Luc Sabran, in jeans and a gray-and-white striped cotton shirt, gave a nod towards the cat and warned me, “Don’t let him fool you. He’s not to be trusted.” He said it good-naturedly, then smiled and added, “Good morning. How are you, Ms. Thomas?”
I said I was well and returned his “Good morning,” determined this time not to stare. “And it’s Sara.”
“I’d come and shake hands, but I’m covered in rust,” he said, holding up one hand as proof. “Were you looking for breakfast? Denise just went round to the bakery for more croissants, because Diablo there sat on the ones she made earlier.”
Glaring, the black cat replied to this second attack on his honor by stalking indignantly forward and making a tidy leap onto the dining room chair nearest me, giving a short but imperious order that needed no translating. Smoothing the black hair and feeling his back muscles arch and twitch under my hand, I said, “Is that your name, then? Diablo?”
“It goes very well with his character.”
“Is he your cat?”
“No.” Luc Sabran put one final twist on a screw and sat back on his heels to inspect the results of whatever repairs he had made. “No, he lives with a neighbor just over the lane, but he visits. The food’s better here.” The radiator was evidently working to his satisfaction now, because he put the tools away and stood and flexed his shoulders and began to walk towards me with that easy stride I had admired last night. In motion, he was even more distracting, and I purposely looked down and concentrated on the cat.
“The treatment he gets here is better, too. Isn’t that right, boy?” Luc Sabran had stopped close beside me and his hand came into the line of my vision as he reached down to rumple the cat’s ears, his tone and his action affectionate.
Brisk footsteps sounded outside and the kitchen door opened and closed and Denise said, “Do not make a fuss of that cat. I still haven’t forgiven him.”
Diablo rather smugly pressed his head up into Luc Sabran’s cupped hand and closed his eyes as Luc said, “But you will. You always do. That’s why he still comes round.” He gave the cat’s head one last scratch and moved into the kitchen himself, past Denise to the sink where he turned on the taps and began to wash, scrubbing the cat hair and rust from his hands. “Did you get any chocolate ones?”
“And if I did?”
“Well, I did fix the radiator for you. And you won’t find many tradesmen who would come out on a Sunday before sunrise, no matter how nicely you ask them. And none,” he said, with certainty, “who’d do the work for coffee and croissants.”
“All right, then.” She was smiling. “But you’ll have to set an extra place. And be nice. Was he being nice?” she asked me.
Luc answered for himself, “Of course I was. What kind of a question is that?”
The dynamic of how they behaved with each other was more like good friends than ex-husband and wife, I thought. Nothing like how Jacqui and her own exes behaved. From where I stood in the dining room, the open arch of the door leading into the kitchen created a frame for them both as though they were performers and I was their audience, and I admittedly watched them with interest, searching for some sign that my first impression was wrong. I could usually spot tension, even if I didn’t always know its cause. Denise and Luc weren’t tense, they were relaxed—they joked and smiled without a trace of animosity. I found that very curious.
Denise told Luc, “With you, it’s never something that I take for granted.”
Luc grinned and took a tea towel in his hands to dry them as he looked to me for help. “Was I not being nice?”
“You were. He was,” I told Denise.
I couldn’t catch the nuance of the look he sent her then, but I assumed it held a hint of vindication or was smug, because she knocked him down a peg with, “Well, just see that it continues while she’s here.”
Again he looked to me. “You’re here how long?”
I didn’t know for certain. “It depends. A few weeks, probably. Perhaps a month.”
Luc told Denise, “I’m sure I can behave well that long. Noah, I’m not sure of. He’ll be after her to help him practice English all the time.”
“He’d do better,” said Denise, “to have her help him practice his own grammar. Sara speaks French really well.”
Luc’s smile was brief to match his nod. “Yes, I did notice.”
It surprised me just a little when he said that, because from the moment I’d addressed the cat in French I’d ceased to notice we were speaking in that language—I’d been more wrapped up in following the conversation. The cat himself had obviously tired of the attention I was showing him, and with a stretch he slipped down from the chair, rubbed past my legs to mark me as his new possession, then stalked off with purpose into the salon.
Denise said, “Now he’s had his breakfast, he’ll be off to have his morning nap. He likes the softer chairs.”
“And warm croissants,” Luc added, coming back again into the dining room with plate and cup in hand to set a place for himself at the table.
It was eight o’clock now, properly. The light was changing, brightening, the soft blue world beyond the leaded windows turning violet and then lavender with pink around its edges, very beautiful. It turned the little beveled shapes between the squares of window glass to diamond drops that glittered round the room like tiny jewels. It showed me, too, more details of the view of the back garden: bare-branched trees and what appeared to be a high hedge all around it, with the silhouettes of a small scattering of rooftops showing over that and close behind.