‘Still Wilde. I’m not married.’
‘Well, she’s a pretty one.’ Mary straightens. ‘She’ll be driving the boys wild herself in a few years, I’ll be bound.’
My lip curls in spite of myself, and my fingers tighten on the spongy handle of the pram. But I force myself to take a breath, swallow down the biting remark I’m longing to make. Mary Wren is a powerful figure in the village – even seventeen years ago, you didn’t cross her, and I can’t imagine much has changed since, not now that her son is the local policeman.
I’d thought I’d shaken all this off when I left Salten House, this complicated web of local allegiances, the uneasy relationship between the village and the school, which Ambrose negotiated effortlessly, compared to the rest of us. I would like to pull Freya’s pram away from Mary, tell her to mind her own business. But I can’t afford to antagonise her. It’s not just for the sake of Kate, living down here, it’s for all of us. The school washed its hands of us long ago – and Salten, if you are rejected by both town and gown, can be a very hostile place indeed.
I shiver, in spite of the heat of the day, and Mary looks up.
‘Goose on your grave?’
I shake my head, and try to smile, and she laughs, showing stained, yellow teeth.
‘Well, it’s good to see you back,’ she says easily, patting the hood of Freya’s pram. ‘Seems like only yesterday you were in here, all of you, buying sweets and whatnot. Do you remember those tall tales your friend used to spin? What was her name … Cleo?’
‘Thea,’ I say, my voice low. Yes, I remember.
‘Told me her father was wanted for murdering her mother, and nearly had me believing her.’ Mary laughs again, her whole body shaking, making Freya’s pram tremble in sympathy. ‘Course, that was before I knew what terrible little liars you was, all of you.’
Liars. One word, tossed so casually into the stream of her conversation … is it my imagination, or is there suddenly something hostile in Mary’s voice?
‘Well …’ I tug gently on the pram, loosing the folds of the hood from her fingers, ‘I’d better be going … Freya will be wanting her lunch …’
‘Don’t let me keep you,’ Mary says lightly. I duck my head, in a kind of submissive apology and she steps back as I begin manoeuv-ring the pram around to leave the shop.
I’m halfway through a laborious three-point turn in the narrow aisle between the shelves, realising too late that I should have backed out, the way I came in, when the bell at the entrance clangs.
I turn to look over my shoulder. For a moment I don’t recognise the figure in the doorway, but when I do, my heart leaps suddenly inside my chest like a bird beating hopelessly against a cage.
His clothes are stained and crumpled, as if he’s slept in them, and there is a bruise on his cheekbone, cuts on his knuckles. But what strikes me, like a blow to the centre of my chest, is how much he has changed – and yet how little. He was always tall, but the lanky slenderness has gone, and the man standing there now fills the narrow entrance with his shoulders, exuding, without even trying, a sense of lean, contained strength.
But his face, the broad cheekbones, the narrow lips, and oh, God, his eyes …
I stand, stupid with the shock, trying to catch my breath, and he doesn’t see me at first, just nods a greeting to Mary and stands back, waiting politely for me to exit the shop. It’s only when I say his name, my voice husky and faltering, that his head jerks up, and he looks, really looks, for the first time, and his face changes.
‘Isa?’ Something falls to the floor, the keys he was holding in one hand. His voice is just as I remember it, deep and slow, with that strange little offbeat twist, the only trace of his mother tongue. ‘Isa, is it – is it really you?’
‘Yes.’ I try to swallow, try to smile, but the shock seems to have frozen the muscles in my face. ‘I – I thought you were – didn’t you go back to France?’
His expression is rigid, impassive, his golden eyes unreadable, and there is something a little stiff in his voice, as if he’s holding something in check.
‘I came back.’
‘But why – I don’t understand, why didn’t Kate say …?’
‘You’d have to ask her that.’
This time, I’m sure I’m not imagining it, there is definite coldness in his tone.
I don’t understand. What has happened? I feel like I’m groping blindly in a room filled with fragile, precious objects, tilting and rocking with every false step I make. Why didn’t Kate tell us Luc was back? And why is he so … But here I stop, unable to put a name to the emotion that’s radiating from Luc’s silent presence. What is it? It’s not shock – or not completely, not now the surprise of my presence has worn off. It’s a coiled, contained sort of emotion that I can tell he is trying to hold back. An emotion closer to …
The word comes to me as he takes a step forward, blocking my exit from the shop.
Hate.
I swallow.
‘Are you … are you well, Luc?’
‘Well?’ There is a laugh in his voice, but there’s no trace of mirth. ‘Well?’
‘I just –’
‘How the fuck can you ask that?’ he says, his voice rising.
‘What?’ I try to step back, but there is nowhere to go – Mary Wren is close behind me. Luc is blocking the doorway, with the pram between us, and all I can think of is that if he lashes out, it will be Freya who gets hurt. What has happened to change him so much?
‘Calm down, Luc,’ Mary says warningly from behind me.
‘Kate knew.’ Luc’s voice is shaking. ‘You knew what she was sending me back to.’
‘Luc, I didn’t – I couldn’t –’ My fingers are gripping the handle of Freya’s pram, the knuckles white. I want so badly to get out of this shop. There is a buzzing in my head, a bluebottle battering senselessly at the window, and I am reminded suddenly and horribly of the mutilated sheep, the flies around its spilled guts …
He says something in French that I don’t understand, but it sounds crude, and full of disgust.
‘Luc,’ Mary says more loudly, ‘step out of the way, and get a hold of yourself, unless you want me to call Mark?’
There is a silence, filled with waiting and the noise of the fly, and I feel my fingers tightening on the handle of the pram. And then Luc takes a slow, exaggerated step back, and waves a hand towards the doorway.
‘Je vous en prie,’ he says sarcastically.