A French Affair
Authors: Susan Lewis
Contents
Some secrets are too devastating to be told...
When Natalie Moore is killed in a freak accident in France her mother â the very poised and elegant Jessica â knows instinctively there is more to it. However, Natalie's father â the glamorous, high-flying Charlie â is so paralysed by the horror of losing his daughter, that he refuses even to discuss his wife's suspicions.
In the end, when their marriage is rocked by yet another terrible shock, Jessica decides to go back to France alone in search of some answers. When she gets to the idyllic vineyard in the heart of Burgundy she soon finds a great deal more than she was expecting in a love that is totally forbidden and a truth that will almost certainly devastate her life.
Set during one long hot summer in a sleepy world of wine, food and romance, A French Affair is a deeply sensual and passionate story of love, resistance, loyalty and betrayal.
Susan Lewis is the bestselling author of nineteen novels. She is also the author of
Just One More Day
, a moving memoir of her childhood in Bristol, and lives in France. Her website address is
www.susanlewis.com
A Class Apart
Dance While You Can
Stolen Beginnings
Darkest Longings
Obsession
Vengeance
Summer Madness
Last Resort
Wildfire
Chasing Dreams
Taking Chances
Cruel Venus
Strange Allure
Silent Truths
Wicked Beauty
Intimate Strangers
The Hornbeam Tree
The Mill House
Â
Just One More Day, A Memoir
Susan Lewis
To Jenny
My biggest thanks of all go to Raphael Vigneau, who so patiently and expertly guided me through the complex journey of wine-making â from the planting of the grapes, right through to the opening, pouring and tasting of an exceptional Grand Cru. If there are any mistakes in this book, please know they are all mine. I also warmly thank Julian Faulkner for his additional help with the wine-making process, and for the very enjoyable time we spent at his vineyard in the Var.
A very big and warm thank you to Cathy Hubert for the French translations, which give the book so much more colour and authenticity than it might otherwise have had. Again, if there are any mistakes, please be assured they are mine.
There are three people to thank for their invaluable help with the sections on sculpting â first and foremost Maria Gamundi, whose sculptures are amongst the most elegantly beautiful I've seen. Secondly, Martin Foot who very kindly showed me around his studio and explained many intricacies of his exceptional
work. And thirdly, much love and thanks to my dear friend Fanny Blackburne, for giving me the experience of sitting as a sculptor's model.
Lastly, I would like to thank my editors, Susan Sandon and Georgina Hawtrey-Woore for all their patience, forbearance, encouragement and support during the writing of this book â it was greatly needed, and hugely appreciated.
â
THERE'S A SECRET
hiding place in here,' the little boy said, leading the way. âMy uncle showed me where it is. He used to keep all his special things here when he was young, so did my granddad. Even Elodie doesn't know about it.'
âDo you think there are spiders?' Natalie asked, keeping close behind.
âOh yes, lots. I can catch some if you like and you can give them names.'
Natalie's eyes were searching the darkness. âThere are beds in here,' she said. âDoes someone sleep in them?'
âOnly me and Elodie, when we want to.'
The little boy, Antoine, stumbled on the corner of a frayed rug, then stopped in front of a large mahogany chest that was mistily lit by a few rogue rays of daylight coming in through a small roof window. âAre you ready?' he asked as Natalie joined him, his voice resonating importance.
âYou're not going to do anything nasty, are you?' she asked. âIf you do, I shall scream and hit you.'
âDon't be silly. Watch,' and kneeling in front of the bottom drawer he used its fancy iron handles to ease it forward. There was a bump as the drawer fell onto the floor.
Natalie looked down at it, then back to Antoine who seemed swollen with mystery. âSo? It's just a drawer,' she scoffed. âWe've got drawers all over our house.'
âYes, but I bet you don't have one hidden away behind another,' he said, and reaching into the empty space he pulled another drawer forward.
More interested now, Natalie dropped to her knees to inspect it. âIt's empty,' she said, annoyed and disappointed.
âYes, because I took my secrets out before you came, in case you found them.'
Slightly bored again, Natalie looked around the dim attic space. âI've never been up here before,' she said. âI think Harry and I should sleep here.'
âYou can't in the summer, it's too hot.'
It was summer now, and the drawer had no secrets, so they didn't hang around for long.
The next time Natalie came was at Christmas, so it was too cold for her and her brother Harry to sleep in the attic then, and at Easter, when her grandmother brought her, she was too afraid to sleep there alone. However, she wasn't afraid in the day, so it was where she sometimes went to write her secrets in her very own diary which she kept tucked away in the hidden drawer.
