Bordeaux Housewives. Daisy Waugh

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СКАЧАТЬ And that’s it? Horatio, I’ve never even seen your vegetable stall.’

      ‘Well. That’s because we move around,’ Horatio said, with practised ease (he’d said it many times before). ‘We go to different markets. Plus of course we don’t actually do it every week.’

      ‘So far as I can tell, you never do it. Nobody I know has ever seen your vegetable stall.’

      Horatio shrugged. ‘I don’t know what to tell you, Emma. It’s there. You must all be looking in the wrong place.’

      Emma clicked her tongue, clearly unconvinced. ‘Actually, it occurred to me you might have a cannabis farm up there

      – which, by the way, if you do, I think it’s a bit mean to keep secret. It would be incredibly convenient –’

      ‘Nope. No cannabis farm.’

      ‘Well then, Horatio. What?’

      ‘Nothing…Except boring bloody vegetables. Emma,’ he tried to laugh, ‘darling. I have no idea why you’ve got these ridiculous notions in your head. I’m sorry, but I’m – we’re – just not that glamorous. We grow vegetables.’

      She left a long pause after that, looked into his warm blue eyes and smiled. ‘I don’t believe you, Horatio.’

      ‘We grow vegetables,’ he said again.

      ‘Oh well.’ She sighed again, much more loudly this time, and Horatio could hear the boredom, the quick shift in her delicious, undivided attention. He became aware, suddenly, of music blasting. It was Chris de Burgh. Lady in Red. Of all idiotic songs. Otherwise he might have asked her to dance. ‘…Well,’ she said again. Suddenly restless. Looking over his shoulder – and still breathing roses somehow, in spite of the cigarette. ‘Well, Horatio. It’s been so lovely – Perhaps I should –’

      ‘Shall we dance?’

      She looked at him coolly, on the point of saying no.

      ‘Dance with me,’ Horatio teased her. ‘And who knows? I might even let you in on the big secret. You might win a lifetime supply of cannabis. Imagine that.’

      She put a hand on his knee and he felt a thousand volts jump through it. ‘Horatio,’ she said seriously, ‘you know, don’t you. I wouldn’t tell a soul…’

      And something about her vast, light brown eyes, her delicate limbs, her rapt attention, made him almost believe her. They gazed at each other, over the space where the trestle table had been.

      ‘…Not a living soul…’ murmured Emma again.

      Horatio cleared his throat. He stood up and held out a hand towards her. ‘Come on then,’ he said.

      She smiled serenely. ‘With pleasure.’

      And they glided onto the dance floor, bumping gently into Maude and Mayor Bourse en route, who were dancing arm in arm. Horatio didn’t even notice.

      ‘…Seriously though,’ whispered Emma, arms coiled round his neck, pelvis to his thigh, rose breath whispering upwards. ‘Seriously. If you did…happen to tell me…and by the way, Horatio, whatever you say, I know you’re up to something…’

      She’s not wearing any pants, he thought.

      ‘…I only want to know for myself…Because I’m incurably curious. I’m hardly going to call the police…’

      …She’s not wearing any pants!

      ‘…One way or another, Horatio,’ she smiled, wriggled herself a little closer to him, dropped her voice so that he had to bend to catch the end of what she said. ‘…One way or another, Horatio, you do know, don’t you, that I’m going to get to the bottom of it…’

      ‘If you say so,’ he whispered, hardly aware that he spoke. ‘…If you say so, sweetheart…’

      ‘…Come on, darling,’ she urged, feeling the strength seeping from him, ‘…come on…whisper…just whisper it to me…just whisper it…now…’

      And he simply couldn’t resist. She was impossible to resist. When he looked down at her, all he could see were those soft, pink, murmuring lips…And he knew that if he didn’t do something – quickly – he would – he would whisper – and all he could do to stop himself…was to put his lips on top of hers. And so he did, and all at once the dance floor was spinning, and her pink tongue was probing…

      WHAM! Maude had stopped dancing with Mayor Bourse, taken off her espadrille and thwacked him hard over the back of the head.

      She and Horatio left very soon after that. Until Emma’s telephone call this afternoon, asking the Haunts to dinner, they’ve neither of them seen or even spoken to her since.

       LOBSTER WITH MAYONNAISE

      ‘Right then,’ says Maude, as Horatio drives in through the Rankins’ mini portcullis and into the château’s large oval courtyard. ‘If she starts teasing you about carrot-growing again, ignore her. And if she says anything remotely cryptic about Jean Baptiste, or Eritreans, or passports or anything – We’re not here to satisfy her curiosity. We’re here to suss out exactly what she knows. And how she knows it –’

      ‘Oh shut up, Maudie. I know why we’re here.’

      ‘Fine. Fine. If you say so.’

      He switches off the engine and they pause for a moment, as if preparing for battle. Suddenly Horatio leans across. He touches his wife’s chin, turns her tense, angry face to look at him.

      ‘It’s going to be OK,’ he says quietly. ‘Don’t look so worried.’

      Maude turns away again. To stop herself from blubbing. She nods.

      ‘Please, Maude. You have to trust me. You have to forget –’

      ‘I’m trying to,’ she snaps. ‘But it’s a little hard. Under the circumstances.’

      He pulls her back towards him. ‘I love you,’ he says, and kisses her. ‘So much. You know that, don’t you?’

      ‘The question at the moment, Heck,’ she says, pushing him away, ‘is whether or not I love you.’ She smiles at him, a little less hostile now, but with the threat of tears still lingering. ‘Let’s just get this over and done with, shall we?’

      

      Set on a hill above a tiny hamlet, the Château de St Jean looks like a toy fortress, with ramparts, turrets, a working portcullis and high walls surrounding its oval courtyard. Emma Rankin only ever wanted the place for its exterior. She gutted the inside, preserving just the vast stone fireplaces at either end of the great hall, a spiral stone staircase at the back, and some ancient oak panelling, which she had moved from the ground floor to the galleried landing upstairs.

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