‘It is no problème,’ he said again, before sipping the last of his coffee and standing up. ‘Come with me, Madame Buttercup, eh? I will love to ’elp.’
Standing up and walking out of the café next to Frédérique, Lily felt suddenly optimistic. With his help, and by making connections with some of his friends, she’d find her feet. She’d only been here a short time, but she already felt less alone.
As she passed Sophie, she thanked her, put a ten euro note on the counter and refused change.
Sophie thanked her and gave her a short smile. But as she left the café with Frédérique, his hand resting gently on the small of her back, Lily turned, only to find the waitress regarding her with a fixed, unsmiling stare.
21
As his key turned in the lock, she had to hold in a little shriek. He walked into the front room, ruffled but smart in his day-old work clothes and she rushed towards him. He dropped his briefcase and pulled her to him.
‘Wow, what on earth have I done to deserve this?’ he joked.
‘Ben,’ she said, waving the plastic stick close to his face. ‘We’ve… I’m…’
‘Really?’ He pulled back and looked at her, his eyes shining. ‘You’re really…?’
‘Yes, Ben. Really.’
Lily plonked the heavy bucket onto the dusty floor, slopping some of the contents out in the process. ‘Le seau,’ she said to herself, trying to memorise some of the words she’d learned for her shopping trip. She unwrapped the sponge (éponge) she’d also picked up at the bricolage and dropped it into the soapy mixture. Then, tucking the scraper (grattoir) into her pocket out of the way, she looked for one last time at the dated wallpaper.
The wallpaper looked back menacingly.
It ended here.
‘OK, here goes, wall,’ she said, taking a picture of the wall for posterity before slipping the phone back into the pocket of her old jeans. ‘Flock wallpaper out, neutral tones in.’
Using warm water, she began to soak the wall, seeing the faded colours darken as the water seeped through the thick paper covering to dissolve the glue beneath. She’d always enjoyed decorating – transforming a room from dull to beautiful, or changing the feel of a place by altering a colour scheme. One of the things she’d looked forward to about owning a ‘fixer-upper’ was being able to put her mark on a property properly.
In the UK, her house had been a cardboard cut-out of pretty much every other house in the street.
This house, for all its issues, had plenty of personality.
After soaking three panels, she began to peel the wallpaper off, using a scraper to loosen edges and pulling them as far as the paper would allow before new water needed to be applied. It was satisfying watching the wall change from faded flock to a sort of green, undercoated surface. And she could hardly wait for the moment – admittedly probably a couple of weeks in the future – when she’d be able to roll the first satisfying coat of paint across the darker tones and bring the house up to date.
It was only a bit of wallpaper, but each time she pulled on a piece and felt it gather traction and lift easily in her hands she wanted to wave it in the face of any incredulous person who’d doubted she’d be able to cope with this place alone. Because here she was; hair tied back, sweat forming on her brow, clothes covered in splashes of water, tiny pieces of sodden backing paper and glue. But doing it. And – even to her surprise – loving it.
‘See, Ben,’ she said, starting on the second panel, reaching for a particularly large corner, where a strip of wallpaper had begun to wetly peel itself off the wall, promising an especially easy race to the bottom when pulled. ‘I can do it on my own.’ She tugged at the paper, feeling it yield effortlessly in her hands. But just as she began to feel confident in her DIY skills, it decided to stick. She tugged, then a piece of plaster that had attached to the back of the sticky sheet dislodged with it, and flew out – hitting her in the face. ‘Ow,’ she said, rubbing her cheek, and then attacking the wall with a little more venom.
But worse was to come: as she continued to pull, it seemed that the glue on the paper was actually stronger than the plaster, and even some of the stone beneath. Great chunks of wall crumbled as she tugged, revealing – instead of an improved, flat blank canvas of wall – a mottled, ruined surface. ‘Oh shit,’ she said as she looked at the pitted plaster, the loose crumbling mortar and the chunks of wall that had somehow stuck to the wallpaper strip in her hand and dislodged with it, like hair on a strip of salon wax.
