‘Eighteen months is not that long to go without. It won’t shrivel up and drop off.’ Olivier laughed as he remembered the unfortunate gingerbread man from the night before. And his smile lingered as he thought of Ashleigh’s laughter too.
‘You’re such a weirdo.’
‘And you are such a pig. It’s a wonder we’re friends at all.’
‘Very true…I’m really pleased you got yourself out of here for a bit though. I’ll miss you this Christmas, but I think it’s going to do you some good. I can feel it in my waters.’
‘I’d go see a doctor about that if I were you,’ Olivier joked, even though he agreed to a certain extent. He knew he needed a holiday, to physically rest, but he also needed the space to think.
Bertrand laughed and they moved on to talking about Olivier’s god-daughter who was now two and running rings around her parents. They said goodbye and Olivier went straight upstairs to have a shower before he got to work figuring out what he could use the moulds to create, if he was going to make up Brighton the way Romesh had suggested. Re-creating the seaside town would be interesting. He could use glacier mints for the ice rink and, what else? The clock. He could mould that and then pipe on the details, perhaps?
Pulling on a pair of trousers from the wardrobe, his eye caught the box his maman must have been talking about. He finished dressing and then lifted it out and placed it on the bed. Inside were a few posters like he’d predicted of his favourite films, a few books he’d thought long lost, and some CDs he’d probably left because he’d listened to almost everything on his iPod. Where had the old stereo gone? There was his football kit too, which he’d decided to leave, and his papa had taken exception to. It had been the strip of Auguste’s favourite team, not Olivier’s. He’d always liked to play the game but hadn’t picked a side. Kind of the way he’d always dealt with his parents after their divorce.
So little to show for his time here, but he supposed he’d taken all the most important things with him. Everything that had mattered he’d packed in his suitcase to take back to Paris or to his boarding school. Ashleigh’s comment about his maman missing him came back to him. He’d never got the impression she had – not in a pining kind of way – but then he supposed teenagers weren’t exactly programmed to notice how their parents were feeling. It hadn’t occurred to him that the custody arrangements hadn’t suited his maman, because his parents had been so amicable, and that was the way Olivier had desperately wanted it to stay.
After double-checking the wardrobe he discovered his old CD player at the back and pulled it out to plug it in. Picking one of his favourite albums, he lay down on the bed and let the music pull him back to the time before he’d decided to go to catering college, before he’d met Nancy, and wondered if he’d still make the same choices now.
He’d spent his teenage years living out of a suitcase really; it was no wonder he’d wanted to settle down and stay put for a little while. Perhaps he’d been so eager for that stability he’d rushed into the decision of where and with whom to try and lay down those roots. Nancy obviously hadn’t been the right choice and his papa hadn’t been shy about pointing that out, even when Olivier was at his rawest after the divorce.
And then there was catering college. A harder knot to unpick, and a choice that Auguste had thoroughly endorsed.
All Olivier knew at the moment was that even though he was on holiday – and could get away with dozing on the bed and listening to music all afternoon if the mood took him – what he really wanted to do was get back downstairs and start experimenting with chocolate.
