Summer on the French Riviera: A fabulous, escapist read from international bestseller Jennifer Bohnet

By Jennifer Bohnet

A family reunited after a twenty-year estrangement, will discover secrets that change their lives forever...

Gabriella Jacques, is happy to be back in her childhood home, Villa Espoir in the South of France ready to embrace fresh experiences with friends new and old and to heal some deep family scars.

Recently widowed Harriet Rogers, hopes to rebuild her family life and reconnect with Elodie, the daughter she abandoned into her mother Gabby’s care to follow her heart. But when an acquaintance from the past seeks her out, Harriet fears a secret from her past will ruin her plans.

Elodie Jacques, adores her new life in her Grandmothers old home as a freelance journalist. Her relationship with her mother is tense as she struggles to understand why her mother won’t talk to her about the past, as until their past is resolved, there can be no future.

Will these three women, all living under the same roof after two decades adrift be able to put aside the past and find harmony in the present together?

A fabulous, escapist summer read from international bestseller Jennifer Bohnet!

Reader Reviews for Summer on the French Riviera

'I didn’t want this story to end. I completely fell in love with all 3 women & felt their pain & conflict as they struggled through their respective journeys'⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Reader Review

'Loved all the characters and reading the story made me feel like I was there with them. Jennifer just writes lovely stories with no big dramas but sweeps you along with their lives. Couldn’t put it down' ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Reader Review

'Such a sweet story. In these times, it’s wonderful to know that miracles are possible. Set on the French Riviera, this romance is complete' ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Reader Review

• Language: English
• Publisher: Boldwood Books
• Release date: Mar 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9781801622851

Jennifer Bohnet

Jennifer Bohnet is the bestselling author of over 14 women's fiction titles, including Villa of Sun and Secrets and A Riviera Retreat. She is originally from the West Country but now lives in the wilds of rural Brittany, France.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Gabriella Jacques was more tired than she’d care to admit. All through the months of January, February and into March, sheer adrenaline had kept her going and boosted her flagging spirits when she wavered with the effort of organising the move to France. It would, she knew, be worth it in the end, but selling and moving house for only the second time in her life was far more stressful than she’d anticipated. There were so many bittersweet memories of her time living in Dartmouth, the town that had adopted her as one of their own, her life with Eric and, when Harriet was born, their happy family life. Until it all changed when Eric died. Not that she wasn’t looking forward to returning to her childhood home in Antibes Juan-les-Pins, she most definitely was. The chance of a proper family reconciliation, with no more broken promises, had to be seized and brought to fruition if at all possible. Elodie, her twenty-four year old granddaughter, had carried her along on a wave of hyper-energetic enthusiasm as well as practicality, although even she was starting to flag this last week of February.

Since their return from Juan-les-Pins in France two days after New Year, with the decision made to move there permanently, the two of them had gone through the long, and continually evolving, to-do list that had been the first thing Elodie had started writing, sitting at the breakfast table, the morning after they had arrived home. Every time they ticked something off as done, another job invariably took its place.

‘So much to do. I suppose it will all come together in the end,’ Gabby sighed.

Elodie glanced at her grandmother. ‘Are you sad about selling this house? We could rent it out instead. Give you an income.’

Gabby shook her head. ‘No. A clean break is better. We’re going to be too far away to be able to keep an eye on things, so it would mean the hassle of getting an agent to handle things – and I’m a bit anti agents at the moment, as you know. I’d just not realised how much was involved. When your grandfather and I bought this house, I remember it being a lot simpler, but then, in those days, we didn’t have so many things.’

Having to go through the contents of a house that had been her home for over three decades and share unwanted, unneeded, possessions between the local charity shops before consigning the rest as rubbish to the bin had been unsettling to say the least. Everything Gabby had picked up seemed to taunt her with some unspoken memory demanding attention before she disposed of it.

Elodie gave her grandmother a concerned look. Gabby, more her mother than grandmother if the truth be told, had been the one constant presence in her life since she was four years old and Harriet, her mother, had forsaken them both for Australia. At New Year, Gabby had celebrated not only her seventieth birthday but also their joint decision to move back to the villa of her childhood that she’d inherited from her father Hervé. When Harriet’s unexpected decision to join them for New Year in Juan-les-Pins had culminated in Gabby inviting Harriet to move into the villa with them, Elodie had been both shocked and wary of her mother’s acceptance. She had the feeling that adjusting to having the stranger who was her mother living in the same house was going to take some time.

‘Has Harriet given you a date for when she is coming?’ Elodie asked. The original plan had been for Harriet, who was currently renting a small cottage on the outskirts of Bristol, to join them within a fortnight of their return from France and help with the packing up of the house. But she’d rung Gabby to say it would be the end of the month before she could make it, if not later. It had proved to be later.

