Coco nodded. She was insisting that we spoke English this evening because she had decided to improve her language skills and try to get a job where English would be a bonus. At the moment she was doing part-time administrative work, and she was bored.
‘It is very good,’ she said carefully. ‘Alice speaks French.’
‘Does she have an English accent?’ I asked. ‘Even a little one?’
Coco shook her head vehemently. ‘No.’ She switched into French. ‘What she does have, though, is a local twang. Louis has it too. She sounds exactly like a Gascon.’
People stopped to talk to us, and I enjoyed the interaction. Things that terrified me when I was alone were absolutely fine when Matt and Coco were by my side. The kind farmers from Pounchet came over, and, finally, I managed to discover that they were called Patrick and Mathilde. It had been bothering me for months.
‘Alice is sweet,’ said Mathilde, as Alice and Louis descended from the roundabout and ran over to demand sweets. Matt picked Alice up and Mathilde stroked her cheek. ‘We miss children,’ she said. ‘If you ever need help, I would always be happy to look after her.’
‘How old are your children?’ I asked.
‘Twenty-two and twenty-three.’
I shook my head. ‘That can’t be true.’
She nodded. ‘We were married when we were seventeen.’ Patrick put his arm round her waist. Mathilde leant back on him happily. ‘The boys came along soon afterwards,’ she added.
When they wandered off, Matt finished his beer purposefully.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Better get this little one to bed.’
Alice was playing with three other girls, running round the carousel.
‘No hurry, is there?’ I said. ‘She’s fine. She can sleep in tomorrow. We all can.’
A band was setting up on a makeshift stage at one end of the car park. The ground was gravelly and dusty underfoot. Suddenly, possibly for the first time in my life, I felt like dancing. I looked at Matt.
‘We’ve got to stay so we can dance.’
He laughed. ‘You want to dance?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you don’t. You don’t dance and nor do I. Any more than you surf. Come on. We’ve shown our faces for a highly respectable length of time now. Let’s head off. OK?’
I looked to Coco for back-up. Then I saw Andy and Fiona heading towards us.
‘
Les anglais!
’ boomed Andy, causing people nearby to turn and stare. I was embarrassed and stared at the stones by my feet.
‘Andy! Fiona!’ said Matt, perking up. ‘Another beer?’
I danced with Fiona and Coco while the men drank and, nominally, kept an eye on Alice and Louis. The older couples danced properly, holding each other as if they were in a ballroom rather than under the stars in a French car park. Even Patrick and Mathilde, barely into their forties, were waltzing and quickstepping. I danced randomly, losing inhibitions, enjoying the hot, late-August night.
We stumbled in at quarter to one. When the builders had finally started work at the end of June, we had toasted them with champagne. I had been ecstatic, imagining that they would work nonstop until the renovation was complete. I had reckoned without the summer holidays. At the end of July, tools had been downed. During their brief burst of activity, they had produced so much dust that it still coated everything, almost invisibly. However much I vacuumed, it never quite went away. Internal walls had come down, others had been replastered, and many of the upstairs floors had been replaced with local pine floorboards. Our two bedrooms were much more habitable, though the house was unmistakably a building site. Next month, I hoped, the back windows would appear.
‘Bloody building stuff,’ said Matt, as he walked into a pile of floorboards which were piled in the hall.
‘Better to have building stuff around than not,’ I said.
‘Yeah. I know. Come on, Alice. Bed.’
Matt was not happy. He was different from the Matt I had always known. He was grumpy and short-tempered. I was desperately looking forward to him changing his working patterns. I was pretty sure he could work freelance. He wouldn’t make much money but we didn’t need much, and without the flights to and from London he was going to be richer anyway. I wasn’t sure, however, that his ambition would allow him to do the minimal amount of work, from home. Whenever I had suggested it, he had snapped at me. I was trying to keep quiet. I trusted him to sort it out.
I went to the kitchen to fetch some milk for Alice and glasses of water for us. The strange old kitchen had been ripped out, and it was much easier to cook in the makeshift one that took its place. Instead of worktops, we had sheets of plasterboard on trestles, and instead of a rusty old cooker, we had a camping stove and a microwave. I had liked it instantly. The days were almost unbearably hot, so I never felt like cooking anything anyway. The most useful thing in the kitchen was the fridge. I took out the jug of water and poured it, deliciously cold, into glasses. The old tiles were pleasantly cold beneath my feet.
