The café phone rang and Tansy moved across to answer it.
‘Hi, Antoine. Table for two tomorrow? Fine. You’ll probably have the place to yourselves as it’s still quiet. See you at seven-thirty then.’
‘Who’s he bringing?’ Rosie mouthed at Tansy.
‘Antoine, who… sorry, he’s hung up,’ Tansy said, looking at Rosie apologetically.
‘It had better not be Charlie, that’s all,’ Rosie muttered, savaging the potato she was supposedly peeling.
As a busy morning turned into lunchtime, Rosie was pleased to serve half a dozen plates of daube provençale, her plat du jour, to a group of walkers on their way to the Cap d’Antibes.
Tansy left at three o’clock. ‘I’ll be back about six-thirty. Make sure you have a rest this afternoon. Go for a walk on the beach or something. We’re all organised for this evening.’
‘I want to check upstairs first. See if there is any way we can make use of the place,’ Rosie said. ‘See you later.’
Locking the door behind Tansy and turning the sign to Closed, Rosie turned the key in the door by the bar and began to climb the stairs. Steep and clad in threadbare carpet, they weren’t the easiest to negotiate and Rosie was glad when she reached the room.
It was larger than she remembered. There was even a walk-in shower in one corner. A halfway decent sofa bed covered in boxes was against one wall and there was a kettle on a wooden table. The whole set-up reminded Rosie of her very first bedsit at college.
The windows were curtainless and, through the back one, she looked directly into the conservatory sitting room of the hotel. Lloyd Loom chairs and matching small coffee tables were dotted around, palm trees in pots and Seb working on a laptop. Rosie stepped back out of view. The last thing she wanted was for Seb to look up and catch her watching him. He’d probably accuse her of spying on him after the way he’d caught her snooping around the hotel.
Rosie pulled at the lid of one of the boxes on the settee. Beautiful wine glasses. Mentally she made a note to remember them for special functions. The rest of the boxes, though, were filled with kitchen equipment well past its sell-by date. Rubbish really.
Back downstairs, Rosie locked up and set off for a walk along the beach. Strolling along inches from where the Mediterranean was gently lapping at the sand, enjoying the warmth of the sun, the temptation to paddle was strong. Her feet, though, were nice and snug in her trainers and she decided she wouldn’t torture them by placing them in water that was still certain to be on the cold side.
The gentle breeze that blew in her face was invigorating and by the time she returned to the Café Fleur the exercise had banished her tiredness from the busy morning.
A dog was lying under one of the terrace tables when she got back. ‘Hello. Where’s your owner?’ Soulful brown eyes that tore right into Rosie’s heart looked at her but the dog made no attempt to move.
‘You’re very thin,’ she said, gently stroking the dog’s head. She wasn’t wearing a collar, so no helpful name tag and address. ‘Stay there,’ and Rosie went into the kitchen to get some of the mince she had left over from the lasagne.
When she’d eaten and drunk, the dog managed a few wags of her tail before curling up under the table again and going to sleep.
Black and white, she reminded Rosie of the collie dogs her Aunty Elsie had kept on her Somerset farm. Whenever Rosie had visited with her parents there had always been at least two dogs bounding around for her to play with. And just once there had been a litter of puppies.
That litter of puppies had caused a family row Rosie had never forgotten when she’d begged to be allowed to take one home. Olivia, her mother, had said yes, but her father had said no, and however much Rosie had cried and begged, nothing would make him change his mind.
Rosie remembered shouting at him through a blur of tears. ‘I hate you. When I’m grown up I’m going to live in the country and have six dogs.’
Of course it had never happened – living in the country or the six dogs. Maybe the dog turning up unexpectedly was some sort of sign? Could she keep her?
Gently Rosie examined the dog’s ears. Every French dog was supposed to have a number tattooed in their ear. No tattoo. Which probably also meant no micro identification chip either. Rosie sighed. The lack of both would mean the paperwork would be immense and would probably mean the dog went straight to ‘death row’ at the local dog pound. No way could Rosie bear the thought of that.
There was only one thing for it. Tonight she’d take the dog home with her and, if nobody claimed her in the next few days, she’d keep her – and christen her Lucky. With the French being so laissez-faire about dogs in restaurants it was unlikely to be a problem.
‘Why are you looking at houses, Mummy?’
Erica jumped. She’d left Cammie engrossed in her beach project at the kitchen table while she’d sneaked into the sitting room to look at some houses on the internet. No time to close the laptop now.
‘GeeGee was telling me about some of the lovely houses she gets to sell and I thought I’d take a look,’ Erica said evasively.
‘You’d have to be a princess to live in that one,’ Cammie said, pointing to the decorative turrets on the house Erica was looking at. ‘Like Rapunzel. Does GeeGee know a princess?’ she asked, her eyes opened wide in wonder as she looked at Erica.
Erica laughed. ‘I don’t think so but you never know.’ Would this be a good moment to talk about selling this house? She’d planned to introduce the subject casually one afternoon when they were walking back from school. Drop it into the conversation and wait for Cammie’s reaction. Now she felt unprepared and caught out.
‘If we didn’t live here, what kind of house would you like to live in?’ she said casually, thinking she might as well make the best of the opportunity and see how Cammie reacted.
‘One like Madeleine’s,’ Cammie said instantly. ‘With a big garden so I could have a dog.’
Erica pursed her lips and blew a soft whistle. Given that Madeleine’s parents lived in a belle époque villa in one of the most desirable areas of town, her daughter had good taste. And why the sudden desire for a dog?
‘A house like that would be too expensive for us but lots of villas have nice gardens – even swimming pools. How about…‘ She scrolled quickly through a couple of pages. ‘Something like this?’
Cammie shook her head. ‘It’s not very pretty.’
Erica clicked on another page and started to scroll through. Cammie stopped her when she reached a typical Provençal villa with a terracotta roof, olive-green shutters and a vibrant bougainvillea clambering over the walls.
‘That’s pretty.’
‘You like that one?’
Cammie nodded.
Reading the description and seeing the price Erica took a deep breath and said, ‘We could sell this house and buy that one. Would you like that?’
‘Could I have a dog if we lived there?’
‘Possibly,’ Erica said as her phone rang. Amelia, her mother-in-law, making her weekly ‘I’m not checking up on you. I’m just keeping you in the loop with family news from up here’ telephone call. This time it was a bit more. Amelia was planning a weekend visit next month.
‘That’s great,’ Erica said. ‘Already looking forward to it.’ She and Amelia had got on from the moment Pascal had introduced them. Both had been equally heartbroken when he died.
‘Is