The French for Always by Fiona Valpy Page A

report in her social pages!’ She grinned broadly, as Sara’s cheeks flushed the colour of the single red rose that lay on the counter before them.

Patti & Thorne
    P atti & Thorne
    tie the knot
    On Saturday 18 August
    At Château Bellevue de Coulliac
    From 4.00 p.m.
    RSVP
    [email protected]
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    I t was not unusual for the bright yellow post van to call at Château Bellevue de Coulliac. As far as possible, Sara bought supplies locally to support the region’s shopkeepers, but for some of the more exotic requests—heart-shaped helium balloons, for example, and biodegradable delphinium-petal confetti, personalised fortune cookies and glitter-butterfly table decorations—she ordered online from specialist suppliers, resulting in frequent visits by the facteur to deliver an intriguing array of cardboard boxes. The postman liked nothing better than to stand and chat for a few minutes, gleaning all sorts of fascinating snippets about the latest bizarre new ways les Anglo-Saxons had come up with for celebrating their nuptials. But today there were no boxes to drop off, just a solitary registered-delivery envelope. As she signed for it, Sara was careful to give nothing away, smiling and chatting with the postman whilst the envelope, with her name and address on it in Gavin’s handwriting, glowed radioactively in her hand.
    ‘There’s a rumour that next weekend there’s going to be a rock concert at Château Bellevue. Is it really true that The Steel Thornes are coming?’
    The Steel Thornes hadn’t had a hit record for about a decade, but they still toured, belting out their heavy-metal back catalogue at the lesser venues across Europe. They had an enthusiastic fan base on the Continent, even if the audiences at their gigs were generally a sea of balding heads and bulging paunches nowadays.
    Sara confirmed that this was, in fact, the case. She’d managed pretty well to keep it a secret that ageing rock legend Thorne Sharpe and his long-term girlfriend Patti Monahan had booked the château for the coming weekend. But she’d had to go and speak to Monsieur le Maire about security (the two rather sleepy local gendarmes had been notified accordingly) and to request permission for the sound-and-light show that was planned for the after-party, so it was inevitable that the news would have seeped out.
    ‘I hope it’s not going to upset people in Coulliac. We’re far enough from our nearest neighbours that it shouldn’t be too loud, and they’ve promised that the live music will finish by eleven p.m.’
    'Oh no, not at all,’ the postman assured her. ‘In fact the Café de la Paix is putting out extra chairs. The whole village is intending to come and watch from the square—I just hope it’s going to be loud enough . It’s not every day we have a real live rock band come to Coulliac! People are coming from far and wide—if the mayor could get away with selling tickets for it, he would.’
    Once she’d wished the postman a bonne journée , Sara made herself walk back inside and sit down at the table before tearing open the envelope. As she read, the hand holding the sheet of paper began to tremble.
    The tone of the letter was cool, and some of the phrases were couched in legalese, which made Sara suspect Gavin had already sought professional advice. Either that or he was trying to scare her into submission: and either way, she was shocked that he was resorting to bullying her like this. The bottom line was that he wanted his money out. He wanted sixty percent of the profits from this season’s earnings, in line with his shareholding in the business, and he wanted the château put on the market straight away, in the hope of selling it by the end of the year so that he could get his investment back.
    Of course he was entitled to his share of the profits; Sara would never have dreamed of withholding anything that was due to him. But he also knew full well that more investment in the property was needed if the