The Devil's Cave: A Bruno Courrèges Investigation (Bruno Chief of Police 5)

stalling the instant retort that family fantasies did not go well with her plan to return to Paris on Sunday.
    ‘I’m trying to figure out what you mean by that,’ he said.
    ‘Simple enough. I have this fantasy of staying here with you, marriage, children, family lunches every Sunday. It’s what keeps me sane, even though we both know I’ll never do it. I think you will, at some point, with some woman, and then my fantasy will have to stop. I’m gambling that by then my career will be so fulfilling that I’ll have no regrets.’
    Her frankness startled him, not least because she’d said it almost as though the lines were rehearsed, that this was a deeply considered judgement rather than some off-the-cuff remark.
    ‘You don’t think you could ever find a way to combine them both, career and family?’ he asked.
    ‘Certainly I could, if you moved to Paris and we lived together there. But then you wouldn’t be Bruno any more. You’d be miserable away from St Denis. And if I moved down here, I wouldn’t be the Isabelle that I hope you’ll always be a little bit in love with. I’d lose whatever it is about me that attracts you. So it wouldn’t work. That’s our fate. But it doesn’t stop me imagining you in an apron making Sunday lunch with little Brunos and Isabelles running around your feet and playing with Balzac.’
    ‘And what are you doing in this fantasy of yours?’ He couldn’t bear not to ask the question.
    ‘I’m not in it,’ she said. ‘I’m just watching, disembodied, thinking of might-have-beens and knowing they couldn’t work. That’s one thing you learn: love doesn’t always conquer all. It can’t, no matter how much we count on it and hope for it and remember those fairy tales that always ended saying they lived happily ever after. Life isn’t like that.’
    ‘You timed that perfectly,’ Bruno said, turning up the long hill to his cottage. ‘We’re home.’
    Isabelle asked to be let out to walk Balzac back, and kissed Bruno’s cheek quickly before climbing out. He drove on, parked, and with an effort turned his thoughts to dinner. It took some determination, even though he’d heard before most of what Isabelle had said. It was a theme they could never let go, like scratching repeatedly at a scab although knowing the wound would reopen. What was new was her fantasy of a family life. But it wasn’t going to happen so he thrust the thought aside as he entered his kitchen.
    He was just pulling down his glass jar of the short-grain Italian rice that Fabiola insisted he use for risotto when he heard Isabelle’s voice praising Balzac and then came a patter of puppy feet down the hall and into the kitchen in search of the source of the tantalizing smells.
    ‘Did you find the wine I brought?’ she said from the hall and then bustled in, her cheeks glowing red. She rubbed her hands together and shivered. ‘It’s cold out there now the sun’s gone.’
    ‘Your wine’s already decanted and on the table, and there’s a fire lit to warm you up but have a sip of this while I finish the soup.’ He handed her a glass of the Bergerac Sec andturned on the grill to toast the bread. Once it was done, he ladled the soup into two individual bowls, put the toast and cheese on top and slid the bowls beneath the grill.
    ‘Two more minutes,’ he said, walking into the main room where Isabelle now sat, shoes off, her feet toasting before the fire. She had clutched her arms around herself as if trying to hold in the warmth.
    ‘Would you like a blanket round your shoulders?’
    ‘No, thanks, but could I borrow that jacket of yours, just till I warm up?’
    He brought it back from his wardrobe, draped it around her shoulders and said, ‘I’ll do better than that,’ and embraced her, rubbing his hands energetically over her back and then down her thighs to warm her. The fire was burning strongly and the house was not cold. Maybe she was coming down with some kind of flu. With a final kiss on the brow, which seemed hot and slightly feverish to his lips, he said, ‘We’ll forget about the table and have the soup right here by the fire.’
    He returned from the kitchen with the soup bowls on a tray, the cheese brown and still bubbling. He had left a kettle of water heating on the stove. Balzac was now settled on Isabelle’s lap. She ignored the spoon, cupping her hands around the hot bowl and breathing in the scents of garlic and thyme and venison stock. He brought the glasses and