The Ingredients of Love by Nicolas Barreau

Author:Nicolas Barreau
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Nine

Post Nubila Phoebus. I softly whispered the inscription engraved on the white boulder, and ran my fingers tenderly over the letters. “After the clouds, the sun.”

It had been my father’s motto—and he had been, something you might not automatically expect in someone in his profession, a man with a humanist education who, unlike his daughter, had read a great deal. Rain is followed by sunshine—how wise he had been!

I was standing in the Père Lachaise cemetery and above me white clouds were scudding across the sky; when the sun finally broke through it was actually quite warm. I hadn’t been to Papa’s grave since All Saints’ Day, but today I had felt a very strong urge to come here.

I took a step backward and laid the bright bouquet of asters and chrysanthemums on the flat rectangular surface carved into the ivy-covered grave for that very purpose.

“You can’t imagine all that’s happened, Papa,” I said. “You’d be amazed.”

The week had begun so unhappily, and now I was standing here in the cemetery, in a strange way happy and excited. And above all I was looking forward impatiently to the following evening.

The sun that had shone so brightly into my room that Tuesday after all the recent dull and rainy weather had been a kind of harbinger. All at once everything had changed for the better.

After I’d unloaded my shopping in the restaurant that Tuesday, discussed three possible pre-Christmas menus with Jacquie, and then thought a couple of times about the red coat and its wearer, I’d gone home again and decided to fill this not exactly glorious day with an even less glorious activity before returning to the restaurant for the evening.

So I sat down at my computer and set to dealing with a pile of long-overdue bills by electronic transfer.

First, however, I glanced at my e-mails and found a friendly—you might even say totally charming—letter from André Chabanais, in which he not only answered all my questions but, to my great surprise, made a suggestion that immediately changed my mood to one of joyful anticipation.

I had the opportunity to meet Robert Miller, even if only for a short while, since Monsieur Chabanais was going to meet with the author and had invited me to come along as if by chance.

Of course I accepted his offer, and unlike my first telephone conversation with the bearded editor, this one was quite amusing and almost flirtatious, which, in the mood I was in, I found quite pleasant.

When I told Bernadette about it, she of course immediately began to pull my leg and said that she was starting to like this editor more and more and that if it ultimately turned out that the author was not quite as wonderful as his novel, I would have another option.

“You’re impossible, Bernadette,” I said. “You keep trying to set me up with one man or other. If I take anyone at all, it’ll be the author—first of all, he looks better, and then he is after

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