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She’d been sympathetic and supportive, but she loved her son and had accepted that he had to support his family and keep to the promise he’d made when he’d taken over the practice. Like someone on the rack, Ethan had been pulled both ways and she knew that he had stood his ground with an aching heart,
Her father-in-law, more volatile than his wife, had been furious with the French daughter-in-law that he’d always adored, and made no bones about it. The thought of coming face to face with him again made a chill run down her spine, but she would cope somehow for Ethan’s sake.
‘All right, if that is what you want.’ she replied, wishing herself miles away. With tears threatening, she told him thickly, ‘I’m taking the children back to France the moment New Year is over. I should never have come. It was stupid of me to think it could be civil between us, and as I’m already here it will save you having to bring them back the following weekend.’
He’d been putting crackers on the table while she’d been busy at the stove and knowing she was close to tears was gripping the back of a chair to stop himself from going to her and taking her in his arms. What would it achieve if he did? It was all too late, he told himself as he’d already done countless times before.
Their marriage was on the slippery slope, had been for months because he’d made a commitment that he’d felt he was not in a position to back out of, and Francine, who was usually most understanding and logically minded, hadn’t been prepared to back him up on it.
When the four of them were seated around the table for what Francine was expecting to be a travesty of a Christmas dinner, Ethan produced the gifts that he’d told her about earlier, and with Kirstie and Ben watching intently she unwrapped them slowly.
The belated birthday present was a book that she’d once said she would like and she thought how achingly different it was from the lingerie that he usually chose with care.
There was an unwritten, unspoken message in the gift he’d given her and she understood it all too well. It was the same with the Christmas present, an exquisite gold bracelet decorated by a jeweller with tiny shells that he’d gathered from the beach. It was another reminder of what she was missing, she thought, beautiful Bluebell Cove with its golden sands and breathtaking countryside—and him.
‘Thank you Ethan,’ she said in a low voice and when Kirstie insisted on her wearing the bracelet she slid it
carefully on to her wrist.
That night, sleepless once more in the spare room, Francine’s mind was going over the day just gone and the strange mixture of it. The children’s pleasure had been the highlight, and the giving and accepting of gifts between Ethan and herself bizarre and hurtful when she thought of how it had once been. Yet she was still wearing the bracelet, couldn’t bear to take it off.
New Year’s Day was going to be strange too with the visit of Jean and Lawrence Lomax planned. At the beginning of the marriage break-up Ethan’s father had told her angrily that a wife’s place was with her husband and if this was where he earned his living it was where she should be prepared to stay.
The dread of meeting him again was still with her, but he was the last person she was going allow to tune into the state of panic-stricken indecision in which she was floundering.
In the meantime there was a week’s grace before she had to face them. She was going to keep a low profile where Ethan was concerned, spending all her time with the children or on her own. The feeling of panic was still with her, the choking sensation every time she thought of the years ahead without him.
If she were to tell him that she’d changed her mind and was going to forget about the house in Paris, would it make any difference? she wondered. The scars on their relationship were not going to heal overnight, if ever.
When she discovered that the children had been invited to the home of one of their friends for Boxing Day she decided to spend the time they were absent walking along the coast road and stopping off for lunch somewhere.
As soon as they’d left she went to get ready and came down within minutes dressed in a warm jacket, jeans and her boots. Ethan was reading a medical journal in the sitting room when she appeared and asked, ‘Where are you off to? There’s still a lot of snow around after the heavy fall on Christmas Eve.’
‘I’m going to walk along the coast road and will eat out at lunchtime.’
He nodded and went back to his reading. There had been a time when he would have been beside her, she thought, happy that they were spending some time alone together, but not now. He was probably feeling relieved that she was going to be out of his orbit for a while as her role in his life had changed from cherished wife to intruder.
Outside there was a cold wind that stung her cheeks and the snow that had been there on the day of her arrival in Bluebell Cove still lay thick and crisp beneath her feet. Down below she could see the beach and the cold blue expanse of the Atlantic surging in once more.
In past summers when Ethan had finished at the surgery they’d spent lots of time down there, with the children fishing in rock pools and playing in the sand, and all of them swimming when the sea wasn’t too rough.
It was far too cold for that sort of thing now, but she hoped he would still take Ben and Kirstie down there when they came to stay with him in the spring. The beach and the sea were two of the delights of Bluebell Cove, as was the enchanting village surrounded by the rolling green fields of the Devonshire countryside.
