Free A French Wedding by Hannah Tunnicliffe Page A

hated him washing the cocker spaniels in the bathtub but her father wouldn’t wash them outdoors, he was too besotted with them. Juliette had snipped her hair using a small pair of silver scissors she’d found in her mother’s sewing kit after her father had died. Her mother must have had them sharpened regularly, because they made quick work of it. Juliette’s father had not lasted long without her mother. Juliette often imagined an invisible thread that bound them both to each other and the earth. Once her mother’s bonds were severed her father’s started to fray. It was only a matter of months before they were both gone.
    Closing her eyes to the breeze, Juliette remembers them before either were ill. Sitting up in bed together, sharing a newspaper and drinking tea. Walking the dogs, one each. At the dining table listening, enthralled, to Juliette’s stories of life in Paris.
    Juliette pictures her mother’s face. Her funny, crescent-shaped eyes, her wide forehead and pointing chin. Laughing at some joke Juliette has made. Skin covered in freckles, as it had always been, for as long as Juliette could remember. Even her hands had always been freckled. But warm when her fingers laced with her daughter’s, soft when pressed against Juliette’s cheeks, comforting against her back.
    Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly …
    Juliette blinks and straightens. She is tired. She walks back to the kitchen, thinking about tomorrow’s preparations. When she opens the kitchen door there is a woman seated at the bench. Her back is to Juliette and she has a bottle at her elbow. She is dressed in black cropped trousers, with a light jersey, maybe cashmere, and patent leather ballet slippers on her feet, which are crossed at the ankles. Juliette clears her throat. The woman’s dark hair, cut in a shoulder-length bob, swings as her head turns. Juliette glances at her right hand, there is a ring much like Rosie’s on it, but with a dark stone, and a cigarette between her fingers.
    â€˜Shit. Sorry. I’m smoking.’
    Juliette looks at the bottle. Tequila with a gold label and a pale, bloated worm in the bottom.
    The woman smiles guiltily. ‘I gave this to Max a year or so ago so I’m just reclaiming what was once mine.’
    Her eyes are as dark as her clothes, her lips bare, a pink-grey. Before Juliette can speak she does.
    â€˜I don’t suppose you usually let people smoke in the kitchen. Max told me you’re a proper, wonderful chef.’
    â€˜Max is kind,’ Juliette answers, rinsing the cloth and then laying it over the tap by the sink.
    â€˜I’ll only smoke this one, I promise. I just didn’t know my way around and didn’t want to wake anyone up.’
    Juliette nods. She thinks of Henri, the baker, of their conversations on the plastic crates in the early morning, as the rest of Paris was just waking. Lamenting the loss of cigarettes, reluctantly acknowledging the sensitivity it brought to their tastebuds, commiserating over strong coffee and croissants still so hot they flaked and fell apart in their fingers. Helen pushes the bottle towards Juliette.
    â€˜I got it from a small town in Jalisco. It’s supposed to be famous. Will you share it with me? I think it’s called something stupid like “Big Cock Tequila”.’
    The two women stare at the label on the bottle. It has a picture of a rooster on it. Juliette considers. She is probably too tired to start more preparation work now.
    â€˜Max got a kick out of that,’ the woman says, grinning and then blowing smoke towards the floor, away from Juliette.
    â€˜I bet he would have,’ Juliette says. ‘ D’accord .’ She lifts the bottle to her lips. It is dry and sour and hot going down her throat. She coughs and laughs, the woman laughing back. One of her front teeth slightly crosses over the other.
    â€˜I don’t drink much tequila,’ Juliette