Читать книгу Just for the Holidays: Your perfect summer read! - Sue Moorcroft - Страница 8

‘I hope Mum comes out with us today.’ Head on hand, Natasha was playing with her croissant instead of eating it, a sheen on her skin from where the morning sunshine streamed in through the kitchen window.

Jordan had already wolfed a cheese doorstep sandwich and two croissants. ‘Yeah.’ His expression was hidden, absorbed as he appeared to be in fraying the bottom of what he termed ‘shorts’, despite their ending halfway down his calves. Calves that seemed too hairy to belong to someone Leah still thought of as a boy.

Anxious that the kids might be beginning to pick up on Michele’s uncharacte‌ristically evasive behaviour, Leah debated whether to suggest a visit to the water park in nearby Muntsheim. Even if Michele was supposedly feeling delicate it surely couldn’t be too taxing to read or snooze while the kids hurled themselves down the chutes?

Alister got in first with a simpler plan. ‘How about we hang out in the garden? Then Mum won’t have far to go when she feels well enough to join us, will she?’

A smile lit Natasha’s face. ‘I’ll tell her.’

‘Cool,’ agreed Jordan.

‘But you’ll do something more active than playing Minecraft, won’t you, Jordan?’ Alister said, employing his mild-but-inflexible voice.

Jordan sighed and climbed to his feet. ‘OK. I’ll get my supersoaker to shoot Nat with while she plays boules.’ He sent Alister a challenging look but Alister, who picked his battles wisely, merely smiled.

The kids gone, Leah began to clear the table, admiring the delicate pale blue and green of the crockery. ‘I’m perfectly happy to play boules or get into water fights but are you and Michele going to be able to do it without … an atmosphere?’ She managed to bite back the urge to call it ‘public displays of animosity’.

Alister watched her load the dishwasher. ‘I’m sorry. This is crappy for you. My suggestion we stay here today is an experiment.’

Leah abandoned her tower of crockery to give him a friendly hug. ‘I’m not going to ask about the nature of the experiment or what data you hope to collect. I’m just sorry it’s all gone wrong between you.’

His body seemed to sink in on itself as he sighed but whatever he opened his mouth to reply was lost in Michele’s entrance as she banged crossly in, throwing back over her shoulder, ‘No, stay up there, please, Natasha. I want to talk to Dad.’

‘I’ll leave.’ Leah turned for the door to the garden.

‘Appreciated,’ murmured Alister.

‘Why should you?’ Michele snapped simultaneously. ‘You’re involved in this Happy Families plan for today.’

Alister met her ire with coolly raised eyebrows. ‘Basing ourselves here will enable you to see something of your children without worrying about feeling queasy in the car or doing anything too active for your delicate condition. Does that cover whatever excuse you were about to trot out?’

Acutely uncomfortable as Michele and Alister glared icicles at each other, Leah resumed her escape. ‘I’ll get more loungers from the summerhouse.’

She closed the door on Alister’s low-voiced ‘Think what’s best for the children, Michele.’

Intent on keeping clear of the battleground, Leah dawdled as she set out the wooden sun loungers. Casting around the capacious summerhouse she located a paddling pool and a hose and dragged them out, too. The gîte and its neighbour were the only residences this far up the lane and there seemed to be nobody next door but the workman and his young assistant so she doubted it mattered if they had a water fight and it got a bit screamy.

She watched the clear water burble into the pool. Think what’s best for the children … If not for the kids, she’d reverse her car out of the garage and make a break for it instead of sticking around to share the death throes of Michele and Alister’s marriage.

But, as she was here, Leah could – probably – prevent spilled blood, and that definitely came under the heading of ‘best for the children’. Mentally polishing her halo she let herself into La Petite Annexe to change into her bikini. It didn’t cover as much as she would have liked, but she hadn’t had much time for holiday shopping and she was amongst family.

After slathering on factor 50 and grabbing her magazine, she reserved herself a lounger and settled down to try and Facetime Scott during his morning break. Scott had been her best friend since school and she usually saw him several times a week, sharing their love of all-things-car. She missed him. If anyone knew her deepest, darkest secrets, it was Scott.