If she were to put all that on to one side of the scales of life, and on the other side place living in a house she owned on the outskirts of one of the most famous cities in the world and the place where she’d spent her childhood, but had sacrificed her life with Ethan because of it, which way would they tip? she wondered.
The wind continued to bite. She pulled her jacket more closely around her. What was the point of thinking those sorts of thoughts? She’d made her choice and her life was a mess.
It was going dark in the cold winter afternoon and Ethan kept looking at the clock. Where was she? he wondered, the pale and drawn-looking stranger who not so long ago had been happy to live with him here, and now incredibly was back as a visitor, sleeping in the spare room instead of next to him in the double bed they’d shared.
But, he thought bleakly, he wasn’t there to watch over her in Paris, so why get all steamed up because Francine was late from a walk that they’d done countless times before? Yet he couldn’t help himself.
When their marriage had started to collapse she’d been immovable in her desire to live in France and in the end he’d given up on her and after being stunned by her request for a divorce had agreed.
But she was different now, he thought, lost and vulnerable, but not so much that she hadn’t been quick to remind him when he’d seen her in the square on Christmas Eve and joy bells had rung in his heart that she was only over on a visit to see the children.
He was going to have to keep a tight hold on his emotions because she’d been the one who’d wanted to end it, not him, and the pain of knowing she didn’t love him enough to stay with him was unbearable.
He’d gone upstairs to find the sheepskin coat that he wore in this kind of weather, having decided that make of it what she would he had to check that no harm had befallen her, when through the bedroom window he saw her coming up the drive and hung the coat back in the wardrobe.
She was blue with cold and he thought it could only have been a desire to get away from him that had driven her out into the wintry weather for so long. What a fiasco Christmas was turning out to be, both of them wary as warring armies with undercurrents all the time instead of straight talking.
When he went downstairs she was in the hall, taking off her boots and jacket, and he said, ‘Go and sit by the fire. I’ll make you a hot drink.’
She was opening her mouth to refuse, he could tell. ‘Just do as I say, Francine,’ he said, and she obeyed meekly.
He left her slowly sipping a hot toddy and went into his study, deciding that she didn’t have to worry about him crowding her. It was the last thing he had in mind. He’d been dreading spending Christmas without her and now that she was here he didn’t know which was worse—having no communication at all or the stiff dialogue that was all they were left with.
Everything had always been clear and uncomplicated between them. They’d been in tune in every way, including fantastic sexual chemistry, until Francine had inherited the house in Paris and her overwhelming homesickness had shattered what they’d had.
The children had just been dropped off. Tired and happy, they were full of the day they’d spent with their friends. As they were about to go up to bed Ben said, ‘Maman, we want to stay here where all our friends are.’
‘Yes,’ Kirstie agreed. ‘We like it in France, but we have no friends there.’
Ethan watched the colour drain from Francine’s face and thought that the children were quite unaware that they’d just dealt their mother a body blow. How would she react?
She’d been warm and drowsy after the cold walk, curled up in a big chair in front of the fire, but what they’d said brought her wide awake. As she was about to speak he motioned for her be silent, and ushering the children towards the stairs told them gently, ‘It’s late. Let’s talk about it in the morning. Your mother has been for a long walk and is tired.’
He went up with them and waited until they were settled, and all the time he was thinking that he should be rejoicing at what they’d said. Francine wouldn’t take Ben and Kirstie back to France if they didn’t want to go. She wouldn’t see her children unhappy, but neither would she be able to exist without them if they weren’t under her wing. They would visit her, of course, like they did him, but he would have the most control over the situation, their roles would be reversed.
‘I’m getting what I deserve, aren’t I?’ she asked in a low voice when he went back downstairs. ‘I put my own needs before those of you and the children and am going to pay the price.’
There was no triumph in him, just sadness as he said, ‘You’ll find that Ben and Kirstie will have forgotten all about what they said in the morning. It was because they were on a high after spending the day with their friends.’
‘You must hate me, Ethan.’
‘Why would I do that? I’ve never had to live in a foreign land like you did, so I can’t pass judgement on that, but I’ve learned one thing and it is that no marriage is a rock. I thought that ours was and it proved to be on shifting sands. I won’t ever get married again, Francine.’ And with that announcement for her to mull over, he went to make them a late supper.
Ethan had been right, Francine thought the next morning as the four of them sat down to breakfast. There was no repeat of the comments of the night before and the children went off sledging on a snow-covered slope nearby the moment they’d finished eating, but as far as she was concerned the words had been said and she couldn’t ignore them.
