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She looks at me, then up the alley towards his closed shop, then back at me. “Of course. Bring me fifty jars. I’ll sell them for you.”
Fifty. I restrain myself from doing a happy dance in case she thinks me crazy.
“I’ll mention it to Antoine.” She glances towards the small supermarket. “He can stock some, I’m sure.”
I do the happy dance in Grandad’s shop before looking for boxes to give Eileen and Antoine. It takes me a while before I find boxes that are actually labelled.Lavender, Thistle,andWild Sageare written in a childish hand on the sides of three of the crates. Probably Doris. I put a selection in two carboard boxes and take them to Eileen and together we write up sticky labels for each individual jar.
“Aren’t you going to that meeting?” She looks up from writingSage. “It’s ten past nine already.”
“Rats.” We’re barely halfway through the first box.
“Don’t worry, I’ll finish these, go.” She hands me my bag and waves me out.
Chapter Nine
Hal
“My name is George Du Montfort.” Everything about the tall, charming man at the head of the conference table says rich, elegant, and successful. No evidence of the naughty schoolboy who was my partner in crime.
George had been a couple of years older when we played truant from school and ran around the island catching fish in the stream and inventing games. Our pretend stone-age cave in the woods once caused a fire, burned down a tree and earned us both severe punishments.
After that, one of the teachers, Miss Chantal, argued that our naughtiness was just excess energy and a thirst for discovery. She took us under her wing and put us in charge of creating school projects. We started with an astronomy show then a school quiz. The following year we won an award for the reproduction of the battle of Waterloo. It was the last thing we did together. We had in fact started an exhibition about the Nazi occupation of La Canette when George’s father had unexpectedly become seigneur of the island and our friendship ended.
He became a young aristocrat and was sent off to an exclusive boarding school in England. And I… I was a Hemingway, grandson of ‘horrible Hector’ and his disgraced and despised family. We never played together anymore.
He must be 37 now and looks every inch the seigneur. For the last half hour, before he joined us, his staff ran a slide presentation on the recent regeneration of La Canette.
There are about thirty of us here, eleven, including myself, have been seated around an oval table in the front. Everyone wears a sticky label with our names. We’re owners of various properties around the island including the four farmhouses on Catcher Lane: Low Catch, Labri Catch, Blue Catch, and True Catch. Across from me I’m not surprised to see the young woman from the puddle yesterday. She hasn’t noticed me yet because she arrived late and missed the introductions and since then has been concentrating on the presentation, taking down notes as if she’s studying for an exam. Her name label has a quickly scrawled ‘Elodie’.
Many of the names here on the island are a mix of English and French, my own family have always tried to stick to English names, but since all our names all begin with an ‘H’, we tend to run out and unless we want to call every other girl Helen, we’ve had to look to other languages for inspiration.
Elodie is a nice name, clearly one of the families that use French names. She has brown eyes and light hair, the colour of Dijon mustard. I wonder who she is and why she’s so serious. It’s as if she’s afraid of missing out any important detail.
When the lights come back on, she looks across the table, notices me and gives me a polite smile as if she’s never seen me before. Her glance moves away but a moment later she looks at me again with a faint puzzle. I must look different now that I’m clean. Just then, George Du Montfort stands up to address us. Again, she goes back to taking copious notes.
George talks but I hardly listen. My attention wanders to her, then I yank my eyes away. I have obligations back in England, decisions I need to make. I’ve been chewing over the same questions about my own life for a while now and the time has come to answer them. Yes, or no? And what each answer might mean, what promises I might make or break.
George finishes his talk, and everyone applauds. I’ve missed most of what he said, but it doesn’t really matter. The growth of island economy and population mean nothing to me except in one respect. Our house is likely to fetch a decent price. The two property developers I saw in the café are here, at the back of the room, keeping their heads down.
“We’ll take questions,” the assistant says and almost immediately, hands shoot up.
“What will happen to our homes if we live on the mainland?” a middle-aged woman asks.
“You have two choices,” George answers. “We hope you’ll choose to return and live here, but if not, then I’m afraid you will have to surrender the lease. With increased demand for housing, we cannot afford to keep empty property.”
“And if we want to sell?” Asks a prim, buttoned up lady with gray hair in a tight bun. Her name label says Mrs Xavier, she’s the owner of True Catch two houses down from ours.
“If that is your decision, then we will guarantee a fair price.”
“Why don’t you build more houses?” she asks.
“Because one of the things that keep our island unique,” George explains, “is that our landscape remains unspoilt by modern developments and blocks of flats. The only building licences issued are on existing structures. It is why the textile factory and La Canette Silks operate from one of the old Casemates, and the women’s refuge was rebuilt from the remains of the old rectory. The clinic and hospital are the only exception where the old house was extended to accommodate the A&E department.”
I glance behind at the two property developers. I now understand their dilemma; to create a holiday resort, they need to develop the existing properties.
“Are you worried about the Russians?” Mrs Xavier asks.
Georg, about to move on to another point, falters. “The Russians?”
