cool air of the winery and abandoned her riddling, scuttling up the spiral stairs to seek comfort in the warm open arms of her vines.
Outside in the courtyard she all but fell on top of Patric Didier, the cooper’s son, who was chatting animatedly to Sophie. The Didiers had been producing barrels for longer than the Peines had been producing champagne — it was a sign of the House’s once great reputation that they kept returning — but in her angst on this occasion Clementine had forgotten they were due.
“My father can’t be here today,” Patric told her after she burbled a muffled greeting, hiding her face with a series of eccentric hand gestures so that no one could see her tears. “He’s asked me to mend your barrels and your delightful little sister here says she’s going to help me.”
Clementine felt fury chase her anxiety from the tips of her toes to the top of her head where it escaped into the air with a sharp crack through the crinkles in her hair. That little minx! Only here five minutes and throwing herself at poor Patric. She knew from the unpaid bills on Olivier’s desk that the Didiers were owed for the last three years of Peine cooperage so if Sophie put one finger wrong …
Sophie heard the crack, or at least picked up on her anger. “Unless there’s something you would like me to do for you, Clementine,” she offered, her violet eyes wide and innocent.
Half-strangling an anguished cry, Clementine pushed rudely past the young pair and scurried over to her bike.
“She’s a regular charm-school graduate that one,” remarked Patric. “What a fright you must have got to discover she was your long-lost sister.”
“Oh, she’s not so bad,” Sophie said charitably as she watched Clementine pedal away. The truth was, she did not think that she had discovered Clementine at all. In fact, she still knew very little about either of her sisters despite finding herself living in the same house as them. They acted like she was invisible so she acted that way too, hiding herself in a gloomy little bedroom with a sagging but nonetheless cosy bed, creeping around close to the walls of the ramshackle house like a beaten puppy, slinking in the shadows of the winery, sniffing the vats, running her thin little fingers along the rows and rows of bottles in the cave.
She loved exploring the old house and was entranced by its nooks and crannies, its rooms full of forgotten furniture, its bookshelves heaving with old volumes and aged magazines. She loved the different creaks on the staircase, the rattles in the walls, the echo of leaking water hitting bare boards somewhere up in the attic. To her, these sounds were not reminders that the house had seen better times. She simply rejoiced in hearing the same thing day after day, in seeing the same whorls of dust collected in the same corners, the same dead fly in the same abandoned spider’s web. This was how a home spoke to its inhabitants, she assumed, how it murmured light-heartedly of its aches and pains. It just wanted its occupants to know how it felt, to keep them in touch. She took to patting the peeling walls as she climbed the stairs as if to say, “All right, I hear you.” She wanted the house to keep her.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the room she loved most was her father’s. The smell of the tobacco he had smoked in thereseeped out of the walls. She could not breathe in deeply enough when she first slipped inside the door to hunt for any sign of the man he might have been. There was none, or at least very little. He smoked roll-your-owns, drank pastis, was not allergic to dust, and didn’t feel the cold. All this she picked up from the evidence left beneath his bed. There were papers, ash, bottles, and dust-balls the size of tumbleweeds, but no slippers. It wasn’t an awful lot to know about a person, she had thought that day, as she straightened up and looked around the room.
She’d thought a lot about her father over the years, of course
Outside in the courtyard she all but fell on top of Patric Didier, the cooper’s son, who was chatting animatedly to Sophie. The Didiers had been producing barrels for longer than the Peines had been producing champagne — it was a sign of the House’s once great reputation that they kept returning — but in her angst on this occasion Clementine had forgotten they were due.
“My father can’t be here today,” Patric told her after she burbled a muffled greeting, hiding her face with a series of eccentric hand gestures so that no one could see her tears. “He’s asked me to mend your barrels and your delightful little sister here says she’s going to help me.”
Clementine felt fury chase her anxiety from the tips of her toes to the top of her head where it escaped into the air with a sharp crack through the crinkles in her hair. That little minx! Only here five minutes and throwing herself at poor Patric. She knew from the unpaid bills on Olivier’s desk that the Didiers were owed for the last three years of Peine cooperage so if Sophie put one finger wrong …
Sophie heard the crack, or at least picked up on her anger. “Unless there’s something you would like me to do for you, Clementine,” she offered, her violet eyes wide and innocent.
Half-strangling an anguished cry, Clementine pushed rudely past the young pair and scurried over to her bike.
“She’s a regular charm-school graduate that one,” remarked Patric. “What a fright you must have got to discover she was your long-lost sister.”
“Oh, she’s not so bad,” Sophie said charitably as she watched Clementine pedal away. The truth was, she did not think that she had discovered Clementine at all. In fact, she still knew very little about either of her sisters despite finding herself living in the same house as them. They acted like she was invisible so she acted that way too, hiding herself in a gloomy little bedroom with a sagging but nonetheless cosy bed, creeping around close to the walls of the ramshackle house like a beaten puppy, slinking in the shadows of the winery, sniffing the vats, running her thin little fingers along the rows and rows of bottles in the cave.
She loved exploring the old house and was entranced by its nooks and crannies, its rooms full of forgotten furniture, its bookshelves heaving with old volumes and aged magazines. She loved the different creaks on the staircase, the rattles in the walls, the echo of leaking water hitting bare boards somewhere up in the attic. To her, these sounds were not reminders that the house had seen better times. She simply rejoiced in hearing the same thing day after day, in seeing the same whorls of dust collected in the same corners, the same dead fly in the same abandoned spider’s web. This was how a home spoke to its inhabitants, she assumed, how it murmured light-heartedly of its aches and pains. It just wanted its occupants to know how it felt, to keep them in touch. She took to patting the peeling walls as she climbed the stairs as if to say, “All right, I hear you.” She wanted the house to keep her.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the room she loved most was her father’s. The smell of the tobacco he had smoked in thereseeped out of the walls. She could not breathe in deeply enough when she first slipped inside the door to hunt for any sign of the man he might have been. There was none, or at least very little. He smoked roll-your-owns, drank pastis, was not allergic to dust, and didn’t feel the cold. All this she picked up from the evidence left beneath his bed. There were papers, ash, bottles, and dust-balls the size of tumbleweeds, but no slippers. It wasn’t an awful lot to know about a person, she had thought that day, as she straightened up and looked around the room.
She’d thought a lot about her father over the years, of course
Similar Books
