The French for Always by Fiona Valpy Read Free Book Online

where Thomas was making sure he knew how the sound and light systems worked and Antoine was un-stacking chairs in preparation for Saturday night’s hooley. The château and its clustered buildings were peaceful in the afternoon light: the calm before the storm. The golden stone gently reflected back the sunshine’s warmth, and the courtyard’s borders of Iceberg roses and lavender softened the edges of the gravel paths, the whole Impressionist effect forming the perfect romantic backdrop for a fairy-tale wedding.
    Gavin used to say that their job was making dreams come true. The reality, as Sara well knew, was that achieving it demanded a heck of a lot of hard work, an eye for the minutest of details, and most of all the ability to keep calm in the face of demanding wedding planners, difficult guests, plumbing disasters, alcohol poisoning, overexcited children, overexcited groomsmen, hysterical brides, hysterical mothers of brides, family fall-outs and every other drama that weddings entail.
    And those challenges paled into insignificance against the test of abandonment mid-season by one’s business partner, let alone one’s husband-to-be. She supposed she should still have felt bitter at the thought of organising dream weddings when the prospect of her own had just disappeared over the far horizon with its tail between its legs. But—honestly?—she found to her surprise that she felt okay. In fact she was almost relishing the prospect of making a success of the business on her own. She realised she was regaining her self-confidence, finding her voice again. Running the business single-handed was going to require her to get it back fast and she felt a new sense of certainty as she went about her work, as if, having picked herself up from such a painful fall, she was getting back into her stride more surely than before.
    She pushed a strand of hair back from her forehead. In this heat, the pots of verbena and geraniums would need watering this evening—she’d better remind Antoine. She swept the vegetable peelings into the compost bucket and made her way out to the walled kitchen garden, where the weeds were parched in the summer heat. She had planned that this time next year neat rows of produce would be burgeoning in raised beds, with an automatic watering system to ensure the rich clay soil stayed soft and hospitable. She felt a pang of sadness, realising that it wasn’t going to happen now. Next year seemed an impossibly long way off: the château would belong to someone else by then...
    A squadron of swifts screeched overhead in the dizzy blue of the August sky. She took a deep breath, relishing the last few moments of peace. As she bent to pick a generous bunch of pepper-scented basil from the stone trough, there was a low hum from the speakers in the barn and then suddenly The Pogues’ version of The Irish Rover blasted out: Thomas was rehearsing his welcome for the guests. Sara smiled. This was the overture: time to go and raise the curtain—the show was about to begin.
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    A convoy of hire cars wound its way up the drive, dust billowing in the evening air in its wake. Sara identified the O’Callaghans—the well-upholstered and larger-than-life parents of the bride, with whom she’d been in frequent communication over the previous few months—and went to introduce herself. Amidst the hubbub of laughter and excited chatter, she managed to allocate the guests to their rooms, Antoine and the Héls Belles helping to show them the way. Vast suitcases were dragged from the backs of the cars and manhandled into the house.
    Sara always thought you could tell within the first five minutes what the family dynamic was going to be. This one was good, so she felt her shoulders relax slightly: fewer inter-family tensions meant fewer fires to put out.
    Niamh, the bride, was luminous, a natural Irish beauty with dark blue eyes and delicate, creamy skin. Her happiness radiated from her like the sun, and the rest of the