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Edie
Never had Edie eaten a meal like the one that Nanou served up. Four courses of heaven; salmon mousse entrée, boeuf bourguignon and vegetables for main, a platter of cheeses then strawberries and meringue for dessert. Ace explained that they always ate lunch together, it was their big meal of the day and his favourite, then in the evening Nanou and Silvestre ate at home and he and Joe made their own food, something lighter, usually pizza if Joe got his way.
It had been a battle of the wills, and a test of her mental agility to draw an imaginary line down the table and separate her feelings for Ace from those towards his father. The urge to scrutinise Joe was immense, the desire to hold Ace’s hand and be as close to him as possible intense. When Joe looked her way or asked a question her heart flipped, when Ace did the same it melted.
Focus, that’s all she had to do, so she gave Ace a nudge. ‘I think I’ll need a nap after drinking wine and beer… maybe tomorrow I’ll just have water.’
‘I’m the same, I usually just have the one glass at lunch and then water so don’t feel like you have to keep up with Dad, or Silvestre, otherwise you’ll be paralytic. Today was different and I felt like celebrating you being here, but you do have very, and I mean very red cheeks. Have you caught the sun?’
‘I don’t know, have I?’ Edie placed her hands on her cheeks that were hot to the touch. Feeling a sudden need for fresh air and while Nanou made coffee, she asked Ace if they could bring in her case, and, it would also give them a few cheeky minutes to make more memories.
When they returned the table was partially cleared and after removing a carrier bag from her case, Edie returned to the table and feeling emboldened by the wine, she called Joe’s name and when he turned, passed him a gift-wrapped parcel.
‘I couldn’t think what to get you, so I went old school. To say thank you for having me.’ She’d brought Joe two special treats from England; some retro sweets and a drink she thought he might remember from his childhood. Edie could see from his face he was pleased the moment he pulled them from the paper.
‘Black Jacks and flying saucers, and Fizzers… I love all these, thanks kid. I’ve not had them in years, and I ain’t sharing my shrimps so don’t anyone ask.’ Joe was rifling through the bag and pulled out a Fruit Salad, opening it quickly before Edie passed him a bottle.
‘And this… I couldn’t bring any more, there wasn’t room in my case.’
Joe’s face broke into a smile as he turned the bottle around in his hands and for a second or two looked lost in thought before looking across the table. ‘Lance, do you remember when we went to Manchester, I took you to see the Vimto Statue and we brought loads of bottles back with us?’ Lance replied with a shrug and a blank expression, so Joe asked Ace instead. ‘You remember, don’t you? Your aunty Margaret made you and your cousins Vimto lollies with it. We should make some now and stick ’em in the freezer.’
‘Yeah, course I do. Let’s face it, Dad, if it was made in Manchester I’ve either drank it or eaten it!’
Everyone apart from Lance laughed, and Edie was relieved that Ace had redressed the balance and saved his dad’s feelings, something Lance could have done had he been bothered. Ace had told her that memories were everything to Joe, and he loved nothing more than talking about his home and family especially when Margaret stayed. His other favourite subject was the glory days of the band, and once him and Gus got started there was no shutting them up. Edie secretly hoped that when Gus arrived she’d be able to listen to their stories and have the opportunity to add more notes to her book.
Not that she had time to dwell and continued handing out gifts and gave Silvestre a mug and Nanou an apron, and Lance also got a box of retro sweets that he was gracious enough to accept with a thank you and a smile. He was a funny one and that was for sure. She’d noticed him watching her, flicking his eyes away when she caught him. He was friendly enough, but Edie got the impression he was just going through the motions, toeing the line really. In fact, he looked bored, with the meal, and the conversation and she wondered why he was there if it was all such an effort. She also wondered if he knew how lucky he was to have all this, these lovely people, a family around him. Clearly not.
Edie knew loads about him already and it would be fascinating to see if he matched up with the clippings, the photos from gossip magazines that she’d printed off on the uni photocopier, then carefully cut out and glued in, like a fastidious seven-year-old and their football card collection. Edie had got her money’s worth out of her course fees and access to that photocopier, that was for sure. It wasn’t the same, storing things on her laptop. She was more old school and liked the touch of paper and handwritten notes, pages to turn and ponder.
Seeing the palm of a hand hover over her face, she laughed when she heard the voice that accompanied it. ‘Earth to Edie, are you in there?’ Ace had caught her daydreaming. ‘Shall we take your things up to your room, then if you’re not too tired we can go for a walk, and I’ll show you around the farm.’
