‘Yes, Ella, sit very still please.’ He was teasing her now, sensing her embarrassment and trying to put her at her ease. He handed each of them a pencil and they began to draw her.
‘No rubbing out, Rhona.’ he stopped her as she tutted and reached for his tin of pencils. ‘Use the line you’ve already made and correct it. You see, like this. You can draw several light lines until you start to build up the right shape. That’s it, good. Now go over that one and make it a little darker . . .’
Caroline wasn’t with them that day; she had stayed behind at the gallery to prepare for a drinks reception that she was holding that evening to launch an exhibition of her brother’s latest work. They’d promised to come back early and lend a hand polishing glasses and folding napkins. All at once, Ella felt self-conscious about being without their chaperone. How ridiculous, she thought, as if I were seventeen again. It’s not as if anything can possibly happen between him and me. She sat still, as directed, gazing out to sea, all the while conscious of his eyes skimming her eyes, her lips, her throat as he drew her.
They presented her with the three sketches. ‘Very good. What a brilliant drawing, Robbie. And, Rhona, yours really is excellent.’
‘I’m going to keep it and send it to Daddy.’ Rhona took hers back and put it in the bag that contained her sun-hat and sandals.
Ella handed back the other two drawings, noticing that Christophe tucked his between the pages of his sketch-book before starting to unpack the lunch things. Would he keep it? Or would it just be thrown away when he got home?
And why, all of a sudden, did that seem to matter so very much to her?
‘I’m sorry. Have we been introduced? Why, Rhona and Robbie, it’s you! I didn’t recognise you in your smart clothes.’ Caroline, looking radiant herself in a black cocktail dress, with her hair piled up in a loose chignon, stooped to hug the children.
‘Your team of helpers, reporting for duty.’ Ella gave a mock salute. ‘Give us our orders.’
‘Robbie, can you go and find Christophe upstairs? He’s filling ice buckets to chill the wine and I think he might need a hand breaking up the ice block with a hammer and chisel. Make sure he doesn’t do any lasting damage either to himself or to the kitchen. And, Rhona, please could you finish folding these catalogues – like this – and then lay out a few piles of them here and there?’
‘It looks wonderful, Caroline.’ Ella admired the newly displayed exhibits.
Caroline nodded. ‘His work gets better and better, doesn’t it? I hope it will be well received. We have quite a number of my Parisian clients coming this evening – the island is becoming such a fashionable place to holiday these days. If they like what they see, they could be influential in spreading the word back in the city. His work is starting to command Parisian prices, even on the Île de Ré.’
As the evening shadows began to lengthen across the cobble-stones, the first guests started to arrive.
The children handed round glasses of chilled Sancerre and were exclaimed over and proclaimed ‘charmants’. The two rooms of the gallery were soon filled with an elegant and sophisticated crowd, and Ella circulated, eavesdropping on the guests’ appreciative comments and admiring remarks about the artist and his work. Caroline introduced her to a former colleague from the Louvre, who regaled her with anecdotes from the museum during the war years and reassured her that all the artworks that had been hidden in safe locations around France had survived and had now been returned to their rightful home.
As Ella leaned closer, to catch the man’s stories above the rising hubbub, she was aware that Christophe seemed to be watching her rather than listening to the chatter of the group that surrounded him.
Her children approached, and Christophe continued to watch her as she introduced them. She noticed a look of pain, fleeting as a flicker of lightning, that pulsed in his eyes as she drew her children close to her side, and she wondered whether it had been a mistake to come back to the Île de Ré after all. Perhaps she should have let it be, allowed time to dissolve the bond of their friendship rather than perpetuating it across the years. Despite the clarity of the opalescent sky above the roofs of Saint Martin, where swallows dipped and soared beyond the church tower on the hillside across the harbour, she had a sudden foreboding, as heavy as gathering storm-clouds. What would happen in a week’s time when the holidays came to an end and it was time to board the train that would carry them away from the island and back to their lives in Edinburgh? It would be impossible to get on that train. It would be impossible not to.