‘Hey, you,’ he answered snippily as his image leaped to the screen, brown hair shining and spiked at the front. ‘Finally found time in your holiday schedule to remember the existence of your bestie?’

‘Don’t be grumpy. I’m feeling homesick and I wanted to hear your voice. As lovely as Alsace is, I’d rather be back in Bettsbrough enjoying the gardening leave I’d planned. Got to support Michele and family, though.’

‘Oh. OK.’ He looked mollified. ‘So what’s the place you’re staying like?’

Leah directed the phone screen towards La Petite Annexe so the camera would capture it for him. ‘This is my bolthole.’ Then she lined up on the gîte, panning around so he got the full impact of all three floors and the impressive timberwork on the outside. ‘And this is where the others are.’

‘FFS, it’s massive! Have you got a rugby team visiting or something?’

Leah laughed as she turned her phone so they could see each other again. ‘There aren’t quite enough spare rooms for that but it’s certainly not cramped.’ And she told him about the long drive over and the frost occasionally twinkling between Michele and Alister.

Leah’s spirits rose as, in return, he gave her a jokey rendition of his latest run-in with his boss, including his outrageous excuse that his work was suffering simply because ‘his bestie’ was in another country. Scott always made her feel better with his uniquely snarky affection and she sighed along with him when it was time for him to wind up the conversation with ‘Got to get back to work, I’m afraid. Get yourself home as soon as you can.’ He blew a kiss and disappeared.

Regretfully, Leah put away her phone as Natasha and Jordan burst into the garden, Jordan armed with a Rambo-sized water gun and Natasha with plastic bowls from the kitchen.

‘Girls against boys!’ Natasha yelled, frisbeeing a bowl in Leah’s direction.

With little choice but to join the fray, Leah snatched the bowl from the air and, taking outrageous advantage of Jordan’s exposed position at the pool as he filled his supersoaker, scooped up a healthy bowlful of glistening water and sloshed it down his bare back. ‘Girls against boys!’

‘Waaaaah, freezing!’ Jordan heaved harder on the plunger that loaded his weapon. ‘This means water war!’

‘Water war!’ Natasha, screaming like a chimpanzee, leaped into the middle of the paddling pool just as Alister emerged from the house. With no respect for his sombre expression she scooped a wave of water in his direction.

The arc of water hung in a shimmering rainbow in the air before sloshing over Alister’s head and chest. He flinched. Blinked. Then, resignedly, he dragged off his T-shirt, laid his bespattered spectacles away and calmly took up the garden hose. ‘OK, water war.’

‘You can’t have the hose, Alister, it’s not fair to outgun us by that much!’ Leah tried not to trip over her flip-flops as she raced to remove herself from the firing line.

‘Who said life was fair?’ Alister spun the tap to the ‘on’ position and pulled the hose trigger at the same instant as Michele stepped out from the house. The powerful jet of water met her head with an audible splat.

‘Oops.’ Alister took just a second too long to shift the jet away. ‘Sorry.’

‘Oh –!’ Michele gasped, one side of her hair plastered to her head and the corresponding eye streaming mascara.

Natasha screamed with excited laughter. ‘You got splooshed!’

With a Tarzan yell, Jordan aimed his supersoaker at his mother. ‘Girls against boys! Choose your weapon.’

For a second, Leah thought Michele would give everybody a good scolding or whirl around and retreat to her room. Time seemed to stutter while water glistened on bare skin and lush lawn.

Then Michele wiped her face and slicked back her hair. ‘Girls against boys,’ she growled dangerously, yanking the bright green hose off the tap, leaving Alister with an altogether empty weapon. Jamming her fingers into the stream of tap water she sent it spurting in his direction with deadly aim.

‘Unfair!’ he bellowed, slipping on the grass as he floundered to escape at the same time as attempting to rearm himself by stealing Jordan’s water gun.

‘Get your own weapon, soldier,’ snapped Jordan, wrestling it back and aiming at his sister.

‘Eeep! Noooooo!’ Natasha flew across the garden with the water playing square between her shoulder blades. ‘All onto Jordan, girls!’

