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Two days of hard work and lots of worry must have taken their toll on her. And I suspect, something else has been worrying her because this final gift brings her to tears. She wipes her face again and again. “I can’t believe how, kind everyone is being. I don’t even know them … this is too much.”
To give her time to collect herself, I ask the woman, “This is excellent stuff. Do you have more of this at your factory?”
“Yes, but different colours.” She looks up at me hopefully. “How much do you need?”
Curtains for three or four cottages… Maybe throws… “A lot.”
“We have so much, different colours. It’s surplus, we can’t sell it. Just pay whatever you can afford.”
Her words surprise a laugh out of me. “Don’t say this out loud, or you’ll have a stampede.” I say fingering the rich silk.
“We had a sale over Christmas and everyone on the island bought a little.” She says surprising me even more. “They saved our business.” Then she kneels down next to Elodie who is still wiping her face. “Please accept it, you need it. I know it’s hard to feel like charity.” Her voice quivers and her accent thickens. “We came here, refugees. All of us, driven out of Kosovo because of civil war, we had nothing. So hard to be out of your country, a stranger. People in La Canette helped us and now we help you, and one day you will help someone who needs.”
The unexpected irony stabs me like a knife thrown by mistake. We too are refugees. She and her friends driven out of their country by war and we, driven out of our island by the same people who made her welcome.
How can one tiny, tiny island have two faces that are so, so different?
Elodie’s light sniff draws my attention and I find her looking at me, her eyes, still glistening, and suddenly full of sympathy. For me? As if she understands. I’m halfway to her, my arm almost over her shoulder before I catch myself.
What the hell do I think I’m doing?
Awkwardly, I pretend to brush some dust from the back of her paint spattered T-shirt. I also thank Amira and promise to visit their factory and look at their surplus fabrics.
Pierre is watching me but looks away quickly, her lips twitching with a supressed smile.
So, she noticed the failed hug. Far from proving there is no attraction, it might have even proved the opposite. At least the meaningful side glance she and Gabriel exchange says they don’t believe me.
I blow out a breath and get back to my work.
Just for an instant, I was almost carried away, forgetting myself, longing to confide in someone, to think well of La Canette. This is what my sister’s name means, this longing to come back, to find a home you've lost. But trusting La Canette will take more than wishful thinking.
I fire up the electric saw and the noise drowns out the seductive fantasies. What I’m building here, are holiday homes for other people. Not for me. My home is in England.
As if to prove this point, a song comes on the playlist,Take Me Home Country Road to the Place I Belong.Elodie sings softly while she paints the window ledge.
“Where’s home for you?” Pierre asks her.
Elodie dips her brush into the yellow paint – sorry,ochre,as they keep correcting me. “I don’t know,” she says. “I’ve never felt at home anywhere. I haven’t lived in La Canette since I was ten. My parents couldn’t wait to leave. Dad and Mum wanted to see the world, so they relocated all of us. First to England to teach at a private school, then a year later they retrained as TEFL teachers and moved us toAddis Ababa.”
“Crikey,” Pierre says. “What was it like growing up in Ethiopia?”
“I don’t know. We only stayed in Addis for a year, before going on to Egypt.”
Elodie drops to her knees so she can paint the legs that hold up the ledge. Her strokes are long and smooth and almost loving. You’d think the repurposed table had been a dear family heirloom.
“Then we went to Burma, followed by Brazil, Uruguay, Holland, Denmark, Finland, Chile and a two months’ stint in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”
She looks up from under the ledge and gives us a lopsided smile. “In answer to your original question, if I belong anywhere, it would be in an airplane. The longest I've stayed anywhere was Manchester for four years just before I came here.”
“Big love for Manchester?” Gabriel glances up.
“Love?” She scoffs, climbing out from under the table. “No, just a big mistake.”
“Bad relationship?” Pierre asks quietly.
This is clearly a personal story, so I turn away to give them privacy.
I didn’t lie to Gabriel earlier. Yes, Elodie is lovely, but I do need more than a nice personality. A relationship is a living thing, not a picture you hang on a wall. You share yourself with another person, not only your body and your bed, but your life. And my life has no room in it for Elodie LeFevre.
