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PROVENCE, 1987
They stared at her, utterly floored.
‘You know about the restaurant – about the people that she killed?’ said Sabine.
‘I do. Is that why you’re here? To satisfy some curiosity of yours?’
Gilbert and Sabine shared a look. The nun was surprisingly feisty.
‘No, it’s not like that. I want to know who my grandmother was – it’s not some mild curiosity for me, it’s more than that.’
Gilbert nodded. ‘Me too.’
The nun stared back at them and nodded. ‘Take a seat. I will ask for some refreshments, and then I will tell you what I know.’
They both pulled out heavy steel chairs and watched as she went back inside.
The garden was beautiful. The roses offered a profusion of pale lemon, salmon pink, and frothy white blooms that cascaded over walls, climbed trellises and bowed arches.
When Sister Augustine returned, moments later, it was with a wooden tray laden with rose-flavoured lemonade and several large glasses. She set it down carefully, and for a moment Sabine saw her fingers shake.
She wondered if it were a sign of age, or of nerves. Her words, when at last they came, confirmed for Sabine the latter.
She took a seat, then poured them each a glass of lemonade, spilling some on the table, muttering a soft, ‘merde,’ which while about as tame as it came to cursing was still a surprise from a nun. ‘I apologise, I’m nervous, now that it is finally happening – that someone is here for her.’
Sabine shared a look with Monsieur Géroux.
‘You knew someone would come here?’ he asked in some surprise.
‘Marianne did. I think it was why she put the abbey on all the documentation; even though we had never handled anything like that before, she wanted to make sure that if one day her daughter came to find out what happened, there would be someone who could tell her – someone who would remember her, and perhaps explain.’
‘But – but what if you weren’t here? What if someone came and you were—?’
The nun took a sip of lemonade. ‘Dead? Well, I was beginning to think that would be the most likely outcome, as the years passed and no one called.’
‘If she – well, if she wanted her daughter to know the truth, why didn’t you contact my mother? It’s not like the adoption records were sealed.’
Sabine left out the fact that her mother hadn’t known she was adopted.
Sister Augustine shook her head. ‘Elodie was clear – if her daughter or family wanted to know what happened, I was to tell them, but I wasn’t to go looking for her child and to deliver her tale. It is, after all, not a happy one. She thought that if her child grew up never knowing of who she was and where she came from, while sad, wouldn’t it be worse for her to impose such a history on her? I had to respect her wishes even though it pained me to think that so few people understood what happened. The sacrifice she made – or indeed the honour she displayed.’
‘Honour?’ said Sabine in some surprise.
‘Yes, I believe so, in her own way.’ She looked at them both. ‘How much of her story do you know?’
Gilbert answered. ‘I used to work for her when she first opened the restaurant. I was there, right up until the night she killed all those people, including my brother, Henri.’
Sister Augustine’s eyes widened in shock. ‘You are Gilbert, Henri’s brother?’
Gilbert turned pale. Sabine reached for his hand.
‘Y-you know of him – of me?’
‘Only what she told me.’
Sabine gasped. ‘She told you?’
‘Yes – she came here afterwards, like she always did, when she wanted to confess.’