For the next hour the air was filled with screams, protests, laughter … and a lot of water. It was sufficient to swill away the tension – temporarily at least.

Finally, puffing hard, Michele held up her hands. ‘Enough! Ceasefire or I surrender or whatever I have to do.’ She fell onto one of the now damp loungers.

Glad that the atmosphere had warmed a degree or two, Leah flopped down on another, wringing out her hair. ‘I’ll get drinks when I’ve caught my breath.’

Michele closed her eyes and tipped her pale face to the sun. ‘Thanks. I think perhaps I overdid it.’ Her clothes clinging damply didn’t deter her from plummeting almost instantly into sleep.

Alister regarded his estranged wife sheepishly. ‘Maybe she did overdo it. She’s zonked.’

‘It’s to be expected, I suppose. She’s very pale.’ Leah’s eyes darted towards the youngsters, their heads bent over their phones as they recovered from the water war via their world of constant communication. When were they to be told about their brother/sister-to-be? Would they leap on the news, hoping against hope that the baby would reunite their parents? Her heart twisted to think of yet another bitter disappointment to poison their young lives. Since the first shock of their parents splitting up, when Natasha had cried for days and Jordan had shut himself in his room, they’d coped almost unrealistically well. It was as if they’d been able to grow thin protective shells.

But if those shells were put under pressure they’d surely shatter.

Keeping these uncomfortable thoughts strictly to herself Leah managed to bask in the sun for an hour before Natasha announced herself once again to be ‘staaaaarving.’ Michele stirred but sank back into her slumbers so, stifling a sigh, Leah laid down her magazine. ‘We’ll eat out here. Lots of lovely salad.’

‘And cakes?’ Jordan suggested, hopefully.

‘With ice-cream?’ supplemented Natasha.

‘For afters,’ Leah agreed.

She wasn’t sorry to go indoors and get a break from the powerful sun. The smooth tiles of the kitchen floor felt cool beneath her feet as she put eggs on to boil, then washed watercress and lamb’s lettuce for the salade verte. Humming quietly as she moved on to slicing big firm tomatoes that were so red they glowed, she became conscious of a man’s voice speaking French outside. Then Michele, evidently restored by her nap, replying. Alister joined in. Leah didn’t bother trying to follow a conversation that was way above her command of simple French phrases. Her sister and brother were Francophiles; French Language was Alister’s teaching commitment in his junior school and Michele loved to compete in airing her command of the language.

As Leah whisked together the ingredients for a quick pecan toffee pudding, covered it with brown sugar and poured boiling water over it before sliding it into the oven, she did catch Michele insisting, ‘Oui, oui, il est notre plaisir!’ It was good that something was giving Michele pleasure because not much seemed to, these days.

There was a little rice left from the risotto and Leah made a quick rice salad, chopping in tomatoes and spring onions with almonds while the eggs cooled, pausing only to call through the back door, ‘Could someone carry the table and chairs onto the lawn, please?’ and check that they did.

Finally, she grabbed napkins and cutlery and stepped out once again into the shimmering heat of the garden. ‘I’m ready to bring lunch out, if someone wants to help me.’

At the same moment, Michele called, expansively, ‘Welcome! Come and join us.’

‘Pardon?’ Leah halted in confusion.

Then two figures rounded the corner of the house and a deep voice replied. ‘Thanks. This is nice of you.’

Leah jumped as she recognised the workman and the teenager from next door. ‘Oh!’

‘This is my sister, Leah.’ Michele beamed.

The workman’s dark hair looked as if the wind had just blown through it, his even darker eyes smiling from his tanned face. ‘I’m Ronan Shea and this is my son Curtis. Great to meet you.’

‘You’re not French!’ Leah exclaimed.

‘No, indeed.’ If anything, she could detect a touch of Irish in his voice.

‘But you spoke to me in French!’

He grinned disarmingly. ‘I’m a big fat showoff.’

‘Leah, I’ve invited them to join us,’ interrupted Michele, ‘so they’ve brought their lunch and we’re all pitching in.’

