To be fair, the wrinkly men of my youth who loitered around the cooperative building or drank pastis in L’Escale, chinwagging long after they’d hung up their rakes, merged into one another, but I nodded anyhow.

  “He’s dead now. From a big heart attack. Like his brother.”

  Another slurp of coffee. “And his cousin, Samuel, had a bad one that nearly saw him off too. It must run in the family. Remember him? Bald, with glasses. He joined us next, after his wife left him. He’s dead now as well, passed away last Christmas. Didn’t even make eighty. Cancer got him in the end, not his heart.”

  I liked to believe my Papi didn’t gain small personal triumph from outliving his contemporaries, but from the way he held out his hand and counted them off on his fingers, I couldn’t be too sure.

  “Then Bruno’s uncle joined us. He was a nice fellow. Now he’s stuck in a nursing home over in Fouras. Horrible place; you’d have to kill me before you locked me in one of those.”

  If we were going to have a running order of all seventy-five members of the original cooperative and their current state of ill-health or demise, we could be here a while. On the other hand, if I needed reassurance Papi’s long-term memory was still intact, I was getting it. Comprehensively.

  “And do you remember Hervé—he only had one eye? He joined us next, made us good money, too, because he had two flats, both a decent size. But then he got ill with…”

  “How did you manage to run it?” I persisted. “What I mean is, how did you ever get everyone to agree on anything? Did you just elect one man to be in charge and let him have the final word, or did you put issues to the vote and fall out all the time?”

  Silly question really. Invite a group of Frenchmen to share a room together and of course they would argue. “Dieu, yes. We fell out. Everyone had something to say. As more and more people signed up, some of the ones who refused tried to sway everyone else against the idea. Your friend Jerome’s papi was the worst. God rest his soul. Went to bed and never got up again. Massive stroke.”

  Jerome’s grandfather. That figured. My own papi made the sign of the cross with unbridled satisfaction and nodded to himself.

  “Why did the naysayers think a cooperative was a bad idea?”

  He shrugged. “I think they were worried they’d be carrying men who didn’t pull their weight. And maybe some didn’t, not all the time. But when I tripped over a boule, broke my ankle, and couldn’t work for a few weeks, having the others helping was one less thing to worry about.”

  “Why did they all join in the end? How did you persuade them?”

  “The storms of 1972,” he answered emphatically. “Poor harvest all summer followed by floods. Destroyed a lot of salt flats. People were scared they would lose everything. Some did.”

  He paused, wrenching off another chunk of bread. I should make an effort to quiz him about the past more often, I decided. It animated him. “Those of us in the cooperative had money put by, so we were okay. We became very popular all of a sudden.” He threw me a mischievous grin, his eyes, like mine according to everyone who knew us, although I hoped mine were surrounded by fewer wrinkles, lighting up. “Not such lunatics now, were we?

  “We had a meeting. Not in L’Escale this time, but in the shed we had before we built the new cooperative building. And everyone came. And this time, they listened. Beatrice told me what to say to persuade them to join. She was a clever lady, your mami.”

  I was intrigued. “What did she say?”

  “She said we had to make all the men believe in a common goal. A vision of something far in the future that would make them proud.”

  I smiled to myself. No way could I imagine my grandparents as young adults, sitting across from each other, maybe even at this old table, strategizing about how to draw everyone in. The only conversations I’d ever heard them having had been gossiping about their friends, moaning about the price of literally everything, and telling everyone how much nicer the island had been before they built the toll bridge and let the noisy Parisians in.

  “So I did,” he carried on. “I pointed out that I wasn’t doing any of this for me. I mean, I was of course, but they didn’t need to know that. I said I wasn’t even doing it for my children. Or anyone else’s children, as some of the men in the room already had their grown sons working with them or moved away. So that wouldn’t swing any arguments.”

  “What did you say, then?”

  He gave another satisfied nod and tapped on the table. “I suggested we were all doing it to protect the grandchildren we didn’t yet have. For boys like you, Florian. In order that our families’ futures would be safe long after we’d gone. We all agreed on that.”