All we needed now were visitors. I wanted Alice to see her cousins, Bella’s boys, and I wanted adult company. For six months I had been desperately waiting for summer and the guests I had assumed it would bring. Christa and Geoff were coming out in two weeks’ time. Bella, Jon and the boys were not quite committed to coming at the same time, though Bella had started saying they might make it half-term instead. At the beginning of July, I had, in desperation, emailed Anne in Brighton and invited her out for a couple of weeks. She had written back the same day, saying: ‘so sweet of you to invite us. have just booked yoga hols in greece – v good karma! – and don’t have any other spare time. would love to come and see you sometime. xxx PS paula told me your happy news! congratulations! must be due soon . . .’
Sometime did not interest me. I wanted company. In the middle of July, Charlotte had arranged to come for a long weekend, but cancelled at the last minute because she got an audition for a play in the West End. My inner bitch almost told her not to bother going, since she wouldn’t get it, but I stopped myself in time. I was upset not to see her because I had geared myself up for her company, and had even made up her bed and put fresh flowers in her room. Greg was not due back from Asia until September. All I had to look forward to was Christa and Geoff’s visit. It felt strange for my lack of friends to be so apparent.
The following Thursday, company arrived unexpectedly. It was a stifling day and Alice and I were sweltering in the garden. I was pruning some roses and Alice was lying in the shade, on the grass, playing an involved game with her toy cars, talking under her breath. I thought she was arranging them into families. Bigger cars were paired off and given two or three little cars to look after. When I heard the car pulling up, I put down my secateurs, took off the gardening gloves I had felt obliged to wear since becoming Fiona’s occasional manicure buddy, and ambled round the side of the house to see who was there. I was wearing my coolest clothes, which was to say, a baggy T-shirt I had picked up for four euros in the supermarket, and a pair of faded pink shorts. I half hoped Matt had come home early, but I knew it could not be him because he had phoned an hour earlier from his office.
I could not walk quickly, because it was so hot. Any kind of activity was impossible in this weather. I had only been doing the roses because I could do them with very little movement. The house glared at me, reflecting the strong sun and giving me a headache. The rotten figs that had fallen off the tree were giving off an overpowering stench. Bees, wasps and hornets hummed around them.
There was a French car outside the house, with its engine running. It was not familiar; I knew all the neighbours’ cars and tractors. This one had a Parisian number plate, which meant it was probably a hire car. I saw a woman standing by my front door and a small boy still strapped into a car seat.
‘
Bonjour?
’ I said, smiling tentatively, wiping the sweat off my forehead. We rarely had unexpected visitors, and I was pleased to see even a stranger.
The woman turned to me. She was tall and skinny, with short blonde hair. Although she was probably older than me, I instantly felt middle-aged and dowdy. She was wearing a gleaming white dress that finished halfway down her thighs, displaying long, tanned legs. She was wearing just enough make-up to make her glow, and not so much that it looked silly and shiny in the heat. Her cream flip-flops were beaded. Her hair was carelessly perfect. How, I wondered again, did people manage to look like this when they had toddlers? Coco laughed every time I asked her and reminded me that when Louis was not at school, her mother often had him. She devoted her ample child-free time to grooming herself; I devoted mine to the garden. I was not chic because I could not be bothered.
I watched the woman assessing me for a couple of seconds, and I was acutely aware of my stained old shorts and my cheap T-shirt. I knew that I had put no thought whatsoever into my appearance. I hadn’t even bothered to wash my hair for a few days, and despite Fiona’s best efforts, I rarely bothered to have it cut.
She smiled a dazzling and apologetic smile.
‘
Bonjour,
’ she said, speaking carefully. ‘
Nous sommes un peu perdus. Est-ce que vous pouvez m’aider s’il vous plaît?
’
‘Are you English?’ I asked.
She grinned, surprised. ‘Yes! You are, too. Clearly.’
‘Yes, I am. Are you on holiday?’
She sighed and laughed. ‘We are. Only I’ve gone and got myself hopelessly lost. My husband’s stayed at Mimizan for the day and Olly and I came to explore the countryside, but I fear we have explored rather too enthusiastically. I’ve got a map but I’m afraid it leaves me none the wiser. Where are we?’