It was the first time she’d heard anything of that nature, which could mean that the novelty of living in France was wearing off, and if that was the case, what was she going to do? She was feeling guilty enough already for what she’d done to Ethan. She didn’t want to spoil their lives too.
They knew that things were not good between their parents and that the separation was going to continue, but she and Ethan hadn’t explained about the impending divorce as yet. They’d been more concerned with showing them how much they loved them. Yet the day would have to come and she thought achingly that if only he hadn’t called her bluff when she’d taken them to live in France with her and had followed them, instead of letting it happen.
He was seated across from her at the dining table, waiting for any comments she might have, and she didn’t disappoint him.
‘Are you upset that the children didn’t pursue their request from last night?’ she asked.
‘Why? Should I be?’ he asked abruptly. He got to his feet, ‘I’m due back at the surgery this morning so I’ll see you whenever.’
It was like any day after a public holiday at The Tides Practice he thought as the morning progressed, made up of the regulars and people who had succumbed to various ills over the Christmas period.
The two nurses were being kept fully occupied as their third member, Jenna, the bride of Christmas Eve, was on her honeymoon. Lucy Watson, the elder of the two, had been a nurse at the surgery all her working life, and young Maria, a trainee, was the eldest daughter of one of the lifeguards down on the beach.
Leo Fenchurch, the new addition to the practice, wasn’t his usual bright and breezy self and Ethan wondered if it was because he had been partaking too much of the wine during the festive occasion, but that surmise proved to be far from right when the two doctors stopped for a quick bite at lunchtime.
It seemed that Leo’s lack of joviality was connected with something more serious than too much celebrating. His mother, who lived alone, was gravely ill and after a phone call on Christmas morning he’d been to Manchester and back in the last two days to be with her and to sort out a programme of care.
‘What’s the problem?’ Ethan asked.
‘Emphysema,’ was the reply. ‘Mum is only in her early sixties, but she might as well be ninety the way it’s restricting her life. I shall go each weekend to check on her and do what I can, but will make sure I’m back first thing every Monday,’ he promised. ‘I haven’t been here very long and don’t want to mess you about, Ethan.’
‘Look, Leo,’ Ethan said. ‘Do what you have to do for your mother—we’ll cope at this end. How does the saying go? Charity begins at home.’
As he went back to his consulting room to prepare for the afternoon surgery and to make a call to Hunters Hill Hospital for an urgent appointment for a patient, Ethan thought he was the wrong one to be quoting that particular pearl of wisdom. There hadn’t been much ‘charity’ over recent months in his home. Plenty of aggravation, but no charity.
The children had returned ravenous after sledging all morning and as Francine made them a hot lunch she put to them the question that she’d been debating all the time they’d been absent. It was asking for problems if she was going to risk a repeat of their disturbing comments of the night before, she’d kept telling herself, but she had to know for certain if they were unhappy away from Bluebell Cove.
Ethan had been right in his assumption that they wouldn’t mention it again.
So far they hadn’t, but she couldn’t face living on a knife edge, waiting to see if they would say the same thing again at some future time, how they felt about what was going on in their lives, as both of them were aware that a permanent split between their parents might happen one day.
It hadn’t been Kirstie and Ben who’d acted totally out of character because they’d been overcome by homesickness, she thought, and if it had been, it would have been this place they were pining for, not the Paris house.
Ben gave her a chance to introduce the subject by saying, ‘Grandma and Grandad are coming on New Year’s Day.’
‘Yes, I know,’ she told him, smiling across at her son, who had the same kind of dark thatch as his father and the bright blue gaze, while Kirstie had skipped a generation and inherited Francine’s mother’s fair colouring. ‘They’ll be longing to see you both, but we are going back to France the morning after New Year’s Day. OK?’
There was silence and she hoped it was because they were both tucking in to the food she’d just put in front of them, but it was not to be.
‘We don’t want to go,’ Kirstie said apologetically, almost as if she understood how much it was going to upset her, and Ben, with his head bent over his meal, mumbled his agreement.
‘Supposing I said you had to come with me? That you couldn’t please yourselves. What would you do then?’
There was no reply forthcoming and she went into the kitchen and stood gripping the edge of the worktop until her knuckles shone white. Kirstie came to stand beside her and said awkwardly, ‘We could still go to Paris for our holidays, Mum.’ To Ben, who had sidled in behind her, she added, ‘We would like that, wouldn’t we, Ben?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, as long as Dad is there too.’
‘So it’s all right if I go back without you, is it?’ Francine asked, and was rewarded by consternation on both their parts.
