‘Precisely.’ Emily grinned. ‘But please do try not to veer sideways, won’t you?’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’ Lily smiled.
There was a moment’s silence before she began again. ‘Look, in all honesty, the property does need serious attention. The garden is so overgrown – some of the grasses and weeds are taller than me. And there are repairs needed. And I haven’t really had the chance to clean it properly…’
‘You really do want me to like this place,’ said Emily, placing her hand briefly over Lily’s. ‘Seriously, don’t worry. You’ve told me about it and it sounds beautiful.’
‘Well, it has potential at least.’
‘It’ll be fine. I won’t judge. I promise.’
‘I guess we’ll find out,’ Lily said, bumping slightly up the small, gravelled kerb. ‘This is it.’
‘What, this one?’ Emily said, pointing at her neighbour’s cottage.
‘No, that one.’
‘Oh. But you said… overgrown?’
Lily looked up properly and gasped. In place of the tangled mess that had filled the entire front garden, was a plot of flattened, slightly grassy, slightly muddy, ground. The path was clearly visible and from the looks of it had even been swept.
‘Oh, my god,’ Lily said. ‘It must have been Claude.’
‘Who’s Claude?’ Emily asked as they got out of the car.
‘Oh, he’s a friend of Frédérique’s – you know the guy who’s selling me the place? He said he’d bring his tractor over and – well – sort out the garden. But I didn’t realise he was doing it today.’ She glanced at her watch – it had been four and a half hours since she’d left, but even so the progress was astounding.
‘Wow, that’s nice of him.’
‘Ridiculously nice,’ Lily said, taking one of Emily’s bags from her as they walked up the path to the front door.
Inside, she inspected Emily’s face closely as her friend made positive comments about the I, the size and the potential of the place. ‘Really?’ she asked repeatedly. ‘You really like it?’
‘Darling, I like it for you,’ her friend said at last. ‘It wouldn’t be my bag, but I’m a lazy cow – you know that. If you say you can transform this into your dream property, I believe you.’
‘Thank you.’
They finally walked through to the kitchen, after she’d explained to Emily in probably too much detail, exactly what to expect. ‘I know I said it was a kitchen, but it’s really only a work in progress…’ she was saying, as they pushed into the room. ‘And you’ll see the back garden from the window and it’s a complete and utter… oh.’
She stopped so suddenly that Emily bumped into her and almost sent her flying.
‘Oops, sorry,’ her friend said.
‘No, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s just… I saw…’ She gestured to the window.
Rather than the tangled greener’ she'd used to view whenever she was at the back of the house, the back garden too had been flattened. The job was rudimentary – clearly done with a tractor that had left the grass cuttings in its wake and scored lines in the newly revealed ground. But for the first time Lily was able to see the 3,000 m2 of garden that stretched away from the back of her cottage. A line of fir trees signalled the end of her plot giving way to a wooded area through which – wherever there was a small gap – she could glimpse the lake beyond.
Propped in the corner, uncovered during the job no doubt, was a rather rusty cast-iron table and chairs.
‘Oh my god,’ Lily said again, ‘it’s beautiful. This is my garden. This is…’
Emily draped an arm around her friend’s shoulders. ‘It’s absolutely perfect,’ she said.
They were mid-coffee when there was a knock at the door. Lily went to answer and found Claude standing on her doorstep, smiling.
‘I just come to see if it is OK?’ he said in his broken English. ‘I know it is not pretty, yes? But there were many – how you say – sticks and trunks and it is very hard to cut. So I ’ave to use my biggest tracteur.’
‘Oh, it’s wonderful!’ she said, just managing to resist the urge to jump into his arms and give him the thank you hug of his life. ‘It’s… I don’t know how I would have managed.’
‘It is nothing,’ Claude replied, modestly.
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to pay? I really don’t mind. I…’
Claude shook his head. ‘It is – how you say? – what les amis, the friends are for.’
‘Oh, well, at least come in for a coffee?’ she said, then, hoping that coffee wasn’t quite the euphemism for sex in France that it had become in England, quickly added, ‘My friend, Emily, is here and I’m sure she’d love to meet you.’
