Love in a Warm Climate (6 page)

“If we were to offer €10,000 more than that, do you think they would accept?” asked Nick.

The agent leaned back in his chair, which reclined under his weight. At one stage I thought we’d lost him, but he bounced back. “I can ask.”

He called the lawyers representing the feuding French family. I had terrible butterflies. I tried to breathe deeply, to squeeze all my nerves into my toes and not look too desperate. Mr Vorst jabbered away in very fast French. Neither Nick nor I were any the wiser as to the outcome of the conversation when he finally put the phone down.

“They will call me,” said the agent. “As soon as I have some news I will call you.”

“But did they sound optimistic?” I asked.

Mr Vorst smiled and leaned back in his chair again. “Lawyers rarely sound optimistic,” he said to the ceiling. “There is nothing more you can do, I will call you the minute I hear anything.”

Nick and I left his office and walked towards our hotel.

“It is amazing that all this has happened in a day,” said Nick. “This morning seems like a lifetime ago. We left London at nine o’clock not knowing that we would end up seeing the house of our dreams today and that our lives could change forever.”

By the time we had eaten dinner we had both checked and re-checked our mobile phone signals about forty times.

That night I veered between euphoria and desperation; one minute I thought ‘Why wouldn’t we get the house? We’re offering a good price and they’re keen to sell’. Then I would think, ‘One of the siblings will decide they don’t want to sell and so the whole thing will just collapse’.

“I mean why would you want to sell such an incredible place?” I said out loud to no one in particular at three in the morning. “It must be one of the most beautiful houses in France.”

I listened to Nick breathing peacefully, which made me feel safe. This was the biggest thing we had done together since saying ‘I do’ and having three children, two of them at once. It was a huge adventure and we needed to make it work.

Miraculously, I fell asleep again almost straight away despite my panic attack. When I woke up in the morning, I took this as a sign that the international conspiracy to keep me awake had not reached France – yet another good reason to move there.

But I left the promised land with a heavy heart the following morning since there had been no call from the agent. As we boarded the plane, I wondered if I would ever walk through the vineyards at Sainte Claire again. Not only could I see myself being happy there – I couldn’t see myself being happy anywhere else.

“Mummy, where's Daddy?” There is a voice coming from somewhere asking a question I cannot answer. I know I need to react but I can't seem to open my eyes.

“Mummy, Eddie took my fairy dress and says he is going to wear it to his first day at school,” another voice joins it. “Tell him he can't; he's a boy, and anyway it's my dress.”

“You wear my flip-flop tops.” The first voice is back. I'm longing to see what's going on and to know what a flip-flop top is.

“Your flip-flops stupid, they're called flip-flops,” says the disgruntled owner of the fairy dress.

Why can't I open my eyes? It feels like something dark is forcing them closed. Have I gone blind overnight? Is it possible to lose both one's husband and one's eyesight in a few short hours? Has God blinded me for visualising my husband's mistress being publicly exposed as a home-breaker and having her head shaved by booing crowds in the Place du 14 Juillet as I am awarded the Légion d'Honneur for services to the French wine industry?

“Mummy, wake up and listen,” bellows a third voice. “You have to get up, it's morning time. It's light outside. We're supposed to be starting school today.”

I sit up, feeling dazed and disorientated.

“Mummy, why are you wearing a scarf around your eyes?” asks one of my children.

Of course, the reason I can't open my eyes is that I have a
lavender-scented 
bean-bag tied over them with a leopard-print scarf. I couldn't sleep because of the bright moonlight forcing its way into the bedroom through the rickety old shutters. Or was it more to do with the fact that my husband of ten years and the father of the three little people currently clambering on top of me admitted to an affair last night with a French woman called Cécile?

I unwind the leopard-print scarf and bean-bag from around my head.

“Mummy, you don't look very good,” says Emily, head to one side, before putting her thumb in her mouth. I almost burst into tears at the sight of the three of them, all in their pyjamas, beautiful with blond tousled
early-morning
hair, looking up at me expectantly. Emily already has her cat's ears on. She was given them for Christmas a year ago and never goes anywhere without them. I have got so used to seeing them they almost seem to be a part of her, but I wonder what the French will make of her eccentricity.

“That's not very nice,” says Charlotte, adding with the brutal honesty of a child, “but it is true.”

“Mummy looks like a fairy,” says Edward, climbing closer to give me a hug. I clasp him to me greedily. Obviously this morning I am more vulnerable than most mornings, but poor Edward's first words were ‘det away' because I have always smothered him with hugs and kisses.