‘I’ll show you. Do you want to come round the back?’ I addressed the boy. ‘My little girl’s about the same age as you. She’s playing with her cars in the garden. Do you want to play, too? We can fill the paddling pool, if you like.’
He hid behind his mother’s legs. He was a nice looking child, blond like his mother, and beautifully turned out in shorts that were still creased from the iron, and a bright white T-shirt.
‘Go on, you,’ said his mother, giving him a little push. ‘Don’t be shy.’
The woman and I sat on the chairs, on the patch of brown grass that would, one day, be reinvented as the terrace. She opened her map and I quickly located Pounchet for her.
‘Here,’ I said, pleased that I could at least point to my village on the map without being ashamed of my nails. They were having a good day today. ‘This is us. So if you’re going to Mimizan, you need to follow this road here.’ I traced it with my finger. ‘That takes you right up to the main road to the coast. You’ll be on the D38 for the last bit. Once you’re on there, Mimizan will be signed and you won’t be able to miss it.’
She smiled at me, a warm and open smile. ‘You’re a lifesaver. Thanks so much. I’m Jo, by the way.’
‘Hi, Jo. I’m Emma. And that’s Alice. How about a cold drink?’
Jo and Olly stayed in the garden for the rest of the afternoon. I got on with her immediately. I was delighted to have someone to chat to in English, who was neither Fiona nor a member of a film crew. We whiled away a few hours, splashing with the children in the paddling pool, drinking cold water, picking at a bowl of cherries, and chatting about our lives. I realised that I was more confident than I used to be. I had never had close friends other than my sisters, and a year earlier a woman like Jo would have terrified me. Now, perhaps because I counted Coco among my friends, I felt I could talk to Jo on equal terms.
Jo was vocal in admiring me for making this move, particularly when I told her that Matt was away for half the week.
‘So he’s away, what, Monday to Friday?’ she asked, lining up her cherry stones on the edge of the plastic table.
‘Usually. It’s meant to be Monday to Thursday but he’s been snowed under at work lately. But he’ll be back tonight. We’ll be honoured with his presence even though it’s Thursday. He keeps saying he’s going to arrange it so he works from home, but it hasn’t been feasible. Maybe in the autumn.’ I looked at her and smiled. ‘It would make the most enormous difference, having him here. I’m always counting down till he comes back. I’d love to have another baby but, frankly, I’m on my own for more than half the week at the moment, and I don’t actually think I could manage that if I had two.’
‘You’re very wise,’ she said immediately. ‘Hang on till you know where you stand. I’d been thinking about another baby, too, but I’m the same as you. I don’t spend enough time with my husband. We don’t have much time together as a family. I work full time and have done since Olly was six months, and I run my own art gallery in Jermyn Street, so it’s hard to cut my hours back. Hugh’s away a lot with his work. He’s on a six-month contract now which means he has to work in Paris every weekend, so it seems like we’re in the same boat. I feel like a single mother, too, and I don’t think I could slot a new baby into our lives.’ She stretched her long legs out, and I tried hard not to stare at them. ‘It feels strange, though, doesn’t it, when all your friends from your first pregnancy are having their second and you’re not?’
I thought about it. ‘I didn’t really make any friends while I was pregnant,’ I admitted. ‘Everyone else seems to, but I didn’t. I chatted to a few people at pregnancy yoga but we never kept in touch. I just used to meet mothers in the park. Matt was away in London all the time so it was a bit lonely. I’ve never been that good with people.’
‘Did you plan to have Alice?’ Jo clapped a hand to her mouth. ‘Sorry, what a personal question! I only ask because Olly came along as a bit of a mistake, a happy one of course, but I wonder whether that’s delaying our second. I mean, I’m not like those women who drop everything to have children and then pop one out every couple of years through their thirties.’
I smiled at her. ‘Alice was a mistake, too. I’d never tell her that. Matt and I hadn’t even been together that long, but I knew it was the right relationship. He got a bit of a shock, but he came round to the idea pretty quickly. He and Alice are devoted to each other. In fact when he’s around I often feel a bit redundant. The phrase “daddy’s girl” could have been invented for Alice.’