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“No! No, no, no. Never.” I shake my head over and over. “Besides he wouldn’t sell the shop from under me.”
Hal swallows. “Yes, you’re right.”
We continue reading the contract. The signatures are dated Tuesday the 28thof April. I cast my mind back, it was a week after Alastair came in to tell us he agreed to buy the old shop in exchange for the debt.
Except on the paperwork, the debt is settled against the sale not of the old shop in the village and its lavender field but of Labri Catch and its lands on Catcher Hill.
Tuesday the 28thof April. I was out with Hal. We’d gone down the hill to spend the day at the pond. Grandad was alone with Doris.
“Doris?” I call her and she comes down the hallway, but as soon as she sees Hal, she shrinks back into the kitchen. I have to follow in order to ask her. But even before I do, there’s a cold dread inside me, a growing suspicion. I already know what must have happened.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Elodie
It takes a few hours for us to piece the story together.
Last Tuesday, an hour after I left with Hal to go downhill, a man had come. Doris didn’t know his name, he was tall and thin, balding on top but with wispy long hair at the back.
Tim Morris, obviously.
He walked into the kitchen and sat with Grandad. Doris, terrified of men, had gone upstairs. Half an hour later, she saw from the upstairs window another man, answering Sweeny’s description, turn up. They were there talking and talking and talking for an hour before two more men came. They all left about ten minutes later.
The two men, we now find out, were visitors from Jersey, invited the day before by Sweeny for a forty-eight-hour holiday. He must have phoned them to come and meet him at the “honey shop on Catcher Lane” to witness the signatures. Neither had ever met my grandad before or knew anything about La Canette. But both were certain that Sweeny had read out the terms of the sale out loud before Grandad signed. Exchange of the honey shop and building and its land for the settlement of the debt. Both men went with Morris and Sweeny to the Municipalité while the sale was submitted to the land registry.
While Hal and I are going over the papers and piecing the evidence together, someone comes to the shop door and knocks. I wave him away pointing to the closed sign, but he won’t go and keeps knocking. In the end I have to get up to open the door.
“Elodie LeFevre?” he asks.
“Yes, but I’m sorry the shop isn’t—”
Before I finish speaking, he shoves an envelope at me. “I’m hereby serving you these papers.”
Hal suddenly jumps up and rushes towards me. “Don’t accept!” But he’s too late because I’ve already taken the envelope. The man has turned away and is already on his bike, pedalling away.
“Fuck.” Hal takes it and checks the address, then hands it back to me. “Well, you’d better open it.”
Inside is a two-page document giving me notice to vacate Labri Catch within four weeks. It also informs me that I must allow access to Catcher Hill for a construction team arriving tomorrow to commence work on the garden.
“How can they do that?” I gasp.
“Haven’t you heard? Possession is nine tenths of the law,” Hal says in voice so tight, it could crack. “They have to get in there immediately, the sooner they take possession the harder it’ll be to stop them.” He checks his phone. “Its seven o’clock now. All offices are closed. They’ve timed this perfectly. My guess is the workers will turn up very early in the morning, before the Municipalité even opens, so you have no way of appealing.”
I glance up into his face, he’s white. The last time I saw him look like this, he was choking on the dust and mould from his old house and might have died. No, it was down by the hidden pool, when he thought he had killed me.
Now, like then, he’s gone so pale that faint freckles become visible on his cheekbones and across his nose. His eyes are almost black.
“No.” The word is out of my mouth before the thought is completely formed.
This isn’t Manchester, on La Canette we do things differently. “Come on. We’re going to Du Montfort Hall to see George.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Elodie
First, I have to find someone to keep an eye on Grandad and I can’t ask Doris. She’s been here all day and deserves a break.
It’s too short notice for nurse Ann who is more likely to be busy with lord M, her principal patient.
