The Last Summer of Being Single

‘Don’t be. In fact I can see you are quite comfortable there,’ Ella replied with a small bow. ‘So I’ll meet you back at the house whenever you feel like it. Your room is all ready for you. Bye for now. And it’s Ella!’

With one small finger wave she strolled back behind his car and pulled a very strange-looking ancient bicycle with a child seat through the bushes, gracefully pushed off with one foot on the pedal and calmly cycled down the lane towards the house, leaving him sitting there surrounded by birdsong, the buzz of insects, dogs barking somewhere close and the ping, ping, ping of condensation dripping onto hot metal from the air conditioning in the car.

He watched in silence as a yellow butterfly landed on his outstretched hand, cleaned its feelers, and then lifted away.

‘Well, you are a long way from Kansas now, Toto,’ he mumbled before chuckling to himself, then chuckling louder, the ridiculous nature of his position hitting him right in the funny bone.

So much for the millions in his private bank accounts! Thank heavens the ‘suits’ at PSN Media could not see him now! They might think twice about buying a company from a farm boy.

This was turning out to be quite a day! And he had only just arrived.

It was almost a shame that he would not be staying long enough to find out more about Nicole’s housekeeper!

A few minutes later, Seb stepped out from the car and felt the small hairs at the back of his neck stand on end.

The outside of the house had not changed that much in eighteen years. The farmhouse had been built from sandstone, which he already knew took on a golden-pink hue at dusk in the long summer evenings. The long wooden shutters that covered the windows and patio doors used to be painted a 5lavender-blue shade that he had never seen anywhere else except in this part of the Languedoc. Now they were dark blue with a pale yellow trim, which to his untrained eye was too harsh a colour contrast below the old terracotta tile roof spotted with patches of moss.

Any fears he might have had about his old home being a ruin were gone, replaced by a general sense of unease that brought a crease of tension to his forehead and a strange quiver of anxious fear in his gut matched with a cold sweat in the small of his back, despite the warmth of his shirt and suit jacket.

He had not expected to feel this way.

He had formed his own company, which had grown into an international multimillion-dollar business, he thought nothing of giving presentations to hundreds of strangers and yet here he was, standing in the warm sunshine, and nervous of taking those few steps through the tall and, oh, so familiar wooden door that led inside the house where he had grown up.

Suddenly a light breeze picked up through the resin-heavy poplar and plane trees and carried the scent of lavender, roses, honeysuckle and sweet white jasmine. Instantly his mind was flooded with so many memories that he sucked in a breath to help steady himself.

Thousands of moments and images that all called out the same message. You’ve come home.

After almost a lifetime away from the country of his birth, this area, this village and this farmhouse…he was home.

And the very thought shocked him more than he thought possible.

Home was the apartment in Sydney with the stunning views over the city where he slept some of the time and kept his clothes. Sydney was his home. Not here. Not any more.

He had decided eighteen years ago that he would never again rely so much on one person for his happiness. The agony of being dragged away from this house had destroyed that kind of childish sentimentality for good.

He did not do sentimental.

Indeed the notion shocked him so much that when Ella sauntered around the side of the house and stood next to him looking up at the window, he barely noticed her presence until her light sweet voice broke the silence.

‘Has it changed much since you were here last?’

He half turned and blinked in confusion as he fought to regain the connection between his brain and his mouth. Had she been reading his mind?

She tilted her chin upward and looked at him eye to eye. ‘Nicole told me that you grew up here. I was just wondering if the house is still the same as you remember. That’s all!’ And with that she turned away to pick off dead flower heads from the cascades of stunning blossoms billowing from two giant stone urns that stood either side of the main door, giving Seb a chance to put together a sensible reply.

‘Er, no. Not much. I noticed the gates are down—’ he sniffed ‘—but the house itself looks pretty much the same.’ He raised one hand toward the shutters with a nod. ‘The colour scheme is different. Not sure it works.’

There was an exasperated sigh from Ella who twirled around to face him and planted a fist firmly on each hip.