Perhaps it was just that one panel, she thought, feeling herself begin to sweat. She pulled at another strip of paper, but the wall beneath was even worse, crumbling and uneven and damp beneath its colourful disguise.
‘No…’ she said. ‘Please, no.’
Her heart beating hard, she stepped back to observe her work. One clean, smooth strip of wall, then a mess of stone and rubble and broken plaster. Crumbled chunks of loose mortar and tiny rocks at her feet. And a wall that looked not only unsightly, but actually downright dangerous to her untrained eye.
‘Oh no,’ she said to herself, close to tears. ‘Oh no, oh no, oh no.’
Was it her fault? Had she done something wrong? Soaked the paper too much? Pulled on it too enthusiastically? Or – worse – was it the house? Was it that her little piece of paradise was actually not all it promised to be?
Wiping her face roughly with the back of her hand, she pulled her phone from her pocket, thumb scrolling instinctively for Frédérique’s number. But before she could dial, she noticed a text message from an unknown French number. She clicked on it, wondering who it could be from.
Hi Lily, we’re in your neck of the woods this morning – off to the lake. Fancy joining us? SAM
She and Sam hadn’t spoken for that long at the party; then after she’d left abruptly, holding back the tears brought about by Ben’s break-up messages, Lily had assumed she probably wouldn’t hear from her. But it seemed she had made a friend after all. Or at least had the beginnings of a friendship with someone who’d seemed wonderfully normal.
She replied:
Having a nightmare but I’d love to escape.
What’s wrong?
Decorating disaster…
Shall I pop over on the way – sure it can’t be that bad. You live right by the lake, right?
That would be brilliant. I need a second opinion. I may have accidentally demolished a wall!
Oh dear.
‘Ah,’ Sam said, half an hour later when she arrived with two excited children in tow. Derek, three, was already running up and down the hallway, laughing loudly. And Claudine, four, was hiding shyly behind her mother’s legs.
‘Yep,’ said Lily, looking at the mess she’d created again, but somehow feeling less devastated than she had at first. Just having someone there with her helped her to see it in more practical terms. She could get it fixed. And the damage wasn’t a result of her lack of DIY skills. The wall beneath the paper had already been in a state. She grinned. ‘I guess I’m not quite as good at do-it-yourself as I thought.’
‘Oh, don’t beat yourself up,’ Sam said. ‘There’s DIY in the UK. But in France? In one of these properties? DIY is a whole different beast.’ She rubbed her hand lightly on the bare wall, loosening a tiny sprinkle of debris and dust, which crackled as it landed on the wooden floor. ‘Oops. Sorry.’
‘No problem.’
‘Yep. If you’d told me beforehand you were doing this… well, I’d have advised you to stay well clear. Every job we’ve ever done in our stone ruin has just revealed seven more jobs underneath. You learn to approach everything with caution after a while.’
‘Oh really? So it’s not just me?’
‘Nope, we’ve all been there,’ said Sam. ‘Plus, worse. We had exposed wires and all sorts coming out of the wall. Someone had literally shoved wallpaper over an electrical nightmare.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. Anyone who’s bought one of these stone houses… I mean they’re beautiful. But… well, put it this way. There’s a reason why they’re for sale.’
‘Ah.’
‘And often there’s a reason why the wallpaper’s still in situ. Or covered up with more wallpaper, rather than stripped.’
‘I can believe it.’
‘Lots of the younger French people I know live in those little new-build houses. They leave the stone wrecks to idiots like us.’
‘Oh.’ Lily had seen the peach-coloured houses dotted around. Little rectangles of brick and mortar, devoid of personality. ‘Aren’t they a bit… well, bland?’
‘Well, maybe. But bland is underrated,’ Sam said, gesturing to the wall. ‘Gabriel was desperate to buy one when we got married. He was all, We do not wish to be a slave to our home.’
‘Well… yes.’
‘But I insisted we went for something more traditional. And you know, I’m glad I did. But there were moments when I totally saw his point too.’