A Year at the French Farmhouse(30)

‘Merci, oui,’ she replied, then carefully added: ‘Si j’ai une problème…’ If I have a problem.

‘Un problème,’ he corrected. ‘Problems, they are male, yes?’

She smiled. ‘OK.’ At least, she thought, the French had got that one right.

‘And les solutions, in French they are female,’ he said, smiling.

She laughed. ‘Well, not always,’ she said.

They stood for a minute in companionable silence, which suddenly became awkward. She jangled the keys purposefully. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I’d better be… you know.’

‘OK, Madame Buttercup.’

‘It’s Lily.’

‘OK, Lilee. I weel see you later. And call me, yes? For any problèmes you need?’

‘I will.’





It took twenty-five minutes and two wrong turns to find her way to Broussas again. Once in the small hamlet, she quickly found the house that she’d just deposited her redundancy money on. She’d have to clear her savings account to cover the rest of the cost; the remainder of the small inheritance her mum had left when she’d passed. ‘Well, I hope it’s going to be money well spent, Mum,’ she said quietly as she pulled up in front of the house and looked again at its overgrown garden.

Not for the first time in the eight years since her mum had died, she wished she could pick up the phone and get some advice. Mum wouldn’t have had much to say about France – she’d been a homebody like Ben and had never felt the urge to up sticks and move somewhere completely different. But she would have known what to say in the moment, how to bring Lily’s determination to the fore.

She thought about calling David – but a quick check of her watch and a mental calculation put paid to that idea. It would be early evening in Australia and her brother would be busy putting the twins to bed. They rarely called each other; she didn’t have the right to ring for advice out of the blue during the busiest time of his day.

And, of course, she no longer had Ben to talk to.

She sat for a moment, looking through the windscreen at the pair of stone cottages. The day had become unseasonably cloudy, and the location looked less appealing under shadow. She wondered, suddenly, what it would be like in November, and January. She’d only ever really pictured it in the summer.

But, she thought, unclicking her seat belt, sitting here feeling sorry for herself was not going to help matters. This – or a version of it at least – had been her dream for over half her life. She owed it to herself to see it through for better or worse.

She climbed out of the driver’s seat, clutching the set of keys – there were about twenty of them, all different sizes and she wondered whether they were all still relevant. Or whether, in fact, Frédérique had given her the wrong set and this ridiculous bunch fitted the locks at the local church or town hall or something.

She brandished them before her as she tackled the overgrown path – slightly easier this time after the partial gaps cleared by her venturing down there yesterday. Still, she ended up with more than her fair share of stings and leaf stain by the time she reached the front door. Her front door.

Then, swallowing hard, she put the key in the lock.

Five minutes later, she was still at the front door, sweating and swearing as she rotated the set of keys again and selected another candidate. ‘Come on,’ she said, shoving it into the lock; more like the lock on a prison door than a house, she thought. But finally, it slid into place and turned and suddenly she was able to push the heavy wooden door forward and step into the house for the very first time.





Ten minutes later, she was leaning against a wooden dresser in the kitchen, phone clamped to her ear.

‘How’s it going?’ Emily said, cutting to the chase.

‘I’m not sure, actually,’ she said, her voice thick with tears once again. The phone felt sticky against her hot face.

‘What’s up, Lily? Has something happened?’

‘It’s… well, I’ve signed for the house,’ she said with an enormous sniff. ‘Paid the deposit and everything.’

‘Right?’

‘And now… I mean, I’m in it for the first time… and…’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Oh, nothing. Well, everything. I don’t know… des problèmes…’ she said.

‘Lily, you’re not making sense,’ said her friend. ‘What’s the matter?’

She explained to Emily how she’d walked through the house noticing dangling wires and peeling wallpaper, smelling the damp and neglect and forlorn emptiness. How the parquet floors that had shimmered in the online photographs were scuffed and in need of polishing when inspected close up. How the kitchen simply consisted of a dresser and an enormous porcelain sink that was chipped and contained a pool of rust-coloured water. How she hadn’t been able to set foot in the back garden for fear of getting lost in the tangle of brambles and weeds. ‘Some of them are about six foot tall,’ she said. ‘How am I meant to even begin to tackle that?’

Upstairs, she’d found one old, tired metal bedstead that looked like an ancient (possibly haunted) relic, and three empty rooms, each of which needed more than a little TLC to make them passable. The windows were old, and several panels were damaged or cracked.