“I look like a fairy too,” he continues, wriggling free from my arms. “Where's Daddy?” he adds, looking around the room while doing an unsteady twirl on the bed to show me the fairy dress at its best. I wonder for a brief moment if I can pretend their father is hiding to avoid telling them the truth. But they would soon run out of places to look in our
bedroom-cum
-open-plan bathroom.

“Edward,” I say looking at him and stroking his blond hair. I am about to utter my first sentence as a single mother. It has to be just right. This is one of those moments they might never forget, like the first time they ride a bike or wear a school uniform. I have to make it as painless as possible for them.

But how do I explain that their father has gone? I just can't do it to them. This must be what it's like when you have to tell people someone is dead. There they are, all innocent and unknowing, and you're just about to shatter their world. I can't shatter their world – not yet anyway, not before a cup of tea.

So instead of telling Edward that his father is probably with a
small-breasted
woman called Cécile, I tell him he can't go to school in Charlotte's fairy dress. This probably has a more immediate effect on him than the other news would have had.

“Why not? I love it,” he wails, keeling over on the bed, looking
dangerously close to having a tantrum or at least bashing himself on the headboard.

“Because your teacher might not like it.” I know they don't go for school uniforms in France, but a fairy dress might be pushing it. “And you look a bit, well, a bit like a girl and you might get teased.”

Edward sits up. “I look like a girl?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say, stroking his hair again. “I'm sorry to say you do.”

“Yuk. I hate girls,” he says looking disconsolately at his fairy dress.

Charlotte looks around the room. “Is Daddy downstairs in the shower?”

“No, Daddy has gone to London,” I say, making an effort not to betray anything in my voice. “He had to leave for work early.”

“But he was supposed to be here for our first day at school,” wails Emily. “It's not fair.”

“I know, I know,” I say consolingly. “I'm afraid he had to go back to work urgently. But as a special treat you can have
pain au chocolat
for breakfast. A French breakfast for my French schoolchildren.”

If anything can console Emily it is chocolate.

“Yipppeee!” she yells. Didn't take her long to get over the absence of her father. Maybe I should eat some chocolate too and hope for the best?

“Last one to get dressed is a rotten banana,” yells Charlotte, running towards the door. I watch them. Charlotte is a smaller version of me, or at least the me I used to be before I became a mummy with a tummy; Emily is more like my mother: a total rebel. She'll be reading books on nihilism before she's ten. Or possibly even writing them.

Half of me feels like lying down and going back to sleep. So what if I'm the rotten banana? I can't muster the energy to do anything at all. I'm exhausted. My brain feels as messy as a ball of wool that's been dragged around the house for several hours by an over-excited Daisy. The thought of getting dressed, even getting up, fills me with despair.

I wonder where Nick is now. Probably already back with Cécile. She could be tying his tie for him as I lie here wondering how the hell my marriage ended. Hopefully she'll accidentally strangle him.

What am I supposed to do? I need to think about our future, about moving back home, packing everything up again (lucky I didn't throw away those
£
8 collapsible boxes), finding a house, taking the children out of school, finding them another school. I wonder where I put Simon the removal man's number. I didn't think I'd ever need it again, let alone two weeks into our new life. The list of things to do is endless and horrible. I don't want to dwell on any of it now; it makes me feel physically sick. But I can't possibly stay here alone with no job and rely on Nick the faithless
bastard for handouts.

I think back to how excited we were when Mr Vorst called us to tell us our offer had been accepted. I had the feeling of a whole new world opening up. And now of course it is already closing.

In the distance either Frank or Lampard screeches. Nick bought them from an aviary near Montpellier a few days after we moved here. They roam around the estate looking elegant and squawking occasionally. It feels like they have been here forever, like they belong to the house and land.

I love the sound they make: it's an aristocratic sound, the sort of sound you only ever hear in England when you're on a visit to some stately home. Whenever I see our peacocks wandering around regally I'm reminded of the TV show
Brideshead Revisited
. But where is Jeremy Irons when I need him?

I get up and walk out onto the terrace. It is a chilly January morning. There is no frost but a light mist hangs over the vineyards and the sun is just beginning to wake up. It seems inconceivable that Nick could risk his family and all this: Frank and Lampard, Sainte Claire, our new life, our vineyards, everything he's dreamed about for so long, just for a good sex life. I need to understand why. I feel utterly confused and abandoned. How the hell did this happen?

I turn to my rose. “Maybe this is just one of those moments of madness?” I ask it. “Maybe he will wake up today and realise the huge mistake he's made.” Then I decide that talking to a flower may be considered a moment of madness in itself. You can only get away with that if you're next in line to the throne.

