Bernard cleared his throat and Ethan dragged his mind back into the room.
‘It is my understanding that you are looking into the sale of Perfect Paris,’ Bernard stated.
So Silvie or Louis or both of them had told the lawyer their intentions. When, Ethan wondered? Before they had mentioned it to him? He gritted his teeth.
‘Nothing has been decided yet, Bernard,’ Silvie insisted. Was it Ethan’s imagination or did she look a little less than comfortable?
‘It is a formality, Bernard,’ Louis disagreed with his mother. ‘We all know that it has to be done.’
Ethan couldn’t sit still and say nothing any longer. ‘Wait a moment,’ he interrupted. ‘It is not a formality. It does not have to be done. Show me how this decision has been reached with regard to logic and projections.’
‘Ethan,’ Silvie said calmly, casting a look of concern his way. ‘Please, let us hear what Bernard has to say with regard to our idea and—’
‘And then you will hear what I have to say?’ Ethan asked. He was getting frustrated and he knew he had to try and hold it in. No one listened intently to someone who was raging.
‘You don’t get a say anymore,’ Louis told him. ‘In fact you should never have had a say in the first place.’
‘Louis!’ Silvie exclaimed.
Ethan was biting down on his tongue now, focusing on that feeling rather than the fact he wanted to climb across the table and punch Louis in the face. The only thing that gave Louis the right to be here was the fact he was Ferne’s brother. He hadn’t ever been involved with the hotel business. He had shown no interest in the building up of it over the past five years. And now all Louis wanted to do was get rid of it.
‘If I may continue—’ Bernard tried to break in.
‘It is true, Mother,’ Louis carried on. ‘And I do not know why we have put up with this for so long. For years. I have no idea why you would allow Ferne to form a company and give so much of it to someone who brought nothing to the table.’ He threw his hands up. ‘I never understood why you and Father would let a ten-year-old girl become friends with someone you knew nothing about. Someone who knows nothing about himself!’
Here it was. Still, after all these years, everything came back to where Ethan had started from. Ethan couldn’t deny it. He didn’t know who his parents were or where he had come from. But Ferne had not cared. And because Ferne had loved him so much, his arrival in the Durand family – starting with the odd meal and ending with his spending significant time in their home on the outskirts of the city – had been accepted by Silvie and even Pierre to a lesser extent, but not ever by Louis. And here that resentment still was.
‘Why do you think I had to leave Paris, Mother?’ Louis asked her.
‘You left to move on with your career,’ Silvie answered. ‘To climb the ladder and become the success that you are.’
‘No,’ Louis said. ‘I left because someone had taken my place!’
Ethan felt the look Louis had thrown his way like it was a hot poker in the heart. There was real poison in his expression and Ethan was a little bit taken aback. He had always known Louis was not his biggest fan, that perhaps they would never have the kind of friendship he shared with Ferne, but Ethan hadn’t realised it was quite this way. He hadn’t taken anyone’s place. He wasn’t even sure he had made his own place in a way that positions in a family were earned by biology or signing official papers. But Louis obviously felt differently about it.
‘Well, that is simply ridiculous!’ Silvie exclaimed, staring long and hard at her son. ‘You sound like a spoilt prince who has had his polo pony taken away.’
Her comment caused an involuntary smirk and Ethan quickly swallowed it away and attempted to focus not on Silvie’s comment but on the fact that Silvie was sticking up for him.
‘Could I—’ Bernard tried again.
‘Mother, come on. We are trying to make a decision for the good of the family and we have someone involved who really should not be. Owning a large percentage of a company that—’
Silvie jumped in. ‘A company that Ethan helped to create with your sister. You weren’t there when they worked long into the night to make the hotel chain a reality.’
Silvie remembers. She was underpinning his contribution here and now. It might not have been monetary, but he had given everything. And that was why he didn’t want to give up now, even if giving up might be easier. He couldn’t live with it if he forced himself to forgot the toil he and Ferne had put in. The sweat and the tears and the shrimp dinners. Ma crevette.
‘My sister didn’t have many faults, but her biggest mistake was him!’ Louis blasted.
‘I will not have you say that, Louis!’ Silvie exploded, getting to her feet, hands on the table, gripping the edge of it while her temper got the better of her.
Ethan stood then, quickly moving around the table to go to Silvie’s side of it. She looked quite overcome and he felt the need to console her somehow, whether it was his place to or not.
‘Silvie,’ Ethan said, putting a hand on her shoulder. ‘Please, do not get upset.’
‘This whole situation is upsetting,’ Silvie said, sounding even more exasperated now. ‘How did we end up here? Fighting in front of Bernard! We were all so close once. We were. Ferne would not stand for it.’
Silvie’s whimper at the end of the sentence made the atmosphere still a little. Ethan looked to Louis and Louis met his gaze, finally seeming a touch more in control of his emotions. Why had they never warmed to each other? Why had it always felt like a competition? Had they both not loved Ferne in their own way?
‘I am sorry, Mother,’ Louis finally responded, reaching out for Silvie’s other shoulder. ‘You are right.’ He looked again at Ethan. ‘We should not be fighting…’ He looked away. ‘In front of Bernard.’
Ethan adjusted Silvie’s chair a little as she eased herself back down into it and then he sat too, deciding not to return to his own seat, but to drop down here, all three of them now on the same side, Bernard at the head of the table.
‘Am I permitted to continue now?’ Bernard asked, brushing crumbs from his chin having obviously devoured another coconut biscuit while the argument was ensuing.
‘Yes,’ Silvie said, reaching into her handbag and drawing out a handkerchief. ‘Please, Bernard, tell us what is happening with the conclusion of Ferne’s estate.’
Bernard cleared his throat and glanced at the open folio again. ‘As you are aware, Silvie, you currently own twenty-five per cent of the hotel chain and Ethan, you also own twenty-five per cent. And, Ferne, she owned the other fifty per cent.’
‘Cut to the chase, Bernard,’ Louis interrupted. ‘We know this. We also know that Ferne’s fifty per cent was then to be split, thirty per cent to my mother and twenty per cent to Ethan on her death, therefore making my mother the majority shareholder.’
Bernard seemed to hesitate. ‘That was how the will was required to be read from the outset, yes.’
‘What does that mean?’ Louis asked.
‘I am afraid that when Ferne drafted this document with me she foresaw the division that might take place if she was no longer here. She did not want to be unfair to anyone and… as much as she loved you all, she was also uncomfortable with what this change in circumstance might lead to.’