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PROVENCE, 1930
The summer Elodie turned fifteen she had been looking forward, all year as usual, to coming home. To being with Grand-mère at last in Lamarin, with the Provençal sun on her shoulders, as she walked through the beautiful, cobbled streets and of course, perhaps most of all, she looked forward to spending time with Jacques.
Yet, on her first day back, when she wandered down to the village shop thinking that she might make a picnic for the two of them so that they could catch up, she saw him bagging produce for a girl she had never seen before who had long brown hair and long tanned limbs. She kept touching his arm. The two were laughing, their heads a whisper length away from the other.
Elodie stood rooted to the ground, then promptly turned on her heel and marched away before he saw her.
She was furious and she didn’t know why. But as she pounded the street, her legs pumping furiously, she came up with a few reasons.
She felt betrayed.
But it wasn’t, she told herself, firmly because she thought of Jacques as hers, though she did, of course. It was the betrayal of friendship. ‘Friendship,’ she said aloud, startling a pigeon who was basking in the sun a metre away.
‘Yes, that’s what is what it is – a betrayal of friendship,’ she hissed, warming to her theme. All the letters he’d written over the years, all his long accounts of all his various animal friends and not once, not ever, had he mentioned that girl with those very long legs.
‘What is a betrayal of friendship?’ asked a curious voice.
She whipped around.
There was a nun standing behind her. She had a sweet, round face and her habit was long and white and blue. Bits of reddish hair were just visible at her temples.
Elodie realised that she had taken the path to the abbey without realising it. It was a beautiful old honey-coloured building with an old-fashioned garden full of roses that bordered the lavender fields; the sisters used the lavender to make all sorts of healing goods, from soaps to honey and perfume.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Sister,’ said Elodie, who coloured further, her face turning blood red.
‘Don’t be,’ said the sister. ‘You look hot. I’m Sister Augustine. Would you care for some rose lemonade?’ She had on gardening gloves and was holding shears, and had been, until Elodie’s outburst, pruning the roses nearby.
Elodie found that she would. She didn’t at all feel like she would like to go straight back to Lamarin. In fact, for the first time since she was ten, she didn’t want to be in Provence at all.
The sister guided her towards a table beneath a wide umbrella, removed her gloves and placed the garden shears onto the top. It was peaceful here with a sweeping view of the lavender to the right and the abbey gardens to the left. The abbey itself was beautiful, with wonderful stonework and arches in the windows.
Elodie saw some of the other sisters walking in the gardens and into the building, but she and Sister Augustine were, for the moment, quite alone.
It was lovely, but she couldn’t appreciate it, not with her emotions all over the place.
The nun poured her a tall glass of lemonade. Elodie took a sip, and it was sweet and delicious, but it may as well have been made of sand.
‘So what was this about friendship and betrayal?’ she asked.
Elodie sighed. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘It didn’t look like nothing. It looked like if you carried on that way you might get carted away.’
Elodie looked at her in shock and to her surprise she laughed.
The nun winked. ‘Tell me about it?’ she invited.
Elodie took a deep breath, and then she did. ‘Well, see, my friend Jacques…’
‘Is he your boyfriend?’
‘No, he’s my best friend.’
‘Right, carry on.’
Elodie nodded. ‘Well, see, we have been friends for years and we tell each other everything and now – well, it’s like I don’t know him at all!’ Her nostrils flared. ‘You know he is obsessed with birds – obsessed – he sends letters to me in England full of all his observations, with sketches and detailed migration patterns. I could tell you every little bit of bird gossip there was to know in Lamarin, but did he spare even one sentence to tell me about his new human friend? Since when does he have human friends?’
Sister Augustine took a sip of her lemonade. ‘So until now he has never had any other friends, besides you?’
