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48 JULY 2018 VOGUE.COM##### Growing up, my sister and I went every year tostay with our French grandparents in Toulon.Their apartment was on the top floor of afour-story building in a gated compound ontop of a cliff on the outskirts of town, with aroof terrace and enormous windows lookingout to sea. There we would run wild with a gang of summerkids, clambering down the cliff path to the beach, carvingour initials in the aloes on the way, shouting “Marco... Polo”for hours in the pool (irritating the matrons with their carefulbreaststroke), and sunning ourselves on its slatted deck. Afterdinner, we would gossip and flirt by the big tree on the stoneplaza, or race around in games of hide-and-seek along theleafy pathways, our sandals’ slaps echoing on the concrete.Our grandparents’ world was one of immovable routines,into which we kids slipped easily. Meals fell at religiouslyallotted times—lunch at twelve-thirty sharp, supper at 8:00p.m., with an aperitif hour beforehand—and the rituals ofpreparation were, like the postprandial sieste, sacrosanct.Over breakfast, our grandfather planned the day’s menusfor lunch and dinner, recorded in tiny, meticulous script in``````a spiral notebook (we could look up what had been eatenon a particular date years previously). He departed for themarket by 8:00 a.m., carrying his list. In childhood, we wouldaccompany him: to the butcher, the baker, and finally thebar/tabac, to buy the day’s newspapers, magazines for ourgrandmother, and cigarettes for our aunt. (He shunned thenearest grocer after she asked him to pay for parsley, whichwas not done, and ever after made a detour for vegetablesand milk.)Upon his return, Odet, the housekeeper, almost our secondaunt, laid out the groceries and set about cooking lunch, theday’s main meal, always three courses, while our grandfatherretreated to his study upstairs to read and to write. Ourgrandmother, meanwhile, elegantly gaga from early on, wasarranged—beautifully dressed, coiffed and maquillée by Odet,like a precious doll—in an armchair by the dining-room win-dow, where she could gaze out at the infinite, always-changingsea, or look down at the electric-blue swimming pool, or puton her glasses and pretend to read the magazine placed in herlap. In the late morning, around eleven, Odet brought her atray bearing a little crystal glass of Coca-Cola``````WHITE HOTSLIM AARONSCAPTURES ASIZZLING SCENE ATHÔTEL DU CAP’SPOOL, PUBLISHEDIN VOGUE IN 1984.A Place in the SunFor years, the Mediterranean apartment of her grandparents offered an intoxicatingescape. Finally forced to part with it, novelist Claire Messud recalls its charms.``````NOSTALGIAVLIFENOSTALGIA>50 HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES