Chapter 8
EIGHT
ISOLATION
She eats pasta with cheese and opens a bottle of superbly fruity Fitou. Outside, the weather is shockingly cold but sunny, if a little hazy. The snow still isn’t melting, though. It’s just becoming ever more compact and slippery as it slowly morphs to ice.
Indoors, with the fire stoked, she is warm and also a little hazy under the combined effects of tiredness, warmth and wine.
She tries to read but her mind is refusing to focus so that every time she reaches the bottom of the screen she realises that she hasn’t taken in a single word and has to go back to the top again.
Eventually she puts the device aside and turns around on the sofa so that she’s facing out towards the view.
She’s relieved that Jill has left, she decides.
She can be quiet and thoughtful and reflect on her life now, which after all was the whole point of coming here.
But she’s lonely, too. She misses Jill’s upbeat company.
And she’s a bit disappointed that Jill hasn’t called.
Out of sight is out of mind, she thinks.
Then, she’s probably just sick to death of me.
She’s stranded here now, as well. No car! She hadn’t expected that particular plot twist. It’s going to become a real problem soon. Her supplies will probably last for a few days, but after that she’ll absolutely have to get to a shop.
She thinks about going for a walk, but the compacted snow, when she tests it, is like a skating rink and after a minute of Laurel and Hardy slip and slither she abandons the idea.
It’s almost impossible to stand up, let alone walk, and a broken leg would be an almost biblical final straw.
So no. She’s going to be stuck inside until it melts.
But she can do this. She knows she can. After all, during Covid she spent months alone in Jill’s little studio.
So why did she want to come here? Wasn’t the deprivation of the past few years enough for her? Perhaps she really is losing her mind.
Her phone pings with a text message from Fiona.
R U OK? Dad says you’re not answering texts.
She will phone her daughter shortly. It will be good to hear her voice. But first she needs to decide not only how she is, but also how she’s going to spin it. How does she want to appear?
So number one first: how is she? She consciously scans her body.
She’s exhausted, actually, which seems silly, but there you are. And a bit lonely. And stressed. Her chest is tight – breathing feels like a challenge – which probably means she’s very stressed.
Plus – and this is most likely the main one – she’s feeling bored, which is even sillier. If she’s exhausted because the last few days with Jill have been full on, and she’s stressed because she has so much shit to deal with, then a rest, doing nothing, is precisely what the doctor would order.
When did she lose the ability to do nothing and relax? she wonders. When did doing nothing come to automatically equal boredom? It’s an interesting thought, really, and one that says quite a lot about her life.
But she is at least now asking herself these philosophical questions, so perhaps this whole ‘retreat’ thing is working after all.
Yes, she decides. Philosophical. Fiona will love that.
‘Mum!’ Fiona says, the second she answers. ‘We’ve been worried.’
Wendy thinks (but does not say), Two text messages in ten days doesn’t make you look particularly worried.
‘But why, sweetheart?’ she says, instead. ‘Everything’s fine.’
‘Oh, thank God,’ Fiona says. ‘Dad was worried, too, because apparently you haven’t been answering him either.’
Either, Wendy thinks. A weaselly word slipped in to imply that they’ve all been trying to contact her, which they haven’t. She lets it go.
‘So how is it?’ Fiona continues. ‘Are you having fun? Tell me everything. I have, like, a whole ten minutes before my next class.’
A whole ten minutes? Gosh, thank you!
‘Oh, it’s really quite the adventure, sweetie. It snowed! And not just a bit, either. It covered all the solar panels on the roof – the snow, that is – so the electricity has been on the blink as well. I feel like I’m living in the Middle Ages.’
‘I’m not sure they had solar panels in the Middle Ages, Mum.’
‘No. But you know what I mean.’
‘I didn’t know the place was solar. That’s cool.’
‘Yes, off grid, I think is the term. And Jill came to stay for a few days, so that was fun. We went dancing down in Nice.’
‘Dancing?’ Fiona says. ‘You?’
‘I can dance! You’ve seen me dance.’
‘I’ve seen you dance really badly, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Now you’re being mean to your old mum.’
‘I am. Your dancing’s fine. So is Jill still there?’
‘No. She’s gone. She left yesterday. She only came for a few days.’
‘I didn’t realise you were accepting visitors. I might pop over and see you myself. You can show me your moves on the dance floor.’
But we both know you won’t. ‘Oh do, sweetie. That would be lovely.’
‘So now you’re on your own?’
‘I am.’
‘And you don’t mind it?’
‘No, I’m feeling quite philosophical about it all. It’s good, having time to – you know – reappraise things.’
‘Gosh,’ Fiona says.
‘Don’t sound so surprised! That is why I came here, after all. You know that.’
‘Yeah, but it’s not really you, is it?’
‘What isn’t?’
‘Well, relaxing. Being zen. Thinking about things.’
Wendy snorts at her daughter’s hopefully unintentional insult.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean…’
‘It’s fine. And I am, thinking about things. So perhaps it’s a whole new me.’
‘OK. If you say so, Mum. I mean, great! That sounds good.’
‘It is doing me good, darling. So don’t be… you know… dismissive. Anyway, enough of me, how are you? How’s everything back home?’
‘Oh fine,’ Fiona says. ‘Just boring day-to-day stuff, really. The shops are going full-on Christmas already, which is absolutely ridiculous. It gets earlier every year…’
Once the conversation has ended precisely ten minutes after it began, Wendy sits and thinks about Fiona’s eclectic selection of news, namely that: Poundland has closed again, Todd’s girlfriend has a genuine Ferragamo handbag and the latest opinion polls say that no one is ever going to vote Conservative ever again. Ever.
Fiona, having never forgiven the Conservatives for taking away her dream of living in every country in Europe, seemed particularly thrilled about that one.
Wendy runs the whole conversation through her mind again, analysing it for tone, phrasing and hesitation in case she missed some clue, even a hint of a clue as to the one bit of news she’d really like to know, namely has Harry moved his new bit of fluff into the house?
But there was nothing to even begin to interpret.
Perhaps she’ll ask him outright. He’d probably answer honestly. But is she ready to hear it?
She scrolls through her old text messages and sees that she hasn’t replied to her sister-in-law Sue who’d enquired a while back when she was going to France.
Why hasn’t she replied? Well, because she’s angry. Sue, of course, should know. Sue should be interested enough to have not forgotten.
She remembers before she introduced them, when Sue was still her best friend and her brother Neil was her other best friend.
Who could have imagined that by putting them together they would merely cancel each other out?
Best friend + best friend = sweet FA. By meddling, albeit with the best of intentions, she has managed to swap two wonderful relationships for none.
She will reply, though, to stop things getting worse. Because worse is always a possibility.
In the old days, she would have phoned Sue and told her everything – in fact, she would have hauled Sue over the coals for forgetting such an important date and they would have laughed about it together.
But in the old days she wouldn’t have had to do any of those things.
Sue would have known exactly when she was in France because back then Sue actually gave a damn.
She doesn’t want to feel too bitter, though.
Feeling bitter towards her ex-best friend, now sister-in-law, hurts physically.
There’s a sensation somewhere in the region of her heart that feels (she marvels at the perfection of the English language as she realises this) bitter.
Bitterness feels bitter. How brilliant is that?
It’s amazing that people can change like that, though, isn’t it? Amazing that they can change each other so quickly and so profoundly.
She shoots off a text which she hopes is neither friendly nor unfriendly, merely informative.
Sorry, just got this. I am in France! Been here about three weeks. All is well. Hope you’re both OK. Wendy x
She wonders if she should have put more kisses, and then shrugs and lifts her gaze to the window. It’s dark outside now (when did that happen?) so she lowers the blinds and turns inwards to face the fire.
She wonders if she and Harry changed each other, too, and even before she has finished asking herself the question she knows the answer.
She’s way more uptight than she ever was pre-Harry, and Harry for his part is far less fun. He’d been funny when she met him. He’d been really funny, actually.
She wonders where that went and if it’s her fault.
She’s aware of consciously refusing to find him funny these last few years, even though she’s not sure why she started to do that.
To punish him for something, probably. At the beginning that was it, anyway.
Later it was more of a habit. But yes, for years, Harry has been playing to the worst, least amusable audience in town.
And that would do it, wouldn’t it? That would make anyone give up on their failing comedy act.
Then again, perhaps it’s just the inevitable result of spending so many years together, as a couple.