Chapter 8
The following day I awoke to yet another bright sunny morning, and whether it was just because I was tired from travelling or the fact that the bed was so comfortable, I had slept well.
I had been briefly woken by a rumbling noise at five o’clock, and I thought for a moment that I was back on the train, but when I looked out of my window I could see it was just workers in the alley collecting the refuse.
There were three men walking behind a lorry that looked too wide to get through past the many balconies and window boxes.
Its slow progress was accompanied by some urgent shouting and whistling from the workers and the crash of the rubbish as it landed in the back of the lorry.
The vehicle itself sounded as though it had been fitted with a jumbo jet engine and for a while I might have regretted the location of my room, however picturesque it was.
Still, it did afford me a few pleasant moments after they had gone, when I leaned my elbows on the sill and looked out at the pearly grey dawn. I was in the South of France. I had a new day ahead of me. This was what I had wanted.
I sighed with pleasure, closed my eyes and took a deep breath of the cool morning air, which was a mistake as the pungent whiff of last night’s seafood and garlic extravaganza floating up from the alley below caught in the back of my throat and made me cough.
I went back to bed and checked my phone.
Ben
The cat has just got up on the worktop and eaten half my bacon sandwich.
Me
You’d better give her the other half then *smiley face emoji*
You could always ring the vet? They will be able to check if the cat’s microchipped.
* * *
A hotel breakfast in the South of France. Surely there could be no finer start to our day?
There was the usual buffet of juices, coffee and teas. Plus displays of fruit, ham and various cheeses. It all looked marvellous and it made me wonder why I didn’t have such things for myself back home.
My usual five-minute grab was toast and Marmite and two cups of tea.
But then perhaps I wouldn’t have had the patience to artfully arrange my ham slices into little rosettes or my cheese onto convenient wedges on marble platters with some elegantly placed grapes.
And I didn’t have a cunning machine which squeezed fresh oranges in front of me to yield glorious, golden juice into a crystal jug.
Mine came in cartons from the supermarket, and the sell by date was probably sometime next year.
There were different pastries too, which were nothing like the ones I occasionally bought – usually from the freezer section – in my local supermarket.
Should I have a croissant, pain au chocolate or pain aux raisins?
Or perhaps one of the many different and tantalising breads and rolls laid out in wicker baskets lined with embroidered linen cloths.
If I did all that at home it would be lunch time before I got around to eating anything and then there was no way I would lose the extra weight around my middle I had been battling for twenty years.
Two waitresses in smart black trousers and white shirts brought out refills.
More things to entice us. Silky heaps of Greek yogurt, fruit compotes, a beautiful glass bowl of local lavender honey with a wooden dipper; it seemed an endless stream of temptation, and I could probably have stayed there all day, with my Kindle, drinking excellent coffee and going back every so often for something else.
The three of us sat at a table in the window overlooking the flower-filled courtyard garden behind the hotel and tried not to be too greedy.
‘After this we can just meander off towards the Mediterranean,’ Harriet said, dunking the end of her croissant into her coffee. ‘There is a wide promenade by the side of the sea with plenty of places to sit and chill and people-watch. I’d like that, my knee is giving me a bit of trouble.’
‘Then of course we will. That sounds lovely,’ I said.
‘And hopefully we can see some of those awful souped-up cars men are so keen on these days,’ Anna said.
‘I tried to persuade Rupert to change his car a couple of months ago because it keeps breaking down and it’s so old that the garage are having trouble finding replacement parts for it.
He was appalled. You would have thought I had suggested we have a couples massage. ’
‘Right then,’ I said when we all agreed we’d had enough breakfast to keep us going, ‘meet back down here in fifteen minutes. Nothing heavy to carry, sunglasses and comfy shoes.’
‘I don’t have any other sort,’ Harriet said. ‘My days of wedge heels and stilettos are well over.’
‘Oooh, I had some bright red Doc Martens once,’ Anna said, her eyes wide with the memory.
‘I used to wear them with a Laura Ashley tiered maxi skirt and a man’s tweed jacket I bought in the C further out there was a beautiful yacht, its sails white against the blue sky, making slow progress across the bay.
‘Oh, look at that! It’s a shame you didn’t bring your bathers, Lizzie. I bet you’d love to go in for a swim; you always were a bit of a water baby. Back in the day we would all have been in the sea, but I think most of the beaches are private now, owned by the hotels,’ Harriet said.
‘Would they chuck us off if we went down there?’ Anna asked, obviously tempted by a new challenge to authority.
‘Try if you like, I’m not bailing you out,’ I said, nodding towards two very handsome gendarmes who were standing nearby, glowering behind their mirrored sunglasses.
They had a police dog with them too on a stout leather lead. He was wearing a smart blue vest and was taking an equally keen interest as his handlers were in the bikini wearers on the sand. All three of them looked more than capable of giving someone a jolly good bite.
We came to a strip where the promenade was wider and the road narrower, and along one side were lots of enticing-looking wine bars and cafés with tables and chairs overlooking the sea.
‘Let’s go in one,’ I said. ‘Let’s give Harriet a nice sit down and have lunch or a cocktail or something. Let’s go mad.’
At last, we decided on one, H?tel Mer Bleue, because it sounded somehow familiar and it looked lovely, with blue parasols over each table providing some welcome shade.
We had tall glasses of iced lemonade and shared a platter of cheese and charcuterie because although none of us was particularly hungry, we were just lured in by the sight of other people’s late lunches.
Perhaps it was always like this. Harriet and I agreed we could quite happily go without a proper meal most days if we didn’t feel like cooking.
Going to all that trouble for just one person always seemed a waste of time and not worth the effort.
But presented with the sight of other, happy diners gleefully digging into baskets of French bread, oozing Brie in a terracotta pot, crispy golden fries in little wire baskets and beautifully presented salami was a temptation too far.
‘I’m never going to lose weight,’ I said, stabbing at a cube of feta. ‘I think I’m just too greedy.’
‘Me too,’ Harriet said.
‘I am the same weight I was when I was forty,’ Anna said rather smugly. ‘Particularly since I had the boob job, I’ve been very careful. I was always afraid any weight I gained would pile back on there.’
‘You didn’t worry about your nose? You had that done too,’ Harriet said innocently.
Anna rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, very funny. No, I didn’t. I just had an awful fear of anything happening.’
Harriet scoffed at this. ‘Trust me, real fear is when you are in a changing room trying on a dress that’s just a bit too small, and you can’t get it off. And there’s the strong possibility that you might have to call an assistant to drag it off over your head.’
‘Well, I’ve never had that happen,’ Anna said, picking up a succulent-looking prawn, ‘but I’ll be honest, recently I have been wondering who I’m doing all this primping and tweaking for. Is it for me?’
‘Or is it for other women’s approval?’ Harriet said.
Anna snorted and took another piece of bread rather defiantly.