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‘All my time outside,’ she said, and told him about her time in the gardens at the abbey as well as her daily swims with Grand-mère. He told her about everything that had been happening on his little island. So far it seemed like things in Germany had calmed down somewhat. ‘For a while some of the senior researchers were thinking of packing up. But it all seems to have calmed down a bit. Freddie says that maybe it’s just the usual political rally stuff – once they get elected things calm down a bit.’
‘You speak to Freddie?’ she said, surprised.
‘Oh yes,’ he said with a grin. ‘Just a note every so often. He wanted to stay in touch.’
She smiled. ‘I’m glad.’
For now, though, they had a whole month together, and they made the most of it. Elodie would slip away from the restaurant, so they could spend the warm evenings in each other’s arms outside, just listening to the birds.
It was incredible how many still came to find him: the crows, blue tits and starlings. They were all old friends, who did not forget the kind boy who had befriended them.
Sometimes they would fall asleep in the meadow, their own private world, and they would study each other, counting the freckles and beauty spots until it felt to Elodie that she knew Jacques’ body as well as her own. Their skin glowed from their love-making.
It was a drowsy afternoon, when even the birds were taking a break, when he asked her to be his wife. She was making herself a flower crown, and one of the crows, thinking this was a game, was trying to steal the daisies she assembled.
‘Will you marry me?’ he asked.
She looked up, and then saw to her surprise that he was holding up a blue leather ring box, and inside it was a gorgeous emerald ring surrounded by seed pearls.
‘Jacques,’ she breathed, her eyes brimming with emotion.
‘It was my mother’s,’ he said, almost shyly. ‘She would have wanted you to have it.’
She dashed away a tear, and then took his head in her hands and kissed him fiercely.
When he put it on her finger, she looked down at it and then back at him, and felt overcome with happiness.
And just for a moment she worried about that happiness, worried that something might come and take it away like it had when she was nine years old and her world turned upside down, but she shook the thought away, like a shiver.
