Solitaire
Sara Craven
Former journalist SARA CRAVEN published her first novel ‘Garden of Dreams’ for Mills & Boon in 1975. Apart from her writing (naturally!) her passions include reading, bridge, Italian cities, Greek islands, the French language and countryside, and her rescue Jack Russell/cross Button. She has appeared on several TV quiz shows and in 1997 became UK TV Mastermind champion. She lives near her family in Warwickshire – Shakespeare country.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
AS she got down from the small country bus, the heat seemed to strike her like a blow. A glance at her watch told Marty Langton that it was already past noon, and that, of course, explained why the small square seemed almost deserted. She had been in France for less than a week, but already she had become accustomed to the way everything seemed to grind to a complete halt at lunchtime so that the French could give le déjeuner their full and serious attention.
She put her case down at her feet, flexing her shoulder muscles wearily. In spite of the breeze from the open window she had managed to station herself beside, it had been a long hot journey, but now it was over at last. She had finally arrived in Les Sables des Pins.
Behind her the bus, having discharged the remainder of its passengers, started on its way again with a roar and a whiff of exhaust fumes. As it passed Marty, the driver leaned out of his seat and called something to her. She didn’t catch the words—at school she’d always been considered good at French, but her experiences so far had soon disabused her of that notion; no one had told her about regional accents or that people spoke so fast—but the tone was friendly and encouraging as if he had discerned there was something a little forlorn about the slender figure standing looking round the square, with all her worldly goods packed into the elderly leather suitcase at her feet. She smiled rather shyly and lifted a hand in response as the battered vehicle clattered and swayed over the cobbles and around the corner out of sight.
When it had finally disappeared altogether, and even the raucous note of its engine was becoming a memory, Marty felt a faint quiver of apprehension run through her. She had been lonely before many times during her short life, but she had never felt so completely alone as she did at that moment. And all she had to sustain her was the promise of Uncle Jim’s letter, reposing safely in her handbag.
‘You’re not alone,’ she told herself fiercely and silently. ‘Uncle Jim is waiting for you as he said he would be all those years ago. There’s nothing to worry about. You’re going to have a proper home at last.’
A proper home! Even though she had actually arrived, she could still hardly believe it. Only a month ago she had been working at her secure boring job in a solicitor’s office, going home in the evenings to help Aunt Mary with the housework and the gardening at the big rather ugly Edwardian villa on the edge of the small town where they lived, and listen to her accounts of the day’s events in the faintly complaining tone she habitually used. Aunt Mary had always had a grudge against the world in general, but this had been intensified fourteen years earlier when she had been forced to offer a home to her small orphaned niece. This had been a burden and an encumbrance she had never desired, and she had made Marty, five years old and shocked to the core of her being by the sudden death of her mother from virus pneumonia, fully aware of the fact.
All her young life she’d heard the recital of the various grievances—the difficulties of supporting a growing girl on a fixed income, the wish to travel, thwarted by Marty’s presence—and it was only as she grew older that Marty began to realise that she was the excuse and not the cause for the shortcomings in her aunt’s life. That Miss Barton was an indolent woman who preferred grumbling to exerting herself in any way. But by then it was too late. The idea that she was a nuisance and a burden to her aunt was firmly fixed in Marty’s mind, and there could never be any real affection between them.
That was why Uncle Jim had come to assume such importance to her, she supposed. He had made the fact of his caring, his anxiety for her so clear from the outset. He wasn’t in the strict sense of the word an uncle at all, of course, but a distant and much older cousin of her late father’s, and many of Marty’s earliest memories were connected with him. There was never any pattern to Uncle Jim’s visits—he just arrived, and there were always presents when he did come, and a lot of laughter.
Marty smiled a little as she picked up her case and started determinedly across the square. Even her mother, whose eyes had never really lost their sadness after her young husband had been killed in a works accident, laughed when Uncle Jim came. Only Aunt Mary had disapproved, her openly voiced opinion that her young sister had married beneath her never more evident than when Uncle Jim was in the vicinity.
‘Really, Tina,’ Marty had overheard her say impatiently, ‘I can’t imagine why you encourage that man to come here. There’s bound to be talk whether he was a relation of Frank’s or not. And he’s a most unsuitable influence to have on an impressionable child. Why, he’s little better than a nomad. He’s never had a settled job or a respectable home in his life.’
She could not hear her mother’s soft-voiced reply, but Marty heard Aunt Mary’s scandalised snort in response.
‘You can’t be serious, Tina! Isn’t one mistake enough for you? A man like that—and he must be at least twenty years older than you. Have some sense before it’s too late!’
Years later, Marty could still remember her mother’s laugh, warm and almost carefree, with another underlying note that she was too young to understand then. Yet only a few weeks later, a neighbour had come to fetch her from school, telling her soothingly that her mummy didn’t feel too grand, and before twenty-four hours had passed Tina Langton had died in hospital.
Marty’s eyes misted suddenly as she sank down on one of the wrought iron chairs set outside the café under a striped awning. Uncle Jim had been off on his travels again, so there had been no way to tell him her mother had died—not that Aunt Mary would probably have done so even if there had been a forwarding address, she thought. So he had missed the funeral, and she had travelled south with Aunt Mary, thin-lipped and brooding beside her at this unexpected turn in her affairs.
At first the bewildered child she had been had thought she would never see Uncle Jim again, but she had been wrong, because he had turned up about six months later—‘like the proverbial bad penny’, Aunt Mary had remarked caustically,