chuckled. ‘And did you win?’
‘Bien sur! Of course. I always win the lady.’
‘And was she married, this lady?’ she asked, suddenly needing the answer to be no, and he frowned, serious for once.
‘Non. Of course not. I would not do that. I am—how do you say it? A gentleman.’
And he was. He walked her home, kissed her lingeringly, sighed and handed her in through the door like the gentleman he said he was, then wandered off, whistling softly under his breath.
A week later, one cold October night, he seemed different. Distracted, somehow, and for once not focusing on her with that strange intensity, as if she was the centre of his world. At least not then, not in the bar, but later on the way home he drew her off the path, away from the farm buildings and up into a little wood, then he turned her into his arms and kissed her in a way he’d never kissed her before.
His body was strong and lean and full of coiled energy, warm and hard under her hands, his heart pounding against her chest, a strange urgency about him. He’d always been playful before, but that night there was no time for play. He kissed her as if he’d die without her, touched her as if she was the most precious thing in the universe. They made love then for the first and last time, on a bed of fallen leaves under the stars, and in his arms she found a happiness she’d never even dreamed of.
She’d been totally innocent, but he’d been so gentle, so thorough, so—incredible—that she’d felt no pain, only joy and an unbelievable rightness.
Afterwards he walked her back, kissing her once more as he left her at the door of the farmhouse, his touch lingering.
Struck suddenly by some sense of evil, she pulled off her ring and gave it to him, pressing it into his hand.
‘Here—have this. It was my grandmother’s. It’s a St Christopher. It will keep you safe.’ And she reached up and kissed him again. ‘Take care, my love,’ she whispered, and his arms tightened for a second before he let her go.
He murmured something. She didn’t really catch it. It sounded curiously like, ‘Au revoir,’ but why would he be saying goodbye? So final, so irrevocable. It sent a shiver through her, and after she went to bed she lay and thought about it.
She must have misheard. It could have been ‘Bonsoir’, although even she knew that meant good evening and not goodnight. And anyway, he usually told her to sleep well. But ‘Au revoir’? Until we meet again? That seemed too final—not at all like goodnight. It puzzled her, but she convinced herself she must have heard it wrong, until the following day when she went down to make breakfast and found Madame Chevallier in tears.
A chill ran over her, and she hurried to her side, putting her arm around the woman who’d become her friend. ‘Madame?’
‘Oh, Annie, ma petite—je suis desolée. I’m so sorry.’
‘Pardon? Madame, what is it? What’s happened?’
‘Oh, mon Dieu. C’est terrible. Etienne—il est mort! Dead—et Gerard aussi. Oh, mon Dieu!’
Panic flooded her. Panic and the first terrible, overwhelming crush of grief. She sucked in a huge lungful of air, then another, fighting off the pain. ‘No. You’re wrong. You’re lying! He can’t be dead!’
But Madame shook her head and wept, her whole body shaken with sobs, and Annie realised it must be true.
‘No…Dear God, no.’
She looked outside and saw the gendarme talking to Monsieur Gaultier, both of them shaking their heads in dis-belief, and she ran out past them, up to the place where he’d taken her in his arms and made love to her with such passionate intensity just a few short hours before. Such exquisite joy—
‘Etienne, no. You can’t be dead,’ she wept, falling to the soft, sweet earth where she’d lain with him so recently. ‘No! It’s not true.’
The sobs racked her body endlessly, the pain tearing her apart cell by cell, leaving her in tatters.
Madame found her there, prostrate with grief, and helped her back to the house.
‘I have to go and see him,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe—’
So Madame Chevallier called a taxi, and she went first to the village, but the gendarme wouldn’t talk to her. Then she went to the town where it had happened, where the hospital was and the morgue, but the information was even less forthcoming.
The only thing she was sure of was that he was gone, but even his death she had to take on trust. She wanted to see his body, to say goodbye, but she was told his family had taken it already, and no, she couldn’t be given their details.
‘It is gone, mademoiselle. You cannot see him. You must go home.’
Home. It was the only thing in her suddenly topsy-turvy world to make sense. She’d go home, to the only people who really cared about her. Liz and Roger would look after her. She went back, packed her things and set off. She should have phoned them, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words, and so she made her way to Calais and took the first available crossing, caught the train from Dover and arrived back at ten that night, going straight to their house.
Roger answered the door, his face haggard, and Annie, even through her grief, could see that something was terribly, horribly wrong.
A shiver of dread ran down her spine. ‘Roger?’ she whispered. ‘What’s happened?’
‘It’s Liz,’ he said, and then he started to cry, dry, racking sobs that tore her apart.
‘Where is she?’
‘In bed. Don’t wake her. She’s got a headache. Annie, she’s dying—’
A brain tumour. Roger told her the bare bones, but Liz filled her in on all the details in the morning, sitting at the kitchen table after the children had gone to school.
‘Inoperable?’ she echoed hollowly. ‘Are they sure?’
‘Oh, yes. I’ve had every kind of scan, believe me.’ Liz searched Annie’s eyes, and frowned. Even then, in the midst of such agony, she noticed that something was wrong. Her hand found Annie’s, gripping it hard. ‘Annie, what is it? What’s happened to you? You shouldn’t be home yet. What’s going on? You look awful, my love.’
She swallowed the tears, not wanting to cry about something that must seem so remote to this very dear friend in the midst of her own grief, but unable to hold them back. ‘Etienne’s dead.’
Liz’s face was shocked. ‘What? How? Why?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. All they’d tell me was he’d been mugged in an alley in the town. He was with another man, and he was killed, too. They were beaten to death—’
‘Who would do such a thing? Do they know who did it?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. They wouldn’t tell me much. I just—Liz, I can’t believe it. First him, and now you—’
And
