Chapter 5
FIVE
FIRST CONTACT
The next morning, Wendy wakes up to discover a day that is as cold as it is grey.
The thermometer stuck to the outside of the bathroom window tells her the temperature in the garden is seven degrees. It’s a bit of a shock really – she had stupidly imagined it would be sunny every day.
Actually, that’s not strictly true. Logically, she’d known there would be grey days, it’s simply that she failed to ever imagine what she would do with herself.
She switches on some lights, re-stokes the wood burner and makes a pot of coffee. She points her new blow heater at her feet until the fire begins to roar.
I need a plan for dull days, she thinks.
She could visit one of those coastal towns, but in the end wouldn’t that be a better thing to do in the sunshine?
It would be more fun to do it with Jill, too, if she’s really coming.
Wendy can’t remember exactly how they left things but she suspects that, knowing Jill, she’ll be here soon enough whatever was officially decided.
She takes her mug of coffee to the window and peers outside, searching for a break in the cloud cover but it’s wall-to-wall grey.
She returns to the sofa and checks the weather app on her phone. Cloudy all day with a 60 per cent possibility of rain in the afternoon. Yuck.
She has never been good at dealing with winter, with the cold, or even with rainy days in summer, for that matter.
Which is silly really, because she knows logically that without rain we’d all be dead.
She suspects she suffers from that SAD thing everyone’s always on about.
Grey days inevitably make her feel lethargic and, when she’d been living alone at Jill’s, she’d sometimes struggled to even get out of bed.
Which of course is why a six-month sabbatical in the south of France was so much more attractive than the original idea of a cabin in Norway.
Come on, she tells herself, fighting a rising sense of melancholy. You can do this. You’re British!
She showers in the chilly bathroom and dresses warmly then steps outdoors. Just as she does so, a little yellow van pulls up next to her hire car. A woman with a military-grade haircut – young, not much older than Fiona – jumps out and strides towards her.
‘Bonjour !’ she says enthusiastically. ‘J’ai du courrier pour vous – enfin, pour Madame Blanchard.’
‘Bonjour,’ Wendy replies, smiling as she crosses the garden to meet her. She has no idea what the girl said but she did hear the word ‘Blanchard’ which she knows is the name of the woman she’s renting from.
She takes the three letters from the post lady’s outstretched hand and checks the envelopes. They aren’t for her; how could they be? All the same, she feels a stab of disappointment. There are few things she likes more in life than getting letters.
‘Vous êtes la nouvelle locataire ?’ the girl asks.
Wendy has no idea what that means either. ‘Désolée,’ she says, with an exaggerated shrug designed to communicate cluelessness.
‘You’re English?’ the girl asks. ‘Or American? Or…’
‘Yes, English,’ Wendy replies.
‘Is OK,’ the girl says. ‘I speak it. My good subject in the BAC. The only! How long you stay here?’
‘Six months,’ Wendy says.
‘Six month!’ the girl says. ‘Is long. Maybe I practise my English with you.’
‘Yes,’ Wendy says, sounding vague because, in her mind, she’s busy trying to concoct a phrase in French. ‘Oui !’
‘Cool,’ the girl says. ‘You give these to Madame Blanchard? Or I put in the box of letters?’
‘No, I’ll give them to her. No problem.’
‘Good. So ciao until next time!’ And then she turns and strides back to her van, jumps in, reverses jerkily out then, spitting gravel, accelerates off down the track.
‘Bonjour ?’ Wendy admonishes herself out loud. ‘Désolée ?!’
She shakes her head at this miserable failure to seize the moment. After all, that was the first time she’s had any real contact with a French person, and a keen friendly French person at that. All she managed was bonjour, désolée and oui. Three words. Not even an au revoir.
She glances back down at the letters in her hand and returns indoors to get warm.
She sends the owner a message to inform her she has mail at the cabin.
It’ll be interesting to meet her, Wendy thinks.
She glances around at the mess and immediately starts to tidy up, just in case.
She has no idea where the owner lives. She could be a hundred yards down the road.
She might knock on the door at any moment.
Ten minutes later, as she’s guiltily hiding the new room heater in one of the cupboards, her phone pings with a reply: a friend, Erik, will collect the mail at some point.
OK, thanks, she types back, then, P.S. Do you know when the bakery is open? It seems to be permanently closed.
Probably annual holiday, Madame Blanchard replies. I expect there is a word in the window.
Grey day project, Wendy thinks instantly. She’ll walk to the bakery and find out, and hopefully be home before the rain.
She pulls on her puffer jacket against the cold and locks the cabin behind her.
