This is how we happen upon the castle. Or at least the sign pointing towards the castle. It’s a crooked sign, faded and largely obscured by the ivy climbing the trunk of the tree from which it hangs.

I am alerted to the presence of the sign by my father, who makes a stab at reading it.

Château de la Duchesse Clara.

Underneath, in smaller lettering, Nourriture et repos. Food and rest.

There are no photographs on the sign, no stars, no flowery adjectives. Just the name of the castle and those two words. Like a recipe for all ills.

My mother believed in things happening for a reason. She would say that we stumbled upon the castle at just the right time. Like it was in just the right place.

She would call it a Sign.

20

If you approach a Stop sign, you must stop completely.

The castle is not like the castles in fairy tales, with expansive, immaculate lawns and turrets and tiny square windows and a moat and drawbridge.

It is smaller, for one thing. There are turrets, but they look unsafe, as if they might crumble at the poke of a finger. There is no moat or drawbridge, but an ancient wooden gate that leads onto a gravel driveway, beset by weeds. One lone flag, tattered at the edges, hangs limply from a flagpole.

It reminds me of myself; exhausted, its best days behind it.

I sit up straighter. Try and rearrange myself into a sunnier disposition. I’m not exhausted. I’m just tired. And hungry. I need some food. And rest. Isn’t that what I always told the girls when they were down?

I come to a resigned stop at the front entrance. A man appears in the doorway of the château.

“Well, hello sailor,” Iris says, drinking him in like a cold lemonade on a hot day.

In fairness, he is quite thirst-quenching, being tall and slender with a helmet of short, dark hair and a perfectly proportioned face housing amber, almond-shaped eyes and cheekbones you could hang your washing on. Even his mouth is worthy of note and I don’t notice people’s mouths, as a rule. It’s a full mouth, suspiciously red. Now it curls into a smile, revealing—of course—a beautiful set of teeth. Perfect dentation, Dad used to say. That’s what his dentist told him years ago when he went for a checkup. You have perfect dentation. If he could see Dad now, with his now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t dentures. He’d be appalled.

We get out of the car and the Frenchman offers a discreet bow and says, in perfect English coupled with the delicious melody of French accent, “Welcome. My name is Jacques Hermitage. What is the name of your party?”

“Did someone say party?” says Iris, taking off her sunglasses, all the better to drink him in.

“Have you seen my wife?” Dad asks him, in an accusing tone.

I rush to intervene but Jacques reaches for Dad’s hand, shakes it gently. “Not today. But perhaps you would care to come inside for refreshments?” He steps aside, stretches his arm towards the door, smiling his perfect-dentation smile, and Dad is like putty in his hands. So is Iris, who follows Dad with a brief, “You smell delicious” aside at Jacques, who accepts the vintage-Iris compliment with grace.