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‘Oh dear… but I’m sure God will forgive you and I think it’s a lovely idea. Ace hasn’t shown me yet so I’ll ask him if we can go up there.’
Nanou chuckled. ‘Do not worry, I have been looking for an excuse not to go to Mass since I was a child; and I’m not surprised Ace has not taken you. There isn’t much to look at. It is just a group of big rocks that look like they’ve been here for hundreds of years when they actually came from a quarry up the road.’
‘Are you going to be buried there, Nanou?’
Vigorous head nodding preceded her reply. ‘Oh yes. We are all going in. Bettye and Sylvie are probably glad because it will save them a few euros and Silvestre is very happy about it because he never wants to leave the farm, not even to go on holiday, which is another story.’
Edie laughed at this, which encouraged Nanou to embellish. ‘Silvestre, and even Joe, are the total opposite of Jenny because they are happy being here, doing what they do but as soon as her mind wanders and her feet begin to itch, she flies away and for a little while we all miss her. Me, a lot, because the house is full of men. Then there is the positive side. I can put the whole house in order and everywhere is tidy because Jenny is the messiest person I have ever met.’
Edie smiled and then asked another question. ‘So, Joe hasn’t got a secret lover stashed away anywhere then? No mistresses in the village.’
‘No, certainly not. Perhaps he has women friends when he goes to London, and he’s not been back to America for so long that if he has someone waiting there she will be very cross, or très stupide!’
Edie was inordinately pleased by this. That Joe didn’t have a special person in his life, apart from the ex-Madame Jarrett, although it would have been interesting to see how Jenny would behave around someone who vied for his attention, someone who might give her a run for her money in the true-love-of-his-life stakes. Then again, time would tell.
The sound of tyres on gravel drew Edie and Nanou’s attention to the yard where they saw Ace’s jeep pull up, followed by two black Audis, their blacked-out windows obscuring the passengers in the back.
‘I think we have company. I will make coffee, Eedee. Can you help? We will need lots of cups.’ Nanou stood and before she had made it to the kettle, the kitchen door opened and Joe entered, followed by four men dressed to match their cars, and behind, Silvestre and the boys.
Joe threw his sunglasses on the table and rubbed his eyes before indicating to the men they should sit and over the scrape of chairs he introduced their guests. ‘Nanou, Edie, this is Pierre, and his colleagues, Kamal, Hervé and Ivan. Not bad for me, I managed to get you all right.’
For once, rather than the palaver of handshakes and kissing, the seated men merely nodded and removed their sunglasses, a cinematic act that gave Edie the nervous giggles, totally inappropriate which was why she scooted over to Nanou and helped with the coffee. She actually didn’t mind playing the little woman, and maybe the men thought she was the help, but at least she was in the room and could listen to what was going on. And then Joe said something that made her heart sing.
‘Hey, ladies. Leave that. I want you both to hear what Pierre has to say.’ Joe waved Nanou and Edie over to the table and as they drew near, he placed his arms around their shoulders, pulling them close. ‘Pierre, this is my dear friend Nanou, and Edie is my son’s girlfriend and I want you to keep a special eye on both of them because they’re very important to all of us. Aren’t you, ladies?’
While she hated being the centre of attention, all eyes on her, cheeks ablaze, inside Edie was fit to burst. Joe’s words and the feel of his strong arms holding her tight was a moment she’d never dared dream of.
Nanou, on the other hand was clearly basking in the adoration of Joe, her tiny frame scrunched against his towering body; she looked up and adored him right back. ‘And you are important to me,’ she said, then turned to the men in black, ‘so you boys make sure you look after him, or you will have me to answer to. Now, I will bring the coffee and listen. I am a woman. I can do both.’
Knowing when he was defeated, Joe released them both and took a seat at the table. Feeling like her status amongst the family was now clearly defined, Edie was even more than happy to help Nanou multitask. While they tried not to rattle crockery and over the rumble of the kettle and coffee machine, Edie filled the sugar basin and listened to Pierre’s plan of action and with every word, realised that she’d got there just at the right time because after today, nobody was getting inside the grounds of La Babinais, or the close-knit Jarrett family circle either.
It was obvious that now the security team, or part of it, was in place, that the mood around the farm had lifted. It had been busy but feeding four extra mouths was nothing to Nanou but preparing the holiday annexe with bed linen and provisions had tired her out even with help from Edie, Ace, and Lance. The team were going to use it while they were there, providing twenty-four-hour protection on rotating shifts so would need somewhere to sleep and eat, without disturbing the family. Nanou had been in her element, rallying her troops and in the meantime Pierre had got on with rallying some of his own.
Monday morning would see the arrival of more bodies, plus a specialist company who would secure the property with night vision, motion-sensor cameras around the perimeter fences which would also be patrolled by armed guards with dogs, keeping a watchful eye on the vast swathe of farmland to the east of the house. The cliff face was deemed safe, unless Spider-Man fancied his chances scaling the sheer incline. The entrance would be guarded day and night and only those with clearance from the family would be allowed up to the house.
