Chloé held out the gift bag that contained the unmistakable weight of a bottle of wine. Now this was more like it. ‘Merci!’ Lily said, accepting the bag and walking through to the kitchen to put it on the dresser.
‘C’est votre poulet?’ asked Chloé, noticing the dead bird on the side and looking completely unfazed. ‘It’s yours?’
‘My voisin, my neighbour gave it to me. Un cadeau,’ Lily replied, unable to disguise the slight turn up of her lip.
Chloé laughed. ‘Quel est le problème? You are not végétarienne?’
‘Non, non, it’s not that. It’s just…’ Lily felt suddenly embarrassed. ‘I haven’t, I don’t know how… I don’t think I can…’
‘Ah, you do not know what to do weeth it?’ Chloé said, picking up the bird as if it wasn’t a newly dead, feathered murder victim, but a simple kitchen ingredient. ‘It is a big bird, no? You want that I ’elp?’
Lily paused. She wasn’t sure she wanted a tutorial in chicken plucking. Now or ever. Perhaps becoming a vegetarian might be a good option. ‘I’m not sure I can…’
Chloé laughed, seemingly reading all of this information on Lily’s face. ‘Then you want that I take him? And cook him for you?’
‘Would you?’ Lily coloured. ‘I just… I can’t…’
‘It iz not a problème. I will cook ’im and we will eat ’im tomorrow, if that work for you. I ’ave guest tonight but tomorrow, un pot-au-feu!’
When Chloé had gone, somehow sauntering up the tangled and hazardous garden path in her heels and fitted suit, bloodied chicken dangling at her side and still managing to look enviably chic, Lily realised she was smiling. She’d only been in the country a few days, but had already met someone who’d become a friend. Plus, she’d met and conversed with the maire. Plus, she seemed to have a nice – if a little rustic – neighbour.
Yesterday in the notaire, she’d felt as if she might have made a terrible error.
Yet now, just for a moment, she felt a flicker of recognition. As if somewhere inside she sensed that this strange, rural corner of France could indeed become her home.
As if on cue, her phone beeped. When she saw the name Ben, her heart turned over.
Ben:
Looks nice. Come home. I miss you.
She felt a pang: but reminded herself that, once again, Ben seemed just to be asking her to do what he wanted, without considering her.
Come here, she typed. But deleted her words.
I can’t,
she wrote instead.
There was no answer.
12
What was it about Emily? Lily wondered as she began trying to cut tough-stalked weeds with a pair of shears she’d acquired at the supermarket. She absolutely couldn’t wait to see her friend, knew that having someone here would cheer her up; she knew that Emily was coming with the best of intentions – to be supportive, to help make her feel more settled.
But when she cast a critical eye over her property, imagined Emily being here, looking at the dusty rooms and the wallpaper and the kitchen; taking in the garden, or the tangled overgrowth that passed for one, Lily felt a sense of rising panic.
Emily was not one to hold back an opinion. And Lily couldn’t help but worry that the scathing remarks she’d probably make about the state of the house and garden – humorously, and well meant – would shatter the romantic haze she’d managed to create whenever she looked at anything negative in the place.
She’d spent so long fantasising about what life in France would look like, she could see past the wreck that the property had become through years of neglect and visualise what it could become with a little money and a lot of work. In all honesty, it was this ability to visualise, to dream, that was keeping her sane; that was keeping her from panicking that she’d made a terrible mistake.
With Emily’s flight arriving this afternoon, she had no hope of carrying out the full renovation the house would need before it passed muster with her lovable but opinionated friend. But she’d decided to at least clear the path at the front so that Emily could make it to the door unscathed… and, hopefully, unscathing.
After an hour of being stung, of jumping whenever the loud buzz of an insect got too close to her ear, and swearing at the shears, the weeds and anything else that got in her way, the path was at least visible through the overhanging shrubbery.
The final few brambles close to the gate were thick and, rather than clip them neatly, the shears seemed just to break the surface bark but barely dent their tangled, stringy green interior. Lily tried again, and once again the bramble resisted. ‘Come on,’ she hissed at the unyielding stalk. The shears slid slightly to the side, and closed around the tendril, pinching it between the blades but barely making a mark.