The French Christmas Market

Chapter 1

‘Third time’s a charm,’ Nicola said quietly to herself as she struck the match, watching as it fizzed in the dusky air.

She moved it gently towards the crumpled paper, its edges blackening as the flame took hold.

The orange and yellow flickered against her carefully stacked kindling and she held her breath.

But, like before, as the paper turned to an ashy cast of itself, the flame receded, leaving only black-licked wood edges and a disappointing plume of smoke.

‘For God’s sake!’

The matchbox skidded across the room as she kicked it, and hit the wall with a small clip.

She straightened, hands hovering close to the ache in her back she felt from bending, and let out a groan.

It was not like this in the movies. If this were a film, the heroine would have simply lit a match and settled back as the fire crackled romantically in the brick grate.

Then again, if this were a film, she probably wouldn’t be alone.

It was the first week of December and the cool interior of the stone cottage that she’d been so grateful for in August and September’s heat felt damp and uninviting.

The central heating burned oil at an alarming rate, so she was trying to ration it for now.

Her redundancy package had been generous, but it wouldn’t last forever.

Steven had been his usual, sympathetic self when she’d told him on the phone that she was struggling to get a proper blaze going.

‘Don’t worry,’ he’d told her. ‘I’ll show you when I come over.

It’s easy once you get the hang of it.’ His parents had had an open fire when he’d grown up and there was apparently a knack to it.

But still, it would be nice to be able to do this simple thing without him.

Thinking of him, she closed her eyes and imagined he was here, his arms wrapped around her, that she was breathing his familiar scent – a soapy, fresh smell with the hint of hospitals that flooded her senses with reassurance and calm. But no. She’d got this.

She’d come over determined to be a New Nicola. Independent, capable, and preferably not frozen to death. The kind of Nicola she’d always pretended to be at work.

‘It’s OK to want a bit of help sometimes,’ her sister Harriet had told her on the phone earlier. ‘We all do.’

‘I know, but wanting it and needing it are two different things. I need to know I can do this on my own.’

The pathetic ash and flame-licked kindling in the grate seemed to taunt her.

But no. She was not going to quit. Maybe she should have dug around more in the log store, found some wood that was drier, even more combustible than this had seemed.

Checking her watch – it was almost five – she realised she probably had time to pop to the barn, fetch more kindling and give it one more go.

Everything in her body was telling her to admit defeat and put the heating on, then to go into the small electrical shop on the edge of Eymoutiers tomorrow morning and invest in an electric heater to tide her over. But the small, insistent part of herself wouldn’t let her give up.

Grabbing her coat, she slipped her arms in, then, pulling on a pair of gloves, opened the wooden front door and stepped into the half-light of the garden.

The air was fresh, cool and smelled of bark and leaves with a hint of smoke from nearby chimneys where fires obviously roared in grates throwing out heat and light and positivity.

The house was set at the top of a slope and from the front doorstep she had a view into her neighbour’s front drive, a little of his garden and the front of his house.

She’d barely seen Monsieur Rémi since moving here just over three months ago, and the times she’d glimpsed him he’d always seemed to have his back to her, and hadn’t responded to the cheery bonjours she’d tried at first.

As if she’d conjured it herself, the front door of his house opened and the old man made his way slowly onto his doorstep. He wore worn brown trousers, a misshapen red jumper, a scarf but no coat. His grey hair was unkempt and in the dull evening air, his skin was half in darkness.

‘Monsieur Rémi!’ she called, waving. ‘Bonjour!’

The old man slowly turned his face towards her, his expression unreadable at this distance, his mouth and eyes obscured by shadow – almost ghostly. Then he flapped a hand once in her direction – more of a dismissal than a wave – and turned away.

Charlotte, the estate agent, had told them cheerily that spring when they’d viewed the property that their elderly neighbour was charming. ‘He is very friendly,’ she’d told them with a smile. ‘He will make you very welcome, I’m sure.’

They’d knocked on the day when they’d come to collect the keys, feeling the excitement and relief that comes when a property purchase finally completes, but found him not at home.

