number 8 was considered to be lucky, and that she considered it to be lucky too. Given her fortune to date, Deira couldn’t help thinking that the universe was simply mocking her.
‘Everything OK?’ asked Grace when Deira slid the phone back into her bag.
‘Hope so.’
‘I should have asked if you had a problem getting a room at the hotel.’ She glanced at her. ‘La Rochelle was always busy when we were there, and it’s coming into the tourist season.’
‘I booked a remise in the grounds. That’s all they had available.’
‘What’s a remise?’ asked Grace.
‘A shed,’ replied Deira, who’d clicked to translate.
‘They’re putting you in a shed!’ Grace sounded horrified. ‘How can they possibly get away with that?’
‘I presume it’s an upmarket shed, suitable for guests.’ Deira grinned.
‘I ask you to join me and you’re forced to stay in a shed.’ Grace chuckled. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘I’m sure it’ll be lovely,’ said Deira.
‘If you want to listen to music while we’re on the road, feel free,’ Grace said after they’d travelled in silence for a bit. ‘I’m getting used to listening to playlists in the car. When the children were small, it was always nursery rhymes or kids’ songs. Ken preferred listening to audio books, which I like myself, to be fair, but not all the time.’
‘What sort of music do you like?
‘I’m easy,’ Grace told her. ‘I need to update my tastes, because I have a lot of old stuff on my phone. But I usually listen to female vocalists. Adele. Mariah Carey, that sort of stuff.’
‘I have a mix you’ll like,’ said Deira. She paired her phone with the Lexus, and J.Lo’s rich voice, full of pain and heartbreak, filled the car.
‘Maybe not the most cheerful under the circumstances,’ remarked Grace as Adele followed up with even more heartache. ‘But like my mother used to say, they’ve got great lungs on them, those girls.’
Deira laughed.
‘We’re closer to the centre this time,’ Grace said as they approached La Rochelle a while later. ‘It’s not such a big place, and even though there can be lots of traffic it’s nothing like Paris.’
She followed the road through the flat landscape to the outskirts of the town, remembering the last time she’d been here with Ken and the children. She could hear them now, squabbling in the back seat of the car, and Ken telling them that if they weren’t quiet, he’d stop and leave them on the side of the road. He might have done, thought Grace; he’d been a great believer in following words with actions. If he threatened to do something, he nearly always carried it through, which meant that the children knew they could only go so far with him. She, on the other hand, had been a hopeless disciplinarian. She put it down to having to be strict in the aircraft cabin and not wanting to be the same at home.
She was still thinking of Ken as she drew up to the hotel. Unlike some of the newer, but somewhat soulless, hotels with sea views, the Fleur d’Île was a large old house with whitewashed walls, a red-tiled roof and sky-blue shutters at the windows.
‘This is lovely,’ said Deira as they got out of the car. ‘Even prettier than it looked on the website.’
‘Let’s hope the shed is equally lovely,’ said Grace.
Deira felt sure it would be. The interior of the hotel was charming, casually decorated with a pastel blue and white seaside vibe. The walls were hung with art deco posters of beaches and railways, as well as old movie posters for films starring French actresses.
It was when she was handed the key to her hut and saw that instead of a number it had the name ‘Brigitte Bardot’ on the fob that she looked at Grace in excitement.
‘She must have stayed here,’ she said. ‘That’s definitely the answer to the professor’s question.’
She turned immediately to the receptionist, a rather stern older man with a deeply furrowed brow and an enormous white moustache.
‘I know nothing of Bardot and the hotel,’ he said. ‘Yes, we have named things for her. And for Madame Deneuve, and Madame Binoche. But they have not stayed here. Unfortunately.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Grace. ‘Because we thought Miss Bardot did.’
‘I do not know why you would think such a thing.’ The receptionist’s moustache quivered above his lip. ‘I am sorry if you got the wrong idea.’
‘He has to be mistaken,’ said Deira after they’d thanked him and Grace was accompanying her across the garden to