The French for Love by Fiona Valpy Read Free Book Online

finish (ha!), then I jump into a taxi to get to the airport only to find Ed sitting in it. He insists we go back to his place to pick up his suitcase. I realise we’ve missed the plane, so I go to catch a bus to the station, but there’s one just pulling away and I run to catch it but my legs are like lead weights and my lungs constrict so that I can hardly move. I push on though and get to the station. The Eurostar is—miraculously—still there and I go to buy a ticket. But there’s a long queue and it’s not moving. I crane my head to see who’s holding it up and Ed turns to smile at me from the front of the line. Weak-kneed with relief, I go up to him, but he turns away. Then I see he has bought two tickets and I know the second one is not for me. In desperation, I get on the train anyway just as it pulls away from the platform. But instead of whizzing soundlessly through the countryside, it seems to have developed the same problem as my legs, and drags itself along laboriously. I get out and miraculously find myself at Sainte Foy—hooray, nearly there; hang on Liz, I’m coming. I force my leaden limbs to carry me up the hill and finally I turn into the drive under the oaks. But the courtyard is empty and the trees are skeletons and I know I’m too late. All I can hear is my desperate, gasping breath and then a magpie flutters down from one of the trees and starts towards me with menacing intent. It gives a rasping cry and I wake with a start.
    The last time I dreamed that dream was when I hit rock bottom.
    I’d woken, gasping for breath, to find that there really was a magpie calling in the trees in one of the neighbouring gardens.
    I’d lain there for a while, trying to calm my breathing and gather my thoughts. I needed to get a grip. How do you know when you’re losing it? Was this what a nervous breakdown felt like?
    I got up and went through to the kitchen. Opening the fridge door, I gazed at an unappetising heel of stale bread and a single pot of yoghurt which, on closer inspection, turned out to be about a week past its sell-by date. I went to the biscuit tin, but there was nothing in it but the forlorn empty wrapper from a packet of HobNobs.
    The phone lay on the counter beside me and, almost without thinking, I picked it up and dialled. ‘Hi, Mum,’ I said, ‘how are you?’
    ‘Oh, hello darling, just getting ready to go out, actually. What are you doing today?’
    ‘Nothing much. Just wondering if I could pop over sometime?’
    ‘Well I’m going shopping this morning and then I’ve got Bridge this afternoon,’ she replied breezily.
    ‘Okay, well another day then.’ I’d tried hard to keep the tremor in my voice from spilling over into something unstoppable.
    There was a pause.
    ‘Are you all right, darling?’
    I swallowed hard and suddenly found that I couldn’t get the words out because if I opened my mouth I’d start to cry and I didn’t think I’d ever be able to stop.
    ‘Actually the shopping can wait,’ said my mother briskly into the silence that hummed down the phone line between us. ‘Come straight over. Or shall I come to you instead?’
    I took a deep breath. ‘I’ll come to you. Be nice to have a change of scene,’ I said into the phone with a watery smile.
    Half an hour later, Mum was putting two mugs of coffee onto a tray beside a Royal Doulton plate bearing some leftover home baking from her latest Bridge afternoon. The familiarity and homeliness were comforting.
    ‘It’s such a lovely day, let’s take this into the garden,’ she’d said.
    Instead of sitting on the terrace beside the wall of the house, she led the way across the lawn to Dad’s bench. We sat and she offered me the plate of cakes. I shook my head and she’d said kindly, ‘Come on, Gina, you look as if you haven’t eaten properly in days. Or slept either, come to that. Take one and tell me what’s on your mind.’ Balancing her mug of coffee on the arm of the bench, she’d reached over and