‘No! We want you to stay with us. Don’t go back to Paris,’ Ben begged.
‘Why didn’t you tell me before that you weren’t happy there?’
‘Well, we were at first. It was exciting, different, it was like being on holiday, but Bluebell Cove is where we want to live.’
Francine thought wretchedly that to a lesser degree than her own the children she adored had been made to feel homesick to satisfy her own longing. There was no way she could continue to inflict that on them, so what was the answer?
Go back to France alone? She couldn’t bear the thought of it. But if she didn’t do that, it would be a case of returning to Bluebell Cove defeated by her own shortsightedness, and Ethan wasn’t going to welcome her back with open arms, was he? She’d felt like an intruder from the moment of arriving.
Two pairs of eyes were watching her anxiously and she managed a smile.
‘All right,’ she said comfortingly. ‘I’ll think about what you’ve said and see what I can do, but why didn’t you tell me this before?’
Ben didn’t reply, he just stood looking down at the floor, but Kirstie had an answer for her. ‘Because you kept crying all the time, Maman, that’s why.’
They were off sledging again once their stomachs were no longer empty, with a strict warning to be back before it was dark. The moment they’d gone Francine put on her outdoor clothes and went into the centre of the village with a heavy heart, passing the surgery on her way and wondering what Ethan was going to say when he knew that she’d coaxed the truth out of the children.
He would have to be pleased, it went without saying. Only she was devastated by what Kirstie and Ben had said.
When she went into the estate agent’s the face behind the counter wasn’t that of anyone she knew, for which she was thankful. The doctor’s wife enquiring about rental property in Bluebell Cove when from all accounts she’d moved to France would have caused raised eyebrows, though no doubt it would soon get around no matter who attended her behind the mullioned windows that looked out onto the busy main street.
‘Do you have any properties for rent?’ she asked a smartly dressed young assistant.
‘If you’d asked that in summer, the answer would have been no,’ she was told, ‘but at this time of year we do have a few. Top of the list is thatched Thimble Cottage, detached, fully furnished, with three bedrooms, bathroom with shower, sitting room, dining room and kitchen. All beautifully set out to match the age of the property. It is centrally situated next to the church. Are you familiar with the village at all?’
‘Yes,’ she said flatly.
‘Thimble Cottage is available for twelve months. I’m not sure about afterwards,’ she was told. ‘Would you like to view it? I can take you now if you like.’
‘Yes, that would be fine,’ she agreed. ‘If I am interested, I would want to move in immediately.’
The young assistant nodded. ‘That would be no problem. Shall we go? I’ll lock up here for a while.’
Francine had seen Thimble Cottage many times over the years but had never been inside, and when she did her first thought was that the estate agent hadn’t been wrong in the way she’d described it. It was a very attractive property and might go some way towards lifting the gloom that had descended on her after talking to the children.
‘This will suit me perfectly,’ she said. ‘I’d like to rent it for the twelve months it is available, so can we go back to your office and get it sorted?’
When the children came up the drive they were smiling and rosy cheeked from their exertions, but when she opened the door to them the uncertainty was there again in their expressions and any doubts she might have had about what she was intending disappeared.
But it was not yet the moment to tell them. Ethan had to be told first and though she was expecting him to be pleased that she’d had to give up some of her original ideas, she wasn’t sure if he would be happy to have her back in the village, complicating their lives even more by living across the way from him.
When he came in it was half past six and she asked, ‘How was your day?’
‘Long and busy,’ he said evenly, and went upstairs to change.
The children had already eaten. They’d been too hungry to wait and so it was just the two of them sitting down to the food she’d cooked.
When the meal was over and he was relaxing by the fire, she said tentatively, ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’
‘I hope it isn’t that you’re planning to take the children back to France before New Year,’ he said immediately, ‘because I won’t allow it. Mum and Dad will be bitterly disappointed if they’re not here when they arrive.’
‘Do you honestly think I would do that, knowing that they are coming?’ she choked out.
His expression was bleak. Returning from a busy day at the surgery and finding her there would have been wonderful if the circumstances had been different. As it was, it had been bitter-sweet and he told her levelly, ‘I didn’t honestly think that you would ask for a divorce, Francine, but you did, so don’t blame me for being concerned about what you might spring on me next.’
‘What I have to tell you is the exact opposite to what you were thinking,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I’m not taking them back to France at all, except maybe for the occasional holiday. Are you pleased?’
He was observing her in jaw-dropping amazement.
