‘Ava, you made it!’ She doesn’t make the effort to get up which I am grateful for, instead she leans over the table for me to kiss her on the cheeks. She smells expensive.
‘I thought I was going to be early but looks like you beat me to it.’
‘I’m a bit of a cockroach. I turn up at nine for a coffee and they won’t get rid of me until dinner.’ The waiter, a middle-aged man who is smoking by the door, looks up.
‘She brings in the customers.’ He shrugs and then grins widely at her. He stubs out the cigarette and transports a cumbersome chalkboard menu to the table. We are the only ones here.
‘What’s good?’ I ask, plastering on a smile.
‘Depends what your position is on animal welfare.’
‘Easily swayed depending on taste.’ Her eyes sparkle at my response and then she gestures to a scribble under the entrées. ‘Well then I’d go for the Normande.’
‘What’s in it?’
‘I find the quickest way to lose your appetite here is to ask for the ingredients.’
I am satisfied that she’s right and let her give my order to the waiter who has already managed to deliver a carafe of red with two glasses.
‘Are you local?’ I ask.
She smiles. ‘Yes. I’m a long-term resident of Chateau Eleanor.’ I rack my brain until the image of a rather grand hotel on the edge of the Bastide is bought into my vision.
‘The hotel?’
‘Yes. I came one summer a few years back to meet my friend – the one who owned the apartment – never left.’ She lights a cigarette and then offers one to me. I take it, grateful to do something with my hands.
‘I didn’t know you could live there?’
She smirks. ‘I don’t think they did either. I’m sure it’s an imposition in the summer but the manager and I came to some understanding. At least in the winter the bills get paid.’
I wonder how open she is to questioning, whether she will think I’m nosy or interested if I push further. I punt for the latter. ‘Why there?’
She nods her head from side to side as if weighing up her response. ‘I like getting waited on. Back in the States I’m sure I would have been lumped in some “assisted care facility”, probably charge me more than they do, and at least they don’t talk to me here as if I’m senile. Probably get fed better too.’
‘I read about people doing that on cruise ships.’
She shrugs. ‘I get seasick.’
She greets the waiter who has swapped his cigarette for a tray of steaming food. He places the plat du jour on the table with a flourish. I hadn’t realised how hungry I was until I start to eat.
The American looks on proudly. ‘I thought you might need feeding.’ She elegantly takes a bite of her own and nods her approval at the waiter. ‘Your best yet.’ She raises her glass with her spare hand and I think I can see him blush.
‘It’s so good,’ I mumble through another mouthful.
‘You never came here before?’ The American asks quizzically, I’m not sure if the glasses are magnifying her eyes or whether they have always been this large. I know now that it is my turn to swap some information.
‘No.’ I wipe some sauce off my chin. ‘We didn’t really venture this far out of the square.’
‘We?’
Shit. A slip of the tongue and now we’re here. I weigh it up. There isn’t much point in lying; if she does live in the hotel there will be people who eventually will recognise me, put two and two together. ‘My husband and I.’
‘Oh.’ She doesn’t look taken aback. I realise that in the same way I have been guessing what brought her here, she has been doing the same about me. ‘And your husband is back in England?’
‘No.’ I take a swig of red from the carafe. ‘He died, brain aneurism, all very sudden.’ I have learned that the best way to deal with delivering the news is similar to ripping off a plaster. That if I give all the information at the outset there’s only space for one sympathetic, kind-hearted response. If you give the bare minimum, people get curious, and the whole thing gets dragged out for weeks.
‘I’m sorry.’ She’s taken aback now, but unlike a lot of people who are met with that sharp statement, she doesn’t shrink from it.