‘Let me help Nanou with the dishes first. There’s so many. I can’t leave them all to her.’
Ace stood and grabbed her hand. ‘She’ll be fine, I promise, and you can help her tomorrow if it makes you feel better. Now come on, I can’t wait to show you around.’
After he’d pulled her upwards a thought pinged into her head and even though it made her blush, she couldn’t hide the grin that spread across her face as she whispered into his ear.
‘And I can’t wait to give you your present. It’s a very special one.’ She waited a second and when she saw the light dawn on Ace’s face, she gave him a cheeky wink and then after they thanked Nanou for lunch and said they’d see everyone later, they hurried from the room.
They were seated on the rocks, Joe, Edie and Ace, all watching Lance as he waded into the ocean with Bob and Vic who liked to get properly wet when they played fetch the tennis ball. It was still warm enough to swim which the three younger members of the party had done, whereas Joe had wimped out and said he’d mind the coats. That had resulted in jeers as they were the only ones on the small, isolated beach, a little further around the coast from the bigger stretch of sand that led to Herval.
In the week since she’d arrived, Edie had made sure they came down to the beach at least once a day, morning or evening or both; she loved it.
Edie had always dreamed of living by the sea but in her mind’s eye it was a tropical beach, the quintessential tourist photo of an equatorial paradise but now, having seen the beauty of the Brittany coastline, she would swap her dream in a heartbeat. The images she’d seen online were nothing compared to being there, high on a cliff surrounded by nature. Each day was brought to her in a technicolour palette; blue skies touched the deep black horizon where waves as big as whales rolled towards shore, a turbulent swell of greeny-blue where the ocean met the rugged coastline. There, jutting grey rockfaces edged with smudges of brown-gold sand were enclosed by sheer white cliffs topped with verdant emerald pastures or patchworked fields of fallow earth.
She could sit and look at it forever, breathe it in, imagining the tales that the sea could tell, carried across the world on the Atlantic winds that whipped over land, swapping stories with the great monoliths who whispered their secrets, myths captured in stone, shared by the pagan gods with mortals here on earth.
And when the house fell silent at night, as she lay next to Ace as he slept, Edie could just about hear the crash of the waves through the open window. In the morning she’d be woken by the screech of seagulls, the rumble of a tractor, even the silence of the countryside had its own way of communicating, calming, easing you gently into the day. It was safe to say that Brittany and La Babinais had got under her skin and so had Ace and his family, and as much as she’d wanted to be accepted, she hadn’t expected to fall in love with it all.
And she’d bonded with Joe because he was so easy to be around, and no matter how hard she looked for cracks, for reasons not to like him, to uphold the myth, there were none. Things were going more slowly with Lance the dysfunctional man-child. Mainly because it was as though he’d built this impenetrable wall of resentment and entitlement around himself that was, as Joe would say, a bit of a ball-ache to break down.
Still, rather than sitting in his room for hours checking what she presumed were his social media accounts, he’d joined in when Joe attempted to teach her how to clay-pigeon shoot, and they’d all trekked across the farm on the quad bikes.
Card nights had been fun, drinking beer and eating whatever Joe decided to rustle up for tea, not dinner, another of the northernisms that he refused to let go of. He was actually a really good but very messy cook and an excellent poker player too, and she’d lost all of her matchsticks to him. She’d also loved looking through his photos, the two of them with a brew, concealing her disappointment when what she was hoping for didn’t happen, what she prayed to see wasn’t there. That still hurt.
As she shuffled position on the rock to relieve the numb-bum feeling, Edie could taste sea salt on her lips, blown in on the wind. Joe was seated a body width away on her right and the sound of him laughing with Ace immediately wiped away her gloom. Keep Joe separate. Enjoy this, you don’t know how long it’ll last.
They were taking bets whether or not Lance would end up on his arse and from the look of the waves that were getting choppier by the second, frothy horses’ heads rearing higher with each swell, it was an odds-on bet. To her left was Ace, who after whipping off his partially dried swimming shorts was struggling to get damp legs into his jeans. He’d also lost one of his socks, and the guilty party in that scenario was seated on Edie’s knee. Riva had claimed Edie (and Ace’s sock) for her own and always beat Luna to the post if the ditsy Spaniel fancied her chances.
