‘No buts,’ said David, crossing to the bathroom and closing the door.
Amy looked out of the window, then instinctively ducked back. Sitting on the edge of the pool, long legs trailing in the water, was Josie. And she was staring straight up at their room.
Chapter 14
Today, the village was almost unrecognisable. Sleepy and off the beaten track, Lourmarin was not usually a draw for day trippers beyond the chateau on the outskirts. But then came market day, and it was as bees descending on a hive. The lanes were crammed with stalls piled high with everything from olives and wine to hand-fired ceramics and rustic furniture, each one besieged by eager punters buzzing and shouting and waving wads of cash. Getting from the little playground to the square – usually a two-minute stroll – had taken Amy and Juliet fifteen minutes, elbowing the basket-wielding Frenchwomen out of the way. And that was another curious aspect of the village: even the tourists were French. None of the usual mix of Germans, Spanish and Brits; Amy could have sworn she had heard nothing but the local rolling dialect in the week they had been here.
‘I think the kids deserve an ice cream, don’t you?’ said Juliet, tugging Hettie and Alex through the crowd and out into a narrow space next to a deli.
‘Ooh, yes, yes! Can we?’ sang the children almost as one.
‘Of course,’ smiled Amy, nodding to Josie, who dutifully took the drooling children into the shop, where they pressed their eager faces against the counter, shouting out the names of flavours they wanted.
It had been two days since the photo shoot, and perhaps sensing Amy’s unease with her, Josie had wisely kept herself in the background. Amy took a minute to study her now. Her beaten-up tennis shoes, thin ankle chain and pretty sundress, ever so slightly sheer in the fierce midday sun, was hardly the look of an overt temptress. It wasn’t her fault that she looked fresh and sexy in the simplest of clothes, and it was not as if the girl had actually done anything wrong. Amy found herself feeling bad.
‘Look at these,’ said Juliet, wandering over to the shop next door, inspecting a case of silver and jade jewellery. There was a gorgeous green gemstone hanging from a gold chain that immediately caught Amy’s eye, but her first thought was how it would look photographed on a velvet cushion across a double-page spread. She knew that David’s dire predictions about getting over-stressed about the Mode application had come true. She couldn’t think about anything else and had spent the past two days obsessively scribbling in a series of notebooks.
‘It’s a yes from me,’ she said, pointing at the green stone.
‘Yes to what?’ boomed a voice, and Max put his arms around Amy and Juliet’s shoulders. ‘To a Maxie sandwich? I know you’ve both been dying to ask all these years.’
Juliet picked up Max’s hand with her finger and thumb, her face pinched as if it were a dead rat. ‘The jewellery, Max. Mind out of the gutter, please.’
‘See anything you like?’ asked David, joining them. Amy pointed out the green pendant. ‘Hmm, that’d go with your eyes.’
‘But my eyes are blue.’
‘It’s wotsit,’ he said. ‘Complementary, isn’t it? Like a feature wall.’
‘Thanks,’ said Amy, smiling to herself.
‘That’s lovely,’ said Josie, slowly licking an ice cream. ‘Is it real gold?’
David bent closer to the cabinet, then took a sharp intake of breath. ‘At that price, you’d hope so, wouldn
’t you? I thought little village markets were supposed to be full of bargains.’
‘Not on market days,’ said Max. ‘I’m sure they double the price for the day trippers.’
‘Are we day trippers, Uncle Max?’ asked Tilly, holding out her dripping cone for him to lick.
‘No, darling, we’re practically natives.’
‘What does natives mean?’
‘It means people who live here.’
Tilly frowned up at Amy. ‘Are we living in French now?’ she asked.
Amy laughed. ‘No, darling, just on holiday.’
‘Can’t we stay? I like it here.’
‘No, precious, Mummy and Daddy have work in London . . .’ She stopped, her head suddenly spinning. It was as if all her blood had drained out of her, and she reached over to a stone wall to steady herself. The others had already walked on ahead, and the noise of the market seemed to press around her, locking her in a muffled bubble of sound: alien accents, shouts and cries.
She tried to focus; wanted to shout out for someone to give her a glass of water or a chair to sit down on, but no one seemed to pay any attention to the stylish English lady who was struggling just to stand. Snapping her eyes shut, she began to breathe deeply, forcing her lungs to fill with air. It was a hot day and she could feel the sun burning on the nape of her neck. A touch of sunstroke, that was all it was. She just needed to rehydrate and have a lie-down.
She could see David up ahead, holding Tilly’s hand at a stall selling a selection of paper kites. Tilly was smiling, happy at her father’s side with her ice cream and her friends to play with. Amy made her way over.