The roads are very wiggly-waggly around here. If you turn around, I’ll open up the gates for you. Bear left when you come in and you’ll see the parking bay where you can leave your car.’
The paved driveway sloped gently down and curved around a profusion of tall, flowering shrubs and clusters of cherry, apricot and almond trees before splitting into two—one broad section turning right towards the large, two-storeyed stone house overlooking a cobbled courtyard and the other, narrower drive terminating in a vine-covered pergola next to the windowless back wall of a small, rectangular cottage with rough-plastered walls painted the colour of clotted cream and deep-set windows covered by blue shutters.
Miles followed her down on foot and handed her two keys on a small ring. ‘One for the gate, one for the cottage,’ he told her as she opened the boot of her car. ‘Let me help you take these bags around—Melanie should be along in a minute to show you all you need to know about the cottage. She was just trying to drag Sophie out of the pool.
‘I hope you had a good trip from Paris,’ he said, swinging out her larger case as if it weighed no more than a feather and reaching in for the soft roll-bag. For a man in his early sixties he had the vigour and energy of a much younger man, perhaps because of his very physical lifestyle, being very much of a hands-on builder, according to Karen. ‘And you found your way to St Romain with no nasty little surprises on the road from Avignon.’
Just one big one! Veronica bent over to refasten the buckle on the side of her case and when she straightened her face was excusably pink.
‘It was a very interesting drive,’ she admitted with perfect truth.
She followed Miles down the steps and around onto a sunny, paved patio edged with flowering plants at the front of the cottage, where he put down her bags beside a wrought-iron table and chairs.
‘I’m very grateful to you both for allowing me to stay,’ she added shyly, looking around the walled garden with its wonderful profusion of plants and trees, a white, crushed-stone pathway leading off between two stone pillars to join the sweeping curve of the main driveway. Only just, through the tracery of leaves and branches, could she make out an occasional glimpse of the clay-tiled roof of the main house.
Miles ran his stubby, carpenter’s fingers through his healthy thatch of iron-grey hair. ‘We’re the ones who’re grateful, Veronica. After all, your holiday is just as important as ours.’
‘Uh, yes, well … thank you,’ murmured Veronica, not quite sure what he meant. ‘I was sorry to hear about Melanie’s accident …’
‘Aren’t we all!’ he said, pulling a face. ‘It threw a real spanner in the works. She’s been planning this big get-together for so long she was furious at being told she’d have to curtail her activities and wear a sling—particularly the bit about not being able to drive!’
Big get-together? Veronica felt a ripple of dismay. ‘How many are coming? I was sure that Karen said it was only going to be your family …’
‘Oh, I didn’t mean big in terms of numbers, there’s only seven of us,’ he explained, to her relief, ‘but the kids are so rarely all in the same place at the same time any more, that it’s a Very Big Deal for Melanie, especially since it was planned around her mother’s seventy-fifth birthday …’ He gave her a long-suffering roll of his hazel eyes. ‘No family holiday is complete without the old ma-in-law tagging along, right?’
Veronica laughed, because she had seen them together, and knew that he and Zoe Main got on extremely well. She also knew that two of their three offspring were no longer ‘kids’ in the strict sense of the word. The twenty-one-year-old twins might object to being put in the same grade as their much younger sister.
‘And, of course, Melanie’s stepson from her first marriage has agreed to come too, so that makes it even more of a VBD as far as she’s concerned,’ Miles said.
‘Oh, I didn’t even know she’d been married before,’ she murmured in surprise.
‘Long ago and very briefly,’ said Miles, with a brevity of his own that spoke volumes. ‘But it’s good for Melanie that he still considers himself part of the family—’
He broke off as his wife came down the crushed-stone pathway, accompanied by a plump little girl in a blue swimsuit with a thin towel wrapped around her waist, her wet plait dripping down over her shoulder, her round spectacles glinting in the sun.
‘Veronica—how wonderful to see you!’ Melanie’s clear voice rang out across the garden as she approached in a characteristic rush of enthusiasm, her cool, floral dress fashionably smart on a matronly figure that attested to her love of good food. She ruefully flapped her right arm helplessly in its blue sling and threw her left arm wide, going on tiptoes to offer a welcoming half-hug, laughing at the great disparity in their statures that forced Veronica to bend her knees.
‘Oh, but we must do this the French way,’ she said, and gave Veronica a brief kiss on both cheeks, and then another peck on the left. ‘The third one demonstrates that you’re an extra good friend—’ her blue eyes twinkled as she backed off, her ash-blonde hair framing a face whose rounded contours were cheerfully unadorned, and remarkably girlish for a woman of nearly fifty ‘—which you most definitely are, Veronica, to step into the breach like this … poor Karen was terrified I was going to ask her for the ultimate sacrifice! Can you believe my horrendously rotten timing? I tripped over a silly kerb, of all things, when I was running after something I’d left in the bally car, and hit my elbow on a bollard. I’d just met Miles and Mum and Sophie at the airport. Poor Sophie saw me go shooting past her like a speeding bullet, didn’t you, Soph?’
‘A speeding bullet smacking into a wall,’ the girl said with ghoulish accuracy as her mother paused for a breath. ‘Hi, Veronica.’ She held out a slightly damp hand, and Veronica politely shook it, hiding her smile as she looked down into the solemn little face.
‘Hello, Sophie. It’s been ages, hasn’t it? I don’t think I’ve seen you more than once or twice since you went off to boarding school and that was—what—nearly two years ago? I hear you got an extension of your school holidays to come to France?’
‘Yes, but I still have to do the work, and have it marked when I get back. I don’t mind, really—I don’t want to fall behind the others.’
‘That’s not likely—Sophie’s way out on top of her class,’ said Melanie smugly. ‘My late baby is a very early bloomer!’
‘Congratulations,’ Veronica said to Sophie, who didn’t look the least bit smug, just ever so slightly anxious at her mother’s boasting. ‘One of the burdens of brightness, huh, having to constantly beat off all that praise?’
Sophie’s air of gravity lifted at the dry comment, dimples forming in her plump cheeks as she grinned at Veronica with approval, her eyes bright behind their glass shields.
‘Obviously the school has worked out well, then,’ Veronica commented to Melanie, recalling the anguished soul-searching that Karen had reported going on in the Reed household when the idea was first mooted.
‘Yes, but it was Sophie who was determined to go,’ said Miles, giving her soggy braid a squeeze. ‘I don’t think our feeble brains were providing her enough of an intellectual challenge at home.’
‘Oh, Dad!’ the girl groaned at his teasing.
‘Come on, Shrimp, you can’t go