  So that kicked me in the gut much harder than I’d anticipated. Could I pull the same thing off with men who had bags of coins being dangled in front of their faces? Was family as important to modern men like it had been back then? Would appealing to a future common good work? Fucking merde if I knew. I didn’t have a father myself, and would probably never have my own kids, never mind grandchildren. Nevertheless, I added it to my mental list of reasons to oppose the takeover.

  Unaware my eyes had become all watery and having reached the end of his tale, Papi resumed dipping his bread into his coffee. I’m sure it hadn’t been as romantic as he made it sound; it wasn’t exactly a bonus scene from Les Misèrables, no one was hurling salt at the barricades to a background of beating drums. Nonetheless, it was an inauspicious moment to realise revolutionary spirit simmered in my blood.

  No pressure then.

  “Alors, what are you looking all dressed up for? Have you had a court summons?”

  Nico and Jerome eyed my clean jeans and ironed long-sleeved T-shirt as if I’d waltzed into L’Escale in top hat and tails. After a meticulous shower, my curls had erupted from the top of my head like a volcano, so I’d slicked them back while they were still damp and secured them with a tight band. Hoping to distract my friends from my spruced-up appearance, I’d launched into a tirade about the cooperative saga until they’d begged me to stop.

  “Shouldn’t that be who is he all dressed up for?” Nico smirked and took a long drag of his roll up. In stark contrast, unless he was experimenting with unusual aftershaves, he’d come to the pub straight from the oyster beds.

  “At least I don’t smell of dead fish.”

  “It’s manly and alluring.” Nico waved his roll-up at me. “Trust me, the ladies love it.”

  The bloody annoying thing was, he was right. There was something about Nico’s don’t-give-a-shit, unwashed, bad boy demeanour that had them flocking to him. Mind you, if they were hoping to tame him, they were out of luck. Nico was never going to change.

  “It’s that man, isn’t it?” Jerome cocked his eyebrow. “That old Englishman you’ve got a crush on. You have very strange taste in men, Flor. He looks like he’s spent every day of the last twenty years holed up in a library.”

  “Every night, too,” added Nico. “He looks ill. Or maybe it’s his age.”

  Jerome gave me a nudge. “Julien spotted him helping you with the raking yesterday, when he went out on patrol.”

  I rolled my eyes. Julien called it patrolling, being a responsible policeman. Some days it felt closer to stalking.

  “Putain, Charles is not old! He’s only about ten years older than us.”

  “What’s he been doing for those ten years? Sleeping in a coffin?”

  “He’s a friend. That’s all. And I’m pretty sure he’s straight. He’s not giving out gay vibes, that’s for sure.”

  That recent mental illness and grief accounted for Charles’s pallor was not something I felt a need to share. Whatever light had once shone in his eyes had been comprehensibly snuffed out. He’d given me a glimpse into his recent struggles while slumped on my bench, and his pale hand clutching the water bottle had trembled like a leaf.

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” scoffed Jerome. “Nico’s uncle Thibaut has five children and he’s as bent as —"

  “Merci, mais non,” interrupted Nico. “That is all speculation, not knowledge.”

  “‘Speculation’?” spluttered Jerome. “Don’t you remember giving him a lift back from that gay bar Flor dragged us to, in La Rochelle? And him spending the entire journey home boasting about the man he’d blown in the toilets?”

  “He was drunk, that’s all. Talking gibberish.”

  Mon dieu, even Nico’s aunt had worked out her husband preferred men. I sniggered as Nico blew his smoke in Jerome’s face.

  “Keep that disgusting shit away from me!” Jerome covered his nose, jerking his chair back as if he hadn’t chain-smoked his way through the last ten years. “I’m going to be a papa soon! I’ve given up.”

  Nico’s grin was wicked. “I bet you haven’t told the old man you’re going to be a papa, have you?”

