Chapter 1 #2
It’s going to be her personal Into the Wild adventure, only hopefully without the starving-to-death-in-a-bus bit.
So, taking a breath, she decides there’s no need to think about any of them tonight.
Tonight, she will be proud of her achievement in getting here and if they can’t be bothered to ask, then at least she won’t have to tire herself replying.
By the time she has cooked and eaten, the cabin is a tiny bit warmer and within half an hour of returning to the sofa to stare at the flickering flames (more appealing this evening than any TV), she’s asleep.
At some point during the evening, she wakes up to find herself utterly disoriented until the chill in the air and the eery moonlit plateau beyond the window remind her where she is.
Up in the mezzanine it’s a bit warmer – hot air rising and all that – but as she slides under the covers, the sheets are still quite shockingly cold. She rolls herself in the quilt, using it like a sleeping bag, and adds an electric blanket to her mental shopping list.
She wonders briefly why – seeing as hot air does rise – the tops of mountains are so cold, and then, despite the indisputable fact of that cold, she slips back into sleep where she dreams of running through an abandoned airport hunting desperately for a lost boarding pass.
At one point she thinks she hears a wolf howl and sits up in bed with a start.
But did the noise come from her post-apocalyptic dream airport, or from this lonely mountain in France? She really isn’t sure.
She wakes from a momentarily remembered dream of being suffocated to find she has pulled the quilt over her head and truly is struggling to breathe. The second she peeps her head from beneath the covers, she understands why she has done so, though. The bedroom is icy cold again.
She pulls the quilt back over her head but realises that the fire must have gone out and that the only way to make the temperature bearable is to get up and relight the damned thing.
Dragging herself from the warmth of the bed and grimacing, she hops barefoot down the chilly steps of the metal staircase.
Downstairs, she grumbles angrily as she hunts for her tracksuit bottoms and a jumper followed by her thickest pair of socks.
Once dressed, she hops over to the wood burner and runs one hand across the metal to confirm that it truly is stone cold. She should have loaded it up before going to bed – obvious, really.
She searches for fresh kindling in every cupboard and, finding only full-sized logs, steels herself and pulls on trainers and her jacket.
Outside, the sun is peeping over the hills to the east and the air feels tingly with cold.
There’s a magical mountain purity to the air that seems to make her blood run more freely – that’s the sensation, anyway.
She pauses to look into the distance where a massive bird of prey – perhaps it’s even an eagle – is circling.
She consciously takes in another icy lungful of air and tries to remember when she last thought to breathe consciously for the pleasure of it.
It’s not something you do a great deal while living on a main road.
She’s overcome, momentarily, by the beauty of it all.
The vista is quite astounding – a vast, flat, vibrantly green plain stretching into the distance bordered by a grey rocky outcrop on the left and greener hills to the right.
Beyond the plain she can see a thin strip of turquoise sea and above that an impossibly blue cloudless sky.
A shiver rippling through her, rising from deep within, forces her to remember that she’s on a mission to find kindling so she stamps her feet and drags her eyes from the view.
Along the right-hand side of the cabin she discovers a lean-to woodpile, but again there are only full-sized logs.
At the rear of the cabin she discovers a vented metal door from behind which comes a vague electrical hum, but it’s locked with a padlock and she’s fairly certain she doesn’t have a key.
So no kindling anywhere…
‘Ridiculous!’ she murmurs as she starts to scramble around gathering twigs. She feels like she’s fallen through a wormhole to prehistoric times. ‘Absolutely bloody ridiculous!’
As soon as she has an armful of kindling, she returns inside to discover the one advantage of having had to go out – it now feels relatively warm.
With the help of some scrunched-up kitchen roll and the twigs she manages to get the fire going again and this time piles it high. That done, she returns to the safety of her quilt vowing not to re-emerge until the cabin is warm enough to support human life.
She sleeps for almost two hours and when she wakes up she’s soaked in sweat – the room suddenly feeling like a sauna!
Fearing that the place might be on fire, she jumps from the bed and rushes downstairs.
The wood burner is so hot it hurts her eyes to look at it but otherwise all is well.
Squinting against the heat, she kneels down and manages to close the air hole along the bottom which seems to calm things down a bit, then crosses to open a window.
Her breakfast is made up of leftovers from the previous night and a strong cup of coffee which she takes outside so she can smoke.
With the sun now fully risen – her phone says it’s 9.
30 though she’s unsure if that’s UK or French time – the temperature outside is almost pleasant.
She turns a chair towards the light and sits and closes her eyes, letting the red warmth soak into her eyelids.
A gentle breeze flutters against her cheek and in the distance, somewhere behind her, a donkey brays.
Sunlight, clean air, donkeys… Not in Kansas anymore, she thinks.
She corrects Kansas mentally to Maidstone and then smiles and murmurs out loud, ‘Not in Maidstone anymore.’ So, she’s already talking to herself.
She wonders if she needs to worry about that.
She pulls her phone from her pocket and rattles off another message to the owner.
I need an electric heater, she types. Do you have one you can lend me or do I have to go and buy one myself?
She checks her email and Facebook.
She finally has a message from Jill in Messenger: How did it go? Did you get there? Call me! Plus another from her sister-in-law, Sue: When are you going to France? Is it soon?
The Airbnb app chimes, so she opens it to find a reply from the owner: Not possible, I am sorry. Too much electricity in the house. But the wood pan is very good and we have supplying wood for you. She gasps in amused disbelief. They really are quite mad.
