Second Chance to Live by Kearns Roscoe T

Author:Kearns, Roscoe T [Kearns, Roscoe T]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-03-06T08:00:00+00:00

“All that planning you see, proved to be pointless” and I told him how I never made it out of France, well not until some years later when I was sent to New Zealand on an assignment.

“Monique's family had a small vineyard in the Dordogne area near a charming medieval town called Sarlat and we decided to stay with her parents for a month, picking grapes before backpacking across the continents. She hadn’t seen them for a few months and she was a little homesick and we thought this would be a good way to start our journey. It was July as I recall and we caught the Eurostar to Paris from Waterloo Station with our back packs, then we hired a yellow Citroen C5 car, the one that looks like an upturned skip on wheels and drove South arriving at her family’s home just as the sun was setting.

The place was so beautiful and I remember the first night vividly. I was very tired and ready for bed in spite of the stunning crimson sky to the south but the smell of boeuf bourguignon emanating from the kitchen below enticed me down. It was delicious; the meat was succulent and infused with local made wine and I soon learnt that Monique's Mum was an outstanding cook.

Indeed her parents were lovely and they welcomed me into their family as if I was one of their own and I couldn’t help but compare her family with mine. Her mum and Dad were in their late fifties but they still goofed around as if they had only just started dating, openly kissing each other tenderly and holding hands. Romance was still alive in Sarlat. Perhaps it was the good food and even better wine?

The work was extremely hard though, every day from dawn till dusk, we would pick red grapes straight from the vine placing them into large wicker baskets to be crushed later. The sun was baking hot most days and for breaks we would sit in the shade of the tress and eat our lunch al fresco planning our journey whilst ripping bread apart thinking about what we would be doing this time in a month or two.

Monique would teach me some simple French words and phrases to begin with and with practice I was able to understand and converse in basic French. I could order a meal or ask someone where the toilets where, that kind of thing.”

I felt a little self-conscious about what I was about to reveal, talking about past romances but he did say you couldn’t undo the past and what has happened as happened, so I decided to press on.

“Monique had an older brother, he was ten years her senior. She had mentioned him many times and they would speak on the telephone and I had seen his picture on her dresser when we lived in London.

He was very handsome and rugged. He was the male version of Monique, same beaming smile and dark eyes. I could tell that they were very close.

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