‘The day after tomorrow.’ Gabby said now.

‘Cancelling at the last moment seems to be a habit of hers,’ Elodie said with a sceptical look. ‘Let’s hope she doesn’t cancel for a second time. I suppose she could have changed her mind about moving with us?’ She glanced at her grandmother.

‘I’ll ring her again this evening.’ Gabby gave an inward sigh. She too worried about Harriet cancelling again, but the last time they’d spoken, she’d insisted that she was on board with their future plans for a life together on the French Riviera. All Gabby could do was to hope and pray that she meant it. That Harriet wouldn’t be the reason for her family falling apart again. She wished for nothing more than that both her daughter and her granddaughter would eventually form a conventional loving mother-daughter relationship. After all she, Gabriella Jacques, wouldn’t be around for ever.

1

No matter how well organised a house move is, something always goes wrong on the day. Things get broken, empty rooms show their desperate need for decoration, boxes are dumped into the wrong rooms, and moving-in day invariably descends into a chaotic shambles. Which is when the conscious thought, why on earth did I think moving here was a good idea, becomes lodged in the brain.

For Harriet Rogers, standing in the room that was to be hers in Villa de l'Espoir, that moment came as she watched the removal men drive away, leaving herself, Gabby and Elodie facing a veritable pile of boxes that would, once unpacked, become a recyclable mountain in its own right. The fact that, for once, the sun had hidden behind a sky full of grey clouds had added to the frustration of the day. Now, as the time approached six o’clock, the sun had finally decided to shine on this their first evening in Antibes Juan-les-Pins.

Gabby was in the kitchen going through various boxes with the word ‘kitchen’ written on them in red that had actually reached their correct destination. Thankfully, the kettle and the microwave had surfaced early on, largely, Harriet suspected, due to the fact that the removal men needed copious amounts of tea and biscuits to keep them going. Elodie had done a dash to the nearest boulangerie at midday, buying freshly filled baguettes for them all and a tarte tatin to slice up.

Harriet ran her hand through her hair and sighed. This last week had been difficult. When she’d finally arrived in Dartmouth to help pack up Gabby’s house, Elodie, in particular, had made it clear to Harriet that she’d let them down by not coming to help earlier, adding to the guilt that Harriet already felt. The tentative relationship that had started to develop between the two of them over Christmas and New Year had proved to be a fragile bond that needed more nourishing, not the neglect that had occurred over the last couple of months. Now they were all actually together in Villa de l'Espoir, all Harriet’s doubts broke through her carefully constructed mind barrier and rushed to the surface.

How could she explain how terrified and anxious she’d felt at the thought of returning to Dartmouth and potentially meeting up with people from her past? The less time she spent there limited the likelihood of that happening – particularly if she stayed in the house and didn’t venture out. She eased her guilt by making a secret pact with herself that she’d work extra hard in France to help to get the villa straight.

By arriving so late to help, Harriet’s plan had almost worked, but then on their last evening, Gabby had insisted on treating them all to fish and chips to be eaten on Bayards Cove. ‘I want to make a new happy Dartmouth memory for the three of us,’ she’d said.

The late March evening air had been cool but with a welcome feeling of spring all around, with daffodils in the various planters on the embankment. The town had been quiet as they’d walked through and bought their supper from Elodie’s favourite fish and chip shop, before making their way to Bayards Cove. Glasses of wine were bought from the pub, The Dartmouth Arms, and sitting on a bench on the cove overlooking the river the three of them had tucked into their fish and chips.

Eating her supper, Harriet had watched the activity on the river. The lower ferry, with its tug alongside, didn’t look a lot different to the one she’d grown up with, the one she’d routinely jumped on to go to Paignton or Torquay. The ramp had still clattered and jarred its way down noisily onto the access slope as the ferry had motored in far enough for the two to fit together safely for vehicles to drive off and those waiting along the embankment to board.

Gabby had been the first to finish her food and as she had screwed up the packaging she’d started to reminisce. ‘I remember sitting here so many times with Eric, and the two of you at different times when you were younger. And now here we are a three-generation family, making a Dartmouth memory to take with us into our new lives.’ She’d been silent for a moment before turning to Harriet. ‘Do you remember coming here with your dad?’

‘Of course. Our Sunday mornings together were special. He’d buy a pint of beer for himself, a lemonade for me and we’d share a large packet of crisps.’ Harriet had smiled at the memory. ‘The times I tried to get him to buy me a proper drink. I was eighteen before he’d even buy me a lemonade shandy.’ She shook her head. If he’d ever heard about the cider she and her friends downed on a Saturday evening, he’d never let on. Screwing up her own empty packaging, she’d held out her hand for Gabby’s and Elodie’s. ‘I’ll go put these in the bin.’