How long does a moment of madness normally last? Is it a kind of mid-life crisis? Maybe it had been building up for months. Did Nick think the move to France would answer all his problems, dispel his dissatisfaction, and then find it didn't? Or did he realise that the only thing that could satisfy him was Cécile and her self-waxing legs?

Of course I don't know that they're self-waxing, but I assume she didn't get my husband to stick around for so long by wrapping hirsute pegs around him. I walk back inside and over to the mirror. I lift up my nightie and look down at my own legs. Yep, they're predictably hairy.

Is he right? Have I really let myself go? I need to call Sarah, I need to talk to someone. Last night I just couldn't face anything, but today I need to work out what to do.

A scream from the kitchen stops my rêverie. I run downstairs and find Edward trying to wrestle Emily's precious Peter Rabbit bowl, a sixth birthday present from her best friend at school in England, from her.

“Sit in your place, Edward,” I say, taking the bowl from him. If I'm going
to be a single parent there's going to have to be a policy of zero tolerance around here. “Girls, lay the table.”

“Why does he get to do nothing?” moans Charlotte.

“Because he's only five and he doesn't get to do nothing, he's going to help me clear the table.”

The twins think about rebelling but I give them one of my ‘don't even think about it' looks so they get out bowls, plates and cups. They put one in Nick's place.

“Not there, silly,” says Charlotte to Emily. “He's gone to London to work.”

“He didn't say goodbye,” says Emily before putting her thumb back in her mouth.

“He asked me to say goodbye and give you all a kiss,” I lie. Why am I protecting the bastard? Actually I'm not, I'm protecting them.

I leave the room, partly to get dressed but partly so they can't see that I am about to start crying again. Maybe I should hold off telling them. He was always going to be away during the week and even some weekends, so as far as they are concerned nothing has really changed. Right now I'm so unsure of what will happen. Maybe in a few weeks I will be able to forgive him? Or maybe he won't want to come back at all after a few weeks of the full Cécile treatment.

I pull my nightie over my head and resume my investigation of myself in the full-length mirror. How could he leave all this behind? The breasts that have seen better days, the nipples that never really recovered from
breastfeeding
, the knees with an inexplicably useless layer of skin just above them that seems to have arrived from nowhere, the unwaxed legs and bikini line, the out-of-shape arms, the buttocks that are at the other end of pert. And I haven't even started on my face.

Sophie Reed, née Cunningham, mother of three, thirty-six years old, saggy, sad and single. And a sex-free zone. What happened to my libido? Nick was right to complain about that. It's not like I'm not aware of the issue myself. My sex drive is like one of those 80s pop stars that you used to be so familiar with but who then just vanished off the face of the earth. When I was trying to get pregnant I was keen on it, then while I was pregnant I liked it – my whole body was somehow on heightened alert.

But after that my libido turned into Adam Ant and my husband had an affair. How long did it take? I suppose since Edward I have totally lost interest in Nick and any sex life with him. It's almost as if the love I used to have for the father has been transferred to our son. Not in any sexual way of course, but all my affection and adoration. I could spend hours gazing at
Edward, but I never really notice Nick any more. Or if I do notice him, it's because he's done something to annoy me like not putting his clothes in the laundry basket or nicked the bit of the paper I wanted to read. When did it all change?

There was a time though when he was everything to me, when I adored him and he adored me. Is this all my fault? Should I have made more of an effort to be sexy and seductive and lost the baby weight and had my hair dyed blonder and done all those things high-maintenance yummy mummies do? I suppose it never occurred to me that he would go off me. I have always been pretty, and vaguely thin, and attractive. Boys always liked me. Up until now that is. I still look OK, but I am no longer thin. My weight gain has been insidious: it has happened without me noticing, each baby leaving its marks in the form a few kilos. I don't look after myself like I used to. I never have facials, I hardly ever paint my nails, I have forgotten where to buy leg wax and don't even think about matching underwear even though I now live in the land where it is practically obligatory. I have become the second lowest priority on my list, just above my husband.

I drag a brush through my hair; it is still thick, blonde and long, so at least I have that going for me. Thankfully alopecia hasn't set in. Yet. I did read somewhere that you can lose your hair from shock or go grey overnight. I guess if that were going to happen it would have done so already. But maybe the shock of Nick's infidelity hasn't reached my hair follicles yet.

I still can't believe it. Nick and infidelity. Those words just don't fit together. My solid, dependable, Irish rock of a husband has slept with another woman. He has betrayed me, betrayed all of us. And the worst of it is that I only had two weeks to enjoy this French dream before it happened. I can't believe my new life, that started with the New Year, is already over.