  “Shh! Not so loud. Not yet, no. And if Léa finds out I’ve shared it with you two mecs, I’ll be in big trouble. It’s too early, anyhow. We need to have the fourteen-week scan before we go around telling everybody.” He sounded like a proper little expert.

  “Make sure you break the news to your dad somewhere far away from me,” said Nico.

  Far away from me, too. Both Léa and Jerome still lived at home, neither ever had more than a five euro note between them, and Léa had about a million siblings. Jerome’s parents’ house was going to be the only solution as far as I could see. Michel would go ballistic.

  Nico wolf-whistled, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “Your hot date’s on his way.”

  “Does he know you’re gay?” Jerome asked.

  “Who, Nico’s Uncle Thibaut?” I let out a laugh. “Why do you think I run in the other direction whenever I see him?”

  It was my turn to receive a face full of smoke.

  “Yes. Charles knows I’m gay.” And it had elicited very little response, neither a flicker of interest nor a straight man’s polite wariness. I hadn’t known what to make of it, to be honest.

  “You never know, you might be lucky. Maybe your Englishman fences with both hands.” Nico suggested. “Do you want me to ask him for you?”

  I turned to see Charles walking towards the bar and let out a low whistle myself. With his pale skin and more formal clothing, he stood out from tourists and locals alike. Self-contained and serious, he looked very much alone. But oh, fucking merde he didn’t need to be. I was right here, ready to strip him out of that buttoned up shirt, run my lips across that creamy pale skin, kiss away the weariness from under his eyes and…

  “You’ve got it bad, mon ami,” Jerome diagnosed, pushing himself from the table. “If you need any tips on how to persuade someone into your bed, I’ll be standing over at the bar.”

  Nico snorted. “Don’t listen to him. He’s an amateur. Take advice from a man who really knows.”

  As if about to demonstrate, he stretched out his long legs and his grubby shirt rose a little, exposing the bottom of the octopus tattoo inked across his lower belly. Mon dieu, if he’d been so inclined, I’d have been buried deep between those endless legs years ago. “I guess men are no different to women,” he added. “They need charming first. So for god’s sake don’t bore him with the whingy salt cooperative shit.”

  CHAPTER 9

  CHARLES

  A fly on the wall would clock my fragile mental state and not only because of the bottles and bottles of pills lined up in the bathroom. The bigger clue was that I was meeting a guy for a quiet drink and casual supper yet had structured my whole day around it as if we were planning magic mushrooms in the desert.

  Maybe my careful grooming and selection of outfit (black linen shirt and least loose jeans) would be more understandable if it was a date with a woman. But I hadn’t been on a date with a woman since… well, since the heavy charcoal shadows had come out to play and I’d fallen off the rails. And if I was honest with myself, it had been quite some time before that.

  To put it bluntly, my sex drive had driven off, and as much as I told myself it was due to my new medications or that I’d become more picky of late, its foot had been hovering over the accelerator for the last ten years.

  Like jealous lovers, orange wisps of anxiety prodded at the edges of my inner forest green. As I applied a squirt of aftershave for the first time in over a year, I reminded myself this was nothing more than a drink in the local bar with a kind and generous young man. So why was I trying so hard? Was it because he was young, and I didn’t want to be mistaken for his dad? I wasn’t that much older than him, even though my newly acquired grey hairs added a few years to my appearance.

  Or was it because he was a young man, with silver dancing around his shoulders, and being in France and using my rusty French had woken feelings that had lain dormant for almost twenty years?

  Slinging a sweater around my own shoulders, I gave my sallow complexion a final glance in the mirror, then pinched my cheeks to coax some colour into them like a heroine from a Jane Austen novel. Going out and socialising is good for me, and I’d be able to report back to Marcus with something positive for a change.

  A group of locals surrounded Florian at the bar—some were the friends he’d pointed out from the other night. Spotting me first, one of them stood to make space at the table as I tried to casually saunter over, as if leaving the house with the express purpose of talking to people wasn’t a big deal. Taking a deep breath, I pushed the orange hovering behind my eyes to one side. Handshakes all round followed, and then Nico and Jerome left. An open bottle of local rosé stood in a bucket of ice between us

  Florian poured me a glass. “Or I can get you beer? Or something else?”