As if to prove her words Ronan opened a cool-bag to display three different hunks of cheese, a whole cooked chicken, a portly loaf of bread and bottles of wine and cola. ‘I hope it’s not too inconvenient?’ His gaze remained steadily on Leah’s face, whereas his son seemed unable to lift his eyes above Leah’s neck. Although they weren’t far below it.

She felt colour sting her cheeks at the sudden realisation that she was standing chatting in her bikini for goodness’ sake. She forced a smile. ‘No, of course not. Just excuse me for a minute.’ Acutely aware of what felt like acres of flesh on display Leah tossed the cutlery on the table and set off for La Petite Annexe, forcing herself not to break into an undignified gallop.

Michele, perhaps realising belatedly that Leah wouldn’t have chosen to be wearing only a purple high-leg bikini when introduced to a strange man and his wide-eyed adolescent son, called after her, ‘You take your time and we’ll bring the food out.’

‘Good of you,’ Leah muttered, bolting through the annexe door.

Having let her embarrassment cool under a tepid shower before covering herself in cropped jeans and a T-shirt, Leah rejoined the party to find the table was busy with conversation and everybody had already heaped their plates. Leah quietly took the only vacant chair.

Which was between Ronan and Curtis. It would have to be.

‘Thanks,’ she murmured, when Ronan passed her a plate and napkin. She poured herself a glass of lemonade. Only Alister seemed to be doing damage to the wine bottle in the centre of the table.

Ronan fell into easy conversation with Alister, and as Curtis, Natasha and Jordan had found common ground in the belief that all software should be free, Leah’s residual bikini embarrassment began to fade.

Curtis, she discovered by listening in, was, incredibly, only thirteen, despite being six feet tall and wearing head-to-toe black Goth gear. Leah wondered at a boy quite that young being allowed piercings in eyebrow, nose and both ears, and his alternative hairstyle dangling perpetually in his eyes. Whenever he was offered anything from the table he replied with an endearing ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, fanks.’ Aside from their height there wasn’t much similarity between father and son: Curtis sandy and hazel, Ronan uncompromisingly dark.

Curtis politely helped Natasha and Jordan clear the first course as Leah brought out dessert. The sight of the steaming pudding with its accompanying chocolate sauce and fresh fruit silenced the gathering momentarily.

Alister passed around clean plates. ‘Leah makes fantastic desserts.’

Ronan turned his dark gaze on her. ‘You’re surely not baking on holiday?’

‘It’s something incredibly easy –’

Michele broke in. ‘Leah only has to look at food and it jumps around and becomes something delicious.’

‘But still.’ Ronan smiled. ‘Surely nobody works on holiday?’

‘You’re painting a house.’ Leah reached for one of the local yellow plums called mirabelles and bit into its sweet juiciness.

Ronan watched her lick juice from her lips. ‘We’re only kind of on holiday. My dad built the house when my mam was still alive and, hilariously, they named it “Chez Shea”. After she died, he and I spent a lot of time here and eventually I inherited it from him. As I’m off work for a few weeks I thought I’d come out and give it some TLC. But anyway, why does food jump around and make itself delicious for you?’

‘I trained as a chef but I work in chocolate products.’ Leah reached for another plum, her hair swinging over one shoulder.

‘She’s a chocolate taster!’ giggled Natasha. ‘It must be the coolest job in the world.’

Curtis’s eyes grew round in astonishment. He stared at Leah. ‘Seriously? You taste chocolate? For a job?’

Leah’s eyes twinkled. ‘Before you apply, there’s more to it than just scoffing chocolate down all day. I source ingredients, come up with new recipes or test other people’s. I’m lucky to possess the correct palate.’

‘So much so that when her last employer discovered she was moving to Chocs-a-million she was instantly put on gardening leave to remove her access to planned products,’ put in Michele, drily. ‘All right for some.’

‘Like teachers don’t get paid for taking the summer off?’ Leah sent her sister a sidelong look.

‘But “desk” isn’t a four-letter word for me as it is for you –’

Jordan interrupted, evidently focused on the important stuff. ‘She can make amazing cakes, Curtis. Talk to her nicely and she might make you something.’

Curtis gazed at Leah hopefully.

‘She’s on holiday,’ Ronan reminded him.

