Carrie stuck her tongue out at her niece, and looped an arm around her neck in a wrestler’s headlock. ‘Is that so?’
Jade promptly dissolved into giggles.
‘Mum’s still not sure of the details but she thinks it’s six.’
‘That’d be two bedrooms and a sofa bed in the lounge,’ guessed Carrie out loud. This could be her best chance at tracking Richard down. Sleeping in the lounge was a smallish price to pay.
Jade shrugged. ‘I guess.’
‘What if I drove? Hired a car at the airport. Nice, did you say? Cinders and her mother could go on holiday somewhere hot and sunny.’
‘Seriously!’ Jade jumped up and threw her arms around Carrie. ‘Auntie Caz you rock. That would be awesome. Even with Al. Not that Al is not nice. He’s lovely. But … well you know.’ Occasionally Jade knew when to stop. This moment was clearly one of them. Al was a teacher. Fifteen years older than her. One day she would understand.
‘Good job Al is cycling in the Alps, then.’ Carrie’s stern look communicated that she’d gone far enough.
‘Is that in Russia?’ asked Jade, looking away.
‘Did they teach you anything at that school of yours?’ Carrie shook her head, but Jade gave her a cheeky irrepressible grin.
‘Yup, Poker, Spin-the-bottle and how to top up your lunch card with someone else’s account.’
Turning her back on her niece, Carrie poured boiling water over her teabag and waited for it to brew, tuning out Jade’s excited chatter. How hard could it be to find out where a film crew was working? Surely she could discover where Richard was staying and hand-deliver a letter. She wouldn’t even have to see him. This was the best possible solution. This way she’d be sure he’d receive the letter. She could spend weeks waiting for letters to go back and forth to the States, even if she had his proper address.
‘Come on then, Princess Jade. Show me where we need to get to and what the flight times and prices are.’
Coming down the metal steps as dusk fell, the balmy heat enveloped her in that familiar holiday-warm embrace, immediately making her smile. In the distance lights twinkled, winking through the heat haze pouring off the tarmac of the runway. Overhead a plane roared as it took off. Despite the petrol fumes in the air, she could also smell that indefinable mix of Cypress and the Mediterranean.
Jade, who’d moaned for much of the flight, now started hopping up and down and asking lots of questions. Angela answered them patiently. Carrie tuned out. She had other things on her mind. She clutched the travel wallet closer to her. The car-hire papers were all in there. Booked online. Her diving licence as instructed. They weren’t delayed. The car-hire office expected them. They were used to people arriving at all hours.
She had her phone. It had maps on it. They’d work in France, wouldn’t they? She’d already programmed the address of the villa into the app. Carrie didn’t feel as sure about driving as she made out to her sister.
Her hand tightened on her carry-on luggage.
Angela turned anxious eyes on her. ‘Do you think we’ll be able to find the car-hire place okay? They won’t have closed yet, will they? It’s peak holiday season. They must be used to people flying in at this time. It will be alright won’t it?’
‘Of course it will. Once we’re through, it will be dead easy.’ Carrie smiled, hoping that her sister couldn’t see the mild panic in her eyes. She’d never ever driven on the wrong side of the road. Why the hell had she thought she could?
‘Do you think you’ll be alright in a left-hand car? And with the French drivers. I’ve heard they’re mad.’
Nerves danced in Carrie’s stomach, taking up a full-blown jig instead of the slightly agitated rumba of a minute before. ‘It’ll be fine. I’ll take it nice and steady.’ And pray that there wasn’t much traffic on the road at this time and that the sat-nav on her phone would be patient with her and that she’d be able to manage the gears with the wrong hand.
They crawled at snail’s pace through passport control and then it took forever for the noisy juddering carousel, like an angry caterpillar, to disgorge their luggage with ill grace.
‘I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you offered to do this.’ Angela squeezed her arm as they walked out through the ‘nothing to declare’ channel, pushing a heavily laden trolley. It had been impossible to persuade Jade that, in the heat, she wouldn’t need that many clothes, even if they were going to be away for nearly a whole month.
Carrie had halted at the ‘nothing to declare’ sign, fancifully imagining that she might get stopped and turned back to go through the other channel. You should have declared your marriage. The jury was still out on whether she should have told Al. Not telling him was cowardly, but how did you go about telling your fiancé that you were already married? She couldn’t face the questions. Why hadn’t she mentioned it before? How long were you married? When did you last see him? Why didn’t you tell me?
‘I’m not sure that if I was driving out here, I would have been brave enough.’ Angela’s voice penetrated her thoughts. ‘You’ve always been so adventurous compared to me.’
‘No I haven’t,’ Carrie responded, slinging her bag over her shoulder. ‘It was easier for me to leave home.’ She hadn’t had a chronic illness to contend with. ‘And I had a reason to go. A place at drama school.’
‘Yes but you could have turned the place down. Not gone to live in London. It was a big step. You were marginally older than Jade and yet you went and embraced it.’
‘I was hungry then. To perform. To act. It wasn’t necessarily being brave, more like young and stupid. Foolhardy, even. I had no conception of what I was getting into. I assumed if I wanted it enough, it would happen and that, against the massive odds, I might be good enough and get work.’
‘Yawnsville. We’re on holiday here, guys. There’s proper French on the signs and everything and you two are having a history lesson.’
They emerged into the airport departure lounge. What was it that made you aware that you were in a different country? Was it the people? Their indefinable Frenchness, which made them look different.
The familiar logos of Hertz and Eurocar loomed and there was the company name and logo that matched her paperwork. Hurdle one successfully surmounted.
‘Why don’t you wait out here?’ suggested Carrie, looking at the tiny goldfish bowl of an office, dwarfed by its big-brother branded counterparts on either side.
‘Bonjour,’ said Carrie, retrieving the pages printed from the internet.
‘Bonsoir,’ said the middle-aged man on his feet behind a tall counter.
‘Yes. Do you speak English?’
‘Oui Madam.’ His dark eyebrows drew together in a ferocious, rather off-putting, slash suggesting that Carrie had committed a faux pas already. What he didn’t realise was that if she’d attempted to speak French they’d have been here all night.
Rather than upset him any further, she laid the paperwork on the counter with an encouraging smile, hoping that managing the transaction with minimal dialogue might make him feel better.
He took the folded sheets and held them close to his face, his nose almost touched the paper.
With a nod, he looked up at her and then back at the paper before busying himself typing at his computer. ‘Permis du conduire,’ he said without shifting his gaze