy, plump and alive. There must be a litter of tiny cats in there, it’s that frisky. The rest of me is a thousand years older: grey and putrid and brittle like one of those crispbreads northerners are always eating. My girl will eat buttery, shiny, golden croissants. She will be victorious – victorious over death. We shall thumb our noses at it, this child and I. I would like to call her Victoria.
How Manon loved her unborn baby! How she nourished it with the love that burned so exceptionally brightly within her.
No wonder Victoria is so strong, he thought. Manon gave herself entirely to her.
He flicked back to that August night when Manon had decided to leave him.