It had only been in October, when Nicola had been living here for just over a month, that she’d first sighted him.

A small Clio had driven up and a younger woman had helped him up the stone steps at the front of his house, carrying a bag and a suitcase for him.

His daughter, presumably. Then she’d driven away and the only evidence since that their neighbour was installed in his house had been the light that would shine in an upstairs window during the evening, snapping off at eleven o’clock every night.

Of course, she hadn’t expected to become BFFs with her elderly neighbour, have him over for coffee and girly chats, or take him for a night on the town.

But she had hoped they might exchange pleasantries, wave at each other from time to time.

Had hoped for the reassurance of knowing there was someone friendly within shouting distance if things went wrong.

Clearly, this was not going to happen.

Sighing, she made the short walk around the front of the property to the attached barn where they’d inherited an enormous stack of wood and pre-cut kindling from the former owners.

It was freezing inside – making even the house seem like a sauna in comparison – but she forced herself to go into the dark space, putting the torch on her phone on and setting it by one of the wood piles.

Then she rummaged in the very centre of the kindling and pulled out several cold but seemingly dry pieces.

‘Right,’ she said out loud. ‘This time it’s going to work. ’

Back in the house, still in her coat and gloves, she knelt before the grate and pulled out the half-blackened kindling.

She used the brush to push the ash that had formed from the briefly lit newspaper through the metal base and gave herself a completely fresh start.

Then she balled up paper, stacked the kindling in a pyramid formation, stuck a firelighter in for good measure and held her breath as she retrieved the matchbox from the edge of the room and struck one into life.

Once again, the paper lit easily, the flame and black edge rushing through its scrunched-up print until it reached the firelighter and kindling. Then, once again it started to dull and fade.

Nicola was just about to send the matches across the room again, and maybe half of the fire tools with them, when a glow started in the centre of her woodpile.

Slowly a tiny flame, frail and blue at its edges, sent a flicking tongue against one of the kindling sticks and Nicola held her breath again.

And there it was – a flame. An actual flame!

‘Yes!’ she cried into the empty room, leaping up and punching the air as if she were a football fan whose side had just scored the goal of the season. ‘Get in!’

In her former life, she’d headed up advertising campaigns.

Sometimes she’d dealt with budgets into the hundreds of thousands.

She’d take a concept and make it shine for a company, see their sales increase.

She’d experience a rush of pleasure looking at the figures after a successful campaign.

Perhaps it was stupid to be similarly buoyed about lighting a fire – something humans had been doing for millennia without making a song and dance about it.

Perhaps some of her former colleagues would feel only pity, seeing her joy at this tiny victory.

But sod them. Because this mattered.

They’d watched her manage huge budgets, seeming to thrive in the high-pressure environment. They hadn’t known the stomach aches she’d developed as a result of the stress, hadn’t seen the worn-out shell she’d become the minute she was away from that place.

The redundancy, when it had come, had been almost a relief.

Then the idea of France – building a business in a place renowned for work-life balance, where they could afford a property without an astronomical mortgage.

The pressure would be off; she’d never get in that state again. And she was one step closer.

She made herself a well-earned tea and knelt in front of her new heat source, feeling the fire thaw the front of her body, although her back still felt pretty cold from her journey to the barn.

There was something comforting about fire, beyond the heat it emanated, she thought. It was friendly, somehow.

If she were honest, anything that made the stone cottage feel more homely was all right with her.

Sure, she’d suggested she move here alone, persuading Steven they could sell up, and he could live with a friend and keep working to the spring as he’d planned.

But that didn’t mean it wasn’t a struggle sometimes.

Being alone was harder than she’d imagined.

When she’d lived with Steven, she’d sometimes longed for a bit of ‘me time’ – a break on her own to unwind.

What she’d discovered was that ‘alone time’ is only precious if it’s rationed.

If you have months of it stretching in front of you, it feels more like a curse than a blessing.

And as the autumn then fell into winter she’d felt less independent and more isolated.