She stubs out her cigarette on a rock and turns back towards the house. She needs to shower and get out for supplies otherwise she’s going to have to go without lunch.
Food, wine, heater, cigarettes, she thinks, glancing back briefly at the incredible view – now her view. Food, wine, heater, cigarettes, plus slippers and an electric blanket.
Google Maps lists only one nearby supermarket but when she locks up the cabin and drives to the exact point on the map – the specific spot where Maps announces optimistically that her ‘destination is on the left’ she finds herself in the middle of a tree-lined road. There’s not a single building in sight.
She tries to use her phone to search for an alternative, but it isn’t picking up a signal anymore so she just carries on driving until it does.
Half an hour later, she enters a village called Saint-Vallier-de-Thiey.
It looks pretty and she’d like to explore.
She’s tempted by the idea of a quick drink in the little sun-soaked bar overlooking the green, but she resists and sticks to her mission and soon enough she has found the Intermarché car park, and is pushing a caddie through sliding doors.
The shop is bigger than she expected, the size of her local Sainsbury’s, but to her wonder-filled eyes everything looks so much better.
The bread is crusty and fresh, the vegetables are deformed and fragrant and the cheese section takes up two full aisles.
As for the wine department… oh lordy, Jill would die.
An hour later she’s the best part of 400 euros down and back out in the car park with her clinking caddie filled to the brim.
It’s my first shop, she tells herself. It was bound to be expensive. Plus, she’s had to buy one-off items like the blow heater. No electric blanket, though – it would seem they’re not everyday items in the south of France.
Once she’s found the tabac and stocked up on cigarettes, she drives back up the twisty mountain roads to the house and, no longer stressed about finding a supermarket, she’s able to marvel at the views.
At some turns she can see far enough to make out two or three different seaside towns bordering the turquoise sea.
She’ll have a look at an online map when she gets home and work out whether they’re worth visiting.
Back at the house she rewards her successful expedition with a generous glass of red and then, between sips, sets about unloading her shopping, moving the cheeses into the fridge, the cans into the cupboard, and piling the baked goods up on the counter.
She’s probably overdone it with the baked goods, she thinks.
She grimaces guiltily. She has bought a lot of wine, too, though wine, unlike baguettes, will keep.
Once the bags have been squashed into a corner, she refills her glass for the second time. This 4 euro pinot noir is shockingly good. She sandwiches a wedge of not-as-ripe-as-she’d-hoped Brie between a third of one of the baguettes and heads back out to her view.
As she bites into her sandwich, the wine is just hitting the sweet spot, and she experiences a moment of pure ecstasy.
Red wine, cheese and crusty bread – the view, the smell of pine needles in the air…
Christ! she thinks, the French sure know how to do things, don’t they?
Why on earth do I live in England? It’s amazing really, how we all just stay where we’re born.
There’s a whole planet out there to choose from, after all.
She should probably call Jill and tell her how well she’s doing. She’s been putting it off, and she’s not sure why. She tries consciously to think about that now, scrunching up her brow to help her concentrate.
She’s been feeling anxious, she decides – understandably anxious about getting here, living here alone and surviving for the full six months. When she calls Jill she wants to sound triumphant, even though she has no idea why. After all, Jill never does anything particularly challenging.
Now would be a good time to call her, though, wouldn’t it?
Just look at her in her mountain garden with a glass of wine and a baguette!
But still she hesitates. Because what if it all goes wrong and she has to run home with her tail between her legs?
Failure after declaring triumph would be a bit pathetic, wouldn’t it?
Not perhaps to Jill, because why would Jill even care?
But to Wendy, it definitely would. And she doesn’t want to sound pathetic to herself.
You have to be careful about that. You have to take care of your self-image because sometimes the story you tell yourself about yourself is the only thing stopping you falling apart completely.
She sips her wine and takes another bite of the sandwich, then returns her attention to her phone.
She sighs and clicks her way onto Messenger where she crafts an optimistic yet understated reply to Jill: I’m here.
All good so far. Place is lovely. Shopping done.
Wine is so cheap you’d never have to sober up.
She replaces the bit about sobering up with a simple ‘so cheap you wouldn’t believe it’.
That would have been a bit close to the bone, and depending on her mood Jill could take it either way.
She frowns and thinks about the fact that Jill will almost certainly phone her the second she receives the message and adds, Just off to explore. I’ll call you when I get back.
Am I going to explore? she wonders. She supposes she might as well.
She thinks about the fact that she still hasn’t had a message from Harry nor even a text from the kids. Honestly, they’re dragged screaming from your womb; you devote your entire life to them and they can’t even…
Don’t think about it. Don’t spoil the moment.
She sighs and slides her phone into her pocket then swigs down the rest of her wine and stands.
The half-eaten sandwich is losing its appeal for some reason.
And no, she can’t be bothered to go exploring yet.
She has 180 days to explore, after all. Well, 179 and a half now remaining.
It feels like she’s done a million things in the last twenty-four hours and she’s really bloody tired.
She looks out at the view again and notices that the colours are more bleached, less vibrant in the midday sun.
Harry would go crazy hillwalking here, she thinks. He’d absolutely love it.
She imagines how he’d be cajoling her to go walking right now, this minute.
At the realisation of how dangerous it is to follow this line of reasoning, she raises one eyebrow and swallows, catching herself, freezing out the thought through sheer willpower. No, she tells herself. Harry’s not here. Not in person or spirit. And that’s the whole bloody point.
She turns and heads towards the cabin.