The Country Escape - Jane Lovering Page 0,30

speak when you have one; it’s just a shame it had taken me so long to get the hang of it. A manual would be useful. Or a translation device.

‘So, Rory’s asked you to the disco, has he?’ I tried to give the words the same lightness as she had. ‘He seems nice.’

‘He’s okay,’ and the shrug told me that she’d noticed that I’d noticed. ‘His mum’s great though, says I might be able to go and work in the café over half-term, and that would be great, cos Dad wants me to go and see Mémé that week and I don’t really want to go. Will you tell Dad I’ve got a job and I can’t go?’

She must have got it bad for Rory. Luc’s mother was a woman for whom the word ‘formidable’ had been invented, but she adored her only granddaughter and indulged her to the extent of champagne and grown-up parties. We’d never quite got over the incident of the Coco Chanel dress, Poppy’s mémé and I.

‘Let’s see if the job is a definite first,’ I said, trying for maximum diplomacy. ‘You wouldn’t want to miss a trip over if it’s not, would you?’

There was a snort that Patrick couldn’t have bettered. ‘I might have known you wouldn’t want me to do it. I bet you just want me out of the way for that week so you can meet up with your bloke without having me around cramping your style!’ The door swung and refused to slam. ‘You just don’t want me to have any fun!’ Her feet slammed up the stairs, leaving me perplexed. You’d have thought fourteen years would have made me immune to perplexography, but Poppy seemed to come out with new ways to rock me back on my heels muttering, ‘What the hell?’ every day.

Bloke? Did she mean Gabriel? But he wasn’t… well, he was male, but that was the only possible way in which he could fit into her created storyline. And if she thought that working in a café was going to be more fun than flying over to France to be alternately babied and fêted by her grand-mére, then I really had absolutely no comeback.

I decided that discretion was the better part of not getting sucked into an argument that wasn’t even an argument and I couldn’t possibly win. I began dragging together the makings of a meal, and hoped that Gabriel wouldn’t keep me hanging on too long for the return of Patrick’s hay-net money.

8

I opened the front door on the crisp Monday morning, to a minibus trying to park in the gateway and Keenan squeezing himself out of a 4 x 4 that was only not a minibus because of seating numbers.

‘Morning, Katie,’ he said, artificially brightly, whilst brushing icing sugar off his front. ‘We’re here to set up for filming, is that all right?’

I stood back to let him in through the front door, whilst a number of people jumped out of the van and began uncoiling wires and lifting boxes of equipment directly over the gate. Patrick clearly thought they’d come to liberate him and went to stand in the way.

‘Yes, it’s perfect. Got the whole “neglected, yet lived in” vibe.’ Keenan came through to the kitchen. ‘Peter will be up in the next busload, got to get his shots done before he goes off to the Broadchurch docu filming – he’s our villain, y’see. We’ll do Davin and Larch and the establishing shots later. Nice day for it!’

The low sun was filtering into the kitchen through the fretwork of leaves that fluttered on the ivy growing up the outside of the cottage. Random shadows came and went like a flickerbook around the walls.

‘Yep.’ Keenan rubbed his hands together. ‘Very serial killer. Almost too serial killer, in fact,’ and he pulled out a phone. ‘Gabe, can you bring us some gear out of props to soften the place up a bit over here? Oh, just like some soft furnishings stuff, couple of easy chairs, rag rug, that kinda thing? If you’re not sure, ask Tansy… oh, is she? Okay, well, use your judgement. We just want to make it look more like a home and less like a…’ He caught my eye. ‘Well, you know. Just some stuff.’

When he hung up, he at least had the manners to look a bit ashamed. ‘Sorry. I know it’s your home and I didn’t mean to impugn your interior design, but we have to use a kind