But Leah obviously recognised suffering when she saw it. ‘Maybe if we have a bad-weather day we can have a bit of a bake off. The kitchen in the gîte has a big oven and hob.’

‘Yeah! Bake off!’ gloated Jordan.

‘Bake off, bake off!’ sang Natasha.

Curtis switched his hopeful gaze to Ronan and Ronan softened. ‘Sounds as if you’re in luck.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, fanks!’ breathed Curtis. ‘I like making stuff. ’Specially stuff I can eat.’

‘And we could have a chocolate tasting –’

‘I’ll get the chocolate.’ Jordan raced off towards the gîte, leaving Leah halfway through her sentence.

Ronan felt his mouth stretch in a grin, in no doubt that she’d had no intention of the chocolate tasting taking place on the instant. Catching his eye, she managed to pull her face out of its expression of dismay, giving only a small eye roll before Jordan came loping back to the table, cradling three coloured packs in his hands.

‘I’ll have to move my stash to La Petite Annexe,’ she observed, drily. She set one of the packs aside. ‘This is open and, anyway, we need only two. OK, those who are taking part in the tasting, you need to drink water and eat a little dry bread to cleanse your palate.’ Alister declared himself a spectator, Michele occupied herself with her phone, but Ronan joined Curtis, Jordan, Natasha and Leah in nibbling on crusts of bread while Leah went on. ‘I’d normally taste in quite different surroundings. A product development kitchen’s a cross between a kitchen and a science lab. It’s clean and quiet and free of other tastes and smells. But this is only a demonstration so we’ll pretend we can’t see the remains of lunch or each other.’

She picked up the first large slab, enveloped in a deep brown paper with a dull sheen. Her hands were shapely, the nails short and plain. ‘I’d normally make sure it was room temperature but France in August is hotter than I’d keep my kitchen so this has been in the fridge.’

Ronan found himself unexpectedly engaged. He enjoyed chocolate as much as the next man but his attention was more on the subtle shifts in Leah as her professional persona took over, showing itself in the confidence in her voice and body language. ‘What difference does the temperature make?’ he asked.

‘Partly consistency but mainly that over-cool temperatures hinder my ability to detect flavours.’ She gave him a quick smile. He found himself watching her mouth again. ‘So here’s the speed-dating version of how I’d assess a chocolate that’s new to me, starting with the packaging because quality chocolate usually gets quality wrapping. This looks good to me.’ She slipped a finger under the brown paper and pulled back the foil beneath to expose a dark slab of chocolate divided neatly into rectangles. ‘Of the chocolate itself, I note that the surface is smooth and free from bloom – the whitish marks we sometimes see on cheap products, those that have been around too long or stored badly. The colour’s good. The surface has a sheen which, in dark chocolate like this, lets me see other colours. It’s a sort of brown rainbow visible to the practised eye.’

Ronan inspected the slab. He saw dark brown. No rainbow. Curtis flicked him a what’s she on about? look.

‘The precision in the moulding is another sign of quality. Then I listen.’ She picked up the slab and broke off a rectangle, then broke it again. ‘It should resonate when it snaps. Hear it?’

‘Seriously?’ Curtis demanded. ‘Talking chocolate?’

Leah laughed. ‘Buy a cheap bar and you’ll be able to hear and see the difference. You won’t get that snap and the product will be grainy and without lustre.’ She turned the pieces of chocolate in her hands. ‘See how this snapped? It has a sharp edge. That’s how it should be.’ She broke off four generous portions and handed them out. ‘Don’t eat it yet. Smell it. Enjoy the aroma and prepare your taste buds.’ She inhaled, her eyes half shut. ‘Smells good to me.’

‘Yum,’ agreed Natasha.

‘So now – being glad that at a chocolate tasting we don’t have to spit, as we would at a wine tasting – place a piece on your tongue. Don’t chew unless it needs breaking slightly to release the flavours. Letting it melt on your tongue releases the cocoa butter and counteracts any bitterness. We’re not eating, we’re tasting. Close your eyes. Let yourself experience the flavour.’

Instead of closing his eyes, Ronan watched her close hers, observing her focused expression, and Jordan snaffling a second piece while Leah wasn’t looking, then blushing when he realised Ronan was.

