‘Emma, you’re letting air in. It will play havoc with my climate control,’ Ally said, taking the door from her friend’s hand.
‘I have to go,’ she said, her voice almost failing her.
‘I know, shoo! Go and get Dom and I’ll see you later. I’ll be the one with my hand up the French guy’s arse being the ventriloquist if he can’t speak a word of English,’ Ally said, cackling out a laugh.
Emma managed a faint smile and hurried out of the leisure centre. It couldn’t be him! Duval in France was like Smith in England. There were hundreds of people in France called that, weren’t there? And so he played football? So did lots of men. Lots of French men called Duval. No, it couldn’t be him. It wouldn’t be him.
Chapter Three
It was him. Google had a lot to answer for. Here he was, Guy Duval from the Riviera campsite, now looking at her out of her laptop screen. He was dressed in the bright blue of the French national football team, the gold cockerel motif looking resplendent on his chest. Everything about him was as she remembered it. She had never envied a cockerel before, but there it was, its feathers erect, a smug beak on it, festooned against that well-structured torso.
Why had she never Googled him before? She knew the answer to that. She had banned herself from thinking about him. When he broke her heart, she snapped. She’d left, she’d moved on and she had well and truly put him away in her past. It had to be that way. There were times when her thoughts had travelled back to those few weeks, usually when she had had too much to drink or after a bad day at school. The trouble was, she could still so easily recall how the French sunlight felt on her skin, how his hand had felt in hers. But along with the good memories were others she would rather forget. She’d been broken. He had broken her. You didn’t Google people who took your heart and threw it away.
‘Mum, can I have some more sauce?’ Dominic called.
He was behind her at the table, hungrily devouring fish-fingers after his hour learning the intricacies of breaststroke at swimming lessons.
‘Yes, of course, I’ll get some.’ She snapped down the lid of the computer before standing up.
‘Will Chris be here soon? He’s getting me some more cars today,’ Dominic said. He raised his head and those eyes lit up.
Emma picked up the tomato ketchup and squeezed some onto her son’s plate. He was growing up so fast. He was tall, with a dark brown mop of hair that constantly fell across his forehead. He had an infectious smile and those wide eyes.
It had been just her and her dad when Dominic came along, but they had managed. And Emma hoped they had made him feel every inch the special person he was. He might not have been planned for, but even the best plans usually have to be adapted. And, whatever the future held for her now, Dominic would always be at the centre of it.
‘I don’t know what time he’s coming over. We’re going out tonight though, remember? Grandad’s coming to look after you.’
‘Great! That means I can stay up late and play on the Wii with him!’ Dominic said, peas falling from his lips.
‘So that’s what you get up to, is it?’ She smiled.
‘I always win. Grandad gets the buttons mixed up.’
‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’ Emma replied. She opened her laptop back up.
There were dozens of photos of Guy, all waiting to be clicked on. Most of them were football shots, him in action for different teams in France. But there was one picture that interested her in particular. In this shot he was wearing an expensive-looking suit and had his arm around the waist of a beautiful dark-haired woman. She had eyes the shape of almonds and a slender figure draped in a coral-coloured shift dress. Madeleine Courtier the caption stated. She was so pretty, so immaculately turned out. Ally would know the designer of the coral dress and who her hair was styled by. But it didn’t need intimate knowledge of haute couture to see that this gorgeous woman was Guy’s equal in looks and status. Footballers were like movie stars these days. He was a footballer and she, Madeleine Courtier, looked like a movie star.
As Emma looked at the photo, a burn manifested in the