He calmly promised to call the next day, expressed his thanks, and then turned back to the piano.
Ella was standing now, her cell phone pressed firmly against one ear, her right hand squeezed against her mouth, and from the look on her face whatever she was hearing was not good news.
Seb instantly made his excuses and crossed the room to take her arm.
‘What is it? Is everything all right? ‘
Ella shuddered and shrugged into her jacket. ‘That was Yvette. She was reading to Dan when the lights went out. It has happened once before in a mistral and we lost power for a couple of days.’ She clutched at Seb’s arm. ‘Can you take me home, please? I wouldn’t normally leave a party before the guests but this is an emergency.’
‘Sure. But I don’t understand… Is it Dan? Is he frightened of the dark?’
Ella grabbed her bag, then pressed her hand onto her chest and took a breath. ‘Not frightened of the dark. Terrified. I’m hoping that he will grow out of it, and I’ve tried everything but right now…he’s going to be panicking. I need to get there and fast.’
‘Of course. Let’s go.’ Seb grabbed her hand and led her through the hotel guests who were crowding in to chat about the music. Ella would have been lost in the crush but with Seb in the lead they were in the porch before Sandrine could reply to their quick ‘farewells.’
Seb flung open the front door to the hotel and it was snatched immediately out of his hands by the gale-force winds that howled as loudly as the howls of protest from the hotel guests who were being buffeted by the freezing cold draught. By turning his shoulder to the wind, and protecting Ella as best he could with his body, Seb managed to shuffle their way across the car park and open the passenger door of his car for Ella, bracing it against his back long enough for her to throw herself into the seat before the wind slammed it closed.
By the time Seb collapsed into the driver’s seat and pulled his door closed, he was freezing cold, exhausted and shaking with physical effort.
‘I had forgotten what the mistral wind feels like!’ Seb murmured to Ella, who had taken a firm grip with one hand on the grab handle on the car frame and was holding her seat belt extra tight with the other.
He slowly unclamped her hand from around her seat belt.
‘Relax. You are surrounded by six air bags, Ella, and the same safety technology used in racing cars. You are quite safe.’
‘Then why do you need six air bags?’ she squeaked as the powerful engine roared into life.
‘Not all drivers are as experienced as I am,’ Seb replied with a hint of a smile on his lips, trying to reassure her, while thinking of some task to keep her mind busy. ‘But I do need some help. Would you mind checking for fallen branches on the road? There is not much clearance between the road and our seats.’
Ella could only look ahead in terror as Seb carefully edged the car down the main road, the powerful headlights lighting up the thrashing trees and bushes either side of the road.
It was going to be a bumpy night.
ELLA came to a dead stop at the top of the staircase.
Dan was sitting huddled on the bed in his room, one arm wrapped tight around Milou’s neck while his other hand was clasped firmly around the handle of their biggest torch.
The light was pointing upwards and reflecting from the ceiling so that the bottom half of his small face was white and the rest in shadow. Thick church candles burnt brightly inside glass flues, but their light was ineffectual compared to the giant electric torch.
The hard light contrasted so powerfully with his sweet striped pyjamas and towel dressing gown that her heart constricted with the sight of it. Dan had always been scared of the dark but she had not seen him looking so pale and terrified for a long time.
Ella forced herself to lift her head for the last few steps and skip lightly into Dan’s room. She had to be positive for her son’s sake—she just had to get him through the night.
‘Hello. Are you still awake? This is exciting, isn’t it? Did you hear the big wind? Oh—you found the torch from the kitchen! Good thinking.’
Ella flung herself down on the bed next to Dan and gave him an extra warm cuddle.
‘What a clever boy you are. And thank you for helping Yvette.’
‘I had to help find the torch,’ he finally managed to reply. ‘But then the wind got a bit scary.’
‘Well, seeing as you have been so brave, I think you can come downstairs for a few minutes and tell Seb all about the excitement.’
In an instant Dan was shrugging the duvet from his legs and sliding out of bed.
Ella grabbed hold of his hand and used the torch to guide their way to the hall, which was flooded with light from the driveway. Yvette had already driven off home, but Seb had left his on so that the powerful beams pointed straight onto the house and the glass panel above the front door.
She could have kissed him on the spot.
An even brighter light came walking out of the living room—the beam so powerful that Ella shaded her eyes.
‘Hey, guys. Hope you don’t mind that I lit the fire. And what do you think of this new torch? Cool, eh?’
Dan shone his torch onto the carpet, then looked at Seb. ‘Yours is better than mine,’ he said with a quivering-lip voice. He looked back and forth between the two torches and said, ‘I need one like that.’
‘Well, how about a swap? Here, try it out. I should warn you, though. It’s pretty heavy!’
Dan ran forwards to take the handle from Seb, then blew out hard. ‘Really heavy! ‘ Then he started waving it about. ‘Look, Mum. Now I can see everything.’
‘That’s wonderful. In that case you can guide our way to the kitchen. I fancy some hot chocolate. And you’ll never guess what happened to me tonight?’
Dan lifted his head towards her, eyes wide and suddenly curious.
‘Did your lights go out too?’
‘No, they didn’t. But Seb gave me a scary ride home in his sports car. What do you think of that?’
‘Hey! It wasn’t that bad! I didn’t go that fast.’ Seb laughed and winked at Dan, whose mouth curled up into a grin. But as Seb strolled down the short corridor, Ella realised that it was Seb’s fingers Dan sought rather than hers, his tiny hand engulfed inside Seb’s palm. And it broke her.
Hours later, Dan’s head lolled on Seb’s shoulder as Seb carried him back to his toy-filled bedroom, with Ella carrying the torch to guide their way up the narrow old staircase.
They had shared hot chocolate made in a pan on a gas ring fed by a bottle of propane, then huddled in front of a roaring fire in the living room. Seb had drawn the heavy curtains, but nothing could block the howling wind on the other side of the glass and the draughts that blew the smoke right back down the chimney, making them all choke and splutter and laugh.
Dan had been given the task of holding the big torch while Seb fed the fire and lit a cluster of scented candles so they could see where the cups of hot chocolate were.
It had seemed only natural for Seb to divert Dan with stories about the hot and dusty places he had visited and all of the exotic plants and birds that he had seen during the previous month in the North of Australia.
Tales of kangaroos and Koala bears and kookaburras and remote towns where people had to drive for hours before they saw another house or person.
Places where people needed computers and clever phones to