Slowly her eyes opened again. ‘A beautiful, rich flavour. This is good chocolate, high in cocoa solids, well presented, great aroma, just the sweet side of bitter. I’d expect it to temper well and I could make high-quality chocolate products from it.’

‘What’s tempering?’ Ronan put in.

‘It’s a faffy procedure involving heating and cooling the chocolate slowly to avoid the cocoa butters separating out or crystallising. A product development kitchen for chocolate products will have a machine to do it with precision because it ensures smooth glossy chocolate for dipping and coating.’

‘Your sensory perceptions must be well developed.’ Ronan just stopped himself from using the word ‘sensual’ instead of ‘sensory’. The sensual experience had been his, watching her.

‘Can we try the other bar?’ demanded Jordan.

‘It is interesting to compare,’ she agreed. ‘It often helps me fully explore my impressions of one product to compare it to another. We need to cleanse our palates again, though.’

Nobody objected; in fact Jordan almost knocked his glass over in his haste to co-operate. Soon they were running through the process again, everyone closing their eyes and solemnly sucking chocolate. Unanimously, they scored the first bar higher than the second and Leah pointed out economies in the packaging of the second that hinted at a slightly lesser quality.

Generously, she let the kids ‘taste’ chocolate until it had all disappeared, then Curtis, Jordan and Natasha wandered over to the shadier part of the garden – ‘which means they don’t want us to listen in,’ observed Alister – and Michele stowed her phone and did the polite-company thing in asking Ronan all about himself. ‘So are you being paid not to work, this summer, like Leah?’

Ronan caught the faintly exasperated look that Leah sent Michele. He’d worked out that the two were sisters but thought some of Michele’s digs were a bit uncalled for.

Before Leah could respond, however, her phone buzzed to claim her attention, and Ronan responded courteously. ‘I broke my clavicle and had to have it pinned. Luckily it was my left side and painting uses my right.’ He rubbed the dull ache that made his shoulder heavy and stiff. From the corner of his eye he could see Leah tapping rapidly at her phone screen. The phone buzzed again almost straightaway and she snorted with amusement before resuming her tapping.

‘Poor you,’ said Michele. ‘How did that happen?’

‘I’m a helicopter pilot and I had a bit of an incident, but in a few weeks I should be passed fit to fly again.’ He deliberately glossed over what had happened. Those who didn’t fly treated it like a big deal to get an ailing helicopter to the ground rather than the simple good airmanship that it was. Now the op was over and the healing well under way he didn’t want to indulge avid requests for information. He just wanted to enjoy the extra time with Curtis.

Happily, Michele seized on his job as the interesting element of his explanation. ‘Helicopter pilot? Glamorous! Makes teaching look boring.’

Alister smacked his lips over his wine. ‘Ha! Maybe, though that depends on the teacher.’

Michele sent him a death glare and Leah hastily put away her phone and butted in. ‘A helicopter pilot? That’s cool.’

She had her work cut out as peacekeeper between her sister and her husband, Ronan decided as he smiled at her. ‘Flying’s my life. I work for an air tours company called Buzz Sightseer, flying tourists over London. I’m the chief pilot and helped build the company up from day one.’

Leah found herself fascinated as Ronan talked, relaxed and easy in his chair, long legs crossed at the ankle.

He lived on the southeastern fringe of London’s urban sprawl, was divorced, and shared Curtis’s care with ex-wife Selina. He’d been brought up in Ireland, ‘the rocky bit, right at the top’, but his dad had moved the family to England, where he helped Ronan through university and on his way to his commercial pilot’s licence before he passed away. ‘Dad would’ve been pleased that I got the career I love,’ he concluded. He gave the impression of calm control, of not wasting words, except to occasionally inject flashes of dry humour into the conversation.

When Leah finally glanced at her watch the time had whizzed around to almost four. Regretfully, she searched around in the grass for her sandals. ‘I’d better get off to the supermarket, unless we’re eating out tonight.’

Ronan sat up. ‘The supermarket in Muntsheim? I don’t suppose I could beg a lift? My car’s having work done and the garage said it should be ready round about now. I was going to call a cab.’