‘Thank you! Nicole hired an “interior designer”—’ at this point she lifted her hands and made quotation marks with her fingers ‘—to remodel the old place in the spring.’

Ella nodded towards the shutters and shuddered with her shoulders. ‘He was a lovely charming man who had a wonderful eye for textiles but had no clue about the local style. I mean none. Zip. De nada. Zero.’

She bent towards Seb as though confiding in him. ‘I may be from London but I have lived here long enough to know that this house does not need navy-blue shutters!’

Then she stepped back to the flowers and expertly snipped off a perfect half-open pink rose bud with a few glossy green leaves with a fingernail.

Before Seb could reply she skipped up, stood on tiptoe and slipped the rose into the buttonhole of his made-to-measure suit jacket, smoothing it into place on his soft cashmere collar with the fingertips of one hand.

‘There. That’s better. No thorns, you see. I planted a rose without thorns. Do you like it?’

Ella raised her brows and looked Seb straight in the eye with an intense look and suddenly her mouth twitched as if she was only too aware that as he looked down to admire the new addition to his wardrobe he had a delightful view down the front of her yellow and white sundress.

For a few moments he completely forgot his troubles as he admired the tanned skin and soft curves under the thin yellow and white cotton. A white lacy bra peeked out either side of the dress, which had slipped down over one shoulder, and he felt the sudden urge to lift the strap of her sundress back into position. But that would have meant touching her skin and finding out if it was truly as soft and smooth as it looked.

It was very tempting but also totally prohibited.

Oh, no. Not going there. Bad idea! He liked city-smart women who knew how to run multimedia servers and could make orbiting satellites obey his commands. Not elves in green pants. Especially when she released her hand from his jacket and he saw a diamond and sapphire wedding band on her left ring finger.

Mrs Martinez! A married housekeeper. Okay. Very prohibited! That made sense. He vaguely recalled that she mentioned a little boy. A married woman with a family. The perfect housekeeper and gardener and maintenance man team to look after the house when Nicole was away.

Mr Martinez was a very lucky man.

He brought his attention back onto the trellis of roses above her head before croaking out a reply. ‘I do like it. It’s a stunning display. Thank you, Mrs Martinez.’

She gave his jacket a small final pat and smiled back at him before dropping back onto her heels.

‘You are most welcome. The main rose garden is still at the back of the house.’ She paused for a second, then gestured to the car and flashed him a half-smile. Then it was back to business. ‘Even in that mobile sofa you call a car, you must be tired after your long drive. Ready to see what he did to your old bedroom?’

This had been his room. The ancient bathroom with the cracked enamel basin had been in the room next door. The wall must have been knocked through to create this stylish tiled ensuite. But the room itself had not changed that much and the floorboards certainly creaked in the same places.

The rush of memories threatened to overwhelm him again as he looked out from the square window onto the walled garden at the back of the house where he had played and learnt to love life.

And then it hit him.

Ella Martinez had made up this room for him. Not the spare room his grandmother had used when his mother was terminally ill, but his old room. How had she known that this had been his room?

He turned back towards the door. Ella was standing at the top of the stairs simply watching him and her smile was like sunshine inside the dark cool shade of the corridor.

Seeing the look on his face, she said, ‘I worked it out,’ then pointed to the wall behind his back. ‘From the wallpaper.’

Then she grinned and took pity on his confusion. ‘Relax. I’m not psychic. When the decorators stripped off the layers of wallpaper they found some interesting blasts from the past.’

Ella glanced back over each shoulder, and then peeked down the staircase, as though checking that they were not being overhead, before leaning closer.

‘I’m sure lots of teenagers back then plastered their bedroom walls with posters of their favourite pop groups. In fact—’ and at this she leant back, pursed her lips, and nodded before going on ‘—I’m willing to bet that you would sing along to your favourite records holding a hairbrush as a pretend microphone. Am I right?’

Seb felt the back of his neck flare with heat and embarrassment, only then he looked at Ella and the laughter that had been teasing the corner of her mouth bubbled through into a full warm giggle.