Free Englishwoman in France by Wendy Robertson Page B

English as Miss Marple.
    I go to stand beside her. ‘Thank you for the conversation, Madame,’ I say. ‘It was interesting.’ I hold out my hand. ‘I’m called Starr.’
    She takes her hand from the handlebar, leans across and squeezes mine. ‘Patrice Léance,’ she says. ‘Around here they call me Madame Patrice. You may call me that, my dear. Now Misou and I go to the market.’ She puts a foot on the pedal and pushes off, her legs in her English tee-bar sandals flexing their muscles.
    I watch her leave, then I walk across the square and down the side street where I had seen the boy vanish. There is a mountain bike thrown down outside a tattoo parlour. I peer through a window and a muscular man shoos me away as though I’m a stray cat. He reminds me of Siri’s headmaster, containing his anger as he drove me away from his school that morning and had words with Philip about me frightening the children.
    Siri
. . .
    Giving up the ghost, I go to the library, file my copy, return to the house to dump my laptop, then make my way down to the quayside to look for this five-city hole in the road that Madame Patrice told me about.
    Later, when I get back to the house they are all there in the courtyard, a tangle of bicycles against one wall. Billy’s face is bright red from the sun. Mae has her hair under a tight turban.
    Philip’s face lights up when he sees me. ‘You’ve been out, Estella?’ he says. ‘Walking about in the sun?’
    â€˜Always good at the obvious, our Phil,’ says Billy heartily.
    I nod, keeping cool. ‘Must have been out, Phil. Here am I coming through the gate.’ They’re all looking at me. ‘I give in. I went to the café and wandered down by the harbour.’
    Mae examines me from head to foot.
    I put up a hand. ‘If you ask how I’m feeling, Mae, I’ll sock you,’ I say.
    â€˜There’s fresh coffee,’ says Philip. ‘Shall I pour you one?’
    I look warily round the courtyard. ‘Kids are siesta-ing,’ says Mae, lighting a cigarette. ‘Don’t you worry your little head about those two!’
    â€˜No need for that, Mae,’ says Billy.
    She laughs, ruffles his hair, and leans across to pull me down into the seat beside her. ‘Come in, Starr! Sit with us. I’ve missed you. I’ve missed my dear old Stella.’
    Now I can feel her, the old Mae, plump, naughty and sparking, telling fortunes with the cards and sneaking round the back of the labs at school for a smoke, making me laugh about the gross impossibilities of the diaphragm we’d just been shown in a sexual health lesson in school.
    Philip thrusts a pot of coffee at me and I take a sip.
    I shake my head at Mae. ‘You shouldn’t be smoking, Mae.’
    She shrugs. ‘Billy tells me that once a day, every day. Now I’ve got prim Miss Olga telling me off. But do I take any notice of these experts? No siree! Of him? Of her?’
    Billy rolls his eyes. ‘My girl’s got a death wish!’
    So for a short time, until the children wake from their siesta shrieking and wailing, it’s just a bit like the old times – the four of us sitting round talking in a desultory fashion about odd things in the news and Mae’s battles with the Town Hall over her council tax.
    Even from the other side of the table I can feel Philip relaxing. At one point he looks across at Mae and she winks at him. She thinks she’s cheered me up. I leave them to their winking and go on explaining to Billy how the syndicating of the column works, and how those astrology gurus say my style makes the column a ‘one-off’ and that makes it sell in the strangest of places.
    But all the time, inside myself, I can feel this singing, this fizzing. All three of them are sitting there thinking I’m calming down, forgetting about Siri, but it’s quite the opposite. Haven’t I seen