Alister sloshed more wine into his glass. ‘You can leave Curtis here if he wants. He seems to be stopping our two from bickering.’

Ronan grinned. ‘And miss a ride in your pink car?’

Alister snorted. ‘Not my car.’

‘I did think it was a bit pretty.’ Ronan went to check with Curtis, who looked up only long enough to say that the others had given him the password to the wifi and he was quite happy where he was. Ronan going off without him was, apparently, ‘Cool beans’.

‘I’ll come with you.’ Michele began to get to her feet.

Although she understood the eye-roll Michele directed towards Alister, Leah suddenly found she’d used up her quota of sisterly compassion for the afternoon. ‘Sorry, no room, I want to give my car a run,’ she whispered. Once she’d dropped Ronan at the garage she could blast out into the countryside, letting her satnav bring her back to Muntsheim to do the shopping when she was happily chilled. Surely she was entitled to snatch a few moments from this tense, unholidayish holiday, to open her car windows and let the wind blow it all away?

Refusing to hear Michele’s ‘But –!’, Leah ducked into La Petite Annexe for her keys and purse then emerged with a brief ‘’Bye!’ and a hasty ‘C’mon’ in Ronan’s direction.

Ronan, with a last word to Curtis, allowed himself to be collected up and chivvied out of the garden.

From his position, prone on the cool grass, Curtis watched his dad follow Leah up the path beside the house.

He turned back to his new friends. ‘Your mum’s a MILF,’ he muttered, too quietly for the adults to hear. He’d been waiting to use the line ever since he’d seen American Pie on DVD when his mum and Darren had been out one evening but, frankly, mums usually weren’t.

‘What’s a MILF?’ Natasha screwed her neck to try and see what Curtis was doing on his phone.

Jordan groaned. ‘You must need your eyes testing. And don’t even think it. She’s our mum.’

‘Still a MILF.’

A throaty roar emanated from around the house. Jordan cocked an ear. ‘Leah’s taking the Porsche. Hope your dad doesn’t scare easy.’

Curtis stared. Jordan had short back ’n’ sides dark hair. Curtis wished he, too, had dark hair, like his dad, instead of being sandy with freckles, like his mum. ‘Why do you call her Leah?’

Propping his chin on his hand, Jordan treated him to a condescending stare. ‘Because … it’s, like, her name?’

‘Duh! But why don’t you call her Mum?’

Jordan frowned. Then he began to laugh. He laughed so hard he had to slap the ground making that ‘Huuuurgh!’ sound between peals that people did when they couldn’t even inhale for mirth.

Curtis gave Jordan a shove. ‘What?’

Although she giggled, Natasha was more helpful. ‘Leah’s not our mum. She’s our cool auntie.’ She nodded to where Michele was talking in a low voice to Alister, who was brandishing the nearly empty wine bottle. ‘That’s our mum.’

Jordan laughed harder. ‘Do you still think our mother’s a MILF?’

Face burning, Curtis realised he hadn’t even thought who Michele was in relation to the rest of the group. Yet Michele was much more his idea of a mother – old and a bit plump, wearing a frown most of the time. ‘Erm, sorry.’ The ‘No’ was implicit in his tone.

‘Leah can’t be a MILF because she’s not a mother,’ Jordan pursued, with unanswerable logic. ‘She’d have to be an “AILF”, which you can’t even say.’ His voice was rich with the superiority a fifteen-year-old reserved for thirteen-year-olds.

Scowling, Curtis hunted for a way to redress the stupidity scale. ‘Does she ever look after you?’ He ripped up a handful of lawn to throw into Jordan’s face.

Jordan coughed up a blade of grass before mashing Curtis’s head playfully into the ground. ‘I’m a bit old to need looking after. She used to though.’

‘If she’s a babysitter she’s a BILF then,’ Curtis said smugly, and got the Urban Dictionary up on his phone to prove that ‘BILF’ wasn’t something he’d made up.

Natasha clamoured, ‘But what is a MILF? And what is a BILF?’

In the vicious tone siblings seemed to reserve for moments of inexplicable irritation Jordan suddenly snapped, ‘Look it up, Gnasher.’