Four more men were en route from Paris to take over the evening shift which caused Joe to suggest they cancelled the driver who was collecting Jenny and let her rough it in the back of a black van, like the good old days. While the others laughed along, Edie heard the sarcasm in her own thoughts, oh, I bet she’d love that.
On Pierre’s advice, Ace’s birthday celebrations were cancelled merely to prevent social media breaches because if Gus and his contacts were correct, the news was about to break Stateside. The news channels and press would think nothing of sharing photos lifted from Facebook of Joe and his family and friends having a great time while women shared their painful stories with the world. Ace hadn’t objected, and even though he trusted his friends implicitly, he wasn’t naïve and knew that they might slip up or, potentially succumb to the lure of five minutes of fame. Journalists could be very persuasive.
Edie and Ace had finally managed to snatch a moment together and were on the loft balcony, watching the activity below where Kamal and Pierre were chatting to Joe and Silvestre, Ivan and Hervé already in position at the gates awaiting backup from Paris.
Ace was holding Edie close; her head lay on his shoulder so she could feel the vibration of his words as he spoke. ‘He seems less stressed now, don’t you think? I was getting worried because he lets stuff get to him and when it does he either sinks or loses his mind and neither is a pretty sight.’
Edie pulled away slightly and looked at Ace. ‘What do you mean, it’s not a pretty sight?’
‘His default setting when he can’t cope is to hit the bottle. He gets totally wasted and holes up here for days on end, or wanders around the farm like a madman, walking and walking till he drops. Talking to himself, shouting at the moon which sends the dogs barmy, crying like a baby and saying stuff nobody understands. It’s like he has to get it out of his system and then, when he’s on the other side, he writes music.’
Edie looked down at the man below, whose long salt-and-pepper hair was blowing in the breeze, his shirt flapping around his body that stood almost half a head higher than six-foot Silvestre and she wondered what made such a solid, straight-down-the-line bloke, fall apart. ‘That’s so sad. That he gets like that, and it must be awful to see. Does it happen often?’
Ace rubbed her arm then kissed the top of her head. ‘Not a lot, thank goodness. In a way I’d rather see him smashed and angry at the world than when the melancholy hits. That scares me the most and before you arrived, I could see he was on the verge of it. I’m sure it was those letters that set him off.’
‘Has he said anything more about them, who he thinks Marnie is? After the passionate way he spoke about the past, I’m not surprised that it gets on top of him now and then, building up like a pressure cooker in his head. I get like that sometimes when I wallow, and then that morphs into anger, and I don’t know what to do with it. My default setting is to have a good cry and trawl social media putting angry faces on random posts and then I eat a pack of Jaffa cakes. Sometimes two packs.’ Ace’s chest shook with the sound of his laughter and it pleased Edie, knowing she had cheered him up.
‘Well, I wish angry emojis and Jaffa cakes would work on Dad, but at least Mum will be here soon to keep an eye on him because if anyone can calm him down, she can. Either that or they’ll get a bit stoned and sing, which is entertaining in itself.’
If Ace thought she was smiling at his portrayal of Joe and Jenny swinging their flares around the campfire, he was wrong because that woman was seriously starting to grate on her nerves. It was like Jenny could do no wrong and she was the answer to everyone’s prayers.
Had they all forgotten that she left her seven-year-old son in France because she had wanderlust and had got bored with domesticity and being out of the limelight? Talk about blinkered! It was like everyone had rewritten the history of Saint Jenny to mask the fact she had dumped her husband and son so she could screw her way around the States, again. Recognising the whistle of the pressure cooker in her head, Edie took a breath and pulled Ace closer, forcing down that familiar rush of anger and wiped her mind of thoughts of Jenny.
Ace rubbed Edie’s bare arms that were covered in goosepimples. ‘Are you cold? Do you want to go inside? It’s getting really windy now and I’ll feel sorry for the security guys if that storm hits. I saw on the weather report it’s working its way up the Atlantic so will be here any day, probably on my birthday. I never liked Saturdays anyway, especially wet ones.’
‘We’ll make it nice for you, though, and you’ll have your family around and we can rope in the security men to make up the numbers. I know, we could get them in some photos looking moody and mysterious, armed and guarding your birthday cake, one with a fire extinguisher in case your candles get out of control.’ Edie loved it when Ace laughed, his eyes always gave away how he was feeling and when he looked at her, his lips confirmed it.
‘I really love you, Edie. I’m so glad you’re here with me right now. I don’t ever want to let you go.’
‘And I love you, and I don’t want you to let me go, ever. I’ve been so happy, being here with you.’ It was true. Everything else aside, that bubbling pot inside her head that simmered away, no matter how many times she’d turned off the heat, no matter how scared she was that it would eventually boil over and ruin this. Her and Ace.
And as if by magic, timed to perfection, tarnishing a beautiful moment, the sound of a car pulling into the yard turned their attention downwards.
‘At last. Mum’s here. Come on, let’s go and meet her.’ Ace turned and took Edie’s hand. As she was pulled away, she caught a glimpse of Joe, striding towards the limousine. Not wanting to see the charming moment of reunion she followed Ace inside to the sound of a whistling kettle, this and her annoyance piercing her brain.
