felt her eyes sting with unshed tears as she remembered, or was it from the incense. She tried to focus on the coffin and the roses, but her mind would not stay with her, and she felt it wander off again and there she was, back as though nothing had changed, and yet everything was about to be shattered.
‘Can you take the girls to ballet?’ Matilde had asked, knowing he would.
‘I’m not going.’ Celeste had pouted. ‘Camille got new shoes and I didn’t.’
Matilde didn’t have time for Celeste’s sulking.
‘Go to ballet, Celeste. You had new shoes last month, and the reason Camille got them was because her feet have grown so much.’
Matilde had looked at her long-legged daughter, who had the best of both of her parents’ looks. The blonde beauty of Matilde, and the fine, aquiline Le Marche nose.
She could model one day. Matilde and Daphné had discussed this quite often, while Robert denounced her plans.
‘No, Camille will take over Le Marche with me one day,’ he had said proudly and Matilde had noticed the shadow cross Celeste’s face.
‘And then Celeste can join when she’s old enough,’ added Matilde.
‘I don’t want to work with Daddy and Camille, I hate them,’ Celeste had said, lashing out as she did when she was hurt.
She was so like Robert, Matilde always said to people when they asked about her demeanour, or was it because of Robert.
The priest was now swinging the censer around, the smoke billowing out, lifting up the prayers to heaven, and Matilde felt the tears fall.
The policeman had escorted her to the hospital, with a screaming Celeste, who didn’t want to go, and had to be lifted into the back seat of the police car.
Robert was almost unscathed. Camille had died instantly.
It was rare Matilde let herself remember that time, but she was at the mercy of her memory as she listened to the prayers, and remembered the year after Camille had died.
Elisabeth and Henri had brought lovely Sibylla out from Australia to try to be a companion for Celeste, but Celeste had hated her on sight and the trip was a disaster, with Robert and Henri having harsh words before they abruptly left.
What the argument was about, Matilde never knew and she never asked, too caught up in her own pain to care.
Only a year later, Henri had died. The Le Marche family had lost two members in two years. It was the sort of thing that the gossipy society Matilde moved in thrived on.
So Matilde drank, and Robert slept with anything that had a heartbeat, and Celeste was ignored.
Matilde wasn’t proud of her mothering. Robert was always the better parent when they were small, but when Camille died, he stopped parenting and Celeste was left with no one.
So she and Robert separated and they sent Celeste away. Out of sight, out of mind, she had thought, but it wasn’t Camille she dreamed of; it was Celeste.
And when Celeste broke down about her unhappiness and had tried to kill herself, Daphné had stepped in.
Without Daphné, Matilde might have no living children, and she said a silent prayer for the woman under the roses.
She loved Celeste, she just didn’t know how to help her. When she had arrived in Nice last week, her face all tear-stained and so thin, Celeste had wanted to hug her and put her to bed and feed her soup and bread and watch her sleep, but the opportunity for her to be a mother had long gone.
Celeste had resisted hugs, and instead went out on the balcony and stared into the horizon. She refused to speak of her pain, even though Matilde knew it was that arrogant Paul Le Brun, and she glanced at him in the church. Handsome yes, but what good is handsome when you’re married to someone else.
Oh, Celeste, don’t choose a man like your father, she thought, looking at the back of Celeste’s blonde chignon at the front of the church.
So many times Matilde wished she had something wise to say to Celeste, or that Celeste would even listen, but she was scared of her daughter now.
Scared she would lose her like she lost Camille, scared of her temper and her biting tongue, and scared of her restlessness.
Matilde stayed in the past, as the service went on, and when it finished, she was one of the last to exit the church and that’s when she saw him.
A man, as handsome as any man she had ever met, in a navy suit, and silk tie, with a crisp white shirt, and a beautiful coat draped over his arm. He had dark, thick hair, cut close to his head, and slightly tanned skin, but it was natural, she could tell. He walked slightly beside her, and they stopped at the entrance of the church, waiting for the crowd to exit.
‘I am sorry for your loss,’ he said in her ear and she felt a ripple of something in her body—fear or lust, she wasn’t sure, but God knows, he was too young for her and too handsome to be good for any woman.
‘It is not my loss,’ she said firmly, turning to see eyes of lapis blue. ‘It is my daughter and ex-husband’s loss.’
‘But you were sad, non? I saw it in your face, you had many memories cover your face during the service.’
Matilde felt herself frown. Where had he been sitting? Why had he been watching her?
‘Who are you?’ she asked, narrowing her eyes. He was cunning, she thought, cunning was always hard to manage. Daphné was cunning.
‘Dominic Bertiull,’ he said, extending a hand that Matilde didn’t take.
She sniffed as though the name meant nothing to her, and she pushed her way into the crowd and away from the blue-eyed libertine, who still followed her, but Matilde knew everyone who mattered, that was her job in life.
‘It must be hard for Robert to have to take over the company when he has not really worked in it for a long time,’ said Dominic in a hushed whisper that smacked of false concern.
So the vultures have started to circle, she thought, and she wondered if she should tell Robert that Dominic Bertiull, the corporate raider and slash and burn CEO, was at his mother’s funeral.
And then she remembered Camille. Why should she care if Dominic took Le Marche from under Robert’s rule? He had lost Camille, now he could lose the company he had always desired to be at the helm of, and only then did Matilde feel that justice would be served.
‘I don’t know what Robert does and what he will do next. My only concern is for my daughter, please excuse me,’ Matilde said and, with a push, she forced her way through the crowd to Celeste’s side, where she took her daughter’s hand.
Glancing back to the steps of the church, she saw Dominic Bertiull staring at her and she wasn’t sure if she should feel flattered or scared, or a little of both.
Elisabeth, London,