Glaring at her brother, Natasha snatched up her phone. ‘I will, then, in the Urban Dictionary!’

But as Curtis could see she was spelling it ‘erban’ she had no success. Soon she shoved her phone in her pocket and went off to the woman that Curtis now understood to be her mother, complaining that the lemonade was warm.

As she drove out of the village, Leah relaxed into the driving seat of the Porsche and glanced over at where Ronan lounged in the passenger seat. ‘I didn’t want to subject you to The Pig.’ As if she would, when she hadn’t driven the scarlet Porsche Cayman since washing the dust from her after the long trek to Kirchhoffen.

Ronan ran his fingertips over the stitching in the leather. ‘I can understand why.’

‘I love this car. I never get tired of driving it.’ Feeling a surge of proprietary delight to be behind the wheel, Leah began to accelerate up the lane out of the village, slotting into third gear as the engine note climbed.

‘And Alister doesn’t mind?’

‘What?’ Flicking into fourth, Leah felt the day’s irritations slithering from her shoulders, glorying in the power of the engine that thrust her back in her seat.

‘He doesn’t mind you driving it?’

The irritations thudded smartly back. ‘Mind? Not at all.’ Leah kept her eyes on the road, turning over in her mind the realisation that Ronan, who handled a truly cool machine as his job, appeared to have leaped to the conclusion that the Porsche could only belong to a man. Her foot steadied on the accelerator and she reined herself in to a stately forty-five miles per hour.

Leah butted heads with dismissive men every time she went on a track day, especially when she was the only female participant. It had created in her a burning need to prove herself in the eyes of the condescending male. In fact, most males. The need was burning particularly fiercely right at this moment, urging her to make a stand on behalf of snubbed women drivers everywhere. And though they were currently sailing past neatly laid-out fields that rose up to meet more distant tree-clothed hills she knew they’d soon come to a half-finished business park on the outskirts of Muntsheim with a very different kind of wide-open space. One that would provide the perfect arena to challenge Ronan’s assumptions.

As she formulated her plans Ronan made up for her silence with a helpful rundown of the tram system into Strasbourg and where to find the ‘office de tourisme’, near the cathedral. ‘But perhaps you’ve visited Strasbourg already?’ he prompted.

Leah, attention not really on city tourist traps, replied absently, ‘I expect we’ll get there but Alister’s more into cycling and active stuff,’ and Ronan retreated into silence, too. Maybe he was worried Leah wasn’t capable of talking and driving at the same time, she thought, grinning to herself.

Ten minutes later the fields petered out and the road became broader and busier, street lighting and advertising hoardings signalling the town’s approaches. The business park came up on their left. Leah slowed to give it the once over. Work at the site looked to have halted some time ago. Red skips and depleted brick stacks were corralled behind temporary fencing but she saw no sign of a workforce.

Would the owners mind her borrowing their big empty car park for a few minutes?

No, she decided, as she indicated and turned across the traffic to nose the car through a drunken line of plastic cones.

Ronan glanced across at her, expression perplexed. ‘You’ll need to go on a bit for either the supermarket or the garage.’

‘Oh, dear!’ Leah tried to look as if she were gazing about helplessly while actually assessing the area for hazards. ‘I’ll turn around.’ She straightened the car up, confirmed it was in first gear and made a last check of her mirrors. Then she stamped on the accelerator.

‘Whoa!’ gasped Ronan as the engine, howling in joy that it was playtime, catapulted them across the tarmac.

‘Oops,’ crooned Leah, relishing the feeling of acceleration. Settling her left hand on the handbrake she gathered power for another few seconds. Then she simultaneously yanked up the handbrake, stamped on the clutch and spun the steering wheel hard left. The Porsche changed direction like a dog chasing a rat.

Flung against the door, Ronan gasped. ‘What the fu—’

Standing on the accelerator again Leah sent the car flying back the way it had come, powered up, yanked the car into a doughnut that made her tyres screech, slammed into reverse, J-turned, and screamed to a halt neatly facing the exit.

‘It’s not Alister’s car,’ she pointed out, breathlessly. ‘It’s mine.’