  “Rosé’s fine.” A glass of rosé was precisely what I needed to settle my orange nerves.

  “We’ll have a quick drink and then go back. Papi will be wondering where his dinner has got to.”

  Somehow, Florian seemed different tonight—still his usual beautiful self, but smarter.

  “You look dressed up. Have you not been working today?”

  A hint of blush stole across his cheeks and for a moment he seemed at a loss for words. “Putain, you’re the third person to comment.” He gave a light laugh. “I should wear proper shoes and clean jeans more often. It makes me wonder what a scruff I look like the rest of the time.”

  “You look very nice both ways,” I reassured him, because apparently, I complimented handsome young men on their attire these days. “But what’s the occasion?”

  “Oh, fucking merde.” He blushed even harder. “You’re as bad as Jerome and Nico.” His eyes slid to his drink, then around the packed bar, to anywhere that wasn’t me. “You’re the occasion. I smartened up because I was having drinks with you!”

  “Me?”

  Good Lord. Comprehension dawned. Cool, calm Florian, who had women tracking his every drag of the rake, who had the local copper drooling after him, who could probably name his price if he wanted to model underwear, had gone to the effort of dressing up for drinks with a nutjob like me? It was the funniest thing I’d heard in months.

  “I’m immensely flattered.” I tried not to let my lips twitch. “I can’t remember the last time anyone did that for me.” Or maybe someone had, but I’d been too wrapped up in work to notice.

  “Yes, well, I did. And now I’ve made you feel awkward. But you don’t need to because I won’t make a pass at you or anything.”

  The rosé must be hitting hard on an empty stomach because, in a flash of chocolate brown, a tinge of disappointment washed over me. Although God knew how I’d react if he did come on to me. “I don’t feel awkward at all, but would you like it if we changed the conversation now?”

  “Yes, putain, anything. Please.”

  I searched for a suitable subject. Probably not the moment to mention imaginary amorphic demons and how they’d convinced me they were real. The daily ins and outs of my subsequent breakdown weren’t light topics for drinks chit-chat either. Nor was informing him tiny silver flames licked across his shoulders every time he took a swallow of rosé. I cast around, brown and orange vying for prominence. The thing was, absolutely nothing else defined me.

  “Tell me what you do for a living,” said Florian, back to his normal self. “You already know all about my job.”

  And it couldn’t be more different. Florian worked the land creating magic, whereas I used my money to help myself to the fruits of other people’s labours, raped them for profit, then destroyed them.

  “I live and work in London,” I hedged.

  Ah, what the hell. There was no point sugarcoating it. He must have met plenty of wealthy Parisians similar to me. “I’m a venture capitalist. We acquire struggling businesses, or undervalued businesses, and, if we can, we increase their worth by streamlining their assets. If we can’t, we sell the assets on.”

  Florian laughed. “I have no idea what any of that really means, except that it sounds like it makes you a pile of money.”

  “Most people don’t understand it,” I agreed. “It’s smoke and mirrors. And yes, it makes my business partner and I an awful amount of money.”

  “Good for you.”

  I sensed his attraction to me lessen a fraction. Maybe I should have lied that I was a postman or something and conjured up a witty anecdote about a snappy dog and a letterbox.

  “And has having all that money made you happy?”

  Seemed we were launching straight into a serious conversation after all. Two guileless sea-green eyes studied mine, set above cheekbones that could slice a baguette. I had an insane urge to stroke my thumb across one of them; I’d have to settle for trying to sketch them later.

  “That’s a difficult question to answer, Florian.” I took a sip of wine, framing my thoughts. “I used to think it did, and then…” I took a shaky breath. “You know I mentioned I’d been ill, after my mother died?” He gave a cautious nod. “It’s a bit more complicated than that. I’ve, well, I’ve spent the best part of this year as an inpatient in a psychiatric hospital.”