A Perfect Paris Christmas - Mandy Baggot Page 0,79

all so close once. We were. Ferne would not stand for it.’

Silvie’s whimper at the end of the sentence made the atmosphere still a little. Ethan looked to Louis and Louis met his gaze, finally seeming a touch more in control of his emotions. Why had they never warmed to each other? Why had it always felt like a competition? Had they both not loved Ferne in their own way?

‘I am sorry, Mother,’ Louis finally responded, reaching out for Silvie’s other shoulder. ‘You are right.’ He looked again at Ethan. ‘We should not be fighting…’ He looked away. ‘In front of Bernard.’

Ethan adjusted Silvie’s chair a little as she eased herself back down into it and then he sat too, deciding not to return to his own seat, but to drop down here, all three of them now on the same side, Bernard at the head of the table.

‘Am I permitted to continue now?’ Bernard asked, brushing crumbs from his chin having obviously devoured another coconut biscuit while the argument was ensuing.

‘Yes,’ Silvie said, reaching into her handbag and drawing out a handkerchief. ‘Please, Bernard, tell us what is happening with the conclusion of Ferne’s estate.’

Bernard cleared his throat and glanced at the open folio again. ‘As you are aware, Silvie, you currently own twenty-five per cent of the hotel chain and Ethan, you also own twenty-five per cent. And, Ferne, she owned the other fifty per cent.’

‘Cut to the chase, Bernard,’ Louis interrupted. ‘We know this. We also know that Ferne’s fifty per cent was then to be split, thirty per cent to my mother and twenty per cent to Ethan on her death, therefore making my mother the majority shareholder.’

Bernard seemed to hesitate. ‘That was how the will was required to be read from the outset, yes.’

‘What does that mean?’ Louis asked.

‘I am afraid that when Ferne drafted this document with me she foresaw the division that might take place if she was no longer here. She did not want to be unfair to anyone and… as much as she loved you all, she was also uncomfortable with what this change in circumstance might lead to.’

‘Again, what does that mean?’ Louis asked.

Ethan looked at Silvie. She was holding the handkerchief between her thumb and forefinger, moving the material slowly this way and that. He wasn’t sure she was tuned in to what Bernard was saying. He wasn’t sure she was connected at all.

‘There is a proviso in Ferne’s will. A clause that she and I specifically designed to come into being if there was to be any mixed direction over the future of Perfect Paris,’ Bernard told them.

A proviso? Were you able to do that in a will? Make a clause of a clause with intricate meanings and consequences if one thing was achieved and not another? Ethan didn’t know. He didn’t have a will. When Ferne had made hers, back when they had formed the company, she had told him life could be unexpected, that they needed to make sure what they built together went to the right people after they passed. And Ethan had laughed. He was sober now, remembering that he had told his friend he had never had anything and as she was the one who had given him the something he did now have, he was only going to give it back to her. He’d promised to get one done. He hadn’t. Stupide.

‘I’ll get straight to the point,’ Bernard told them.

‘I very much wish you would,’ Louis said, still agitated.

Bernard cleared his throat, checking the document in front of him again. ‘You knew that you were not allowed to seek a sale of the hotels until twelve months after the death, and that no sale would be able to be finalised until after the completion of probate.’ He smiled. ‘It was Ferne’s wish for there to be a period of grace where things could settle and the hotels could carry on being managed exactly as they had been—’

‘Yes, but it is past twelve months now,’ Louis reminded.

‘And after twelve months… this next clause takes effect.’ Bernard began to read from the text. ‘After the twelve-month period following my death, this clause shall take the place of clause 8.1.2 in relation to my interest in Perfect Paris. My shares will revert to being held as follows…’ Bernard took a breath. ‘Twenty per cent to my mother, Silvie Durand, twenty per cent to my best friend, Ethan Bouchard and…’ Bernard raised his eyes from the