One rainy morning, as she sat under the roof window, writing down her most private thoughts about Antoine, she heard a car pull up outside, and a moment or two later her grandmother called out for her to come down and see who'd arrived. Quickly she
wrote a few more words in her diary, then after sliding it carefully into the secret drawer she went downstairs. The kitchen door was open and because she didn't mind the rain she skipped outside. She would go back to her diary later, she decided, and write about everything they did today.
But Natalie never went back to the diary again.
âJESSICA? JESSICA MOORE?'
Jessica turned round, half-expecting to see someone she knew, but the flush on the age-crushed cheeks in front of her and the soulful look in the watery old eyes were enough to tell her that she'd never seen this woman before.
Jessica smiled at her vaguely. She didn't want to be rude, particularly when the old lady looked quite a dear with her fluffy white curls and warming smile, but nor did she want to engage with the air of tragedy that was emanating through the kindness in what Jessica felt to be almost suffocating waves.
As the woman began to speak Jessica continued to smile, and even nodded once or twice, but her mind had quickly switched to another place, another time, where she could no longer be reached.
They were standing halfway down the pet-food aisle in Sainsbury's on the Cromwell Road. It was odd for Jessica to be there, since there were no animals at home, nor had there ever been. When she was a child she'd been so desperate for a dog that she used to walk
around pulling a ball of string behind her, calling it Timmy. The memory flitted through her mind now as softly as a whisper. She was seeing a lonely little girl with no brothers or sisters, a father who was unknown and a strikingly beautiful mother who sometimes wanted her, but usually didn't. Her grandparents, with whom she'd lived most of the time, would have allowed her a dog, but her mother, from the end of a phone, or during one of her sweeping, gift-showering visits, would never permit it.
âShe'll be coming to live with me any time now,' her mother used to gush, all corkscrew curls and cherry-red lipstick, âand I'm sorry, but I can't have a dog too. They're the worst kind of tie, and with all this quarantine business . . . What if we go to live abroad? No, no, a dog is just another complication, and that is something I really don't need.'
They did go to live abroad, she and her mother, for two agonisingly lonely years, during which Jessica had missed her grandparents so much that in the end she'd stopped eating and even speaking. She'd known, in her eight-year-old way, that her mother didn't really want her there, that she was a liability every bit as inconvenient as a dog, probably even more so, and the man her mother was living with didn't seem interested in her either.
In the end, her mother and her French-Canadian lover had broken up, and Jessica had been packed off back to Dorset to her lovely gran and big, strong grampy. And that was where she'd stayed, discounting a couple more disastrous attempts on her mother's part to be a full-time parent, until she and her best friend, Lilian, had left for university at the age of eighteen.
All best forgotten now, though. It was a long time ago, and really had no bearing on today at all.
Feeling a slight pressure on her arm, Jessica looked down to see the old lady's arthritic fingers touching her kindly. Jessica's eyes came up to the woman's gentle gaze. She smiled again, then after whispering a polite thank you, she began wheeling her trolley on down the aisle. For the next few minutes she focused only on what she'd come for: Greek yoghurt, muesli, fresh pasta, artichokes . . . She'd made a list and most items were ticked off by now, so it only remained to pick up some bread before she could join a queue at the checkout.
It was a Thursday morning in early July. There weren't many people around, but even so, as she moved quietly about her business she could feel the glances following her like ghosts, seeming to cling to her even after the curious, sympathetic and even embarrassed eyes had turned away. This was one of the very worst parts about being âknown': it allowed her no refuge in anonymity, nor any real privacy to call her own. At least not while she was out in public, and this was the first time she'd braved even a supermarket trip since the terrible event that had shattered her life. Had three months really gone by already? Sometimes it felt as though it was only three days, while at others it might have happened a lifetime ago.
Should she get a French stick, or a
pain de compagne
? She was thinking about Charlie now and wishing she'd let him come with her. He'd offered, but he hadn't really had the time, and Nikki, their seventeen-year-old, had merely looked at her and shrugged, as if to say, don't ask me, I don't know what you're making all the fuss about anyway, it's only a supermarket, for God's sake.
Jessica hadn't told her she was afraid of breaking down in public. Nikki didn't need to know that. For a few crazy minutes she'd considered keeping eight-year-old Harry home from school so he could come with her, but apart from being a selfish and even cowardly idea, it would have totally defeated the purpose of this visit, which was to start getting back to normal.