L'amour Actually (27 page)

  'She's just a professional complainer. She's after a discount on her holiday, mark my words. She'll send in a letter of complaint the moment she gets home. We see them all the time. Don't take it personally. It's not you, it's her.'

  In the few weeks I'd worked with her, I'd developed a real respect for Lucinda, She may have seemed quiet and reserved on the outside but she was one tough cookie underneath – and an astute businesswoman to boot. Her husband, Andrew, was a different matter. He drank too much and talked loudly about how successful his business was to anyone who would listen. But Lucinda was the real power behind the throne. Without her, he'd have drunk the business into the ground long before.

  That week I had a bunch of public school brats called Cosmo and Bunty and other such ridiculous names, who had left the house littered with empty beer cans and vodka bottles and a lingering smell of vomit. They looked down their noses at me, something I was well used to from home. My comprehensive had shared the same road as a second-rate public school for the not-very-bright offspring of minor aristocracy and small-time Russian oligarchs, who considered themselves infinitely superior to the other school kids in the town. Even walking down the street was like a game of chicken with the 'rich kids' refusing to move over to allow the 'comp kids' to pass. As soon as Cosmo and crew realised I wasn't going to be impressed by the mentions of polo and 'that night in Raffles with Harry', though, they pretty much left me alone.

  I had got the cleaning down to a fine art and could do a full clean and changeover for the four-bed house in three hours; but when I had arrived that morning, one look at the scene of devastation told me it was going to be a long one. Three hours in and with the temperature hitting the forties outside, I was only halfway through and running horribly behind. Bending down, I went back to scrubbing the toilet.

  'How can people be so filthy?' I muttered, blowing a strand of hair out of my face. 'I don't know, how can they?'

  I looked up to see Julien leaning on the door frame smiling that dimply smile of his at me. He still made my heart jump every time I saw him and I got that funny fluttery feeling in my stomach.

  'Honestly Julien, these people are supposed to be the elite. You wouldn't believe what I've found. Used condoms under the beds, half-eaten food behind the sofa. Their parents might have paid a fortune to send them to the best schools but clearly they didn't learn any manners while they were there. They treat us like their bloody servants…'

  His mouth closed over mine, cutting me off mid-flow.

  'Well hello you,' I said smiling up at him when we came up for air.

  'Hello you, too. I like a woman in rubber; did I ever tell you that?'

  I snapped my gloves like a dominatrix and pushed him gently away.

  'I'm not touching you while I've got these yucky things on,' I said, peeling off my gloves and dropping them into the sink. 'I prefer my rubberwear without
E. coli
.'

  He wrapped his arms round me and pulled me tightly to his chest. It felt like it was the safest place in the world and I turned my face to his as he kissed me deeply, sending tingles right down to my toes and a few places in between. He lifted me up and I wrapped my legs around his waist as he carried me, lips and tongues still connected, into the lounge and placed me gently down on the sofa.

  'Oh Julien, I'd love to, really I would, but we can't. Not here and I've still got the garden to do. This lot were a right bunch of pigs and I'm way behind.'

  He looked into my eyes and groaned. 'Later then?'

  'You're on. Definitely.'

  Julien stood up and offered me his hand to help me up. I straightened up my dress and kissed him quickly on the lips.

  'Go on, get out of here before I change my mind. I'll call you when I'm finished. Can you come round to mine? I'll make us some dinner.'

  I watched him leave, smiling rather smugly to myself.

  My phone dinged, announcing an incoming text. It was from Charlotte.

'How's life in French France today? Still with that hunky French farmer? Xx'

I quickly texted back.

'Head down toilet. Not being sick, cleaning! French farmer still hunky and still mine. Will text you later xx'

Charlotte and I had been friends since primary school. Every memory I had featured Charlotte. First school play, my winning goal for the school netball team, my first boyfriend, my first break up. Charlotte had been through it all with me. We had even gone to uni together and I was ridiculously excited that she was hoping to come out for a visit soon. I couldn't wait. She'd recently landed a new job as assistant to a film producer and had spent the last few months rushing round Europe working on an action film. We had hardly had a moment to text, never mind talk. I folded clean towels on each of the beds then took a last look round, checking all the bins were empty and the duvet covers straightened out.

  'Hellooooo,' called a woman's voice.

  I went into the hallway to find an elderly, grey-haired woman standing there clutching a sheaf of papers.

  'Hello, can I help you?'

  'Oh I do hope so, you see, I've lost my cat. He's a big ginger tom.'

  She shoved a poster at me showing a ginger and white cat wearing a bow tie.

  'It was Christmas,' she said, seeing my look of surprise. 'He loves to dress up a bit. He went missing a few days ago and I was wondering if you might have seen him? I just live up the road and I know he sometimes comes down here. I wondered if he might have got shut in the barn or something.'

  'Oh dear, well, you're welcome to go and have a look. It's open.'

  'Thank you so much. I'll pop back and let you know if I find him. Don't I recognise you?'

  'Er, well I don't know. From the café maybe?'

  A fleeting look of horror passed across the woman's face. 'I know who you are,' she said accusingly, 'you're that woman, aren't you? Violet Merriman's cat.'

  There was no point in denying it. 'Yes, I interviewed her the day he disappeared.'

  I hoped she'd leave it at that. Although I knew there was a certain amount of gossip and conjecture surrounding poor Snoopy's disappearance, so far no one had come right out and asked. If they did I would have to admit my culpability. The woman backed away as if she was in the presence of a mass murderer.

  'We were just talking about you the other day at the meeting of the Feline Friends in France…'

  She left the comment hanging in the air but I could imagine what they had said.

  'Look, I'm sorry about your cat but I can promise you, I know absolutely nothing about it. Please feel free to have a look in the barn in case he's there but if you don't mind, I'm running a bit behind and I need to get on.'