The temperature is still in single digits, yet by the time she has reached the tarmac road, she’s sweating like a pig.
So she takes the jacket off and ties it around her waist, then, because this leaves her feeling too cold, walks as fast as she can.
It takes twenty minutes to reach the bakery and twenty-five more to get back home, but the trip is entirely fruitless. There is no indication whatsoever if the bakery ever intends to re-open. She should probably have asked the post lady, who would almost certainly have known.
The rain begins while she’s eating lunch – stale baguette dipped in ready-made soup. The droplets are tiny at first, almost mist, but they slowly morph into a downpour.
After lunch she moves to the sofa and watches the raindrops slithering down the windowpane. The rain makes her think of home and when she checks the weather forecast for Maidstone she sees that, ironically, it’s sunny there. She wonders what the kids are doing. She wonders if they hate her.
Her phone rings with an incoming call.
‘Hello,’ Jill says, the second Wendy answers. ‘What you up to?’
‘Just watching the rain and—’
‘Rain?’
‘Yes. Lots of.’
‘God, it’s lovely ’ere.’
‘And I was wondering if my kids really hate me,’ Wendy says, ‘if you must know.’
‘Oh, of course they don’t,’ Jill replies without hesitation.
‘I wish I had your confidence.’
‘No news at all, then?’
‘Three texts,’ she replies. ‘One from each.’
‘Harry as well, then?’
‘Yep. Short and sweet. Well, short at any rate. It wasn’t particularly sweet.’
‘You two will have to talk at some point,’ Jill says. ‘You do realise that?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘I know I keep saying it, but it’s true.’
‘Sure. But I need to work out what I want, first. What my end game is. And that’s why I’m here, isn’t it? To think about it all.’
‘Is it better, then?’ Jill asks. ‘For thinking? I mean. Are you having better thoughts than in my studio?’
‘I’m not sure yet, if I’m honest,’ Wendy says. ‘But I think the distance helps a bit. Not having them all playing happy families down the road definitely feels less… I don’t know. Less suffocating, maybe?’
‘Perspective increases with distance,’ Jill says.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Oh, it’s just something Dad used to say. He used to go for long drives when he needed to think about anything important. And that’s what he used to say to my mum when he got back. Perspective increases with distance. Anyway…’
‘Anyway…’
‘So, can I come? Because I still need to buy a train ticket to the airport. The flight’s already booked – as you know – silly me! And I honestly do think we’d have fun. But if you really don’t want me there then I’m obviously not gonna force—’
‘No,’ Wendy says. ‘It’s fine. Come!’ Even as she’s saying it, she’s not quite sure why.
It’s the result of a sort of ‘oh sod it’ instinct.
Something about bowing to the inevitability of Jill’s visit.
And perhaps it’s better to get it over with so she’ll have a proper long block of time to think about her life once Jill has gone.
‘Brilliant,’ Jill says. ‘I’ll book the train, then. It’ll probably cost more than the flight! When I get there, do I get a taxi, or…?’
Wendy laughs. ‘I’m in the middle of nowhere,’ she says. ‘I hope you’re not going to be disappointed.’
‘Not if you’re there, I won’t,’ Jill says sweetly.
‘And, yes, I’ll pick you up from the airport. What time do you get in?’
‘Just after three,’ Jill says. ‘Three in the afternoon.’
‘Well, that’s easy. A very respectable hour.’
‘Yeah… you’re not gonna like the flight back so much,’ Jill says. ‘It’s six in the morning. So I probably need to be there at four or something.’
‘Ouch!’ Wendy says.
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s fine. We’ll just have to be sensible the night before.’
Jill laughs. ‘Like that’s gonna happen!’
The next morning, she wakes up early, well before the sun has risen above the hills.
She lies in bed, slowly coming to, and as she does so she realises she’s feeling down. She has no idea why – it’s perhaps simply the way some days are. Maybe it depends on what she’s been dreaming – where, in her mind, she has spent the night. She tries for a moment to remember, but draws a blank.
She lingers in bed for half an hour, at first trying to tune in to the voice inside her head to find out why she’s feeling so blue, and then once she’s identified the culprit, trying to tune it back out.
Because what the voice is saying, this morning, is that this whole adventure is doomed, that it’s nothing more, nothing less, than a waste of time, money and energy.
Maybe I should pack up and go home. Maybe I should just kill myself! That would show them, wouldn’t it?
Eek! she thinks. Where did that one come from?
If thoughts like that are going to bubble up maybe it’s a good job Jill’s coming after all.