‘I’ll take the glasses back to the pub while you do that,’ Elodie had said.

Walking across to the rubbish bin, Harriet had smothered a sigh, remembering how numb she’d felt for months after her dad had died, unable to process her grief about the loss in her life or cope with the huge cavity it had created. Saying she was devastated didn’t come close to how she’d truly felt. She might have been almost twenty years old but, childlike, she’d assumed that he’d always be there; to interrogate her boyfriends, to tell her off when she did something stupid, to finally walk her down the aisle when she married the love of her life and, later, to bounce his grandchildren on his knee. He and her mum had been such a perfect fit, the yin and yang of her life. She loved them both dearly and had promised her dad she would look after her mother. A promise she was aware she had spectacularly broken with her actions after his death. Thankfully, he had never known how badly she had behaved, how promiscuous she’d been or the selfish way she’d left the two most important people in her life and fled to the other side of the world.

Now she was back from Australia and the three of them were reunited, she intended to do everything, everything, in her power to make amends to them both. Gabby, who’d greeted her return without voicing any recriminations she might have harboured, had accepted her return with a true mother’s love. Elodie, though, had taken a while to come to terms with her mother being back in her life. Her wary reconciliation at Christmas in Antibes Juan-les-Pins had shown that it wouldn’t be easy establishing a mother-daughter relationship after an absence of twenty years, that it would have to be worked towards. Bridges between them needed to be built, old wounds needed to heal and, at the very least, a tentative trust had to establish itself. Healing the breach with Elodie was the most important of several problems that Harriet needed to address to regain her own self-respect.

‘Hattie? Is it really you?’ A woman’s voice had broken into her thoughts. Her fear of being seen had been realised. And, of course, of all people, it had to be her best friend from Torquay.

‘Lizzie. Fancy seeing you.’ Despite herself Harriet had found herself smiling at her old friend, as Lizzie had started to chat away excitedly.

‘How lovely to see you after all these years. We must have a catch-up. Are you back for good?’ Lizzie had asked.

‘It’s lovely to see you too,’ Harriet had said, starting to try and to explain that she was back in Europe for good but about to move to France when an excited Lizzie had interrupted her.

‘D’you remember my daughter, Kelly? No, of course you won’t. She was a baby when you left. Kelly, this is my best friend, Harriet, from years ago, she’s been in Australia for years.’ Not waiting for an answer, Lizzie had babbled on. ‘We’re all so thrilled – you must remember Jack Ellicott? American, came here the year we started college, before he disappeared back to the US unexpectedly. Well, Kelly is marrying his son next month, would you believe? She went to the US for work experience – she’s a video game designer and it’s the place to be, apparently – and met Nathan. We couldn’t believe it when he turned out to be Jack’s son, such a small world these days. You must come to the wedding. I’ll send you an invite – your mother still lives at the same address?’

‘Same address,’ Harriet had said, telling herself it still was, until tomorrow at least, so not a downright lie. Besides, Gabby had arranged for the post to be forwarded to France, so the invite would reach her eventually. She’d turned to Kelly. ‘Congratulations.’

‘We need to catch the next ferry so we can’t stop and chat right now,’ Lizzie had continued. ‘But it’s been a lovely surprise bumping into you. We’ll have a proper catch-up at the wedding. Come on, Kelly.’

Harriet had watched the two of them walk along the quay towards the ferry before she rejoined Gabby and Elodie.

‘Was that Lizzie?’ Gabby had asked.

‘Yes. She hasn’t changed a bit.’ Harriet had laughed. ‘I didn’t do much talking. I’d forgotten how she used to gabble away. It’s not until she draws breath that you can get a word in. Right, shall we go home for that early night we promised ourselves? Busy day tomorrow.’

And the three of them had left Bayards Cove and started to walk homewards.

Harriet had kept the news that she’d been invited to a wedding to herself, thankful she had a cast-iron excuse for not attending. She’d be out of the country. Meeting Lizzie unexpectedly had been lovely, but it was enough. The thought of meeting other people from her past en masse at a wedding reception terrified her.

Even now, a day or so later, standing in her new bedroom in the villa and remembering that evening, Harriet felt a wave of anxiety seep through her body. People had long memories for juicy gossip and hearsay. The hope that they would show understanding and compassion if they heard the truth was not something that Harriet had ever thought likely. Thankfully, she was in France now, where nobody knew or cared about her past.

A past where she’d selfishly screwed up her own life, not caring about how much her actions affected others. It was time to try to redeem herself in Gabby and Elodie’s eyes and pray they would both give her the second chance that deep down she’d wanted for so long.

Crossing over to and opening the French windows of her bedroom, Harriet pushed back the shutters and stepped out onto the small balcony. Her bedroom at the back of the villa overlooked the garden and the pool, both of which looked in need of some loving care.

For the first few weeks here in France, she’d concentrate on trying to break down the barrier that she sensed Elodie had erected around herself, whilst helping Gabby sort the villa before starting to think about what she was going to do. She didn’t need to work, as money wasn’t an issue. The amount of Todd’s life insurance coupled with his investments had come as a welcome surprise. She could live anywhere and do pretty much what she wanted. What she couldn’t do was sit around for the rest of her life. Was she brave enough to try to pick up that long-ago dream to make a name for herself as an artist, but, more to the point, had she left it too late? Surely she at least owed it to herself to find out.

Harriet pulled the box marked bed linen towards her and took out sheets, pillowcases and a duvet cover. She’d make up both her bed and Gabby’s before going downstairs to help with whatever else needed doing this evening. Having her bed ready for her to collapse into at the end of the day would be good. After all, tomorrow was, as the old cliché put it, the first day of the rest of her life here in France. And it was a life that she intended to make the most of from here on in. If it wasn’t too late, she wanted to become part of a family again, to build a proper relationship with Elodie, to say sorry to Gabby for her behaviour. To ask their forgiveness for her past actions.

If it did prove too late to mend the past and move forward together, she’d leave and try to accept the fact that sometimes it was impossible to right a wrong and that all those years ago she’d irrevocably screwed up her life forever. She would have at least tried.

2

In the middle of all the chaos of helping her grandmother organise the move to France, Elodie had also been busy trying to put together a plan for her future freelance writing life. She was so looking forward to living in France, getting away from her dead-end life in the UK and writing about things she was passionate about.

Since returning from France in the New Year, she’d turned down new copywriting commissions from the advertising company which had been her main source of income, to concentrate on finding new outlets for her own writing. She hadn’t closed the door totally on the copywriting but had explained she needed a few weeks to help her grandmother move. Secretly, she was hoping not to have to do any more work for them, that her features about her new life and interesting places on the French Riviera would earn her enough money. She realised it wasn’t going to be easy setting herself up as an ex-pat journalist trying to sell features to the UK media about life in France. People who were already established were struggling to find outlets for their work as print newspapers and magazines disappeared, so she had to find new outlets and offer editors something different.

So, as well as helping Gabby sort everything out as they had prepared to leave Dartmouth, Elodie had been busy pitching her ideas to magazines and newspapers about writing travel and lifestyle features. Philosophically, she accepted that it was a hard market to break into, but she intended to do her utmost to find a niche in it somewhere, somehow. She’d already secured a year’s contract for a monthly column of five hundred words about ‘My New life on the Riviera’ for their local paper in Devon, the Dartmouth Chronicle. The pay was minimal, but it would be syndicated in the publisher’s other papers along the south coast and get her name out there on a regular basis. The first column was due next week, so she needed to think about starting to write it.

And, of course, the added bonus to living down here was that she had a new man in her life, Gazz. Elodie smiled to herself as she thought about him. From the moment they’d been introduced at his parents’ Christmas aperitif party, there had been a connection between them – despite his friend, Fiona, laying a possessive hand on his arm at every opportunity. Gazz had assured Elodie they weren’t officially an item, despite Fiona trying to show otherwise, and she’d believed him.

Seeing Gazz standing next to Philippe, his grandfather, waiting to greet them in Arrivals at the airport early this morning, ready to drive them to Villa de l'Espoir, had made her heart skip a beat, as had the welcoming kiss he’d given her. She knew too that Gabby had been more than happy to see Philippe waiting to welcome them.

Now, as Elodie set up her computer on the desk in front of her bedroom window, she glanced out at the view over the front garden and the green in the middle of the cul-de-sac, remembering the first time she’d seen the villa back in December. Gabby had told her that it had been the Jacques family home since the end of the nineteenth century when it had been built by her great-great-grandfather. Unusual in design for its age, it was a sprawling villa built of the warm-hued local stone, the terracotta tiles of the roof bleached to a pale pink by the sun over the last century. Elodie had fallen in love with the place that first time she’d seen the villa, feeling as if she’d come home from the moment she’d walked in through the front door.

Elodie had been shocked to learn on that first visit that Gabby had owned the house since the death of her estranged father ten years ago. Since then, the villa had been rented out and Gabby had told Elodie that the rent money had been put into a savings account for her which she would gain access to on her twenty-fifth birthday.

But the happy surprise of learning about the villa and what she’d laughingly called her unexpected