‘There you go.’ Christophe carried Robbie up the stairs and deposited him gently on the bed, so as not to wake him.
‘Thank you,’ whispered Ella. He watched from the bedroom doorway as she eased off her son’s shoes and drew the covers over him, stooping to brush the hair from his forehead and plant a kiss there. Christophe turned away and, without a word, went back downstairs, his limp making his footsteps thud unevenly on alternate steps.
‘Goodnight.’ Ella kissed Rhona and tucked her in, moving across the room to pull the shutters to. The night breeze stirred the muslin curtains, soft as the breath of sleep. ‘You were a wonderful help at Caroline’s party tonight, my grown-up girl.’
‘Thank you. And Mummy?’
‘Yes, Rhona?’
‘It’s only one more week to go until we see Daddy again, isn’t it?’
Ella nodded.
‘That’s good. I think he must be missing us, don’t you?’
She nodded again. ‘Night, night. Off to sleep now.’
Rhona yawned, then tuned on to her side, pulling her pillow close and wriggling into a more comfortable position. Her mother hesitated for a moment, watching as Rhona’s eyes closed, her lashes fluttering, delicate as butterfly wings against the roses of her cheeks. And then Ella turned and left the room.
Christophe sat on the terrace, his head tilted back, watching the stars. She sat down on the chair beside his and followed suit, gazing into the night sky.
Caroline had gone home with her artist at the end of the evening. ‘Are you sure you’ll be alright?’ she’d asked Ella, holding her at arm’s length and scrutinising her face. ‘I can easily put him off for another time.’
Ella had laughed. ‘Don’t you dare! We’ll be fine. I don’t want to be the one to get in the way of your love life – I feel we’ve probably been a bit of a hindrance on that front already this summer.’
They’d found Robbie curled up behind Caroline’s desk, sound asleep. ‘Here,’ offered Christophe. ‘I’ll carry him to the car. Let me drive you home. You’ll need a hand at the other end.’
So they were alone together. Ella wondered fleetingly if it had been engineered? And, if so, by whom? Caroline? Christophe? Or by Ella herself, who could, after all, have turned down the offer of help and driven the children home on her own. Was it all three of them, conspiring together? Or could she blame it on something else? On Angus’s affair? Or was it just fate?
Above them, the Milky Way was a river of light, flowing through the blackness of the night. As she watched, Ella felt as though she were being pulled into its stream, swept along, unresisting suddenly.
And then she knew, with utter certainty, that leaving Christophe again was impossible. That, in a life filled with impossibilities, this single truth was the only one that mattered. She and the children would stay here on the island and they would make a life together with him.
Without a word, she stood and held out her hand to him. He looked up at her, pain and fear clouding his expression, and shook his head.
She took his hand in hers, then nodded, her eyes still locked on his, her smile calm and clear.
She pulled him to his feet and they walked, hand in hand, to the dunes, which gathered them once more into their hidden embrace, secreting them away from the world of impossibilities, in a place where the only certainty was love.
When she woke, just as the blue mist of dawn crept across the beach, he was no longer lying beside her. She turned, drowsily, and saw him there, his pencil whispering across the page of his sketch-book as he drew her. When he lifted his eyes to glance at her again, she was smiling at him.
‘This will be my greatest masterpiece, Ella. All these years, it has been waiting to be created. But now is the time.’ He sketched a few more lines, then carefully closed his sketch-book and stood, holding out his hand to her.
They brushed the sand from their clothes and, hand still clasping hand, walked back to the house before the children awoke.
It seemed that Caroline sensed something had changed the moment she saw them together. She drove Christophe back to the apartment above the gallery after lunch and on her return she suggested that they all go down to the beach to collect shells.
She and Ella sat against the soft flank of the dunes, watching Rhona and Robbie as they pottered up and down the strand-line, busy as sandpipers, each with a bucket to fill.
‘Ella,’ Caroline said, gazing out towards the sea, unable to look her friend in the eye. ‘I know. Christophe has told me, about your decision last night to leave Angus. Tell me, please, that in the clear light of day you have reconsidered.’