One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [104]
And then I slipped right down the precipice and imagined a lovely home, a family, a big country house. Children, ponies in the paddock, dogs in the boot room, like Laura and all her friends. My husband, like their husbands, a successful lawyer. Dinner parties, a little job – yes, still a job, still the interior designer, but with backing from my husband. No pressure. Not a big disaster if it doesn’t work out, darling. No panic. That was it. That would be nice. Oh, and I’d shut for a month at Christmas while we went skiing, and in the summer too, while we were at our house in France. No, wouldn’t shut, because my partner, Maggie, would take over. Maggie, who had to work all year round, who didn’t have the option, the luxury, the cushion to break her fall. Wouldn’t that have been nice, I thought as I shut my eyes, which I realized were wide open and staring, even though I was exhausted. Would still be nice.
Still my mind wouldn’t rest, and I was so tired. Because now I was wondering, feverishly, whether Céline would carry on working. After children. Would she go back to the office in Paris in her Armani suit, having efficiently popped a baby off the breast, or would she, in a few years’ time, be wandering around that glorious Seillans garden? Down there on those terraced lawns, beyond the olive grove, by the river, one hand holding a golden-haired toddler’s, the other, on her slightly swollen tummy, barefoot and pregnant? Tears of self-pity gathered in my throat, as I realized it was all I’d ever wanted to be. Barefoot and pregnant. I wanted someone to take my shoes away.
20
The following morning, however, sunglasses firmly in place, sharp little white shirt over three-quarter jeans, I was Hattie Carrington, chic West London antiques dealer again, not the snivelling, self-pitying wretch of that hotel bedroom. Bangles jangling up tanned arms, Chanel No. 19 wafting out through the window, I was at the wheel of my lorry, getting the usual admiring glances from the other truckers as I rumbled up the ramp aboard the ferry. Never mind that there’s more to life than getting admiring glances from six-bellied tattooed truckers. Never mind that I’d had to almost bribe the ferry port officials to let me on this boat, and not the one I was actually booked on, which sailed a mere two hours later. Oh, no, I couldn’t get that. Out of the question. Not with the rest of the antiques gang, the likes of Ivan, Ricard and Sylvie, who’d no doubt worked the Fréjus fair brilliantly, got heaps of bargains under their belts, enjoyed a jolly lunch in town before packing up and driving en masse to Reims for supper and a stop-over, before a sensible three-hour drive this morning. I had to save some face. Had to pretend my desperate, pitiful flee from the hotel bedroom had been in some way worth it.
I sighed as I slammed the cab door and headed for the ship’s stairs and upper decks. Thank God I’d forgotten my phone charger: thank God, for once, Ivan couldn’t get in touch with me. For a woman who compulsively checked her inbox for text messages, rang 1471 to check her answer machine was working, and had been known to yell, ‘Ring, damn you!’ at her mobile, I was, for once, relieved to be incommunicado. Not to be answering awkward questions. Why, I wondered as I sat alone at the bar on the lurching ferry, watching my café au lait slop into its saucer. Why was my life like this?
I finally achieved Laura’s house some hours later, via a circuitous route, that involved a stop at my house in London. There I’d had a quick wash and brush-up, and deposited the lorry, swapping my mode of transport for something more feminine. By the time, then, I eventually crunched up my sister’s drive, with its splendid pleached limes and its sylvan views, I’d driven eight hundred miles in two days and was, frankly, shattered. Cranky, too. The calm, the quiet, the other-worldliness,