Chapter 7 #8
‘Allez !’ he says. ‘Je vous dépose,’ a phrase she correctly interprets as, Come on, I’ll drop you off.
So she walks to the passenger side of the truck and, feeling guilty for having hated him, climbs in.
She’s up at silly o’clock the next morning.
This is partly because she had a couple of glasses of wine last night (enough to bugger up her sleep pattern but not enough to knock her out for the count) and partly because she was cold and had to get up to add logs to the fire.
But mainly it’s because she’s stressed out by her not inconsiderable list of problems: no car, intermittent electricity, hateful snow everywhere and, worst of all, zero remaining minutes on her mobile because she wasted them all trying to call the dreadful car hire people.
These problems, which have been churning around in her mind on their evil merry-go-round, even wormed their way into her dreams.
Add to this unpleasant mish-mash, a sprinkling of Jill at the airport going home and a dash of Harry, still at home in their bed with whatever-her-name-is, and it’s become impossible to avoid the most agonising question of all: should she give in and pack her bags this minute?
So yes, it’s not even six thirty, and she’s been up for an hour, stoking the fire, and staring at the flames while she waits for the electricity (and hence the wifi) to return so that she can buy more bloody minutes for her phone and give the owner and the hire company what for.
And maybe, just maybe, buy a plane ticket home for tomorrow, or even (why not?) today.
She eventually manages to boil water on the stove for tea, and after half an hour of picking up and then discarding her useless connection-free phone, she digs her Kindle out.
After a couple of glassy-eyed false starts she begins to read, but after a few pages the damned thing tells her that it too has a low battery, and a few pages after that, it shuts down.
She resists the urge to hurl it across the room and, stuffing it down the side of the sofa, allows herself a few tears.
Two astonishingly stretched hours later, the sun finally comes over the mountain, and an hour after this the electricity returns, shortly followed by the wifi, so she immediately buys two hours of overseas minutes from Tesco and connects to Airbnb to send an angry message to the owner.
I send someone, Madame Blanchard replies immediately. You are at the cabin this morning?
Yes, she replies. I’m here. I’m waiting.
She tries to shower but the water temperature is at the low end of ‘lukewarm’, so instead she washes with a flannel from a saucepan of water heated on the stove. ‘Welcome to the Stone Age,’ she mutters. ‘Only ￡900 a month.’
Just after eleven a car pulls up – an ancient orange Lada four-wheel drive, crunching its way through the snow.
The driver, an elegantly dressed retiree whose clothes must cost more than his car, climbs down and crosses to the gate where she’s waiting.
‘Hello,’ he says, holding out a hand. ‘I’m Erik. Florence – Madame Blanchard – she tells me you are having some problems.’
‘I am!’ Wendy says, shaking his hand. ‘Wendy.’
‘Well, I am here to help, Wendy. Let’s have a look and see what we can do,’ he says, following her through the gate.
Wendy feels tearful again, but this time it’s in relief that the man speaks such perfect English.
‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘The electricity keeps going off, and there’s no hot water either. And I also crashed my car, so everything’s basically bloody awful.’
‘Gosh, that does sound bloody awful,’ he says. ‘We’ll have to see if we can sort at least some of that out.’
‘Your English…’ she comments, as they step indoors. ‘It’s excellent.’ His accent is so vague as to be unidentifiable.
‘Well, I’m from Sweden,’ he explains, smiling as he removes his coat. ‘Unlike the English, we have to be good at languages. Because no one else on the planet ever even tries to learn Swedish.’
It turns out that Erik can’t do much about Wendy’s electrical problems nor indeed her lack of hot water. The only thing he can do is explain, which he does, in painful detail.
The short version – the version Erik does not choose, the version that someone with the ability to summarise would give – is that there are two panels on the roof heating the hot water when the sun is out and nine others charging the battery – also when the sun is out.
And when (she should be so lucky) the battery is full, the excess electricity heats the hot water further still.
Wendy’s problems stem from multiple facts, namely a) no one has ever rented the cabin all winter before so no one knew it wouldn’t work out, and b) she and Jill not only emptied the battery with the stupid blow heater, but also drained all the hot water (Jill did spend an extremely long time in the shower) and c) there is still snow on the roof obscuring the solar panels she’s depending on to recharge everything.