  The woman scuttled out with hardly a backward glance leaving me to finish off my cleaning.

  A few minutes later she was back. 'There's no sign of him. Would you mind leaving this in the house just in case any of the guests see him?' She thrust a poster at me.

  'No problem. I'm sure he'll be back soon.'

  The woman smiled weakly and wished me goodbye.

  'Right, next stop the garden and the pool, then I'm finished,' I said aloud.

  The grass needed mowing thanks to a few nights of summer thunderstorms with some heavy downpours of rain. It was the bit I hated most about looking after the
gîte
. I liked the fact it was just down the road from Les Tuileries, but it also had the most temperamental lawnmower in the Northern Hemisphere. Opening the barn door, I wheeled my nemesis out.

  'Right you. Behave or I'll… I'll… well I don't know what I'll do but it won't be pleasant.'

  I primed the engine as Lucinda had shown me, switched on the choke and pulled hard on the pull start. It coughed asthmatically.

  'So much for a bloody one-pull start,' I said, scowling at it.

  I pulled a few more times but the engine just spluttered a bit then fell silent. I checked the fuel and quietly cursed myself for not getting Julien to start it while he was here. Taking a deep breath, I pulled the cord again. Still nothing. I started to pull it frantically.

  'I. Hate.You. I. Hate.You,' I muttered in time with each pull. It puttered a bit then stopped. 'Right! This is your last chance. If you don't start I'm going to give you the biggest kicking of your life. Understand?'

  Bracing myself for another round, I pulled the cord sharply and to my relief it started.

  'A wise move, if I might say so,' I said to it, reaching for my iPod which I had left on the garden table. I put in my earphones, engaged the engine and set off down the garden to the sound of Coldplay singing 'Paradise'. Quite appropriate, I thought to myself.

  Fortunately it wasn't a very big garden but in the heat, even a reasonably small, flat one like this was hard work. Within a few minutes, I was feeling the full force of the August sun and sweating like a carthorse. I stopped for a minute, running the back of my hand across my forehead, and let the mower fall silent, grateful that Julien couldn't see me now, hair plastered to my face and my dress clinging to my body. My throat was dry and scratchy so I went into the kitchen and filled a large glass with water from the tap to slake my thirst. I drank it down in one go and then went to the bathroom to splash some water on my face. Catching sight of myself in the mirror above the sink I sighed. No point trying to be glamorous in this weather unless all you had to do was laze by a pool. Living in a hot country, when you had to try and earn a living as well, was nothing like going on holiday and I smiled ruefully at the thought that all my London friends thought this was one big, long jolly.

  When I had got on that plane all those months ago, I hadn't expected to be earning a living cleaning toilets and mowing lawns. Even I could laugh at my naivety now. This was the bit they didn't show on those daft television programmes. Everyone had to earn their money somehow, but in rural France the options were limited. Making a new life here definitely required a certain amount of lateral thinking. I wandered to the door and looked out. The view across the valley was still just as stunning. I could never tire of the undulating fields criss-crossed with streams and orchards. Yes, life might be very different but it had its advantages and now I had Julien, it seemed pretty much perfect.

  Smiling that slightly smug smile of someone who has taken a risk and seen it pay off, I went back outside to finish the garden. Checking my watch, I saw there were still a couple of hours before the next guests arrived. Maybe if I whipped off my dress and carried on in my underwear it would feel a little cooler. It was so stuck to me that I felt constricted and it would be a good opportunity to top up the tan. I wriggled out of it then spread it over a bush by the pool to dry off. Mowing in my underwear felt strangely liberating and definitely much cooler so I soon built up a cracking pace. Part of that was undoubtedly due to the certainty in my mind that, based on previous history, the next guests would arrive early and find me mowing in my knickers. The mower had a mind of its own and when I put it up to full speed, I practically had to jog to keep up. I didn't have much experience with mowers, there not being much call for one in my little courtyard garden in London, and part of my rental deal was that a gardener came to Les Tuileries once a fortnight to garden, although he seemed to operate a bit of a scorched earth policy. My lawn had been mowed to within an inch of its life and was now pretty much dead and brown and with every drop of water metered, there was no way I was going to put a sprinkler on. I had been told by some of my fellow expats at the café that the thing to do was to get to know a local farmer and use his water as they didn't have meters. Well, I'd certainly got to know one very intimately but sadly his fields were too far away and his irrigation hoses wouldn't get anywhere near my garden. I grinned to myself at the double entendre.

  Another half hour of semi-naked mowing and I was finished. Hands on hips, I admired my handiwork. The garden looked lovely and the stripes I had managed to mow into the lawn were almost dead straight. Funny the things that pleased me now. In the 'old days' it would be a successful PR campaign. Now it was a well-mown lawn.

  I put on my now dry dress and pushed the mower back to the barn, having a quick look for Mrs Chamberlain's cat at the same time, then shut the barn doors and locked them. Just the pool to go and I was finished. It was at the bottom of the sloping garden, set slightly into the ground with decking around it and big pots of geraniums at each corner. I lifted up the flap in the decking to get to the skimmer and put in some chlorine tablets. It was a job I hated because the strong smell of chlorine caught in the back of your throat and made your eyes water; but despite that I could just make out an underlying odour of something a bit rotten.

  'Bloody guests,' I murmured. It wouldn't be the first time that someone had chucked the remains from their barbeque under the decking and with the filthy lot who had just left, nothing would surprise me. A quick look around revealed nothing out of the ordinary and I closed up the flap. The smell would subside in a few days and it wasn't so bad that you noticed it around the pool.

  I did one final check of the house and garden, locked up, put the key in the key box for the guests and headed home. Another day's work successfully completed and a few more euros in the bank. Now it was back home for a long, cool dip in my own pool.