Sue Moorcroft - Just for the Holidays - Your perfect summer read!

Leah’s jaw dropped. ‘ Pregnant? Mi chele –!’

‘I know, I know!’ Michele’s shoulders heaved. ‘It’s come at exactly the wro-wrong time. But tha-at’s why I nee-ee-eed you. Everythi-ing’s such a mess.’

‘If your life gets much messier, soap operas will be stealing your storylines,’ Leah agreed, though not without compassion. ‘Does Alister know about the baby?’

‘Of course! The poor man thinks I’ve undergone a personality transplant. I’ve still got to find a way to tell Jordan and Natasha! And what about Baby Three? What kind of family life is she or he going to be born into?’

Leah slid a comforting arm along Michele’s shoulders. ‘Is the baby Alister’s?’

Michele flung herself upright, tears on hold as her best indignant teacher’s voice cracked out. ‘Leah! If even you think the worst of me, I might really shoot myself!’

‘Sorry.’ Leah backtracked hastily as her sister’s face crumpled into a still more tragic mask. She did love Michele, no matter how much they jokingly referred to themselves as ‘Chalk’ and ‘Cheese’, Michele being eight years older, the very married and motherly Mrs Milton; Leah the resolutely single and child-free Ms Beaumont. Michele having a sensible job in teaching; Leah having what Michele termed ‘a silly job’ in chocolate products – though it paid better than Michele’s sensible one. Despite having the bossy and manipulative tendencies that she seemed to feel the right of an elder sister, Michele had also stuck up for Leah a million times and provided whatever was needed in the way of bolthole, wise counsel or shoulder to cry on.

‘All right, I’ll come,’ Leah capitulated, ‘if I get the garden annexe, as agreed. I’m not used to family life and I need my space.’

‘It would be better if Alister was out there.’ Michele grabbed a fistful of kitchen roll to trumpet noisily into. Then, catching Leah’s eye, ‘Oh, OK, if that’s what it takes. Thank you.’

Leah ignored the whiff of reproach. Her claiming La Petite Annexe would force Alister and Michele into proximity in the main house. Maybe Michele’s uncharacteristic decision to hurl her family into upset and confusion might yet prove to be a feature of early-pregnancy hormones? Away from the daily stresses of home, of Michele being a teacher and Alister a head teacher, things might improve.

Then Leah could quietly pack up her car and give them privacy to realign their relationship. Behind her back, she crossed her fingers.

Three weeks later

Leah loved her sunglasses, and not just because they made her look cool or made driving her Porsche in the mellow sunshine of France more pleasurable. No. Those sunglasses were currently allowing her to pretend to leaf through a magazine in the sunshine outside La Petite Annexe while actually watching the first-floor balcony of the house next door where a workman had bared his tanned back to the morning sun.

His sure and easy brushstrokes were transforming the walls of the house from dirty grey to the gold of unclarified honey but Leah’s anxious gaze was trained on the youth behind him. Everything the youth wore was black and decorated with studs or chains. Having perched himself on the wooden balcony rail and hooked his feet around the uprights, he was now arching backwards into scarily thin air. Flexing his spine, he swung gently, chains dangling and winking in the sun.

Leah bit her lip against an urge to shout a warning, scared of startling the youngster into falling.

Then, as if possessing a sixth sense, the man turned. Demonstrating commendable reflexes, he dumped his paint pot and made a grab for the gangly figure. Bellowing with laughter, the youth allowed himself to be hauled to safety. Leah let out the breath she’d been holding and grinned at the man’s obvious exasperation as he gave the youth a tiny shake before dragging him into his arms for a hard hug. Finally, the man managed a laugh as he loosened his embrace, his dark hair lifting in the breeze.

Then his gaze snagged on Leah and, after a moment’s contemplation, he raised his voice. ‘ Bonjour! ’

Unnerved at being spotted through the leafy trees, Leah lifted her head as if she hadn’t been spying on them. ‘Oh! Bonjour .’

‘ Vous êtes en vacances? Restez-vous ici en Kirchhoffen? ’ The man settled his forearms on the balcony rail as his voice rolled over the sunny air. His front view was as pleasing as the back had been.

Leah smiled. Her French was just about equal to the conversation so far. ‘ Oui .’

But then, ‘ Enchantés ’ launched him into a speech of fascinating undulating rhythm punctuated with urrrr and airrr, of which Leah caught about ten per cent. She did at least understand that when he paused it was to invite her to respond to a question.

Both oui and non carrying equal risk, she prepared to offer a shrug and her stock phrases, ‘ Désolée, mon français est très mauvais. Parlez-vous anglais? ’

But then Natasha bounded out through the door of the main gîte. ‘Dad says, aren’t you coming in for breakfast? We want to go kayaking.’ Both man and boy swung their heads to gaze Natasha’s way as, message delivered, she dashed back inside again.

Thus saved from confessing to her rubbish command of the native language of her host country, Leah put her shrug to good use and called ‘ Excusez-moi! ’ to the occupants of the balcony and went to join the family.

Curtis craned over the rail to watch the woman and girl out of sight. ‘Hot.’

Ronan quashed the reflex to call out a sharp ‘Don’t lean too far!’ His heart might not have recovered from Curtis’s last stunt but Curtis was one big growing pain these days and making it abundantly clear that he no longer expected to be treated like a child. He was a teenager and had embraced the language, rituals and social conventions with the fervour of a religious convert to a sect.

Instead, Ronan hazarded a suitably laddish reply. ‘Obviously, I won’t comment on a teenage girl, but the woman was hot.’

Curtis rolled his eyes. ‘How d’you know I didn’t mean the woman?’

Ronan tried to decide whether his teenage self would have had this conversation with his own father. It had been just him and Dad for a long time and Ronan had only good memories. But no, he couldn’t imagine openly staring at a thirty-something woman with long bare legs and a rope of streaky hair. Even when Ronan had been old enough to spend university holidays on big, bluff Gordon Shea’s building sites, he wouldn’t have sprouted four facial piercings, as Curtis had done this summer holiday. And what Dad would have thought of Curtis’s long hair at the front and shaved patches at the side …

Ronan took up his brush. ‘The hot woman seems to be the mum and the girl mentioned a dad so she’s taken anyway.’

Curtis jingled the four chains he wore in place of a belt. ‘Try not to be intimidated by convention, Dad.’

Suppressing simultaneous compulsions to laugh, scold, and suggest Curtis get himself a paintbrush and direct his energies to something more productive than being a smartarse, Ronan replied gravely, ‘Try not to gawp at other people’s wives, Curtis.’

With one of the lightning changes of mood that came with his teenaged landscape, Curtis began to whoop like an ape, ‘Oo oo oo!’, crossing his eyes and swinging his arms.

Glad they were joking around rather than arguing, Ronan tucked his left arm into his pocket to relieve his sore shoulder of its weight as he turned back to his task with a wry ‘How could she resist?’