‘Well, for un petit moment per’aps,’ he said, stepping into the house and pulling off his boots.
‘Emily, this is Claude,’ Lily said, as they walked back into the kitchen.
Emily, who’d been leaning against the kitchen sink, sipping a coffee, straightened up. ‘Ah, the farmer!’ she said, nodding in his direction. ‘Nice to meet you.’
‘It is my pleasure.’
Lily quickly poured out another coffee and set it down on the small shelf close to where Claude was standing, placing a bag of sugar and bottle of milk there too for him to personalise his drink as he pleased. ‘Sorry it’s a bit messy,’ she said.
‘It is what?’
‘Um, messy – er a bit négligé?’
‘Désordonné? C’est normale! You have just moved, oui? It take time,’ Claude said, adding several spoonfuls of sugar to his café then grimacing as he took his first gulp.
‘Lily,’ Emily said quietly, sidling over to where Lily stood leaning against the sink. ‘Did you seriously just talk to that man about negligees?’
‘No, négligé means untidy – neglected – or at least I hope so,’ said Lily. She looked at Claude who was studiously staring at his coffee, recognising they were having private words, and felt guilty. ‘Désolé, Claude,’ she said. ‘C’est her… um langue.’ It’s her language, nodding at Emily to ensure he understood.
‘Sa langue?’ he said. ‘She ’ave a problem with er mouth, um, her tongue?’
‘No, no,’ Lily said. ‘Her language, she doesn’t speak much French – even less than me.’
‘Oh, I don’t know! I understand you’re talking about negligees and tongues. Do you want me to leave?’ quipped Emily.
‘Emily!’ Lily chastised, feeling her face get hot. She barely knew Claude, and the last thing she wanted to do was to make him feel uncomfortable, or give him the wrong idea.
To her relief, Claude laughed. ‘Ah, she is a joker, yes!’ he said, grinning at Emily. ‘She ’ave the Breetish humour.’
To Lily’s surprise, Emily flushed slightly. ‘J’essaie,’ she said, I try, then glanced at Lily. ‘You’re not the only one who listened in French lessons at school,’ she said.
‘So I see.’
After answering a few questions about what farming life was like in the Limousin – ‘Yes, it is a lot of work’; ‘No, I don’t kill the cows myself’’; ‘Yes, I grow sweetcorn’; ‘Yes, I have three dogs but the little one is my favourite’ – Claude finished his coffee and left, with the promise of coming to help if Lily needed anything else.
‘My word,’ Emily said, when the front door closed. ‘No wonder you’re enjoying the scenery around here.’
‘Emily!’
‘What? The man is bloomin’ gorgeous. And he seems to like you!’
‘Don’t be silly, he’s just being nice. People are… well, the ones I know so far, they seem really lovely. And it was Frédérique who suggested he came. You know, the owner. If anything it’s a favour to him.’
‘If you say so.’
‘I do say so,’ she said, grinning over her lukewarm coffee.
‘Still, those eyes.’
‘I know.’
‘That accent.’
‘Well, you’d be surprised, but lots of people have the same accent around here.’
‘That body…’
‘Em! You didn’t see his body.’
‘No, but I’ve imagined it and believe me, it’s to die for.’
Lily shook her head. ‘God, I’ve missed you, Em.’
‘Glad to hear it. And you too, actually.’ Emily looked suddenly teary.
Lily looked at her friend’s eyes, at the unfamiliar shine of threatened tears. It wasn’t the first time she’d felt something was different about Emily since her arrival. The moment in the car when she’d looked wistful, the slight sadness at the edges of her smile. ‘Are you OK?’ she said.
‘Oh, yes. I just keep tearing up at the moment. Chris reckons it’s peri-menopause, but I’m obviously far too young for that in reality.’
‘Far too young.’ Lily reached out and squeezed Emily’s shoulder. ‘You know, if it’s not… I mean if it’s anything else… if something’s wrong. You know you can…’
‘I know.’ Emily nodded.
There was a silence, but clearly Emily wasn’t about to fill it.
‘Sorry about the lack of furniture by the way,’ Lily said.
‘It’s cool. I like the minimalist look.’