Chapter 58

Chapter 58

Emma

Gardenia that helpful, smiling girl in the library; Mrs Pepperpot giving up her time to meet them; Clem sharing her wisdom and wine; Roberto taking care of her in Cambridge; Alistair with his knowledge and the research he is doing for her; all these kind, kind people. And that is before she even considers Betty and Les.

She looks at Betty, who is screwing up her nose as she sips tentatively at her Champagne– she must be the kindest person she has ever met.

‘What? Why are you smiling at me like that?' Betty puts down her glass. ‘Tell me more about your mum. You said there were things you needed to say to her?'

Emma immediately stops smiling. ‘I try to fight it, Betty, but however much I tell myself I'm forty and recite my CV in my head, when I see my mum it's like I am five years old again and I feel like I did when she used to scream at me.'

Betty tuts. ‘Well, that's no way to treat a child.'

‘It wasn't all that often. I wasn't abused, nothing like that.' How can she describe it? ‘It was the lack of kindness rather than unkindness,' she says, although she wonders if that is really true. Wasn't her childhood littered with small acts of unkindness? Didn't the effect of these build like the layers of ice packed around a snowball?

‘But you got on well with your dad, I remember you saying?'

Emma is happy to be diverted. ‘Yes, he was a sweet man, very gentle, and he would always try his best to protect me. We spent a lot of time in the garden together. But he wasn't there all the time.'

‘Do you know what you want to say to your mum?'

Emma just shakes her head. Instead, she asks her own, simpler question, ‘Shall we have another glass of Champagne?'

‘Oh yes, let's, love.'

After Emma has ordered, Betty asks, ‘What did your mum think of Will?'

‘Well, he was a good-looking corporate lawyer from an okay family, so she approved.'

‘And she liked him?'

‘I have no idea. I don't know if she ever really knew him.' Emma pictures her mother on their wedding day, beautiful in a white silk suit and enormous hat. No woman could have held a candle to her– certainly not the bride. Emma had expected such a display and didn't really mind– but then she had Will. He was all she thought about, that and knowing her dad would walk with her down the aisle. She wonders now if her father had already known he had cancer. He died less than a year later.

Betty is slowly turning her glass in her hand, ‘Is it getting any easier, love?' She pauses. ‘Will?'

Emma feels her defences rise, bracing herself for the pain. The wave washes over her, but this time does not knock her off her feet. All she can think to say is, ‘Yes.'

Betty waits, but Emma cannot find any more words.

‘Do you think you have forgiven him, love?'

‘No.'

What else is there to say but the truth?

Emma books them into their hotel in Montmartre and from there takes Betty up the steep steps to Sacré Coeur. She wants her to be able to get her bearings and to see the expanse of Paris laid out below her. The sun has turned the underside of the clouds pink and the rooftops orange. Betty points excitedly to the Eiffel Tower in the distance, her curls gleaming tortoiseshell in the late afternoon light.

Over supper in a restaurant near their hotel, they discuss Emma's suggestions for the garden centre.

‘I think you've gee'd Les up no end,' Betty says, as she nibbles away at the French bread. ‘I heard him singing this morning while watering the plants. He hasn't done that in I don't know how long.'

‘Does he think it would be easy to renovate the café?'

‘Oh, that doesn't faze him at all, love. He's even talking of extending it to give it a veranda looking out over the downs and of growing a wisteria along it. He's always had a soft spot for wisteria. And just before I left, he said he had a few ideas of his own and would tell me about them when I got home.'

Emma feels a stab of longing to be back in the garden centre in the early morning, to hear Les singing to his begonias. Perhaps after a few days in Paris, it will be time to go home, to continue rebuilding her life, bedding in a new kind of normal.

As they walk back to the hotel, Emma checks her phone for the umpteenth time. There is still no news from Alistair.