When the stars had come out and she’d seen them for the first time – enormous, fat and glowing in the navy sky – she’d vowed to herself that she’d never take it for granted. The view over the countryside, the freshness, the simpler way of life and the space.
But life had taken over. Stress over bills. Pete’s lack of practical support, his boredom. Their arguments. Preparing things for customers, having to tiptoe around the place when visitors werein situ.She’d started looking only at the tedious minutia of daily life when she should have been gazing upwards.
And there it was, the house they’d fallen for when they were deeply in love. The grey stone walls, with climbing roses. The iron and glass canopy set over the front door, the one she’d painted a deep blue. The windows where some of her curtains still hung. The drive that sloped slightly, welcoming you in somehow. The garden stretching forth and crying out for an allotment and chickens and maybe even a goat or two – the whole French dream that she’d never gotten around to fulfilling.
‘Thisis your place?’
‘Well,was,I guess.’
‘Man, it’s really something.’ Brad was shaking his head.
‘Yeah,’ she said, parking up. ‘Yeah, it is.’
It wouldn’t help to start crying. And if she let her tears fall, she wouldn’t be sure whether they were for the younger version of herself with the dreams she was so convinced would come true, the marriage to Pete that she’d thought would be forever, or nostalgia for the place she’d called home for almost a decade.
Brad was still looking at the house in awe. ‘I can see why you loved it,’ he said.
‘Bit different from Versailles?’
‘Just a bit.’
She loved the house in Versailles, her work at the hotel. Loved the feeling of momentum, something she’d lost in Peyrat with its sleepy way of life. People were content here, and she’d been happy for a time, but she’d never quite lost the sense that somewhere, life was going on without her, and she ought to be part of it. ‘It was lovely for so many years,’ she told him. ‘But I think after a while I started to get restless.’
‘I get that.’
‘But then, sometimes Versailles seems so busy, I sometimes long for a little peace and quiet! It’s hard to know which I’d love more, long term.’
‘I get that too.’ He smiled. ‘I think when you uproot your whole life to a new place, it opens up the world. But that’s not always a good thing.’
‘Really?’
‘I mean,’ he shrugged. ‘It’s 90percent a good thing. But it changes you. Because you realise that if you’re not sticking to the neighbourhood you grew up in, or even the country where you started out, that you could actually live anywhere. And that’s quite—it messes with your head sometimes. Harder to settle, or believe you’re in the right place.’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I never thought of it like that. I suppose we’re spoiled.’
‘We certainly are.’
‘Although I don’t feel particularly spoiled,’ she said, as she rummaged in her bag for the keys.
‘Nope.’ He laughed.
And there it was again. That feeling of nostalgia, sadness for what she’d lost, for how things had turned out. When she and Pete had fallen out of love with each other she’d lost her anchor, the thing that kept her in one place. And now she was being tossed around on an ocean that looked beautiful but also felt unpredictable, dangerous.
She inserted the key in the lock, wiggled it expertly into place then turned to Brad. ‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘do you wish you and your wife had found a way to make it work? That you still had that old life?’
‘I guess,’ he said. ‘Or at least, I wonder what life might have turned out like.’
Clicking the lock, she turned the handle and pushed the door open. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Let’s see if we can make any of this furniture work.’
Then she stopped, frozen. Brad narrowly avoided bumping into her as he made to follow her into the large entrance just inside the front door. Because standing there was a man with short brown hair, a smattering of stubble. He was wearing a white T-shirt, a pair of army green chinos teamed with trainers. In his hand he was holding a rather wilted flower clearly plucked from the garden outside.
He cleared his throat. ‘I was leaving. But I got your email,’ he said. ‘And the thing you’re coming for… I suppose I was hoping that might be me.’
Bella’s eyes widened and she leant a hand against the door-frame for support. ‘Pete!’
48
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