His capable secretary, Rebecca, barrelled in with her six-month pregnant stomach and barked messages at him, and he listened while watching her bump in its tight jersey top.
‘Is that thing moving?’ he asked, peering at her.
Rebecca stared down at the bump. ‘Yes, they’re busy today. It’s because I had laksa for lunch and now they’re all high on chilli and lemongrass,’ she laughed, cupping the twins in their safe house.
Edward laughed but wished for a moment she wasn’t going to leave next month to have the babies. How on earth would he replace such a wonderful assistant?
Rebecca was still speaking. ‘And Sibylla Le Marche called for you,’ she said.
Edward looked up. ‘She called here? To the office?’ he asked.
‘Yes, she said she had trouble getting through to you on the mobile,’ said Rebecca, glancing down at the notepad she was holding. ‘She said, thanks but no thanks.’ Rebecca raised her eyebrows and waited for his instruction.
Edward sighed and leaned back in his chair. This whole arrangement was proving to be more difficult than he had imagined and he wondered if he should have just gone home after all.
He sat thinking. There was no way he was going to leave Daphné’s legacy to that useless idiot Robert. He wanted to believe in Daphné’s granddaughters, but he had his doubts that the two estranged cousins had anything in common, let alone the ability to turn around a business.
Sometimes Daphné made impossible requests when she was alive, but he did his best to fulfil them. When he made her a promise, he never broke it, which was probably why he wasn’t a successful barrister with chambers at Gray’s Inn. But there was something about the Le Marche dynasty that was compelling, and Daphné’s energy was everywhere, even after her death.
He felt his eyes hurt with unshed tears for his boss and friend and he squeezed them tight to make them disappear.
Don’t frown, you’ll get lines, he heard her voice say and he smiled to himself as he opened a file. As long as the company was still under the Le Marche name, then it would have his loyalty.
Giles, Paris, 1956
Giles Le Marche had closed his pharmacy for lunch was and preparing to go home to a cooked meal, thanks to his housekeeper, Bertie.
Giles liked routine, procedure and process, and his owning his own pharmacy in Montreuil, right next to the main Paris bus depot, afforded him a good living with all number of people coming for their travel sickness remedies and medicines they were unable to find in their village.
He adjusted his hat on his dark head of hair—a genetic gift, thanks to his maternal grandfather, but he told his gentlemen customers the bounty on his head was due to the hair tonic he made, and used daily.
Men willingly bought the tonic, just like women bought all manner of balms and lotions for their ageing.
Everyone was looking for something, he thought, as he closed the door and locked it with his brass key and slipped it into the inside pocket of his suit coat and set out on his walk home.
As he passed the bus station, he saw a small group of people gathered, all quibbling over the price of something.
Perhaps it was some delicious figs that a farmer had brought up from Autignac. He had a lovely blue cheese that would go well with the figs and a class of Tempranillo after dinner.
Moving to the back of the crowd, his height gave him a vantage point to see the spectacle below, but instead of a valise of figs, there was a young girl selling what looked to be cakes of soap, wrapped in raffia ribbons. Glass jars of varying sizes were filled with a lotion that the women in the crowd were trying on their hands and arms and murmuring to themselves.
‘Very soft.’
‘Lovely.’
‘How much did you say?’
As the women discussed the product and the price, Giles stepped forward and dipped a finger into the jar that one of the women was holding. He smeared it onto the back of his hand and sniffed it, then gently rubbed it in.
His skin absorbed the smooth emollient and left it feeling fresher and, dare he say it, almost younger.
He picked up a cake of soap and held it to his nose. Lavender, he noted, and picked up another and recognised pungent citrus scents.
‘How much?’ he asked the girl, who looked up at him with indigo blue eyes, and a shock of dark curled hair.
‘The soap? Two francs. The lotion is five francs,’ she said, as a woman handed her the money for one of each of the products.
He rubbed the back of his hand again and noticed that his skin was still dewy where he had sampled the cream. There was something different compared to the creams he made in his pharmacy, but he couldn’t quite place the core ingredients.
There was lard, which was common, but there was something else.
‘What is in it?’ he asked her, feeling his stomach rumble. If he had the ingredients, he could experiment in the pharmacy and create his own Le Marche creams.
The girl looked up at him, and he saw her tired smile. It was amused and defeated all at once, and he felt sorry for her for a moment. So many girls like this came into Paris to find work, but the city was becoming overrun with the country mice just like her.
He waited for an answer impatiently. She handed a woman her change and a jar of cream and then leaned over and put her hand on Giles’ shoulder and whispered in his ear.
He could feel her mouth next to his skin. Her hair smelt of sunshine but her whisper was redolent with ambition.
‘An enchantress never reveals her magic,’ she said and stepped back from him. He felt the hairs on his neck rise with a feeling he thought would never visit him again.
‘I will buy them all,’ he said, without thinking twice.
And later, when surrounded by the cakes of soaps and lotions, he wondered if it was the product he wanted or the girl from the country.
* * *
Daphné Amyx stood opposite him in the small pharmacy, her hands twisting around each other, as though she was resisting the overwhelming urge to touch the rows of perfectly lined up bottles with their pretty labels.
‘I can make more,’ she said, as she watched the man line up the jars and soap on the marble-topped bench in the dispensary.
‘When you’re next in town, bring me some,’ he said brusquely.
Daphné shook her head. ‘No, I mean I can stay here and make more for you. I could work for you. I’d be an excellent assistant.’
He looked up at her, as though seeing her for the first time. She was ten years younger than his own son and yet she had more self-possession and directness than anyone he had met of that age.
He was used to the teens coming into the store, the girls trying to shoplift the peroxide for their hair, the boys wanting the hair cream for their pompadour.
But this girl with the cloud of dark hair and a waist he could have spanned with his outstretched fingers was beguiling him.
‘I don’t need an assistant,’ he snapped.
‘I think you could.’ She gestured around the space. ‘Women like other women to recommend things, it’s part of the secret women’s business,’ she said with that smile that shifted his perspective of the world.
It had been twenty years since he had loved a woman. His existence was carved out of routine and duty, yet this girl