‘I really do think that if you can be careful for two, maybe three days – you know, not use too much hot water, not use too much electricity – then the battery will fill again, and everything will be fine,’ Erik says.
‘I do understand,’ Wendy says, ‘but it’s not really good enough, is it? I paid 900 euros a month to stay here, and that was supposed to include electricity. No one ever mentioned quotas.’
‘You are right,’ Erik says. ‘It is not good enough. This is why Florence will refund 20 per cent of your… um… you know… the money you have paid.’
‘My rent.’
‘Yes, that’s it. Your rent.’
‘Oh,’ Wendy says. She’d prepped herself to slowly go ballistic, had been mentally listing all the reasons this situation was making her life intolerable, and steeling herself to progressively raise her voice. Erik’s offer has knocked the wind out of her sails.
‘Sorry, but are we talking about 20 per cent of the entire fee?’ Wendy asks, hunting for the catch. ‘For the whole six months?’
‘Yes, it comes to thirty-six days, I believe. She will refund that to you today, if you agree.’
‘Oh,’ Wendy says, mentally totting up how much that will represent. It’s about a thousand pounds.
‘This is OK for you?’
‘Well, I suppose,’ Wendy concedes. ‘As long as the electricity does start working again. Because I can’t really live here without it.’
‘Of course. But we think it will. This is what the engineer – you had a man come to check the system, yes? – well, this is what he says. Two or three days, being careful.’
‘OK,’ Wendy says. ‘Well, I can try. But if it doesn’t sort itself out I will have to leave early.’
‘Of course. Now your car…’ Erik says. ‘You say you are having an accident?’
‘Yes. Well, more just slid off the road, really. On the snow. It’s in a ditch down the way.’
‘So how can I help you with that?’
Wendy sighs deeply and recounts her attempts at calling the hire company: how they always pass her to the breakdown division who then transfer her back to the insurance division, who then attempt to transfer her to an English-speaking insurance assessor, at which point nothing further happens.
‘Then I’m on hold for like half an hour until the line goes dead. ’
‘How French!’ Erik says with a wry smile. ‘Maybe I can call them for you? With you, I mean.’ An offer which produces a fresh welling up of tears.
‘Yes!’ Wendy says. ‘Yes, please!’
The phone call is as torturous as Erik is methodical and patient.
But the news when it finally arrives – that nothing can happen until an insurance assessor has seen the car, and that this can’t happen until a new different kind of breakdown truck has taken the car to a Renault garage, and that this can’t happen either until the snow encasing the car has melted – is not good.
‘Can they at least lend me another car?’ Wendy asks.
Erik translates this request and argues valiantly in Wendy’s favour, but at the end when he hangs up the phone, he’s shaking his head and looking glum. ‘Until the car is assessed, I’m afraid there will be no other car.’
‘Ugh!’ Wendy exclaims. ‘I somehow knew that was going to happen.’
‘If you want to rent another car, maybe from another company, I can take you.’
‘I need to think about that a bit first,’ Wendy tells him. ‘It costs an absolute fortune. I mean, that one cost me a fortune, but if you’re doing it day by day it’s much worse. And I wouldn’t know for how long, would I? So I can’t even sign a long-term contract… So I don’t know.’
‘Yes,’ Erik says. ‘Of course. Well, if you need me to take you, send Florence a message.’ And then suddenly he’s standing, pulling on his coat and rather hurriedly leaving. There’s a distinct whiff of ‘enough of your problems’ suddenly floating in the air.
Once he’s gone Wendy goes around the cabin unplugging appliances with the exception of the refrigerator and her Kindle charger. And then she pours herself a glass of wine and hurls herself on the sofa in despair.
After a few sips, she reaches for her phone.
She has a text message from Jill telling her she’s back in Maidstone and another from Harry asking if she’s up for a ‘chat’.
‘No,’ she mutters putting the phone back down again. ‘No, I’m not up for a bloody chat, Harry.’