Free The Disappearance of Emily Marr by Louise Candlish Page A

been urging her friend to celebrate.

Wondering why my face burned so hot.

Chapter 5
    Tabby
    Emmie’s employer was an Englishwoman called Moira, the proprietor of an agency that managed seasonal lets and supplied cleaners and maintenance staff to the owners of second homes on the island. She lived with her French husband and children on the mainland, travelling to her office in La Flotte across the same bridge with which Tabby was determined to avoid being reacquainted. She was in her fifties and had a pleasant face, blurred but not ruined by the decades, and a quiet, measured manner that Tabby guessed must once have been brisk and eager.

‘Tell me a bit about yourself,’ she said.

This was not a question that could ever silence Tabby; the trouble was selecting from the ready outpouring those details that might actually be relevant. ‘I’m twenty-five and I’m in France for the summer, maybe longer if things work out. I have huge amounts of energy.’ It was true that since taking residence at Emmie’s she had avoided getting under her benefactress’s feet by taking long walks along the coast and through the vineyards, exploring her temporary home with the wonder of a newcomer to Eden. ‘Emmie sent me,’ she added. ‘She said I had the right experience.’

At Emmie’s advice, she had turned up at Moira’s office without an appointment at twelve-thirty. During the lunchtime hours of noon till two, when the French did not do business, the British had time to fill. She had been admitted at once.

Moira listened to her plea, complete with claims of experience that were not quite true but that Tabby was reasonably confident could be lived up to, and seemed content to accept them as reference enough. Even at first glance Tabby could tell she was one of those middle-aged women who had retained a soft spot for the young, even a fond memory of it, as opposed to the envy or begrudging of it that you were sometimes faced with in women past their best (her mother sprang to mind, though Tabby was expert in the rapid extinguishing of any thought of her ). Perhaps it was this that made it so easy to imagine how love had once led Moira to this foreign place – she’d met her husband on holiday, Tabby decided; it had begun as a seasonal romance – and how, twenty or thirty years later, as she worked from a small first-floor office above an immobilier , an estate agent, in La Flotte, the exhilarations of love had had to be consigned to history, her marriage now moribund.

But she was being ridiculous. There was nothing in Moira’s face to suggest disappointment or resignation. She needed to conquer this compulsion to project her own miseries on to everyone she met. She needed to stop the self-indulgent fantasies and focus on raising herself from penury.

‘I’m very keen to work,’ she declared, not sure if she had already said this. ‘No job is too low.’

‘Well, I can always use a hard worker,’ Moira said, ‘and your timing is good.’ This was not a comment Tabby had heard much lately. ‘I have several clients who are letting their homes from the end of this month right through to late September and there’ll be regular changeover work on the weekends.’

‘What does that entail?’ Tabby asked in earnest tones.

‘Basically, you clean up after one lot and get it brand-spanking-new for the next. A quick inventory check in case anything’s missing or broken. We usually do check-out at eleven in the morning and check-in at three, so you’ve got four hours to turn it around. But sometimes it’s just a couple of hours. It’s very hard work, especially in the summer months when it gets very hot here. Do you think you can handle it? Are you fit?’

‘Very. I just walked here from Saint-Martin and yesterday I walked twenty kilometres to Loix and back.’

‘That’s quite a hike. Do you not have your own bike or car?’

‘Not yet. I’ll use the bus.’ The idea of owning a car was about as likely as